Jed “The Fish” Gould, the pioneering Los Angeles DJ who spent 34 years on influential radio station KROQ-FM as “Jed the Fish,” has died. He was 69; the cause was lung cancer, of which he had only recently been diagnosed.
Gould first joined KROQ in 1978, when it was still a tiny, struggling FM station in Pasadena, breaking punk rock, alternative and new wave bands before anyone else — and continued there for decades, departing in 2012 after years as its afternoon jock.
“He is one of the kindest, funniest and the most unique people that I’ve ever met,” said good friend and current KROQ DJ Megan Holiday. “He was so inspiring and endlessly creative, and he had an infectious energy. He could light up an arena. I just loved him very much and was grateful for the time we got to spend together.”
After his time at KROQ, Gould spent time at noncommercial California State Northridge AAA station KCSN, where he did shifts until last fall. After a short stint at KLOS, he also then briefly returned to KROQ, as a host on the station’s HD-2 “Roq of the ’80s” feed.
“My decades at KROQ are the core of my radio experience,” he wrote on his LinkedIn page. “Right place at the right time. We were leading the way but had no idea. Looking back, it’s plain the influence of this powerhouse reached beyond radio. TV, movies and now the sorts of attitudes and intensities displayed online owe much of their processes to KROQ… Any music lover who grew up in SoCal will tell you KROQ was their buddy for much or most of their lives. You can tell I now take pride in what I did. But I really tried not to while I was doing it… I did have some terse and morally contradictory episodes at KROQ, but I was treated well by executives and colleagues alike. I found very little feedback would stick in my head better than the other way. [Program director] Kevin Weatherly helped me be a better me. This vast experience raced by like all good things. Driving to work, at least 10 times a month, I would remember how lucky I was; that this could all be over any minute. Like the end of the Sopranos.”
Born Edwin Jed Fish Gould III in 1955, in more recent years Jed the Fish spent his time as a visual artist, working in mixed media, sculpture and other forms. Before KROQ, he worked at stations including KIQQ, KEZY and KORG. During his KROQ run, he briefly left for modern rack KQAK and AOR KRQR San Francisco before returning.
But he’ll forever be best known for his legacy at KROQ, where he won multiple honors, including the Billboard Modern Rock Personality of the Year award twice, as well as the Radio & Records Local Modern Rock Personality of the Year. He also appeared as himself in films including “Surf II” and “Night Angel,” as well as the doc “Mayor of Sunset Strip.”
As Jed the Fish, Gould’s on-air personality was known for a wicked, off-beat sense of humor and a variety of loud, cackling laughs.
“It took me years of imitation before I learned the simplicity of being myself on the air,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “Turns out this was a wacky position to take, but people seem to like the honesty behind it. The laugh? People would often say, ‘Jed, do your laugh!’ I would glibly reply, ‘Say something funny.’ They often would, and even now, if they do, they get what they want. But what goes unrealized is the laugh is actually over a dozen laughs I subconsciously culled from family members in early childhood. The lingering devil laugh was Uncle John. The low chuckle was my mom’s dad. The wheezy one, my own dad. The giddy ‘hee hee’ from my first stepfather. I have a gentle, stuttering laugh which came from Eileen S. Hall, mom’s mom and a tremendous influence on me. The extended, energetic, open-throated ‘ha-haa’ that scares people seems to be my own, or perhaps a hybrid of the above. I highly recommend laughing whenever possible.”
Below, Holiday shared photos from a David Bowie-inspired photo shoot she and Gould participated in last year:
