David Marsden - Early Career

Early Career

Under the name Dave Mickie, he was the original manager of The Revols, a Canadian rock band in the late 1950s whose most famous member, Richard Manuel, would later become part of The Band. He later became one of Canada's pioneering rock DJs on radio, joining Chatham's CFCO in 1963. Bored with the station's commercial easy listening music, he reportedly brought in some of his own records one night, breaking format and hosting in an uncharacteristically dynamic style. He was fired the next morning, but was quickly rehired after the station learned that his experiment had increased the station's ratings.

He was later hired at CKEY in Toronto where he was called "the most controversial thing on Toronto radio." He parted ways with CKEY after just five months. He became host of Music Hop on CBC Television in 1965, succeeding Alex Trebek. He also started writing a column for the Toronto Star in the same year. He was the subject of a chapter in Marshall McLuhan's book Understanding Media, which lauded his unique hosting style:

That's Patty Baby and that's the girl with the dancing feet and that's Freddy Cannon there on the David Mickie Show in the night time ooohbah scuba-doo how are you booboo. Next we'll be Swinging on a Star and sssshhhwwoooo and sliding on a moonbeam. Waaaaa how about that . . . one of the goodest guys with you . . . this is lovable kissable D.M. in the p.m. at 22 minutes past nine o'clock there, aahhrightie, we're gonna have a Hitline, all you have to do is call WAlnut 5-1151, WAlnut 5-1151, tell them what number it is on the Hitline.

As David Marsden, he joined Montreal's CKGM in 1967 and in 1969, he moved to sister station, CKGM-FM. Marsden was instrumental in switching the station's format from beautiful music to free form progressive rock. In 1973, Marsden returned to Toronto with a completely different on-air persona at CHUM-FM. He left the station in February 1975 to devote more time to his radio commercial production company, but mainly because of the tight playlist CHUM-FM was making their DJs follow. Marsden refused to follow a playlist and left shortly after it was instituted. He eventually returned as an on-air personality at CHIC-FM shortly before it was transformed into CFNY.