Where Did James Earl Jones Go?

RUSH:  Okay.  Back to the phones we go, as promised.  This is Justin in Menifee, California. Great to have you with us, Justin.  Hi.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  How you doing?

RUSH:  Very well, sir.  Thank you.

CALLER:  You know, I’ve been listening to you for about 25 years, and I started when I was a teenager, and I remember you doing an outro a long time ago to your program, and it used to have James Earl Jones on it, and I just always wondered what happened to that.

RUSH:  Yeah, that was James Earl Jones (doing impression), “This, you’re listening to the EIB Network.”

CALLER:  Yeah.

RUSH:  I’ll tell you how that came to be. Johnny Donovan, who is the director of compression here, director of compression and production, ran into James Earl Jones, who at the time was doing those IDs for CNN.  It’s about 25 years ago.  I forget where Johnny ran into him, but it was something social.  No, no, no.  James Earl Jones was in the studio somewhere.  That’s right.  Okay.  James Earl Jones was a guest at WABC, which is where the program originated back those days, and he was guesting on some other show and Johnny Donovan ran in and asked him to say, “You’re listening to the EIB Network.” 

And he wouldn’t do it.  He wouldn’t do it for a while.  Finally Johnny Donovan, as director of compression, convinced him to do it.  He didn’t know what it was, so he finally did it, and then a couple years later or I forget how it was a significant time after that, Justin, he found out about it and made us stop using it.  He rescinded permission.

CALLER:  Oh, I see.  Okay.

RUSH:  Yeah.  Did you think that we purposely broomed James Earl Jones from the EIB Network?

CALLER:  Oh, no, no.  I figured it was something like that, but, like, Chrissie Hynde, who I guess —

RUSH:  Well, Chrissie was okay.  Chrissie turned out to be the savior of our theme song.