Pierre Robert, a pillar of rock radio and a longtime DJ on Philadelphia’s pre-eminent rock station, died on Wednesday. He was 70.
His death, at his home in Gladwyne, Pa., was announced by Beasley Media Group, which owns 93.3 WMMR, the station where he worked. The cause of death was unknown, the company said.
Born in California, Mr. Robert became a staple of Philadelphia’s midday broadcasts shortly after he arrived in the city in 1981, driving a Volkswagen van across the country and landing, not long after, at the Center City offices of 93.3 WMMR. He stayed on the same airwaves for more than 40 years, broadcasting to what he called his “citizen” listeners.
“One of the city’s most recognizable celebrities, Pierre was at the center of its live music scene,” Beasley Media Group said in its statement, “greeting his legions of fans as if personal friends in the smallest clubs and largest stadiums.”
At WMMR, Mr. Robert became a trailblazer of the “progressive rock” format that was borne of the 1970s, in which radio programming and song selection were driven by live DJs and personalities. Now broadcasting from offices just outside the city in Bala Cynwyd, WMMR has maintained the style that many of its peers have long since dropped in favor of more tightly controlled playlists and scripts.
With his signature long hair and beard, Mr. Robert was a working relic of a different radio era, as much a presence in Philadelphia’s music venues as he was on its airwaves. Anointed “the last DJ” by Rolling Stone magazine, Mr. Robert guessed he had been to “thousands and thousands” of concerts, including shows by little-known bands on the city’s grimiest stages as well as sold-out stadiums.
“Today we lost a great friend. Someone who truly LOVED music,” the musician Jon Bon Jovi said in a Facebook post memorializing Mr. Robert. “All types of music. Someone who loved musicians. Not just famous ones, or chart toppers. He admired local artists and tomorrow’s rising stars.”
Though not of the city, Mr. Robert became one of its loudest champions, in ways both large and — in Philadelphia style — deliciously petty.
“I haven’t played Guns N’ Roses since 2002, when they stiffed the Philly crowd,” Mr. Robert told Philadelphia Magazine in 2021. “They didn’t show up for their show at what’s now the Wells Fargo Center.”
In turn, the city — infamously wary of outsiders — adopted him.
“He was a toes-in-the-grass hippie in this rough-and-tumble town,” Chuck Damico, the program director for WMMR, said of Mr. Robert on a tear-filled memorial broadcast Thursday morning. “It never changed who he was. He added what he was, and brought so much.”
Ali Watkins covers international news for The Times and is based in Belfast.
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