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BiTS INTERVIEW: BILL FILIPIACK

BiTS: I saw a message that you posted on the Internet a few days ago, in which it appears that
you’re a person who is into almost everything in the world. Tell me something about your life. How
you managed to get where you are now.

BF: I, as a kid, was enamoured with radio. I grew up listening to Danny Neaverth on WKBW in
Buffalo New York, and I was enthralled with radio. I got the bug really early and it was to me the

root of the community and it’s where I heard my favourite music and was introduced to things that I
was unfamiliar with and that kind of got me going. I ended up studying radio and communications in
college and had my first radio show when I was in college as a freshman. Got my first job at WDOE
in Dunkirk, New York, and I eventually ended up moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in radio
and studied audio and sound and music and ended up at KZLA in Los Angeles and then eventually

Premiere Radio Networks in Los Angeles, and that was for me the beginning. I am surrounded by
music and amazing artists. I was writing myself at that point and started playing out at different

coffee houses and pubs around the Los Angeles area and that was kind of the beginning for me.

BiTS: You were already a guitar player then, weren’t you?

BF: I started playing piano by ear as a kid. My parents tried to get me to take lessons and I was too
boneheaded. [Chuckling] I was, I was awful, but it was very easy for me to hear songs on the radio
and then play them. I had an ear. When I was in high school, I was in a high school band and the bass
player and I, I traded one of my keyboards for a 12-string acoustic and so I taught myself guitar
around the age of 14 or 15 just because it was easier to play out with guitar than it was to carry a
keyboard with me all the time. I first started playing guitar when I was in high school and I pretty

much just taught myself.

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