Richard Blade

About

Richard Blade (born Richard Thomas Sheppard; May 23, 1956, in Bristol, England) is a British-American Los Angeles–based radio, television and film personality from Torquay, England. He is best known for his radio programs that feature new wave and popular music from the 1980s. He was a disc jockey at KROQ-FM in Los Angeles from 1982 to 2000 and has been a host for SiriusXM’s 1st Wave classic alternative station since 2005.

Richard Thomas Sheppard attended Oxford University, graduating in 1974 and worked as a club DJ known as “The Young Dick Sheppard” in the United Kingdom and Europe. He moved to the United States in 1976 where he continued his work as a club DJ and served as a party DJ for celebrities in Los Angeles. He began his radio career in 1980, initially working for stations in Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo and Long Beach before joining KROQ-FM in 1982. He took a new name from the science fiction film Blade Runner (1982). Within a few months of working in Los Angeles, Blade had become the No. 1 Arbitron-rated radio personality on the West Coast and in 1982, he began to host a daily television program on KCAL-TV, back then known as KHJ-TV called MV3, which later…