Tawn Mastrey: 1954 - 2007
‘Leather nun’ was voice for heavy metal
By Los Angeles Times and Valerie J Nelson
October 08, 2007
Tawn Mastrey, a well-regarded heavy-metal disc jockey who built herreputation in the late 1980s at KNAC-FM when the radio station was theofficial outlet for the then-thriving metal scene in Los Angeles, has died.She was 53.
Ms. Mastrey died Tuesday at the University of Minnesota Medical Center inMinneapolis from the effects of hepatitis C, her sister, Cara Mastrey, said.Tawn Mastrey had contracted the disease as a child.
More recently, Ms. Mastrey hosted the daily metal show “Hair Nation” onSirius Satellite Radio but left in June when she became too ill to work.
“Tawn was a key figure in the heavy metal scene and was a DJ at influentialhard rock and metal stations in Los Angeles, San Jose, Portland andMinneapolis,” Sirius Satellite Radio said in a statement on its Web site.
At KNAC, Ms. Mastrey became known as “the leather nun,” a nickname she oncesaid was given to her early in her career by a program director at a SanFrancisco-area radio station who thought she resembled an animated characterfrom a German comic book of the same name.
“She was unique because she had lived the life of a rock star and couldportray that on the air without sounding arrogant or unapproachable,” GreggSteele, senior director of music programming for Sirius, told the Los AngelesTimes on Friday. “She knew how to speak the language of fans of that music.”
“Heavy metal fans know what they want, and when they don’t get it, they letyou know,” Ms. Mastrey told The New York Times in 1991. “Someone at KNAC onceplayed ‘Helter Skelter,’ and we got a lot of listener complaints. Not enoughedge.”
Reacting to Jethro Tull receiving the first heavy-metal Grammy Award in1989, Ms. Mastrey said in the same story, “If I played Jethro Tull, thestation would get bombed.”
Her radio career began in 1972 and included stints in San Francisco and SanJose.
In 1989 she left Long Beach, Calif.-based KNAC, which was plagued by a weaksignal, for KQLZ-FM, a station that billed itself as Pirate Radio and playedmodern rock.
“When Pirate Radio offered me three times the money with the promise ofrocking in Los Angeles officially, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Ms.Mastrey said in a 2001 interview with the Web site Metal Sludge.
She regularly lent her voice to “Nights With Alice Cooper,” a syndicatedweeknight radio show, and was host of “Absolutely Live High Voltage,” abiweekly Westwood One program that airs nationally and features bands such asTrapt and Korn.
When Ms. Mastrey became critically ill, local metal bands staged aHuntington Beach, Calif., concert in July to raise money to help her paymedical bills and call attention to hepatitis C. Metal Knights, a local metaltribute band, headlined the show.
In a release about the concert, the band said, “The name Tawn Mastrey issynonymous with the world of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal. The ’70s, ’80s and’90s rock scene would not be what it was and is today without this wonderfulvoice that uplifted so many major acts.”
