In case anybody was wondering how Jim McGill celebrated Independence Day,
the answer is yes, bottle rockets were involved, although McGill had very little
to celebrate.
In May, McGill, also known as “Jim the Photographer,” was on the job, working for Ray Lytle’s Morning Disaster show on WQLZ (FM 92.7), when he sustained an injury that generated around-the-world notoriety. McGill, the show’s stuntman, was entertaining a crowd of concertgoers with his trademark trick of launching bottle rockets from a plastic cylinder hidden in his derriere — a maneuver he had performed safely more than 100 times — when a rocket reportedly “misfired,” sending him to the hospital.
In an interview days after the incident, McGill told Illinois Times that WQLZ would allow him to discuss his recovery but not how the injury occurred. But weeks later, McGill says, he was fired by Lytle for “insubordination” when he refused to allow his “strictly platonic” female roommate to serve as a Morning Disaster topic.
“She’s hot, really hot, and she’s got a boyfriend,” McGill says, adding that the woman is one of his closest friends. “That’s, like, the silver lining,” he says. “This has really shown me who my true friends are. Anybody can be your friend when everything’s going good. It takes a true friend to stick with you when things are this bad.”
And things are worse than previously reported. The “misfire” that was characterized by Lytle as “a burn on his butt” in a State Journal-Register article was actually the result of the bottle rocket’s being placed in the plastic cylinder upside down, McGill says. His injuries are extensive, he says: “I’ll probably never be the same.”
He also lost his two part-time jobs and is surviving on workman’s-compensation benefits.
McGill has always had the bottle rocket inserted by someone from the station or by a listener. “They’ve all been really cool about it, and everybody does it right. This guy did it wrong on purpose, thinking it would be funny,” McGill says.
“This guy” was the lead singer of a band that was performing at the WQLZ concert. McGill has retained an attorney to explore filing suit against the band and its label.
As for Lytle, McGill still has “the utmost respect” for his former boss. “I feel like he just got mad at me because I stood up to him, and that pissed him off,” McGill says.
Lytle now denies firing McGill and says he’s “more than welcome” to return
to the show. Lytle referred further questions to station manager Glen Gardner,
who did not return IT’s call.
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2004.
