Who was Art Bell's first guest on the Nationally sindicated show?

[BigDave]

I've listened going back to 1994 and was really interested to find out

[OldTimeRadio]

Interesting question.  AFAIK, there really isn't much that's known about his early shows, even here.  I heard him for the first time on national radio sometime around 88/89 or 89/90 and he already seemed pretty settled in by then.  Maybe he was always a cool customer, I dunno.

I find it freaky that there's no recordings I know of, or information about shows before....like....90?  89? 

I'd love to listen to his oldest shows.  He had this crazy shtick about having had his soul put in a box by aliens for like 20,000 years.  It didn't last long, but it was great stuff.  It tied in to "NOT going into the light" and I think he and Whitley Streiber riffed off each other a lot.

[Morgus]

Back in those early days (early-mid 1990s)  Art Bell's c2c show was mostly a caller only open lines show.
The c2c show was also more political talk between callers back then too, with regular callers like Doc Democrat, Charlie Liberal, etc. and Art would debate them about then Pres Clinton.
Guests were rare back then, since Art had his Sunday night Dreamland show for that which was guests only with no callers.
A lot of the early shows are not available nowadays since they were pre-internet digital recordings/streaming.
Art did offer some early shows on cassette tape, but only some special shows.
Somebody would have had to record some on tape and had saved them all those years.

The earliest Art Bell c2c shows with guests I have seen go back to 1992-93 with John Lear, Bob Lazar, and Al Bielik.
But I didn't personally start listening live until after 1994.

[OldTimeRadio]

Wow, thanks for the info.  That doesn't jive with my recollection but I only started listening regularly in '95, when I dated this chick who couldn't fall asleep unless she was listening to Art.  It got me hooked.  Anyway, the really old stuff, the first stuff I heard, I recall that all being spooky UFO talk.  I guess I can't explain that but I know that Bill Jenkins (i.e. "Open Mind With Bill Jenkins") was either going on around that time and paranormal folks were already making the rounds.  LOL, so long ago, my memory is pretty shot, esp. at this late hour.

[Juan]

I have a friend who collects old ratio air checks.  He has one of Art DJing, I believe in the late 70s-early 80s.  Art used the name Art Trey (Art Bell the Third).  It's funny to hear him playing the entire songs that he later used for bumper music.

[Sardondi]

I'm sure this has been addressed at some point, but can anyone tell me why 1993 seems to be the ground zero date for Art's broadcasts? He had already made the jump to alt/paranormal topics before then hadn't he? I'm not so sure I'd want to listen to reruns of exclusively political radio talk shows from 25 years ago, but like everyone else I think it would be fascinating to hear the earliest shows that eventually turned into C2C. Call it "Ur Art". Surely Art himself taped his programs, maybe also the station he broadcast from (in the days before he owned his own). He almost certainly would be the only hope for the complete AB library.

MV, any insight? Might Art have these? Assuming he has no marketing plan for them (and I would think a show that Art did in 1989 about UFOs, would crush a new one from George Noory at C2C if they went head to head), I wonder if Art might consider putting the pre-1993 shows into circulation.

If MV isn't the conduit to Art's inner businessman, is there anyone else who might get a dialogue with AB about the possibility that one day we might hear some earlier shows?   

[ChandlersDad]

Several times Art Bell said that he did not own the content of the radio shows. This may have only been after he sold his soul to Premiere Radio (yes, I think this destroyed the show slowly).  I agree that listening to political debate about issues from 20 years ago would not be very interesting to me.