Radio Favorites – Loveline with Adam and Dr. Drew

A couple days ago, I posted part one in a two part series on my favorite radio shows. I often listen to these old shows while I’m drawing, particularly after my family has gone to bed. In part one, I discussed my paranormal fix in the form of old Art Bell shows. In part two, I’m going to talk about Loveline; specifically the iteration of the show featuring Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew Pinsky as hosts.

“Hey it’s Loveline, I’m Adam Carolla and he is Drew Drew, board certified physician and addiction medicine specialist. Phone number 1-800-LOVE-191, our guest tonight…”

The gist of Loveline is that it was a call-in show offering relationship and medical advice, often with the assistance of a celebrity guest. It’s had a number of hosts over the years, but by far the best combination (and only one I enjoy) was Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew. The two worked very well together; Dr. Drew was essentially the straight man of the act, serious and professional. And as a practicing physician, his medical advice was actually legitimate. Adam served as both the comedic aspect and the practical/common sense perspective. Whereas Drew was calm and scholarly, Adam was vocal and prone to rants. It was a really effective combination.

Here are a few samples from the show. In these clips, you can pick up some fairly insightful pieces of wisdom that you might not expect from a late night radio show. Just a warning; Loveline is a bit more on the NSFW side, to the point that I don’t listen to this show with my kids around. It was broadcast on FM radio, so it’s nothing too crazy, but there are some mature topics discussed and light profanity.

One of the best things about this show was the consistency and surprisingly high quality of advice Adam and Drew dispensed. They talked often about the cycle of abuse, the nature of addiction, and effective ways to get treatment for a wide variety of issues. They were honest with callers, and didn’t try to peddle quick fixes or nonsense. Even though the show was entertainment, I think it actually did provide a valuable service to callers who were willing to listen, and listeners who may have had similar issues.

And, here is my sketch of Adam and Dr. Drew:

I think this one turned out well! My wife said she thinks it’s one of the most accurate depictions she’s see from me so far. This scene is actually from a more recent image of Adam and Drew, which I believe came from a podcast or online show they do now. I haven’t listened to it, but they’ve got a bunch of episodes at http://www.adamanddrdrewshow.com/. So, the Loveline show itself may be gone, but at least these two are at it!

I’m fairly pleased with the entire “radio favorites” series. It was fun writing about these great shows, and drawing the hosts went better than I expected. Loveline and Art Bell offer very different content and listening experiences, but I’m grateful to both for all the entertainment they’ve given me over the years.

5 comments

  • Also, really liked the last clip as well. It’s of similar theme to the first one. Can you please help me ID the show?

  • Nice drawing! Do you know from which show you grabbed the first audio track? I’d really like to identify the show. There’s a female guest that pops in briefly starting around 0:42. If you can id the guest, I can probably find it.

    • Hello there Martin, thanks for commenting and for checking out the artwork. Man, I really wish I could be of assistance there. It was so very long ago, I can’t recall who that guess was. Listening to the clip again, I get the impression this was an actress promoting some movie that came out during early 2000s, but I just can’t nail down who it is. Sorry about that!

  • I wonder if it’s flattering to celebrities when people draw/paint portraits of them. I’ve tried to imagine if I were famous, would I think it’s neat, or would I find it sort of creepy? I suppose it would depend somewhat on whether the portrait was any good. I copied them on the auto-post to Twitter, which they probably won’t see…but I can just imagine Adam Carolla saying, “hey Drew, did you see that weird picture someone did of us?”

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