Jones Is Back on the Air and Back in Control of His Life : Radio: After losing the 91X morning slot twice because of drugs, the deejay is working hard to prove himself at the slower-paced Z90.

Bryan Jones says his party-animal days are ancient history.

The man who almost single-handedly caused the implementation of a drug testing policy at XTRA-FM (91X), losing the prestigious morning slot twice because of drug problems, was hired last April as the morning personality for XHTZ-FM (Z90).

He’d much rather talk about Z90, as he lounges on the oceanfront deck of a trendy Mission Beach restaurant, dressed in his omnipresent shorts and T-shirt.

“They gave me a job when I was down,” he said. “I’m happy to be here.”

But he acknowledges that the fact that he’s on the air in San Diego, driving to Tijuana at 5 a.m. every weekday morning to handle Z90’s morning drive show, is particularly interesting in relation to where he’s been and the jobs he lost at 91X.

He says he is free of drugs, and his track record since joining Z90 in April suggests it’s true.

For Jones, there were no dramatic events or shocking revelations. Nothing like a “Just Say No” campaign changed his mind about drugs.

He simply decided he was tired of it. He didn’t enjoy doing cocaine anymore. He wanted to try to get his life together.

And he wanted to do it in San Diego, the one place where he was known, as he says, as a “deadbeat.”

“I have something to prove here,” he said.

More than another clean-and-sober saga, this is the story of a radio station taking a chance, and a young man trying to make the most of it.

Jones, 32, was raised in Fresno, and 91X was his first job outside the city.

“Compared to Fresno, San Diego is Gotham City,” Jones said, laughing at the “Batman” image.

XTRA hired Jones and partner Dean Opperman to be the morning team for its new “cutting edge” rock ‘n’ roll format in 1984. The station heavily promoted the “Dean and Jones and the Breakfast Club” team, noted for its wacky skits and bizarre characters. A typical morning would include parodies of television shows, such as “Nitwit’s Court” and “Genital Hospital.”

They were extremely popular with the station’s youth-oriented audience. Those were good days for the duo. There were parties aplenty for the old friends, who felt like they had hit the big time.

Opperman was the first casualty. After a series of absences and drug-related problems, he left the

station in October, 1985, to return to Fresno.

Soon Jones found it increasingly difficult to make the 5:30 a.m. drive to Tijuana, then the site of 91X’s studio. The unexcused absences and unexplained behavior continued. Party animals in the radio industry are not unusual. They only attract attention when they don’t show up for work. Seemingly everybody in the local radio industry knew Jones was using drugs.

In late 1986, Jones resigned, before he was fired.

“They wanted me to go test, and I would have tested positive,” he said.

He returned to Fresno and a classic rock station. But in 1988, new 91X program director Trip Reeb, now with KROQ in Los Angeles, called and said he wanted him back at the station--under certain conditions. He had to be clean of drugs, and he had to submit to urinalysis three times a week to prove it.

In addition to testing him, XTRA paid for Jones to regularly visit a psychiatrist.

At the station, however, he returned to the same scene, the same pressures that he says led him to drugs in his earlier stint with 91X. If anything, the pressure was worse. Not everyone at the station was thrilled to have him back, and he sensed the animosity, even understood it.

“The station was paying more for my rehab than some people were making,” Jones said. He laughed at the memory.

“Everybody told them I was going to do drugs,” he said. “Even the psychiatrist told my bosses I was going to drugs.”

But 91X management stuck by him. The arrangement worked for eight months.

“I had no problem stopping,” he said. “But I still wanted to do drugs.”

He had tested positive for drugs in June, 1988, a few months after he was hired, but no action was taken against him. But a few months later, in September, Jones went to London for a special broadcast from the Amnesty International benefit concert. In the swirl of backstage activity, he did cocaine.

A few days later, back in San Diego, he flunked a urinalysis and was fired.

At first, he showed no remorse. When The Times broke the story of his dismissal for flunking the drug test, he denied using drugs, and threatened a lawsuit.

“I am not an idiot,” Jones told a reporter last year after he was fired. “It would be pretty dumb to do drugs if you’re tested three times a week.”

Now, Jones admits, he was dumb. Really dumb.

He did use cocaine, he says, and he deserved to be fired.

He returned to Fresno, where he says he “played golf and got stoned” almost every day.

“Frankly, I had more fun doing drugs than working at 91X,” because of the pressures at the station, he said.

He took a job as a morning disc jockey with the classic rock station in Fresno and settled into his old party habits.

The realization that he was on a track to nowhere came when he took a hard look at his life style.

“I just got pissed off at it,” he said. “The people I was hanging around with were deadbeats. I realized that, if I’m hanging out with these people, then that must mean I’m a deadbeat too.”

For him, doing drugs became a “real lame way of looking at life.” The lure of a great job wasn’t enough to make him quit; he says he finally just decided chemicals were stupid.

“Nobody is going to make you stop unless you want to stop,” he said.

With something to prove, he came to San Diego looking for work. There are few opportunities in rock radio in San Diego. Z90 might have significantly lower ratings than 91X, but it’s rock ‘n’ roll. He “camped out” at Z90 until they finally hired him.

“Everybody deserves another opportunity,” station owner Victor Diaz said in a recent interview.

There are no drug testing provisions in his contract with Z90, which pays him “about one-third” of the $70,000 he earned annually at 91X, according to Jones.

“I think (testing) is an invasion of privacy,” Diaz said. “If somebody is doing what they’re supposed to do, it’s nobody’s business.”

Everyone at Z90 appears pleased with Jones. The almost nonexistent ratings for the morning show have been steadily creeping up, and, despite the laborious drive to Tijuana every morning, Jones has been the model of consistency.

“I’ve never seen him work harder than here,” said program director Gary Beck, who worked with Jones at XTRA. “I’ve never seen a person care as much that had a couple of strikes against him.”

For Jones, Z90 is more than a new beginning. It’s also fun. On the air, he feels less pressure to be constantly funny than in his days at 91X, although he still displays much of the Letterman-like irreverence of those days. A recent routine included a reference to a celebrity cookbook by Vice President Dan Quayle titled “Sand is Good Food.”

“I talk a lot less, just because we’re a music station,” Jones said. “These people are not saying, ‘Do 15 bits a day.’ They’re saying, ‘Play some music and do some jokes.’

“Everybody and his brother is having some sort of yuck fest (on the air). I’ve gotta believe people are tired of it.”

Far from any bitterness, he has nothing but raves for his former employers at 91X. The firings were his fault, he says, not theirs.

But his focus is on Z90, and making the most of his opportunity. His goal is to get a job in a major market, which can offer him dramatically more money and exposure, but he’s in no rush. A new girlfriend and the consistency of the Z90 job have helped change his outlook on the radio business.

“It’s time for me to rebuild,” he said.

Given his history, a big market job offer probably won’t be forthcoming for a while. He realizes that, to a degree, he’s paying his dues, that he is trying to wipe away the impression some people have of him as an irresponsible party dude.

“I sure was a deadbeat, but I’m not now,” Jones said. “Now I just have to prove it.”