Madrid merely shrugs off the accomplishment during a recent interview with Phoenix New Times. “No one has taken less talent farther than me,” he jokes.
Self-deprecating jabs aside, it’s a run worth celebrating. Madrid’s called KUPD home since signing onto the Phoenix airwaves in March 2005. After spending 15 years bouncing between radio gigs across the U.S., the self-described “journeyman radio dude” finally found a place to stick and ultimately thrive. Today, he’s one of the longest-tenured afternoon drive-time hosts in Arizona.
Madrid says he’s still “blown away” by getting to work for KUPD for two decades and counting.
“I've been at the station now for 20 years, and this is no bullshit, I’m still the new hire,” Madrid says. “I'm the last guy who got on at the station.”
Madrid’s racked up many standout experiences during his time with KUPD. Memorable on-air interviews with rock gods like Marilyn Manson and Slipknot’s Corey Taylor. Wild times at UFest, the station’s annual concert blowout. He even has tales of fans so devoted they inked his name into their flesh.
Speaking of obsessive fandom, when Madrid’s not blasting White Zombie or Avenged Sevenfold to the masses, he’s rolling a 20-sided die for initiative. A longtime gamer and unapologetic geek, the 54-year-old dukes it out in Dungeons & Dragons the regular, including sessions at local Bookmans and the Arizona Renaissance Festival. He’s also cosplayed at Phoenix Fan Fusion and can talk anime like a seasoned weeb.
“I would say in the most obvious ways, I'm completely nerdy,” Madrid says. “I'm definitely the nerdy guy (at KUPD).”
And his longtime geeky streak runs as deep as his lifelong love of metal.
Fitz Madrid cosplaying Tatsu from “Way of the Househusband” at Phoenix Fan Fusion in 2022.
Melissa Reid
A portrait of the deejay as a young metalhead
Metalhead Madrid was first exposed to metal as a “rat-faced teen” growing up in San Diego in the ‘80s. It soon became an obsession and an annoyance to his mother, as Madrid recalls cranking Judas Priest’s “Parental Guidance” on repeat over his boombox while they were riding around in her Pontiac Firebird. “She's got some shitty kid next to her (playing something) on loop in the way that only little kids can do with music they love. So she does what every nice parent does: tries to abide for a moment and eventually goes, ‘That’s a little bit loud,’” Madrid says. “And I turn to my mom and I'm all, ‘What do you not like: the music or the message?’ At that point, I knew I was just going to be a moron metalhead forever.”
True to his word, Madrid blasted metal 24/7/365 before also getting into the Misfits, Black Flag, Sick Of It All and “New York hardcore stuff,” as well as other flavors of punk.
“In the early ‘90s, it was just the best time for SoCal punk rock, I think,” he says.
That appetite for loud, chaotic tunes followed him into radio. An early gig at San Diego’s KIOZ included the day in 1995 when an Army veteran stole an M60A3 tank from a National Guard armory and tore across the city.
“That was something cool that happened while I was on radio,” he says. “I was like, ‘There's a tank loose,’ definitely giving little Fitz's dreams a reality. Because, man, when I was in high school, I wanted to steal one of them fucking tanks just to see what it was like, many decades before ‘Grand Theft Auto.’ I was gonna have five wanted stars.”
Over the next decade, Madrid bounced between on-air jobs mostly at rock stations across the U.S., building a career largely fueled by amps, attitude and adrenaline.
“I've moved all over the country as radio guys tend to do. I lived everywhere from Alaska to Florida,” he says. “There was one brief, really rad moment in Las Vegas when I worked for an urban AC station and man, that was cool as shit.”
In 2005, Madrid found an equally cool gig in the Valley.
Landing at KUPD
Madrid was hired as KUPD’s afternoon drive-time host in 2005. He admits he was intimidated at first, given the station’s respected status in rock radio.“(It felt) like I walked into something that was so fucking big. Even now thinking about it, I'm just like, ‘Damn,’” he says. “It was legitimately crazy stepping into this station.”
Two decades later, Madrid’s become a fixture at KUPD, which has been a mainstay of Arizona rock radio since its debut in 1979.
“I've been at the station now for 20 years, and this is no bullshit, I’m still the new hire. I'm the last guy who got on at the station,” he says.
Radio’s occasionally known for inter-station feuds and behind-the-mic beefs. Madrid says KUPD’s been the exception. No backstabbing or feuding jocks. Just solid chemistry with the whole crew, including popular longtime morning man John Holmberg.
“The dysfunction in radio usually is the morning guy and the afternoon guy fucking hate each other and are constantly playing the program director off on the other side,” Madrid says. “It's just this scrambling dirt pile of bullshit that has never happened to KUPD.”
That isn’t to say they don’t give each other shit.
“I've worked with these guys for 20 years. We've all seen each other naked. We've seen each other at our best and our worst and everything in between. It’s a good relationship,” Madrid says. “Is there ball busting? Absolutely. Is it mean-spirited? Absolutely fucking not. Do we say rude shit to each other? Completely. Is it always done respectfully? You fucking know it, because that's the thing that keeps this going.”
While Madrid doesn’t have any Howard Stern-style stories of showdowns with fellow deejays, he does have tales of memorable moments with KUPD fans. There’s the time a listener got his name tattooed on their back (“I hope they've since gotten that removed,” Madrid says) or a raucous occasion introducing Slayer’s final Phoenix gig in 2019.
“(The) place is fucking packed, and I said to the audience, ‘I want to do something with you guys.’ They're like, ‘Whatever.’ I'm like, ‘(Start chanting) ‘fucking Slayer, fucking Slayer,’” Madrid says. “Dude, it felt like grabbing the throttle of a 9-billion-horsepower motorcycle and just getting on the throttle. The roar that came out of the crowd. I got to — just for a second — use the ephemeral, magnificent, otherworldly power of Slayer to bond with the fans. I will never fucking forget that.”
Local metalheads are also known to lose their minds at KUPD’s annual UFest when Madrid launches piñatas into the pit. Fans tear through the crowd, racing the papier-mache beasts to the rear of the venue and back to the stage. Madrid says he piñatas “look funny as fuck bouncing along a crowd” and the races are filled with antics, like an older rock ‘n’ roller charged ahead of the competition in 2024.
“It went into the audience, and it started to come back down. And then some dude with giant dad energy ran it down to the front of the stage,” Madrid says. “He's running with the piñata on his shoulder with a tallboy in hand, booking it down to the stage. I'm like, ‘Oh fuck.’”
One of Madrid’s favorite KUPD memories came just this past summer. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, temporarily serving as acting governor, made an in-studio appearance to sign a proclamation declaring July 22 as “Ozzy Day” following the death of the late metal god and Black Sabbath frontman.
“My hair is standing up on end,” Madrid says. “To see Arizona just acknowledge the power of Ozzy's music and Black Sabbath and all that kind of stuff, it was an amazing moment.”
Interviewing icons
While Madrid never scored an on-air chat with Ozzy, he’s interviewed a slew of metal heavyweights. Some have been hilarious, like when Marilyn Manson nicknamed him “DJ ‘Tits’ Madrid” in 2012. Others were more moving, like his backstage talk with Slipknot’s Corey Taylor in 2015, discussing how the band’s music helped him cope with the death of bassist Paul Gray.“(Taylor said) going back and listening to all the music they’d made together helped him relive those moments in his life. And he went on that journey with his best friend one more time, and at the end of that, he was finally able to say goodbye,” Madrid says. “And as he's saying this, he's getting verklempt (and) having this emotional just naked moment and it was mesmerizing.”
He’s had other memorable encounters with rock icons that weren’t recorded. One was the time he unintentionally pursued Judas Priest singer Rob Halford around a table at a San Diego hotel.
“I'm checking out and I look across the way and it's fucking Rob Halford and he looks like he's had a very long weekend,” Madrid says. “He's on the other side of this circular 12-foot Queen Anne antique table. I chase him around the table twice before I realized, ‘Oh, he's avoiding me.’ Years later, I asked Rob about that (and) he goes, ‘Was that you?’”
Another moment burned into Madrid’s memory was a personal conversation with the late Chester Bennington in the late 2000s. At the time, the Linkin Park frontman and former Valley resident was promoting Club Tattoo, which he co-owned with former Grey Daze bandmate Sean Dowdell.
“I said, ‘You're the dude from Linkin Park. Why are you not a dick?’ And he laughed that kind of soft laugh,” Madrid says. “He goes, ‘Man, what's the point of being a dick? There's so many dicks out there.’ That's who he was. A very, very nice man. And I think I always tell people when we think about that, dude, it's important to celebrate life and to call your friends.”
Fitz Madrid: Dungeon Master for hire
Madrid says he’s been into tabletop and role-playing games longer than he’s loved metal, though both spoke to him as a “kid who was different in Reagan's America.” “When you hear metal for the first time, you just fucking know and you will seek it out. You will seek it out like a key into a lock. And D&D, for me, was the same way.”
His first taste came in 1983 after spotting a copy of “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual” at a California toy store.
“On the cover is this above-and-below scene of various creatures, troll, bugbear and a red dragon. And I'm like, ‘What is this?’” he says. “I opened it up and Dungeons & Dragons changed my life, because I realized that I wasn't alone in liking fantasy and ideas and games that were played in our minds as opposed to just on a board or on the football field.”
Madrid embraced D&D like a rogue grabbing a treasure chest. Over the decades, he’s rolled through countless sessions of the landmark RPG. These days, he’s a Dungeon Master for hire, running free live games across the Valley, from local spots like The Silver Key Lounge in Mesa to the Arizona Renaissance Festival in 2022. He says the vibe is similar to the D&D-focused web series “Critical Role.”
“This is the golden age of Dungeons & Dragons right now. It's never been easier to get involved,” Madrid says. “When I do a D&D live show, I bring the ‘Critical Role’ experience to places, could be a shop, could be the Ren Fest, and I give the players a chance to sit down and play. It’s free for them. I will Dungeon Master, use all my minis and I give them sort of big theatrical experience.”
Madrid has turned his D&D obsession into charity. Last month, a live session at Peoria’s Silver Dragon Games, streamed on Twitch, raised $10,000 for Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
“Now that D&D is everywhere, I try making it easy for everyone who played back in the day or wants to learn about it and get involved,” Madid says. “I think people should play.”
Fitz Madrid can be heard weekdays from 2 to 7 p.m. on 98KUPD (97.9 FM)
