MIDNIGHT MAN EVER-YOUTHFUL DICK CLARK TAKES AMERICA INTO THE 21ST CENTURY.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

Dick Clark has a confession: He can't dance.

Yeah, sure, I know, neither can Al Gore. But Al Gore hasn't spent five decades helping to launch the rock 'n' roll careers of everybody from Chubby Checker to the Doors and Madonna. Al Gore hasn't had a hand in virtually every angle of the music business, from song publishing, radio programs and record labels to tour packaging and awards.

And Al Gore never, to my knowledge, has been considered America's oldest teen-ager.

``I can't count the number of times people have told me, 'I learned to dance holding onto a doorknob,' '' Clark said, referring to the makeshift partners his fans adopted while watching his hit TV show ``American Bandstand'' in the '50s and '60s. The audience's record-rating segment begat a catch phrase that Clark's company puts on T-shirts: ``I like the beat. It's easy to dance to.''

After ``Bandstand'' went nationwide in 1957 (24 years before MTV), the handful of in-studio teen-agers became instructors to millions at home in the finer points of the Twist, the Frug, the Swim, the Watusi, the Pony and other dance crazes that came and went.

``The disconcerting part is I never learned how to dance - mainly out of fear,'' Clark admitted. ``I was always afraid I'd be embarrassed.''

It's possible that Clark, who turned 71 last month, feels it's no longer important that he know how to dance. Or it could be that, as the head of an $83.9 million entertainment empire, he's just too busy.

Dick Clark Productions Inc., is in a three-story building across from NBC Studios in Burbank, a Tudor-style structure camouflaged by clinging vines. Heavy-grained oak and antiques dominate the interior, and the two dogs belonging to Clark and his wife, Kari - a mild-mannered Dalmatian and a friendly weimaraner - make themselves at home.

At a glance, Clark's ground-floor office looks like a family-run curio shop, minus the price tags. The boss conducts his daily dealings behind an old pharmacist's counter, seated in a corduroy-upholstered dentist's chair. The walls are lined with photographs, posters, books and shelves brimming with memorabilia. His seven Emmy awards and many other testimonials are clustered above an old vault. A barber pole stands near the center of the room, but in this context, it's almost inconspicuous.

The quaint atmosphere belies the volume of its industry. Some 200 DCPI employees are stationed here (the remaining 800 work in his 11 Bandstand-themed restaurants in Philadelphia and across the Midwest). They are busy planning, making or tabulating the expenses and income for movies of the week, network and syndicated TV series, radio programs and corporate campaign launches. During this busy season, the focus is on three major network specials: the 29th consecutive ``Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve'' and the 28th annual ``American Music Awards'' for ABC and ``The 58th Annual Golden Globe Awards'' for NBC.

On Sunday night, Clark will be above Times Square in New York as the glimmering ball drops in North America's best-recognized signal of a new year. For the first time, the program is expanding to 3 1/2 hours, starting at 10 p.m., with a 30-minute interruption for the local news at 11.

``Anybody over 18 ought to have better sense than to go to Times Square on New Year's Eve, but I'm still there,'' Clark said. His special began in 1972 as counter-programming to CBS' annual Guy Lombardo orchestra program from the Waldorf Astoria, ``with a bunch of staid people with funny hats sort of dancing cheek to cheek,'' Clark remembered.

Clark produced the debut of the show, and, in a relatively last-minute decision, he was tapped to anchor it from Times Square.

``It was my wife and I, a cameraman, an audio man and an aluminum ladder on top of a building.''

The production values have improved, of course, but Clark still braves the elements rather than sheltering himself in a climate-controlled booth.

``A couple of years ago I was off camera and I felt a tickle in my throat, a cough coming, and I grabbed my water and tipped it up and it was hard as a rock, frozen solid,'' he said.

For this New Year's special, he's lined up 98 Degrees, the Bangles, the Baha Men, Boyz II Men, Third Eye Blind and Lonestar, among others. The show also will include clips of popular tours from the past year, such as Kiss, 'N Sync and Jessica Simpson.

``We don't have any problems booking New Year's or the American Music Awards or the Academy of Country Music Awards because television and music are not very compatible,'' he said. ``There are very few opportunities. You have 'Saturday Night Live,' and you have MTV, which goes to a select audience. But big broadcast television doesn't have much available.''

Clark said he shortlists the acts based on his and the other producers' preferences.

``On New Year's, we try to come up with a potpourri of talent. The same holds true with the American Music Awards. There's a broad spectrum of music there, and it's one of the few times of the year people sit for three hours and watch.

``It's almost like an educational experience combined with entertainment,'' he said. ``We've been doing that formula for a lot of years. It's changed considerably in terms of who the participants are, but there's always something for an older person, a real young person, a black person, a country person in terms of taste.''

Clark has been a musical tastemaker ever since he persuaded the ABC network to carry ``Bandstand.'' It quickly became the No. 1-rated daytime program and endured until 1989.

Veteran KRTH-FM disc jockey Jay Coffey, 50, said in 1965 he was playing bass in a junior high garage band in San Francisco with fantasies of being invited to perform on ``Bandstand.''

``The dream was, you get on Dick Clark and you're home free,'' Coffey said. ``I think 'Bandstand' probably had the same impact for musicians as (Johnny) Carson did for comedians or Arthur Godfrey did for singers. If you could get on 'Bandstand,' you were guaranteed. We trusted Dick Clark.

``He also had great ears. He knew when records were going to be hits and acts were going to be famous.''

Clark was a 26-year-old radio disc jockey in Philadelphia and a substitute host on WFIL-TV's ``Bandstand'' show in 1956 when he was quickly pressed into full-time service after host Bob Horn was fired for a drunken-driving arrest.

``Bob Horn was an older guy, but he seemed to exude hipness, whereas Dick never did,'' said George Kenton, 59, of Moorpark, a ``Bandstand'' regular in the '50s. ``He was so clean-cut and youthful looking, I couldn't imagine him being hip.''

But after Horn's firing and the gossip about him, Kenton said Clark ``was so far above suspicion, I think (the producers) really felt safe with him.''

Clark admits he was ``too square'' to understand the appeal of '60s psychedelic music, but he has enjoyed a wide range over the years, and it's reflected in the assortment in his 1,000-tune home juke box and new 400-CD player - jazz, Brazilian music, some swing, a smattering of classical and, of course, r&b and rock 'n' roll.

``The great thing about somebody my age is I don't have any musical prejudices. I don't still revere the music I loved when I was a kid.''

Aside from his massive collection of sentimental relics, Clark has always lived in the present and the future. He started his production company in 1957 with his on-air earnings, anticipating the need for a fall-back career when he was too old to be in front of the camera. Of course, he hasn't been put out to the has-beens pasture, and his company just posted a record year in earnings.

Ed McMahon, his co-host on the ``Bloopers and Practical Jokes'' series and specials, has known Clark since 1952 when they were neighbors in Philadelphia. (It was McMahon's acquaintance with Clark back then that led to McMahon teaming with Carson, but that's another story.) Now they're friendly rivals, each producing syndicated talent search programs.

McMahon said Clark is so well-organized, so efficient, so mechanical in how he works that it conceals his personal warmth and sensitivity.

``If he's got 10 minutes, he produces a show. Between phone calls, he produces a show,'' McMahon said.

On one morning in mid-December, Clark's desk was strewn with papers and notes pertaining to New Year's, the American Music Awards (Jan. 8) and the Globes (Jan. 21). He also was looking over a Fox drama series called ``Beyond Belief,'' videotapes from England, follow-up materials to a pitch he made the previous day, and the latest restaurant sales figures.

Clark is fit and still appears considerably younger than his age, a gift he attributes to good genes. However, if health forced him to slow down, he says running the company would be the last of his many hats he would want to hang up.

``The truth is, the place will run itself without me. But I am in my 54th year of doing this - I gotta know something.''

Maybe now it's time for Clark to learn how to dance. He needn't be embarrassed. He should just turn on some music with a good beat and grasp the nearest doorknob.

``DICK CLARK'S NEW YEAR'S ROCKIN' EVE 2001''

What: Clark rings in the year above Times Square with concert performances around the country by 98 Degrees, Lonestar, Third Eye Blind, Kiss, and even KC and the Sunshine Band.

Where: ABC (Channel 7).

When: 10 p.m. Sunday.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) the Music Man

From `American Bandstand' to `New Year's Rockin' Eve,' Dick Clark's life has a good beat

(2) 'The great thing about somebody my age is I don't have any musical prejudices. I don't still revere the music I loved when I was a kid.'

Dick Clark

John McCoy/Staff Photographer

(3) no caption (Dick Clark)

(4) Dick Clark will host his 29th consecutive ``New Year's Rockin' Eve'' from the usual post above the New York's Times Square.