Script #5 Blue Slide, Long Shadows

Bridges gleam. The rivers hum. In a city of steel and a bright blue slide, a teenager builds a universe from basement beats and borrowed time—a slide you think goes on forever, until it doesn’t. Fame arrives like a flood: fun, then fast, then frightening. Friends, tours, headlines; the grin that says “I’m good,” even when he isn’t. This is the rise, the rush, and the after—the sound that shook a city, and the quiet that followed.

Written by Jonny Hartwell
Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
A iHeart Radio Production

Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.

Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome in. I'm Johnny Heartwell and this is Johnny's Dead
Air Podcast, a production of iHeartRadio. Here we go diving
into another story from music's dark side. You know, there's
a kind of brightness some people carry that looks like
daylight even at midnight. And you know it when you

(00:21):
feel it. When a kid from a neighborhood you've actually
driven through turns a local playground into a landmark, turns
a mixtape into a map, and turns a city's accent
into a melody. This is a Pittsburgh story, a dreamer story,
a watch me do this story. It's also the kind
of story this show was born to tell. The music

(00:43):
gets loud, the room fills up, and somewhere in the
hush beneath it all a heartbeat, Missus time. This is
the rise, this is the ache, This is the song
we still hum when the speakers cut out. And this
is the story of a sound that felt like home
and the silence then made it holy. This is Script five,

(01:05):
Blue Slide, Long Shadows, Act one, Chalk Dust and Chief Speakers.
He's a kid in a Pittsburgh basement that smells like laundry, detergent,
dust and cheap carpet. There's a keyboard missing, a middle
c a guitar with a sticker half peeled, a mic
stand covered in an electrical tape. The kind of studio

(01:26):
you build out a birthday money and borrowed gear. He
doesn't wait for permission, because nobody gives it in rooms
like this, he just hits record. He's not supposed to
be extraordinary, not here, not yet. He's a solid student.
A cut up in the hallway. The kid who will
freestyle at lunch, drumming on tabletops with pens and turning
cafeteria noise in a rhythm at home. A mother who

(01:49):
sees the art before the world does. A father who
loves a good blueprint and recognizes one when he watches
his son sketch out a life. A brother whose laughter
lands right on two and four. In a city that
keeps the winters long and the summer's humid, and teaches
you to find warmth anyway. The playground you stand at

(02:10):
the top of the blue slide in Frick Park, not
famous yet, just sun faded, scuffed by years of summer.
It's late afternoon. Cicadas turned the trees into a low choir.
A group of teens argue good naturally about who's next.
On the basketball court. You can hear someone beat boxing
poorly then better. A kid in a ball cap starts

(02:32):
stringing together lines like a kite catching the wind. You
don't know it, but this spot is about to become
a chapter title. He loves the feeling of making something
where nothing was five minutes ago. Loves the way neighborhood
kids crowd closer when the rhyme lands clean. Loves that
he can pick up anything a guitar, piano, midi pad

(02:53):
in and talk to it until it talks back. He's
building a voice, and he's building a place to put it.
The bus ride on the sixty one CE Dusk turns
the bus windows into mirrors. Earbuds in phone cracked, you
Q up an MP three somebody sent you in homeroom.
The base is too wide, the hook is sticky in

(03:14):
the verse. The verse sounds like your friends your block.
Ere jokes it. It kind of sounds like you. You
hit replay three times before you stop. The Internet is
a rumor mill with speakers. He pushes out songs like
flyers under Wipers, one after another, unembarrassed by the early ones,
hungry for the next He learns the math of momentum.

(03:36):
Put in three tracks, get one that sticks, repeat, and
this is important. He's joyful, cocky sometimes sure, but he
leads with brightness. It isn't a costume yet. The first show.
Mister Small's theater is a church turned venue, and it
still feels like the ceiling is a portal to God
and knows how to listen. You squeeze past the merch table,

(03:58):
screen print shirts some but he's cousin taking cash, and
you wedge into the pit. The house lights drop, and
a kid you've seen at the pizza shop steps out
like he's been waiting for this moment since fourth grade.
The subs kick, the phones go up, and for a second,
the floor floats. He can rap, Oh, he can rap.
He can sing hooks. He can grint at the crowd

(04:19):
and own them without breaking a sweat. His friends become
a family with a name. They move like a pack.
They make the city feel smaller and in a good way.
A playground becomes a pin on a map. A boy
becomes a plan, and the plan begins to work. Act Too,
The Rise of Easymac. Next Act Too, the mixtape is

(04:49):
no longer a neighborhood secret. It's burnable, tweetable, bloggable, and unstoppable.
A label notices, then another. He chooses the one that
lets him stay himself little longer. Tours stack up like luggage, colleges, clubs,
and festivals. He learns how to sleep on buses and
write in green rooms that smell like old charcuterie, bleach

(05:10):
and stale beer. A debut album drops, and it does
something albums from kids like him don't do often. It climbs,
It plants a flag without permission. The playground from Act
one turns into a pilgrimage site. Fans take photos on
the slide, their comments write new graffiti. We made it,
you made it, We're proud of you, And for a minute,

(05:33):
all those sentences mean the same thing. It's a hotel
hallway at three am. The carpet pattern is hypnotic. You're
dragging a duffel bag, pass room numbers that blur, laughing
too loud at a joke you won't remember in the morning.
A room key demagnetizes, someone calls down for mort towels,
and the ice machine sounds like a tiny avalanche. A

(05:55):
laptop glows on the desk inside twelve tracks labeled Idea
Underscore V five. The beat loops until it feels like
a message that you're not sure you're supposed to hear.
He learns to produce under an alter ego, to wear
different hats without changing heads. The studio becomes a church,
a laboratory, a confession booth. He treats sound like clay,

(06:17):
like water, like light. He gets weird on purpose, because
weird is the only way to stay new to yourself.
Now it's showtime. Backstage is a moving neighborhood, DJs, photographers, cousins,
friends from back home who never asked for autographs because
they knew him when he wore the same hoodie three
days running. Someone prays before the walk on. Someone facetimes

(06:41):
a mom. Someone tunes a guitar. The lights pop on
with that familiar ozone smell, and the sea of faces erupts.
He feeds off it, they feed off him. Everybody goes home.
Full Television calls a reality series that some days feels
like summer camp with cameras, other days like living in
a house made of surveillance. He smiles through the interviews,

(07:05):
DAPs up hosts, and tries to be gracious when the
questions are shallow but the exposures deep. Now it's time
to go home. It's homecoming. You're with him on the
north side, and Pittsburgh spreads out in front of you,
bridges arcing like golden ribs, the rivers carving dark seams
through the hills, the skyline sharp against the sky, proud

(07:27):
and defiant with broad shoulders, like it's dutifully protecting its inhabitants.
The tour bus pulls into town, and the whole city
seems to lean in. Murals, radio shout out, and even
a Maorial handshake in the crowd. Kids from every zip
code wear the same grin. He points into the sea
of hands and says, the street only locals know it

(07:48):
hits like a drum fell, clean and right. The ascent
is loud, friends, multiply, money shows up and sticks around.
It's a high water act. Perform without a net, because
who has time to look down When the view is
this good up here? The air thins up here. The
nights get longer, even when the shows are short. Act three,

(08:09):
Malcolm in the middle before the posters in the all
cap stage font. There's a given name, Malcolm. Malcolm is
a name you put on homework and doctor forms in
the mixtape metadata before anyone cares. He carried that name
through point breeze, through chalk streak hands at the playground,

(08:29):
through the bus rides and basements, and into rooms where
nobody knew how to spell monoga hala, but they knew
how hook when they heard one. So Malcolm becomes easy Mac,
a wing to his last name, McCormick. It was playful, light,
and the kind of name a teenager picks when he's
full of adolescent dreams. A kid in school hallway grins

(08:50):
and holds up a lunch tray. Yo, Easy Mac, you
want some cheese? With that rhyme, a few laughs, riple oud, harmless,
but loud enough to sting. But after a while it
felt too small, too much like a joke. He needed
something that could grow with him, something that could hold
both the brightness and the shadows. The guys who love

(09:10):
him call him by a shorter version, the one he'd
write with a sharpie on his backpack. The world learns
the stage name that sits in the mouth easy, two syllables,
that bounces like a basketball off warn concrete. It's approachable, smiling,
and a little mischievous Mac mac Miller. And with the

(09:31):
revealed comes the weight of owning it, not just the name,
but the rooms it unlocks. He signs it on contracts
and posters on baseballs in the back of receipts. He
hears it screen from balconies and whispered by kids who
built confidence out of his choruses. And because names are mirrors,
he starts asking hearted questions into his act for Trouble

(09:57):
in Paradise, Like a Kenny Wood coaster goes up, must
come down. Act for on record, the colors deepen, the
beats get moodier, the words get older. He talks about
love in a way that makes cynics shift in their seats.

(10:18):
He experiments psychedelia and jazz chords, drum breaks that sound
like heartbeat flutters, features that feel like conversations off record.
The pace is unforgiving. When every night is Saturday, you
forget what a Tuesday feels like. When every problem can
be postponed by a showtime, you start to think you've
outrun the ones you can't. In the middle of all

(10:41):
this noise, all this noise, he falls in love. It's
the kind of love that makes him want to show
up on time, to write songs that sound like sunrise,
to believe in something steadier than tour buses in green rooms.
You can hear it in the tenderness of certain verses,
in the way his voice softens, like it's singing to

(11:01):
someone just a few feet away, for a while, For
a while, the chaos bends to make space for a
two person rhythm. The apartment at golden hour, the blinds
are open, letting late sunlight wash the living room gold.
Two plates sit on the coffee table, half empty takeout
containers beside them. A record spinds lazily, needle crackling in

(11:24):
the quiet between the tracks. He laughs at something small,
something domestic, something ordinary, and for a flicker of time,
it feels like a future is possible. But shadows always
creep in nights, stretch longer than they should. A bottle
by the bed, a little bag on the counter, the

(11:45):
fog he can't always fight through. He tries to juggle
both loves her and the haze, but one of them
always drops. Arguments start in whispers, end in slam. Doors.
Trust frays, patience thins she loves him, but she can't
rescue him. He loves her, but he can't always rescue himself.

(12:06):
The airport goodbye, a crowded terminal, flights blinking on the
departure board. He kisses her cheek before security promises he'll call,
promises he'll try. She smiles, but her eyes give her away.
As he disappears into the line of travelers. She stands
there longer than she needs to, until the crowd swallows

(12:28):
him whole. When it ends, it ends quietly, as if
neither wanted to admit the music had stopped. The relationship
becomes another casualty of the haze, proof that even love,
even love as powerful as it is, can't always outshout addiction.
He pours the heartbreak back into songs, into late night sessions,

(12:49):
into journals littered with inkstained pages. Fans will hear the
grief in his voice, but only a few will understand
just how much of it was real. And heartbreak like
that doesn't heal cleanly. It lingers, gnaws, finds quiet corners
to whisper in. Love left him softer, but lost left
him vulnerable. The studio stayed his safest refuge, but outside

(13:13):
the walls, the fog returned. The bottles, the powders, the
late night bargains with himself. They weren't glamorous, they weren't rebellion.
They were armor, flimsy as paper against pain. He couldn't outright.
By the time the world applauded his honesty on record,
he was already losing battles off of it. The love

(13:33):
that once steadied him had slipped away, and the haze
that replaced it was no partner at all. At five,
the quiet September. Next back five a quiet September. The

(13:55):
day arrives without a drum roll. It's unremarkable, and that's
what makes it so cruel. It's another sunny California morning
that looks like any other. Blue skies prevail, but like
in his hometown, storm clouds are never far off. The
blinds let in a slice of sunlight across the carpet. Somewhere.

(14:15):
A phone alarm chirps, but no one reaches to silence it.
A glass of water sweats on the night stand. The
television is still on mute at Looping a late night comedy.
A visitor knocks, maybe a friend, maybe an assistant. No answer.
The door ease is open. Footsteps cross a quiet room

(14:37):
there's a call of his name, half playful, half impatient,
but the silence that answers is the kind you feel
in your bones before your brain accepts it. We don't
need to see more to understand. We know enough. The
night was long, the weight was heavier than the body
could bargain, with a combination of chemicals, ordinary worl words

(15:00):
that together come without mercy. Later, official reports will spell
it out fentanyl, cocaine, and alcohol, a mix that doesn't
forgive mistakes. But those are just forensic terms for something
simpler and sadder. A young man went to sleep and
did not wake up, And in that stillness, the world

(15:22):
lost more than a voice. It lost a smile, a spark,
a piece of light that can't be replaced. Life like
the blue slide he once claimed as his own, carried
him swiftly down before anyone was ready for the ride
to end. The song still echo, the light still lingers.
Pittsburgh will never forget you, and the city still hums

(15:45):
your name, will keep you alive in every note. Sleep well,
Mac mac Miller's epilogue, next epilogue, And then there's a

(16:07):
moment when the news isn't a headline, it's a voice
cracking through the airwaves. A friend, a radio DJ from
his hometown, someone who watched him grow from basement tapes
to sold out shows. Sits in a darkened radio studio,
red brake lights from the car slowing down on the
Parkway West for reflect on the studio window like Christmas lights,

(16:29):
unlike the holiday, the mood is somber. He takes a
breath and his voice wavers in a way you've never
heard before. I've been doing this for a long time.
I've had to announce some hard things, but this one,
this one hurts. This one is different. We lost him.
We lost a kid from right here who carried this

(16:51):
city with him everywhere he went. He was just twenty six.
He should have had decades left to make us proud.
And I don't know what else to say except hold
the people you love close, because because sometimes the ones
who make us smile the brightest are fighting battles we
will never see. He fades in one of Max's tracks,

(17:15):
no words, just the instrumental. He lets it ride longer
than the station usually allows, his hand frozen on the board,
his eyes wet. In that moment, the city hears, not
just the loss of an artist, but the grief of
a friend who feels the silence sharper than anyone. A

(17:37):
small crowd gathers has twilight shrinks around the blue slide.
Nobody organized it, but everybody knew where to go. Dates
get fixed in place. September seventh, age twenty six. They say,
Pittsburgh is always dressed in gray, but on this day,
even that color feels too bright. The world keeps rotating,

(18:01):
and somehow that feels like a betrayal. And as the
city grieves, hearts drift back to the playground in Frick Park,
a blue slide, once just plastic and paint, now carries
the weight of a shrine. What began with chalk dust
and cheap speakers ends here, a sun faded slide where

(18:21):
a boy once dreamed out loud. His fans and his
hometown will remember him this way, not just a headline,
but at the top of that slide, grinning and ready
to let go. Hope you enjoyed Blue Slide. Long shadows

(18:45):
to Mac Miller story. This has been Johnny's Dead Air
podcast Script five. I'm Johnny Hartwell, thank you so much
for listening.