He's known as "The Emperor" in the United Kingdom.

In France, he's "Le President," in Germany "Kaiser" and in Argentina "El Presidente."

In Thousand Oaks, where he lives, he's known simply as Mike.

Mike Pasternak is famous outside the United States as a pioneering music disc jockey who helped revolutionize rock 'n' roll radio in Europe in the 1960s and early '70s.

It's probably hard to believe for most Americans who grew up listening to rock 'n' roll on the radio that before 1964, British radio consisted only of news and weather, gardening and cookery tips, and orchestral sounds.

Rock 'n' roll was considered by the establishment of the day to be too revolutionary, and the BBC, which owned and ran the country's only three radio stations, ignored the changing youth culture and the new music that symbolized it.

In 1964, an old fishing boat set sail from England under a Panamanian flag, anchored itself in international waters off the British coast and played nonstop pop music over the airwaves. Radio Caroline, first of the so-called Pirate Radio ships, was born.

Pasternak was one of the early DJs on the ship, and he describes Pirate Radio as "an adrenaline rush of music. Suddenly, people in the U.K. could tune in any time and hear pop music."

It was a far cry from Bel-Air, where as the son of Hollywood film producer Joe Pasternak and his actress wife, Dorothy Darrell, he rubbed shoulders with a who's who of Hollywood, including Elvis Presley, Mario Lanza, David Niven, Doris Day and Cyd Charisse. His privileged childhood was like a cocoon, he now says.

"I assumed growing up in Bel-Air that everybody had a tennis court and a swimming pool ... having servants, you know, butlers and maids. It wasn't until later that I realized other people didn't have that."

A Seabee at Port Hueneme

At age 12, he was shipped off by his parents to military school because, he said, he was "a spoiled brat." It was followed by a brief period at Emerson Junior High in Los Angeles, and then he was sent to schools in Switzerland and Paris.

Returning to the United States in 1959, Pasternak, then 16, joined the U.S. Navy and became a Seabee at Port Hueneme. After being posted to an aircraft carrier, he heard that there was a job as a disc jockey, and he jumped at it.

"I lied and said I was a DJ. I had been very good friends with various DJs, so I picked up enough to bluff my way there."

A contemporary of Adrian Cronauer, whose story was made into the Robin Williams film "Good Morning, Vietnam," Pasternak entertained the fleet during the Vietnam War with rock 'n' roll and irreverent humor.

He left the Navy in 1964 and returned to Europe. The next year, he joined the fledgling U.K. pirate ship Radio Caroline, styling himself as "The Emperor Rosko."

He spent the next year or so on the ship, bobbing about just outside British territorial waters. His radio shows reached an audience of millions, who tuned in to hear the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Beatles and other rock 'n' roll greats who otherwise couldn't be heard on radio in the U.K.

"It was revolutionary simply by offering unlimited music," he said. "That didn't exist as a concept to the British. The BBC didn't want to play it."

Pasternak brought something else, Radio Caroline station manager Peter Moore said recently in an e-mail interview.

"He understood the concept of American Top 40 personality radio that had never been heard in the U.K. He saw that something exciting was going on, and he wanted to be part of it," Moore said.

"With Caroline as the catalyst and its audience of tens of millions, new music and youth fashion accelerated at astonishing speed, and hundreds of new bands achieved massive and sometimes lasting success."

The Pirate Radio phenomenon grew, and Radio Caroline was soon joined by other radio ships such as the American-owned Radio London and Swinging Radio England.

The government in Britain was outraged and repeatedly jammed the pirate ships to try to stop them from broadcasting. In his history of Radio Caroline, Moore explains that "it seems the government were anxious to suppress any means of mass communication over which they had no control."

'The day the music died'

On Aug. 14, 1967, the government introduced into law the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act, which effectively made the pirate radio ships illegal. In Britain, it's remembered as "the day the music died."

As midnight approached, the stations fell silent one by one. All, that is, except the first pirate station, Radio Caroline, which remained on the air in open defiance of the new law. It's still broadcasting today, although no longer from a ship.

The BBC's response to the huge popularity of pirate radio was to launch BBC Radio One, a national pop music station. In 1969, Pasternak as the Emperor Rosko joined the station and became a household name. In that era, he said, "the DJs were like rock stars. I felt like Elvis. I thrived on it."

In 1976, however, his father was ill with Parkinson's disease and Pasternak returned to Beverly Hills to help care for him until his death in 1991. To his bewilderment, he found that he couldn't get a job in American radio.

Since then, he's divided his time between returning to Europe for gigs and personal appearances, and making radio shows in the studio of his Thousand Oaks home for broadcast in various countries around the world and over the Internet. He also takes his mobile disco on the road for local parties and corporate events.

Video producer and Agoura Hills resident Dave Cutler has known Pasternak for years. While he says that Pasternak rarely talks about his heyday as a radio icon in the U.K., it's obvious to those who know him that "he likes an audience. He shines when he's the center of attention, and that's when his talents come out."

He'll be back in the U.K. on Tuesday to mark the 40th anniversary of the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act. For one week, he'll broadcast once again from a ship along with some of his old pirate pals.

BBC producer Steve Scruton, who is organizing the broadcasts, said it's hugely important that Pasternak take part in the events.

"It will add authenticity to reliving the time, 40 years ago, when pirates ruled the waves," Scruton said.

Pasternak will be featured in newspaper articles and television programs, and he's recorded a music single called "Pump Up the Pirates," which is getting airplay on U.K. radio stations.

Then it's back to Ventura County, but not complete obscurity.

"My neighbor, she's a French girl who moved here," he said. "We were talking over the fence one day, and she said, You are Le President Rosko?' and then she ran screaming into her house, calling all her friends. She couldn't believe it. Talk about a small world."