Den, the Pen

Las Vegas, Nevada native Dennis Lee Askew is a graduate of Valley High School. In the late 1940s his family moved to Las Vegas from Florida where they were involved in gambling operations. His father worked at the Sands Hotel for thirty years. As a young man, Dennis worked as a bus boy at the Sands, and later moved to southern California after his high school graduation. In the mid 1970s, Dennis led a successful rock band called Universe that played around southern California and Las Vegas. They disbanded and Dennis worked for Odyssey Records in Las Vegas. In 1980, he started writing a column on rock music in Las Vegas called Rock Talk. The column appeared weekly in the Las Vegas Sun and Dennis simultaneously hosted the Rock Talk radio show on KOMP. In 1985, Dennis left Las Vegas to move permanently to southern California to be near his family.