Dimensions
161 x 238 x 26mm
Carol Miller was supposed to be a doctor or, at the very least, a lawyer. She grew up under the watchful eyes of her parents in a very traditional Jewish household in Queens. Her dad listened to opera and her mother read the New Yorker. But one night, as a kid, she heard a barbershop quartet practicing in the alley under her window and fell in love with the music. When she went to find it on the radio, her parents scolded her for having such poor taste. But it was too late -- she was hooked on popular music.
She kept up her studies and made her way to the University of Pennsylvania as a biology major, but by then, the late 60s, rock music was exploding around her. The university radio station was looking for students to help out. Carol thought she might make a good station secretary. Until she got in the DJ booth.
Pursuing radio with the dogged intensity and ambition that got her so far as a student, she landed increasingly high profile spots in Philadelphia radio and then New York radio, eventually getting to work alongside the radio personalities she loved as a kid: Scott Muni, Cousin Brucie, and others. Her life in radio is as star-studded as her upbringing was traditional -- she's the first DJ to play Bruce Springsteen on the radio in New York, is asked for by name by Sir Paul McCartney, becomes close with Steven Tyler (until Bebe Buell attacks her in a club), Lily Tomlin shared her drugs with her and she dated Paul Stanley, who turned out to be a nice Jewish boy from the same kind of neighborhood she grew up in. She also created "Get the Led Out", the Led Zeppelin fan hour that has been imitated and adapted by radio stations nationwide -- she is Q104.3's Led Zep expert and remains close with Robert Plant.
Despite her success, her parents would never understand her choice to go into radio, and the guilt she felt at letting them down is something she would never quite get out from under. While an amazing ride through a life in rock, Carol's memoir also tells the story of how she has never quite assimilated into the mainstream American culture that she speaks to everyday. The long shadow of her beloved family falls over her all the time in another way, too -- in the form of a ruthless breast cancer that all the women in her family have perished from. Carol has always kept her illness to herself and for the first time, in her memoir, she reveals how she struggled to get off the operating table to get back to doing what she loved most.
In her inimitable voice, this story of a life in rock, a distinctly American life, will make you laugh, break your heart, and make you wish you had spent the last 30 years like Carol Miller, spinning the best of rock for fans and friends.
