Carol Miller - Up All Night: My Life and Times in Rock Radio

UP ALL NIGHT

My Life and Times in Rock Radio

CAROL MILLER

To the memory
of my father, Hyman I. Miller, M.D.,
and the memory of Elaine Kaufman

Contents

Would you be interested in writing a memoir? the letter read.

Unbelievable! Me? Im no household name. Just a radio DJ. Who would care?

I was in the air studio opening a promotional package from Ecco/HarperCollins, which contained a copy of their latest offeringa biography of Warren Zevonand uncharacteristically for this type of mailing, a personal letter from Abigail Holstein, an editor at Ecco.

Considering that youre... a fixture on the New York airwaves... you probably have several volumes worth of great rock stories... , the letter continued.

Oh, so they want me to dish some dirt? No way, I thought, but for weeks I mulled over this most generous invitation anyway. A once-in-a-lifetime chance tomaybewrite a book.

OK, Ill give it a shot, I told Abigail and Eccos associate publisher, Rachel Bressler, over drinks, but it wont be what you expected.

And so I sat down at the kitchen table with my laptop, composed and clunked out every word of this volume by myself. My wonderful editor fortunately removed a few of them.

Everyones life, including yours, reflects a place in time, and can be charted as a cultural chronicle, a small piece of a much bigger historical picture. Everyones life is a story.

This ones mine. I hope you like it.

I thought Steven Tyler was dead.

Waking up fully dressed from a three-hour nap, I glanced across the vast expanse of hotel bed, where the childlike lead singer of Aerosmith, the world-famous rock group, lay in a motionless huddle under the floral spread.

Upon assessing this peculiar situation, my first question was Well, how did I get here? The snappy answer: By limo, of course. The real answer was more complicated. And what was I doing here? Actually, my job.

I have an evening radio show. I talk and play rock music, rock artists drop by for interviews, or sometimes I broadcast from their concerts. Ive been on the air professionally since the end of 1971, and since 1973 in New York. Some people would just say Im a DJ, but that doesnt mean what it used to mean. Nowadays, a DJ is a traveling music mixer with his own collection of tracks. In the late fifties and early sixties, a DJ was a fast-talking older guy from your local AM radio station who often wore a loud plaid jacket and spun platters in the high school gym for the big sock-hop.

Even though we grew up with these lively entertainers, some of us who started on FM radio early in the rock era found that image to be a little bit cheesy. At that time, we took ourselves more seriously, so we coined the term radio personalities. I consider myself a professional lifelong friend. I play the music we both love, and weve had a running conversation for years now. Mundane but important stuffthe weather, sports, some news, definitely bulletins too. Almost any given weeknight, you can count on my being there. An audio version of a stable relationship. As of writing this, Im on Clear Channels WAXQ-FM: Q104.3New Yorks Classic Rock. Also heard nationally on SiriusXM Satellite Radio and through United Stations.

But back to Steven Tyler. Summer of 77: The Blackout. Son of Sam. The demise of Elvis. Heat. Garbage in the streets...

It was a Monday night, and I had just finished my radio show on 95.5 WPLJ, New Yorks Best Rock, which ran from 10 P.M . to 2 A.M . Taking a cab from the ABC building on Fifty-fourth and Sixth to my block on West Seventy-second Street, I stopped off at Trax, the late-night club on the southwest corner of Columbus. Through an unmarked doorway and down a steep, narrow staircase was a dark basement firetrap of a venue crowded with banquettes, chairs, and tables, with a stage for performances in an adjacent room. Pick a night, and someone famous (whose records I was playing) would be thereLed Zeppelin, Peter Frampton, Kiss, and on that particular night, Aerosmith.

Someone would like to meet you, said Phil De Havilland, one of the club owners. I had barely made it through the entryway, self-consciously wondering whether my dark hair was still straight and my Fiorucci jeans, which Id recently bought at their flagship store on Fifty-ninth Street, fit just right. No doubt Phil had already pointed me out to Steven Tyler as a DJ on the big rock station who played his records. I was yet another good reason for Tyler and company to frequent his establishment when in town. Tyler, in a gray T-shirt and jeans, sat sideways with his feet up on a far corner chair and warmly extended his hand. Were working on the new album, he said, and I could play you some of the stuff, but its back at the hotel. You wanna hear it? You dont have to do anything.

What this meant was You dont have to sleep with me, and although a normal guy might consider this invitation a bit presumptuous, coming from a rock star it was downright gentlemanly! I agreed, and took the five-minute ride in Tylers limo back through Central Park to the Hotel Navarro, on Central Park South.

In the two-room suite, Tyler produced a large silver cassette device and played some of the tracks-in-the-making for Draw the Line. Da-da-da-da-da-da-dah!Dah! Dah! Joe Perrys opening guitar salvo on the title track bounced off the walls. Tyler watched my face for a reaction. I concentrated, silently nodded my head to the music, and punctuated with Yeah, great... You got some great stuff here! My favorite was the funky Get it Up, which when finished I thought sounded overly complicated, with too many layers of extra riffs and flourishes.

After about twenty minutes of this listening party, Tyler abruptly stopped the tape. Well, Im going to sleep, he said. See, I told ya you wouldnt have to do anything! But you can stay here, on the couch, if you want. Tyler immediately rummaged through a bag for a large brown bottle, jumped on the bed in the adjoining room, and shoved a handful of red capsules down his throat. Within seconds, he was out cold.

It was now close to 5 A.M . I had to make a decision. In just a few hours I had to be five blocks down Sixth Avenue, back at 1330, the ABC building, for a WPLJ music meeting where new releases would be presented, discussed, and voted on for airplay.

The practical move would be to stay, dust myself off, and just walk to work. I would get more sleep, and save the cab fare. Tyler wouldnt be up that early anyway, so I could just disappear. I felt guilty and a little uneasy just at the prospect of staying in a strange mans hotel room. But who would find out? Tyler could probably sleep through the apocalypse. I was perfectly safe here.

But what was the point of all this reasoning if I couldnt get to sleep? I tried the couch in the main room, but the spaces between the cushions made lying down a miserable experience. I walked over to the bedroom: a huge, comfy-looking bed, which could have fit five Steven Tylers, and Mr. Dream On himself curled up on the extreme left side. Silently, I slipped under the covers on the opposite edge, which seemed like an ocean away, dialed the hotel operator for a wake-up call at 9 A.M. , and stiffly settled in for a nap.

But the next morning, tiptoeing to the bathroom, there was no sign of movement from my sleeping host. I began to poke Steven Tyler. If this guy was breathing, I couldnt tell, and where was his pulse? A wave of horror and dizziness swept over me. Dont panic! Dont panic! I repeated, and tried to collect my thoughts. If I simply slipped out of the hotel now, I might be tracked down by the police as the last person to be seen with a deceased rock star, and that couldnt be good. Better to face the music.