Up All Night by Carol Miller

Up All Night: My Life and Times in Rock Radio by Carol Miller is a unique memoir of one of the first female rock DJs. Carol was a voice of a generation that could be heard at night over Rock Radio in New York. She is still on the air, and is even featured in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her stories of rockstars are mixed in with tales of her own struggles with life brilliantly, which makes this memoir highly captivating.

Book Description

“The all-American chronicle of radio legend Carol Miller, from her rise to success in a male dominated world, to the rockstars she's know along the way, to, for the first time, the private story of her quietly waged battle with a deadly disease.

As one of the nation's top radio DJs, Carol Miller introduced the music of Bruce Springsteen to the New York airwaves, was on a first-name basis with Sir Paul McCartney, dated Steven Tyler, and has been recognized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Her on-air approach and singular voice have influenced the sound of rock radio for more than four decades, and her satellite and syndicated Get the Led Out programs are heard nationwide.

In Up All Night, Carol spins the entertaining, moving, and revealing story of her life and times in rock radio and beyond. A nice Jewish girl from Queens, Carol was supposed to be a doctor or, at the very least, a lawyer. But hearing a doo-wop trio in the alley under her window changed the direction of her life forever: she fell in love with popular music.

As the tumult and excitement of the sixties rocked colleges across America, Carol—a biology major at the University of Pennsylvania—became an underground rock DJ at the campus radio station. Radio jobs in Philadelphia and New York City quickly followed, and Carol rose to the top of the profession. But even as she enjoyed a professional and personal life imbued with rock and roll glamour, Carol harbored guilt, disappointment, and alienation, believing she'd failed her traditional, intellectual Jewish parents and often feeling like an outsider in the very culture she had helped to create. The specter of an unnamed illness that had claimed many of her relatives' lives hung over hers as well, and she too would face a monumental challenge when diagnosed with breast and uterine cancer. Told in the distinctive voice that has charmed millions of listeners for decades, Up All Night is a frank, funny, and inspiring memoir. Offering snapshots of the rarefied world of pop music and the shifting social history of our times, it is as much a cultural chronicle as it is one woman's candid and moving story.” – Up All Night

My Thoughts

Carol Miller’s life story is fun, motivating, sad, funny, and honestly real. She details highly intriguing stories with rock legends that she has interviewed and met over the years, as well as become friends with. It starts out with her first encounter with Steven Tyler in a hotel room, and no, it isn’t what you think. The stories only get better from there, but it is her courage to share with all of us her personal struggle with breast cancer and uterine cancer that moved me the most.

Up All Night is a memoir, and some people just don’t like reading those. I am not one of those people, but even if you are one of those people that don’t find it interesting to read real stories, please but that bias aside for this book. Carol Miller’s real life story is so interesting and inspiring that this memoir should not be skipped. I highly recommend it.

* Thank you to the publisher of Up All Night, Ecco, for providing me with a copy of this book for review. All opinions expressed are my own.