The Rock DJ Who Ignited The Cars [Highlight From Episode 319]

Author Peter Aaron shares the story of how Boston FM Rock DJ Maxanne Sartori played a pivotal role in The Cars' rise to fame.

Listen to Episode 319: Ric Ocasek: The Mysterious Maestro Behind The Cars

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on
Rock Moving in Stereo ric Ocassik. The Driving Force of
the Cars is the book our guest is the author,
Peter Aaron max An s Tori incredibly popular, not just
not just to the car story, but to just the
history of Boston rock and roll. She was on WBCN,
which was at the time was kind of an upstart,

(00:22):
sort of a hippie FM station. What it was called
progressive music at the time, which was basically rock that was,
you know, not cloying attempting to have top forty AM
radio hit type music. You know, bands could stretch out
and play longer songs and play play music that had

(00:44):
a deeper feeling to it. And she was very well
informed and very very much ahead of the curve for
what was cool up there. I mean, Dave Robinson in
our interview for the book like You talk at length
about how she was so cool, always knew all the
coolest bands before anybody else did, and turned them on

(01:06):
just to so much music. Rick in particular. She became
like a mentor to Rick and he listened obsessively to
her show, which was on in the afternoon Prime Drive
time on WBCN, and WBCN was sponsored a street fair

(01:26):
in you know, Newbury Street or Back Bay area, and
one of the bands that got on the bill was
Cap and Swing. And Rick had published a chap book
of poetry and went up to meet her and say
he was a fan and gave her this sign book
of poetry and that led to him giving her tapes

(01:47):
of Captain Swing, and she played some of the stuff
on the show. You know, it did it okay as
far as the audience reception, but you know, you know,
nothing amazing. But they became closer friends and she would
play him all kinds of new music that became influential
to him. And then after they had this kind of

(02:09):
ill fated showcase gig at Max's Kansas City in nineteen
seventy six, she you know, helped kind of push him
into trying some different ideas and some moves that clicked
and became the Cars. And then when she started playing

(02:30):
the car's demos on early demos of My Best Friend's
Girl and Just What I Needed on WBCN, the radio
went nuts, like they were the most became most requested
songs on the station, and those songs were getting reported
in the trade journals, and so these industry record major

(02:53):
label record industry people would would see the cars just
what I needed. And instead of where in the in
the chart where there would be the name of the
label that the recording was on, it would just say tape.
And so that caught the eye of some of these labels.
And it just so happened that, uh, the sister of

(03:18):
of someone from a lecture was was going to Harvard
and the cars were would play as dances at at
Harvard frequently, and she talked her brother into coming up
to see the band, and and uh, a couple other
labels were snooping around, and that's and that's how they
got signed