WBCN Program Director Sam Kopper hired 20-year old Maxanne Sartori from Seattle’s KLOL-FM to take over the afternoon shift on Friday, November 13, 1970. Certainly no bad omen, that day marked the beginning of a fruitful and famous association that lasted nearly seven years.
It was quickly evident that Maxanne, as she called herself on the air, liked to rock. As ‘BCN’s first female deejay Debbie Ullman observed, “I was motivated by the counterculture – Jesse Colin Young, Incredible String Band, Jefferson Airplane, [but] she was really into rock ‘n’ roll. She was much more tuned into what [would be] happening with ‘BCN by the later ‘70s.”
Springsteen association, Boston artists champion
Maxanne will always be remembered for her association with a young Bruce Springsteen, who dropped in on the afternoon show with a truncated version of the E Street Band for a pair of famously-bootlegged and beloved unplugged performances in January ’73 and April ’74. Indeed, the unique and hilarious performance of “Rosalita” from the latter visit is easily one of the most memorable nine-minutes in WBCN’s entire history.
Notorious for running the studio speakers at maximum volume, Maxanne would be credited with championing Boston artists like The J. Geils Band, The Cars and Billy Squier, but she also counted some less famous names from the area as favorites, including Fox Pass, Reddy Teddy, Nervous Eaters, Willie “Loco” Alexander. Then there was Aerosmith: “The first person ever to play our record was Maxanne,” said frontman Steven Tyler. She persistently championed the group to program director Norm Winer, who refused to let her play the band at first. “I thought they were too derivative,” he said. “But, of course, she was right.”
By the time Maxanne left, on April Fool’s Day 1977, she’d become WBCN’s most powerful and distinctive personality. Trading in her headphones, she picked up a job doing regional promotion for Island Records, later working in the national offices of Elektra-Asylum and eventually as an independent promoter.
(by Carter Alan)
Carter Alan is a former WBCN deejay now heard on WZLX-FM in Boston. He is the author of Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN (University Press of New England, 2013).
