Laura Lee Saturn's Favorite Music Interview
You drew from your own experience working in radio to write
this novel. How autobiographical is it? Are you Clara Jane, down to the goth
clothing?
Saturn's Favorite Music is the most autobiographical
of the novels I've written, which is easy really because the first two weren't
autobiographical at all. I tend to start with a setting that I can make real,
and an idea that I want to explore and I go from there. With Saturn I
knew that I had worked in radio in a specific time-- as automation systems were
transforming the way broadcasting was done. I knew that there was a story in
that bridge from the old to the new way. (The automation systems of that time
would be very much the old way now too.) I had some funny experiences that I
had written down. What took more time was figuring out what kind of story it
was. I knew that I wanted the radio station to be something of a character in
its own right. I wanted it to be a place and a community that a reader would
want to spend some time with, and might feel a sense of loss as it started to
unravel.
So I thought about who this person would be who the reader
would follow as she got to know the station. Clara Jane is cooler than I was. I
did like alternative music and go to places like City Club. I interned at an
alternative music station and all that. I liked more hippie kind of clothing
back then. Clara might be a little more single-minded than I was. She is more
of a fish out of water in the small town than I think I was. My family was very
supportive of my radio career. (My grandmother was an old radio actress on
WXYZ. She played Miss Case on the Green Hornet for the entire run of the
series.) I wanted Clara to have a bit more to prove and more pressure to be
successful.
The character of Seth also has aspects of my
personality. I'm not as assertive as he
can be, but I tend to bristle at authority a bit. You can often say that all of
the characters in a novel are really the author.
Are the other characters
based on real people?
None of
the other characters are based directly on anyone I worked with. A lot of the
anecdotes were based on things that actually happened, so there might be people
who say, “I was there, I wonder if that character is supposed to be me.” But they're
not. I just needed the right combination of characters to tell the story. I did
borrow some little traits though. We did have a traffic director at one of the
stations who used to bring in tabloids like Weekly World News once a week, for
example. I didn't really have a nemesis like Rad. I worked with a lot of people
and they were a lot of fun. I socialized a lot with the sales staff at one of
the stations where I worked. I had to keep the number of characters manageable
so sales people don't really feature in the book.
A lot of
the places in the book-- like City Club in Detroit-- are real and others, like
the town of Saturn are fictional. How did you decide what should be
fictionalized and what should be real?
I made
the small town fictional in order to let Clara Jane grumble about being there
all she wanted without grumbling about any real place. I also wanted it to be
clear that it is a novel and not a memoir. It is not about the actual places I
lived and worked. At its heart it is about someone trying to find their place
in a world that is constantly changing, and how that challenges who she thinks
she is and who ends up going with her on her journey. I think that idea of
being prepared for one world and showing up to a different one transcends the
setting.
I don't
know where the name Saturn came from. I had the idea of writing a funny story
about radio long ago and in the earliest notes Saturn was the name that popped
into my head. As the story evolved, a whole theme of aliens and alienation emerged
so that must have all been floating around somewhere in my subconscious.
RTV is
actually based on three different stations. I don't know if you're old enough
to remember the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati, but the theme song talked about a
DJ moving “town to town up and down the dial,” and that was common then. After
my internship at a New Rock (alternative) station in Canada, I worked at WKJF
FM/AM in Cadillac, Michigan doing afternoon drive. The physical layout of the fictional station was
based on this station. That was where I did an entirely analog show cueing
records and splicing tape and so on. It is also located geographically in the
part of Michigan that I put the fictional Saturn. From there I went to a
station called WFRA Mix 99.3 FM in Franklin, PA. I did middays and that was the
first place that my shift became automated and I was given a desk job writing
commercial copy and answering phones. I didn't like having a desk job, so I
didn't stay long. Finally, I worked at WAGE AM in Leesburg, VA. It had just
gone country from adult contemporary (a lot of stations did that at that time).
That station was actually the one with the hyper-local focus, the radio obits
and so on. It was also the station that had the early automation system with a
computer called Gentner that monitored the signal and a bank of CD players
controlled by a buggy program that came on 5 1/4” floppies. I was the program
director and morning announcer there.
How did
you pick out where you went, why not further away or in a different direction?
I liked
the idea of doing something that was very grounded in the local area where I am
from.
How did
you recall the albums and songs you named in the book, did you use a diary or
the internet to remind you what was playing at the time of the book?
I started
by thinking of the songs that I associated with working at WKJF. A lot of them
were 70s songs. That station played a very wide variety of music from the mid
60s up to 1992. So I think of bands like Steely Dan and Supertramp when I think
of that station. The exact lengths of long songs that Seth rattles off from
memory are actually from my own memory. And then there were some of the AC hits
that we played to death, and that you don't hear so much now, like Jon Secada
and Joshua Kadison. I have a few old airchecks of my shows that I listened to.
I liked throwing in the “oh, I forgot about that song” kind of songs. I also had some Casey's AC Countdown show
discs.
I had a
strong sense of exactly when everything was happening in the story. It runs
from June 1992 to about September of 1993, I think. Initially, I had each
chapter labeled with the month. I was careful to only include music that could
have been played in the month of the action. If it came out in January 1993, it
won't be in a 1992 chapter. There was only one that I fudged a little. Whitney
Houston's “I Will Always Love You” came out in early 1993, and I wanted the
character to make a joke about it when I referenced request shows, which was in
the December 1992 chapter. So I knew I was a little early with that one, but
all of the other songs correspond pretty well to what you might have heard on
an AC station then. I often consulted charts to come up with a song title for
the characters to be back announcing or teasing. There are a few little places
where I couldn't resist having the songs comment on the action if you know the
lyrics, but this was the exception more than the rule.
What form of music do you have in your house now: album, tape, digital and which do you prefer?
I have a huge and eclectic record collection. I have a lot
of turntables also because at one point in the late 90s I took my record player
in to be repaired and the guy told me to just throw it out, no one used record
players and no one was going to use them in the future. So I started hoarding
record players when I found them at garage sales. That said, I am a Spotify
power listener. I feel a little uneasy about not owning the music I love now,
and would like to have physical copies, but it's hard to listen to an LP in the
car. It was nice to be able to stream 1992 AC hits while writing to put myself
back there.
About the Book:
The hyper-local programming (featuring lost farm animal reports and radio obits) and its mix of light hits and great oldies is a far cry from the rock star glamour she hoped to achieve with a radio career.
But Clara finds a home with an eccentric cast of characters, especially the recently-divorced morning man Seth Jones. As Clara and Seth bond over their shared sense of humor and a mutual love of different genres of music, the station is sold and staff members start to be replaced by automation. Will Clara find the radio stardom she craves before the station goes completely robotic?
About the Author:
Laura Lee is the author of 21 books including biography, humorous reference, fiction, and children's literature. The Metro Detroit native brings a unique background to her work. She holds a degree in theater and worked as a professional mime, improvisational comic, and radio announcer before becoming a full time writer. She now divides her time between writing and producing (and traveling on) ballet master class tours with her partner the artistic director of the Russian Ballet Foundation. The San Francisco Chronicle has said of her work, "Lee's dry, humorous tone makes her a charming companion... She has a penchant for wordplay that is irresistible."
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