WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1225 - Steve Miller

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

Steve Miller didn't expect to become a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer with hit songs that stand the test of time, like The Joker and Fly Like An Eagle. He was just a kid from Wisconsin who loved the Blues and wound up with teachers like T-Bone Walker and his godfather Les Paul. Steve tells Marc how he got his first breaks in clubs run by the Chicago Mafia, how he learned an important lesson from Paul McCartney, and how he discovered a lost 1977 concert performance which he's finally releasing.  Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf steve miller's on the show today yep that's steve mill Okay? Steve Miller. Fly like an eagle, Steve Miller. The Joker, Steve Miller.

Come on. Big old jet airliner, Steve Miller. It just came up. He's releasing a previously unreleased live concert. It was a concert on the actual Fly Like an Eagle tour. And the full concert will also be on Amazon Prime. It's a weird bit of nostalgia because it's shot on old equipment

and as Steve will tell you, he's got all this stuff in his warehouse and he wasn't going to release it necessarily, but he found some massive master recording of the same show. Perfect kind of soundboard, 32 track, 16 track, whatever the hell it is, recording of the thing and he synced it up and it's definitely a time capsule and i think we all forget just how

fucking huge steve miller was so i'm like of course i'll talk to steve miller because he was around man interesting story he was around he goes way back and uh it was it was exciting, actually. And I'm glad we spoke. So that's happening soon. Another thing I want to promote, if I can, is that me and my buddy Dean Del Rey have joined forces. And we've created this podcast called Dark Fonzie. And I will explain if you listen to it, we explain the name. But it's basically a very relevant podcast. It's two middle aged white dudes, two middle aged straight white dudes with no children talking. How? I mean, come on. This is cutting edge stuff. Let me say it again. Two middle aged white dudes with no children straight

white dudes talking so i mean you know i miss out on that i'm not i'm underselling it dean is a a dear friend and it was just something we came up with months ago when we were touring and we're doing live instagram uh instagram lives, and it sort of evolved. The Dark Fonzie name came out of one of those in the car. And we have these car conversations. I mean, Dean is much more of a focused nerd than I am when it comes to, you know, like pants, boots, watches, cars, mid-century houses, eyeglasses. You know, I don't – I can't, he's all in with all of it. But I find him entertaining, and we're close,

and he opens for me a lot on the road, and he's very easy to travel with because we're buddies, and we like to eat the same things. And, you know, I always learn some stuff from Dean about things that I don't think I need, and then I buy them. So that's Dark that's dark fonzie i guess you can get it certainly on itunes and where you get podcasts episode one is out there and i think it was good i just let him deal with it he came over here we talked i said all right

knock yourself out so i gotta tell you man i did comedy the other night for the first time in over a year on friday night i did my first spot in the original room at the comedy store i had not been to the comedy store in over a year i did not do any other shows over a year no a year without stand-up no zoom shows no outdoor shows i refused to uh to do that to myself i felt i'd work too hard and even though it was adaptive i didn't feel the need to do that i didn't feel the need to struggle i didn't feel the need to entertain in a parking lot or with masks or you know zooming i didn't need it i didn't want to because i knew it would be stressful and would not be good the comedy store is a comedy club it's the comedy club it's it's so itself i mean just driving over

there was a nice guy a little dressed up put on a nice jacket that i haven't worn in a long ever maybe the first night and i didn't really know what i was going to do but for the week leading up to it after i decided that maybe i would not need to do comedy anymore all of a sudden the idea that the store was open i was sort of like go out there man this is i it wasn't that i was excited or maybe i'm not admitting i was excited i can't tell you really but i was definitely not afraid and you know i did the tonight last week, so I had some stuff in my head that I worked through with the segment producer over there. And I'm like, all right, that's shaped up. I mean, if worse comes to worse,

I can just run that stuff or whatever, just go. So, man, I got to the store and it was so, it was moving. First of all, they built an entire fucking hotel and apartment complex across the street in a year like i got there there's a whole new building right across the street somebody was was didn't take any time off it's this huge they were building it they were kind of building it a year ago but now it's all built but the comedy store remains the same it remains the same the

pictures in the hallways remain the same. Then the walls, the writing on the building, the neon. There's a new neon for Jeff, the piano player for years who passed away during COVID. They were checking people, comics at the back door to see if they were vaxxed. And if they weren't, they would give them a quick test. Audience members needed to show proof of vax or that they were vaxxed. And if they weren't, they would give them a quick test. Audience members needed to show proof of vax or that they were tested negative. And it was just wild.

I mean, obviously it was quiet. It was different. I guess it's like 30% capacity. I don't even know how many people were there, but they were small spaced out crowds in both the main room and the OR. And when I got there, I realized like, oh, this doesn't fucking matter.

We're all trying to get, we're all doing something new. People are, audiences are new. They're coming and it's been a year for them too. And they know we haven't, we've all been in the same place. We all took a year off to be terrified and wonder if the world was ending or whether or not we would die and try to maintain our sanity i just didn't know what would happen but the great thing was i waited for the comedy club because look man i all of us comics have done shows for two people three people nine people twelve people

look the difference between 20 people in a comedy club spread out and a fucking parking lot is massive. The context holds. The place is grounded and reliable as the fucking Mount Sinai, for fuck's sake. It's the Godhead. It's Mecca. It stays. It remains the Godhead. It's Mecca. It stays. It remains the same. And just walking those halls, I saw Neil Brennan, and he's like, how you doing?

I'm like, I don't know, man. I haven't seen these guys in a year. And I'm like, it almost felt like crying. It almost felt like Neil would have been the right guy to cry to. He could have handled it. But we were both like, I don't know. And it was just that same thing. You know, I was happy with doing nothing or not i mean obviously i've been working the whole time but i was happy

with the idea that maybe i didn't need i didn't need to do stand-up anymore and the benefit the only benefit of the of the lockdown was that no one was doing it and i think once i started to see people scheduling shit that part of me that is driven by spite and just that competitive nature of staying in the fucking game woke up didn't take much it was it was lightly sleeping but right away i was like fuck that he's going out i gotta figure out what i got i gotta get on this but it was so great man i saw uh esther pavitsky steve rennazizi who else was around neil was there but that first set was just great it was just it was very comfortable i mean like i said there's not big crowds there but we're all fucking

excited in some way to see what happens because it's been so long and i kind of got through some stuff i found some new stuff i might have found some themes to start working on to build an hour with and I just left feeling like all right that guy's awake the guy that lives on stage is awake he's ready to go and the fucking notebook comes out I'm putting things together in my head I've got pieces of paper all over the place it took a day a fucking day and then went back saturday night saw jessel nick we had some laughs and back and uh kevin nealon spade was there and uh esther again and maz jabrani luke schwartz who opens for me sometimes, working the door. And I'm just riffing, man, getting on it. Some dark stuff, some stuff evolving already. But it was just to feel the chops come back.

I've been doing this more than half my fucking life. What was I thinking? I don't think in the last week, I didn't think, like for a while there, I was like, I don't know if I can do it anymore. But the last week leading up to this, I'm like, of course I can do it. Why am i what there's no reason to freak yourself out bro says i call myself bro sometimes i mean you you live and sleep and eat this shit man it's not even like riding a bike it's just who you are stupid it's who you are. It's nice.

It was nice. It was fun. And I'm ready. Tickets are on sale for my Dynasty Typewriter shows here in Los Angeles for July. I'll be doing a month of Thursdays there. Hopefully by that time I'll have some through lines and we can riff out some stuff. Maybe help me build that hour. I'm going to regret not hitting the road sooner. I just feel it.

Whatever. It doesn't matter, man. I woke up the comic, and he was barely asleep. Folks, Steve Miller, Breaking Ground, the concert album from August 3rd, 1977, comes out this Friday, May 14th. And the accompanying live concert film featuring the full performance will be available to stream on the Coda Collection on Amazon Prime Video.

Steve Miller songs are wired into certainly people my age's brains. Junior High, baby. Junior High. Fly high, baby. Junior high. Fly like an eagle to the sea. Come on. Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. Come on.

Time to appreciate or re-appreciate Steve Miller. This is me talking to Steve Miller right now. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats, but iced tea and ice cream, yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th

at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Now. How are you, Steve Miller? Hey, I'm really good, Mark. How are you today?

I'm good, man. You got a little office going there? Is that your house? Yeah, I'm in my house. I'm in my attic. This is my room where I do my artwork. That's great. Up here, this is where I hang out. And you got a nice cigar going indoors. It's nice to see someone smoking a cigar indoors. Yeah, well, that's the way I live my life, Mark.

That's why I work so hard, so I can smoke cigars where I fucking want to. What kind are you smoking? I gave them up. I don't know. It's a nice, strong cigar. A mystery cigar out of the box. I take the labels off, so I don't know. It's a nice, strong cigar. A mystery cigar out of the box. Sure. I take the labels off, so I don't know.

You know, it's weird, man. I watched the release of the 1977 concert. I watched it last night, and it was kind of a journey back. Because I don't know who shot that thing or what they shot it on. I don't know either. I haven't got they shot it on. I don't know either. I haven't got a clue. Now, where did you find this? What's the story behind pulling this thing out of the vault?

Well, actually, I have a vault. I know. I believe you. It's a big warehouse that I built years ago. And, you know, like most people, you know, like I did stuff and I'd throw things in there and figured later I'd go through it all. Of course, I never wanted to go through any of it. And I had a really good pal of mine go through and listen to stuff and look at things. And he would he spent a year and a half doing it.

There was 30 years of stuff. We started this 15 years ago or something. Wow. Anyway, he found this concert. And the copy I had was on some kind of cassette. And it looked horrible. It was all purple and pink. And it sounded like the guitars were coming through a telephone or something.

And I just looked at it and said, man, you know, we can't use that. Get out of here. You know, next, next, next. And I actually rejected anything and everything found in the vault. And then my wife, Janice, who is the archivist, she went back and found it and she brought it to me and she showed it to me. And I said, honey, you know, this really, it sounds so bad. bad i can't release that i'm not going to release that and she said well we found out that you have a you made a multi-track recording of it so it turns out i did a 24 track recording that

night that i didn't really know we finally got you know everything indexed where we started going through tape. So I said, okay, well, let's mix that and see what it sounds like. And God, it was just what I feel is just a great performance of that band. So then I had to, like, figure out how to try to make this really terrible video, you know, watchable, you know? Yeah. video you know it's just watchable yeah yeah so we um you know we hired some guy in scotland and he started like schmoozing it and somebody else started schmoozing a little bit and finally got got to the point where you could kind of see what it was and then um i like the uh the camera effects you know the the single switch camera effects yeah yeah yeah well you know so the the thing

that got me was when janice finally said to me she said sweetheart it's just a really nice look back at the goofy 70s it's the 70s you know yeah and i went well yeah i guess it is but uh i mean you know we have this unbelievable laser show going on, and it looks like, you know, like big blanks of white stuff going across. And people are smoking in the audience and stuff like that. You know, it's like a pretty funny show. Well, the effects are very dated, but it does look like an artifact of that time. I mean, you can tell it was shot on that time,

and then you did a couple of, like, sort of sarcastic disclaimers at the beginning that you must have just put on there yeah right well the whole thing sort of looks to me like a late night sex messaging ad from the 80s sure it's got that bright yellow color and yeah yeah all that stuff so we had you So we just put it together. And at the end of the day, what I really enjoyed about it was it captured that band. It was a really exciting time. And this was a time when nobody was videotaping us. We weren't on television. I mean, there was nothing going on. And so to find something where you could just actually see what that band was like.

And I just like the energy of it. I thought we were just unconscious. Nobody was thinking or. No, it was great, man. And I mean, what that was that you were touring Fly Like an Eagle. Yeah, that was the Fly Like an Eagle tour. You know, because I was like, you know, look, man, I'm I'm 57. So I grew up i was in like

i guess junior high probably uh you know or maybe the first year of high school when that album came out it was a huge record there just seemed to be you know you dominated and heart and bob seger you know there was just these these bands that are forever part of my brain. But what I didn't really realize until just last night watching that concert. So I guess it's, who is it? Is it Norton Buffalo on the other harmonica? Yeah. So it's you two.

You come out there with those harps, and I hear the rhythm harp, and then all of a sudden I hear you blasting through with your your chops and i was like holy fuck you know this this is who that guy is this is what he wanted to be he's a blues guy like i mean yeah right yeah i mean uh that i i love blues and and i played a long time in chicago and i grew up in texas but like you can like those harp wicks you know you sound like uh you know blind owl wilson or or uh you know little walter you know butterfield i mean

you got the licks i mean you you obviously put the work in well uh yeah i mean i i've been playing harmonica in from texas since i was like 14 years old where do you come from originally well i was born in milwaukee but i moved to texas when i was five so i grew up in dallas and dallas was completely segregated uh was a really strange world for a young kid to walk into yeah but there were black radio stations there were black blues programs. There were R&B shows. There was all this black culture. There was Mexican culture. There was country music.

There was all that stuff. So I just grew up loving blues. I grew up in a house where a lot of blues and gospel music was played. Why is that? Your folks are musicians? Yeah. I had a whole – my mother's side of the family were all musicians, and they were Scottish, and they played violin, they played hot jazz violin and guitar and banjo and stuff like

that. And when the depression came, they all stopped playing and went to medical school and became doctors huh and uh my uncle dale gave me my first guitar when i was five yeah and uh les paul was my godfather he taught me wait a minute come on guitar how the hell was les paul your godfather that wasn't in texas he was in new jersey wasn't he he was in milwaukee he was in milwaukee yeah it's. You want me to tell you this story? It kind of goes like this. So we are living in Milwaukee. Yeah. It's like the late 40s.

It's right after World War II. It's still a poppin' city then. Yeah. Milwaukee was a place where what happened was people would come and play there after they played in Chicago. Right, right. They play Chicago and then they jump over to Milwaukee 90 miles away and play a gig there. Got it. Les Paul was from Wisconsin. He was getting ready to do a radio show in New York with Mary Ford and he wanted to rehearse. So he brought Mary Ford and his trio, and they came to Milwaukee and stayed there for six weeks and played a dinner club called Jimmy Fazio's Supper Club. And that sounds like an on the level business.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, the mob in Milwaukee was not nice. Yeah. And but it was like second rate to the Chicago mob, which was the big mob. Yeah. They were satellite mob. Jimmy Fazio was a great guy.

He ran a nice supper club. And my, my father was a pathologist. He was a doctor, but he loved music. My mother sang like Ella Fitzgerald and was incredible. And he had a wire recorder, you know, a wire recorder you know a wire recorder and he was making he would record everything with that and what's a wire recorder a wire recorder is what

was before a tape recorder and it was like a spool of copper wire it was like a fishing reel and it was horrible because it was constantly coming off the reel. It was just a complete mess. And it's how we recorded. Well, after World War II, the Germans developed tape recording technology. We got it in a company named Magna Corder in 1949. Yeah, 49 started making tape recorders. Sure. My old man got one. And the tape recorder, this was like the professional tape recorder, the best tape recorder. Sure. My old man got one and the tape recorder. This was like the professional

tape recorder, the best tape recorder there was. Right. And Les Paul shows up about three minutes from where we live playing in this this funky club. My dad goes over to see him and says, hey, I have a tape recorder. Can I come over and record you? And Les said, yeah. So every night my dad would go over and record Les Paul. And he's a techie. Les Paul's like an early innovator techie guy. Yeah. Les Paul invented the multi-track tape recording system. So this was right down his alley. So for him to meet, but more than being just a techie, he was a genius. He invented a lot of great stuff.

But my old man was right in his league. And so he had a shop down in the basement of this little funky townhouse we lived in, and he was working with plexiglass and he was building television sets. And this is 1949. So Les Paul comes over, they became instant best buddies. They're making guitar picks. They're making clear plexiglass pick guards. Pop's playing him the tapes of the show. And he's taking me every night to see Les Paul. So now I got Les Paul and Mary Ford hanging out in my house. And I'm four and a half years old. And my Uncle Dale just gave me a guitar, his guitar.

I've got this little Gibson guitar. Yeah. And so Les and Mary got married in Milwaukee. My mom and dad were the best men and women at their wedding. And Les became my godfather. And I was in love with Mary Ford. I thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world. But the real important part of this story was I realized that Les Paul was like speeding the tape up and slowing it down. And I knew that Mary Ford was singing harmony with herself. They went on to New York, had their radio show.

Then they had that quirky television show where they were on three times a day for 15 minutes, which is a really cool show. And I watched them and they would put out a single. And they had a string of like 25 top 10 singles. Yeah, huge. They were just totally in that business, you know. And they'd put out a single and we'd get a pack of 100 postcards all written in different handwriting by Les Paul and Mary Ford, you know, backwards, forwards, fancy, neat, whatever, requesting their songs at the radio

station in Milwaukee. So by the time they had been in town, he'd become my godfather and left. I knew what multi-track recording was. I knew what an electric guitar was. I knew you had to promote singles. And I knew he was the funniest, coolest guy I'd ever saw. So I was on my way. Wow. So he, at that time, he must have had a prototype for the electric guitar. What was he playing? You know, he was playing this big kind of blonde guitar.

I think it was the Log, the one that was like. Right, the original log, the one that Gibson turned down originally. And he had, you know, I didn't know he was inventing anything. I just went, boy, electric guitar. This is as cool as it can be. And he was, Les was so great. He was such a great guitar player. He was so funny.

Another hot shot guitar player would come in to see him and he'd immediately pull out a handkerchief and put it over his left hand and continue to play, you know, so they couldn't steal his licks. He was just like, he's always pulling that kind of stuff, you know, so I was in love with him. And he was the greatest. And then we moved to Texas and I followed him. Did you learn? did you learn from guitar? Did he, did he teach you some tricks? He taught me my first three chords and they were so easy. I could teach anybody to play those three chords. It's, it's very, very easy. And he just made it all seem like fun. He was, he was really great. And then we moved to Texas and all of a sudden I'm

in this world where there's just music everywhere. My pops recording sister Rosetta Thorpe down at the Baptist church and T-Bone Walker is like a family friend who comes by and plays at the house and I've got all these recordings of him and that's where i learned my stuff right steve isn't it i mean you know it's all t-bone walker all the guitar licks are t-bone walker like it all goes it all goes back to him it's crazy and i'm nine years old and sitting right next to him going hey t-bone how do you do this how do you do they showed me how to play the guitar behind my head and do the splits when I was nine. And he was the nicest guy.

He was a real gentleman, and he was phenomenal. And I have recordings done at our house that are just unbelievable that we found in the vault. Why don't you put them out on your label? Well, we are, putting we're working with t-bone's daughter right now and it's great so all that's that's that's coming out you know there's there's all that kind of stuff that goes on at the vault at the warehouse you know and and lots lots of projects coming up and and we've got a great uh great uh team at universal who's like on our side wants to do all this stuff.

They're the ones who kept going, yeah, let's put out this, this concert, this live concert. This is great. When I was going, I don't know, it looks so bad. Why make a video, you know, blah, blah, blah. People like it. It'll bring people back. But so, okay. So in Texas, that's where you kind of start learning how to play. And now, where does your guitar take you?

I mean, do you commit to it then? Or do you go to college? Do you start a band in Texas? What happens? Well, I loved playing guitar. So I played guitar all the time. And when I was in the seventh grade, I met a kid who had been taking drum lessons since he was five years old and he could play like Gene Carrupa. He was an absolute phenomenal drummer and another

kid who was in love with Ricky Nelson, looked like Ricky Nelson and played guitar and I said, we should put a band together. So we did and we mimeographed letters. It's 1956 in Dallas. I'm 12 years old in the seventh grade. And I mimeographed a letter and sent it out to every fraternity and sorority. I had an older brother, three years older, and a cousin who was older than me. So I was seeing what was going on in college. And they had parties. And everybody had live music in Texas back then anyway.

Every party you went to there was a band did you know the winter brothers i never met them until later you know and uh we uh we i was before those guys i was like 10 years before those guys i was i had the number one band in dallas and nobody knew how old we were we were were booked. We booked that first band for the whole year in three weeks. It was booked for the whole year. Boz was in that band. Boz Skaggs was in that band. Oh, you knew him that early on?

Yeah. And so we all went to the same school. And it was a really good band. We were very entertaining. And we were really good. And we knew what we were doing. And that's when I started playing harmonica because we started off doing instrumentals like Ricky Nelson would do on the Ozzie and Harriet show at the end of the dance. Ricky would come up and do

a couple of numbers. That's how we started work. And we've been working every Friday and Saturday night since 1956. Really? Yeah. And so I started playing and I mean, that was a really, really good band. And in Texas, you had to play blues. They wanted to hear, you know, Jimmy Reed and Bill Doggett and Bobby Bluebland and Little Walter and Muddy Waters. They didn't want to hear Fabian and Annette and the dick clark uh stuff you know you're playing honky tonk junk absolutely parts one and two note for note i love that song it's one of my very favorite songs in fact i've been playing honky tonk the whole pandemic i've been

practicing it and playing it i love that stuff that's great that's what i love yeah it is it's great well i'm glad you like that that's good oh yeah man i i mean it was one of the first guitar runs i i ever heard and i ever wanted to play because i play a bit but uh oh okay well yeah you need to meet danny karon then because danny's like uh was charles brown's musical director and he's mr honky tonk on the guitar oh yeah he's the guy yeah he's the guy he should talk to him next well it's so interesting you know to me that well let's let's just go further along so you got boz playing with you and then you guys moved back up to chicago or how does it you know well um at at that time we were all just white middle class kids.

And we were going to go to college and we were going to earn a living and we're going to learn how to take care of ourselves. You know, that was that was the plan. So I went to the University of Wisconsin. Boz was a year behind me. When I got to the University of Wisconsin, 1961, there were no rock and roll bands there. There were no live rock and roll bands in the local scene. Anyway, so we're in college and I start this band. I went to Denmark, went to school over there for a semester and lived over there for a year and came back and kind of went, you know, I really am a musician. Up until that point, I was still pretending I was going to teach creative writing and be a writer.

Yeah. And a journalist and blah, blah, blah. I had all this other stuff I was going to do. But the whole time I was playing guitar. And I went to Chicago. I saw Butterfield's band. And I just went. With Bloomfield?

No, it was pre bloomfield and um it was i think it was his best band the best band was pre bloomfield because it it didn't have all the lead guitar theatrics and it was more like little walters right yeah yeah classically put together it was elvin and uh jerome arnold and sammy lay and and paul butterfield and they were they were great and they just an article was written about him in time magazine the blue-eyed soul i think it was called or something like that and he got a record deal and i went to see him and i was so cocky when i saw him i went went, really? I've been doing this since I was 12 years old. Hell, I could get a record contract. Boing, light bulb goes off. I go back to my English class. I

talked to my counselor, my advisor, and he's telling me that I'm six credits short of graduating this year and they're not going to accept my credits from the University of Copenhagen. And went you know what i'm out of here i'm going to chicago i had this little meeting my mom and dad came to see me and my mom said to me she said stevie what are you going to do and i gave the answer every parent wants to hear i want to go to chicago and play blues yeah my old man had had a two by four he would have hit me with it and my mother gave me pull open her purse pulled out a hundred dollar bill and said you're young you don't have any responsibilities here's a hundred bucks you should go right away see if you can make it yeah and i went okay yeah and then and then i entered the world of the chicago mafia and a world of crime and drugs and

blues and i loved it i mean chicago was really gritty and it was all happening i got there but you seem like the one thing i noticed steve is like you know when i'm listening to all your music is like you seem like a pretty well-adjusted guy like i mean it like like even in the old records you know 68 69 there's something sort of of controlled and sort of together about you. Like I don't listen to your stuff and wonder if you're going to live through the song. You know what I mean? That's great. Can I use that quote?

Sure. That's the best thing I've heard in a long time. It's like, well, yeah, because, you know, like, I mean, come on, man. You know, hanging out with Les Paul, and then I see kids who want to have a rock band. Yeah. You know, they didn't even know how to make a record. Sure, sure.

They didn't know how to do anything. So I was learning really fast, and I got to Chicago, and it really was what was great was that's where I became a man, an adult. I stopped being a kid playing you know little richard tunes at a fraternity party or something what was what was the moment like what what made it what made the shift just the grit of the place two o'clock in the morning watching otis spann and muddy waters play in a club that held uh 75 people and being able to see them night after night and howlin woo woof and you know, Junior Wells and Buddy

Guy and James Cotton and I became really good friends. He's on the Joker, right? James Cotton? So were you playing with those guys or just watching them? No, I was playing with them. How did that work? Would they just be like, I got a kid here, wants to come up and... No did that work how did that would they just be like i got a kid here wants to come up and no that doesn't work like that and and uh the way it worked was i formed a band with barry goldberg yeah and we were in competition if you can believe this with muddy waters and howling wolf and junior wells and buddy Guy for the gigs that were in the near north side and the south side of Chicago. There were like three or four nightclubs that had blues.

Yeah. And the Hootenanny people had become blues people, you know, and they were all going to the blues clubs. And so there was a pretty hot scene going on. And I came into town and was like showing up and i got wednesday night and thursday night and tuesday night and then monday night and then saturday night and so they they knew who i was yeah and so the in chicago the way it worked is you played from nine at night till four in the morning that's what a normal nightclub set in chicago come on that's crazy yeah yeah it is

crazy but that's that you know it's mafia town that's the way it was that's when a lot of business was done but so you gotta you gotta you can't repeat songs for an eight-hour shift exactly you gotta do uh an eight-hour shift and you're 45 on and 15 minutes off and and i loved it we all loved it and uh we were working all the time and so if we weren't working we were sitting in that same club watching muddy or howling wolf and i became became really good friends with howling wolf uh muddy waters and his band were just absolute masters and when you would you know when you're listening to muddy waters on wednesday night you know in february in chicago and there's nobody there man that was some music you know so that was a big growing up time they were just tight and in the in the pocket

you just they were just real just so so so so adult like there's a whole bunch of things i took away from chicago like oh little walter arranged everything all of this stuff was done was little walters thinking little alter was the john coltrane miles davis of the blues scene he was a genius yeah and he was my number one artist that i loved the most and that way you learned how to play that harp yeah listening to little walter no i learned to play harp listening to jimmy reed i've been playing harp before i i've been playing harp with a microphone through a basement a fender basement amp basement, you know, in 1957. So that was before I had really, really heard Little Walter.

So when I got into Little Walter, I was stunned. Little Walter just became my Bible of music. So there you are in Chicago. So what shifts, man? How do you decide? I mean, what do you do next? what do you what do you do next when how do you evolve out of the blues what's the first step well it's our mafia manager of course we're in chicago yeah so barry's got a mafia manager and uh all of a sudden we're going to

make a record for mercury records yeah so so So they sign us up and they put us in the studio and they give us three hours on one afternoon and a couple hours the next morning to make our album. Yeah. Yeah.

And Barry had written Barry was a great writer and a great pop tune music guy. And he had written a bunch of pop tunes. So that's what the manager wanted. What happened to that guy? Barry? Yeah. Well, he's in L.A.

He's done a lot of things with the Four Tops. And he's like an established session guy and master of keyboards in L.A. It has been for years and years and years. He was real tight with Bloomfield. They were real good buddies. So we make this record. And all of a sudden, we're on the Kenny G Show in Cleveland. And then we go to New York.

This is like right from playing in a nightclub in Chicago. We go to New York and do Hullabaloo with the Supremes and the Four Tops. Which record? It was, you know, I don't even remember what the name of the album was. You know, the Goldberg Miller Blues Band. And we did, you know, a bunch of Jimmy Reed tunes and some of Barry's tunes. And he had written a song called The Mother Song, and that's the one they were promoting.

You guys have it? I don't know. Does that even exist anymore? I don't think so. The record? Yeah, I don't think you can buy it now. But so we go to New York, and then we play Hullabaloo, and we're on national television with the Supremes yeah yeah

sure yeah and the four tops and and then we get a job in this mafia nightclub in Manhattan called the phone booth uh-huh and I can tell you the difference between the Chicago mafia and the New York mafia the Chicago mafia they all wear kind of shiny suits and chew gum and have sunglasses on and in new york everybody looks like caesar romero in a tux yeah it was crazy man and we played this joint for six weeks the young rascals had been there bob dylan was coming in and out, trying to steal Barry from the band for his band. The Love and Spoonful were there. You know, all these people were around all the time.

And yeah, Dylan was around and was really jive. I didn't like Dylan at all. He was just like real high. And Bobby Newworth was with me at his polka dot shootout. And he kept calling Barry Jerry, you know, and say, where's Jerry? And I was just going and he spoke of that shootout and he kept calling barry jerry you know jerry and i was just going get out of here you know but yeah that was that was new york and and we kind of got things going but the record wasn't going to happen nothing was going on so we go back to chicago and the whole scene had just dissipated and was gone. Really?

It was just gone. What happened? Everybody went to California. Oh. And all of a sudden, you know, like college got into blues and Muddy started, his record started moving again. Their careers, when I was in Chicago, their careers were over. They had had all their

big hits and they were done and they were living back in chicago and they were working on the you know the folk music club the blues club wherever they could yeah muddy was like painting the chess studio like he was like they were doing odd jobs here and there and i guess what was it this the english guy started recording their music and turned everyone on again. Yeah, exactly. That's right. And so we go out to California. The psychedelic scene's just starting. It's all happening.

And then Butterfield's out there first. Yeah. And then I went there, and I lived there. And we're telling Bill Graham, man, you've got to get the James Cotton band. You've got to get Howling Wolf. You've got to get Muddy Waters. You need Junior Wells and Buddy Guy. And Graham had, you know, he was open seven nights a week.

He needed bands, and he had the scene going. And we just started bringing the Chicago guys in. Then they started playing colleges. And, you know, the minute you can make $3,000 a night playing a college instead of $500 a week working for a mafia guy in Chicago, you're gone. Everything changes, yeah. And the scene, I mean, it literally was just gone. But everyone was hanging out in the Bay Area.

Everybody went to the Bay Area, and me included. Yeah. I got the hell out of there, too. So how does that first record with the Steve Miller band, how does Children of the Future happen? Well, we got to San Francisco, and basically all the bands there were really amateur bands. I mean, the Grateful Dead was really an amateur band.

The Jefferson Starship was a little better. What about Moby Grape? Moby Grape came in and Jerry Miller and those guys, we were part of that scene. The guys who opened up the scene were like folk music guys who went, hey, let's be rock stars. Let's get rock boots. Let's grow our hair long.

Let's get electric guitars. Let's have a rock band. Yeah. And they started all that stuff. And oh, by the way, everybody take acid. So everybody did. And it became a social phenomena. And then they needed to feed it with music. And I showed up going, hi, I'm a band leader. You need some help and put a band together and just started playing right away. And we played at the Fillmore Auditorium more than anybody. We 120 different uh gigs there and i mean like not not one nighters i mean different events there so it might be four nights you don't strike me as a drug guy were you doing the acid oh yeah yeah of course you know i did i did the acid in in uh madison yeah i did the real

acid not the crap acid on the West Coast. I did the Lasurgic 25, LSD 25 from Switzerland with Sidron. Yeah. We were way ahead of that stuff. We had already solved the problems of the world and didn't need to take acid ever again. I mean, we went on trips that were like poetry and music and jazz. We didn't drop acid and go down and watch pro wrestling. Right, right.

Yeah, man. So when I got to San Francisco, I felt like I was way ahead of what was going on there. And I put my band together and we started playing and it was like, you know, I guess it was like Paris was in the 20s or something. Everything was there and it was really great for a few years before it got overwhelmed with the, if you're going to San Francisco, put some flowers in your song, which brought 400,000 people to the streets and turned it into a you know just a horrible scene but that was that was a great great time so what happened was all the record

companies wanted to sign anybody and everybody who was in san francisco and there were 14 record companies that came running into san francisco wanted to me. So I had a feeding frenzy going on. And I had a friend who was a prosecuting attorney who didn't really care about the music business. And I went to him and I said, I need you to represent me. These guys are crooks, they're gangsters. And here's what I want. And I told him I wanted complete artistic control.

I wanted enough money to make five albums with a no cut contract and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And everybody laughed at me. But because there was this feeding frenzy going on, we kept playing everybody off against each other. And I got the contract. And it's the same contract I work on today. I couldn't get that contract today if I tried, you know. So it was with capital records for five records yeah yeah which they then changed to seven records and you know blah blah it's so

interesting to listen to the old stuff now when was the last time do you ever listen to it yeah yeah because like you know on sailor like because like i you know you've got the you've got some straight up psychedelic stuff and i can hear the time in some of the songs. I can hear you kind of finding your way through that. But then living in the USA is sort of the template for the Steve Miller sound and songs that become your biggest hits almost a decade later. It's kind of interesting, right? Yeah. And it strikes me that living in the USA, I don't know why it hit me because I was trying to figure out

what defines your sound, but there's something Mitch Ryder about it. Were you a Mitch Ryder guy? Yeah, I love Mitch Ryder. And I love, you know, blues bands. I liked a tough band. I liked a band that kicked ass and was, you know, that, that was, that was good. And, you know, when I was in Madison, like I was a freedom writer and I was a member of SNCC and I got into all the politics and, you know, I went and demonstrated and got on the bus and rode off

to the South. So I had all this political kind of feeling and you know i wanted my songs to have that uh you know i didn't want to just all be candy ass pop music you know no no it wasn't coming from a blues world and and as i was growing up i i began to realize that yeah man i was really lucky i grew up in texas and Jesus, Les Paul was boy. I did know T-Bone Walker. I started started really giving me a perspective of what I was doing. And so I was serious about writing and, you know, trying to speak to social issues. And I think living in the USA was really basically written for the 1968 Democratic Convention, which it was obvious it was, it was going to turn into what it was going to be. Yeah. But what's interesting is like, you know,

on top of all that is that there, you know, your, your production is meticulous and your bands are fucking tight. So, you know, like the sound that you get that makes, you know,

cause you can always, I can recognize Steve Miller song no matter what, just because of your voice, but there's a groove to it just because of your voice but there's a groove to it and there's a there's a compression to it there's a tightness to it there's you know you're not wasting any any any any time really you know i i don't know there's just something about the groove that's very specific to you and i think it's just because your bands are so goddamn tight. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, I work really hard at that.

And watching Les make records, you know, Les's records are great. Yeah. And making records is one thing, and live performance is another thing. And when you go into the studio, everything changes, and you have to learn a whole new way to work, and you're creating kind of a fantasy. You go in, you go in everything's dry and dead and blah blah blah and engineers with glasses and done and you're supposed to like create something that's really great when if that's what you wanted to do you just go down to the club and play and record it there and so i

like the the idea of producing records and when I was a kid I was listening to the modern jazz quartet I thought they were fantastic I was listening to lots and lots of jazz I loved Ray Charles I you know I love the the early uh Stax records yeah you know I mean I liked it like my first record that I made when I made it with Glenn Johns, like we argued all the time because Glenn Johns was like an English kind of pop engineer and had lots of echo on everything. And I was going, fuck it, Glenn, goddamn, you know, dry it up, tighten it up, make it sound this way, that way. So we were fighting all the time.

So for you to recognize that in the records is really important because we took it really seriously well no but that's like that's what defines you know the sort of sound because it's all you know there there's an edge to it but there's not you know a menace or rawness or you don't you know it's all very even you know when you're rocking the hardest it's pretty soothing stuff somehow and i think that's because of the production yeah i always want my stuff to be musical yeah and uh uh you know the the people that i really appreciate are are the musicians where you can hear what they're playing rather than a the 13th floor elevators or, you know, or whoever, you know,

that rather than a bunch of kids with their amps turned up to 10, just, you know, screaming and yelling. Right. I'm, you know, I'm much more impressed by musicality. Sure, man. And you got, you had a good rhythm section, man. Those first few records. Thanks, man. Yeah. I mean, you know, I rhythm section, man. Those first few records. Thanks, man.

Yeah. I mean, I try and find the best guys I can work with who will put up with me. Yeah. That we can get together and create good work. And I love those tunes. I love Lucky Man. And then I guess Gangster of Love is on that. That character is on Sailor.

That was the first time he's mentioned, right? Yeah. And then Johnny Guitar Watson, you know, I mean, he was the original, the real Gangster of Love. But then like on like, it's so funny, man. If you if I listen to Brave New World, you know, what's that? The third record, and I listened to My Dark Hour, and I'm like, ah, there's the lick.

You took that lick from that, and that's why I like an eagle. Well, I was working on, see, My Dark Hour was like a real fluke. I was in London. It was 1969. The Beatles were finishing up a project. And Glenn said, come on, let's go to a Beatles session.

I was going to a Beatles session. Are you kidding me? So we went. I met McCartney. They were supposed to do a session the next day. Lennon and Ringo didn't show up. George came over. So there was Paul, me, and George.

We went into the studio and just started playing around guitar. George got bored and left. McCartney jumped on the drums and I said, let me show you this lick. I got this thing I'm working on, man. And so I started playing and he started playing the drums

and boom, we did My Dark Hour and six hours we just made it up and wrote it and finished it. And then- You and McCartney. That lick was something and six hours we just made it up and wrote it and finished it and then you and mccartney that that lick was something that i had always been working on and it uh started playing it all the time oh you know from then till 19 from really 1969 to 1976 man i was like growing that lick

and working with it until i finally got it right. You know, and then baby do, do, do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You are a guitar player. That's I can see. That's good. Oh yeah.

It's just sort of like, it pops out. I'm like, oh man, that lick had to germinate. You know, it's like, you didn't want to let that lick go. Other people would have been like, cause it's like, it's a specific riff. And, but you know, and you put it on my dark hour hour but you weren't going to let it you it meant more to you than that that's funny and i learned that lesson really from from mccartney because uh the little time i spent with him that during those few days we were together you know i was i was going so you know tell me how does it work and everything but you know do you have any regrets

anything and he said yeah he said i wish i have any regrets or anything? And he said, yeah. He said, I wish I had taken more time with these songs. He said, we wrote all those songs so fast. It was like we were going to work. We got there at 10 in the morning. We left at 3.30 in the afternoon, and we cut three songs, you know, and then we'd write two more the next night. And he said, I wish I had taken more time with those songs and i i did that with fly like an eagle and i did that with abracadabra because of what he told me i just kind of went

you know like there there's this moment where you're like putting your next album together and it's 11 59 and 30 seconds and you're gonna say okay that's it and both times i kind of went no wait take that song off it's not ready yet and they went what are you talking about you know because we just spent like you know 15 days mixing it yeah yeah yeah twelve thousand dollars recording it and throwing people in or whatever it is what are you talking this is not ready take it off you know and uh both times it paid off very well glad i followed that advice well so the first like the first real hit you had was living in the usa well living in the usa was was is it's kind of funny it it took off and then it disappeared and then a couple years later it sold a hundred

thousand copies in like four days in philadelphia around the fourth of july some d this was still in the days when djs would go hey here's a little let's spend a little stable or living in usa so went up and went down but it never became a real hit so i didn't i never had a real bona fide you can't fuck with me take it away from me or do anything kind of hit until the joker right the joker was like what we call when things go viral now it really wasn't my record company promoting me or working me that song just came out and just went people locked in it's so funny leading up to that i do have to to compliment you on i think your version of and i've heard several versions of motherless children from uh you're saving grace which and i love that album and that's that and your your cover that's great

you know we we just uh a couple years ago man we were in the studio just fooling around and we did a a new version of it that that we're not releasing just because there's no reason to release it that's really great i've always loved that song thank you very much i appreciate that yeah man i love it and then so the joker i i mean i remember that i didn't realize it was 73 so yeah because that song is like it's just part of all of our brains and uh you know what i mean i mean that song is just it's just part of all of our brains and uh you know what i mean i mean that song is just there but i thought it was a little later so that so that lit you up huh yeah that that i was at the end of my career uh capital records was not

very interested in me they had just spent three million dollars in signing a new english group called flash oh those guys they're amazing and the last last conversation i had with the guys in capital register the joker was the first album i produced myself i kicked sidron out of the studio i kicked everybody out of the studio and just said all right you know there's no money there's no no, this is it. I got to make this record. And this is my last record probably is on Capitol. And yeah. And so I told the guys at Capitol, some kid at the record company said, Hey, you know, I really liked that Joker song, you know? And I said to him, listen, man, I don't care about singles anymore. I said, here's a list.

These are the 60 cities I'm going to starting tomorrow night in Florida. And I want you to just have my albums in those cities. Can you do that? Could you just do that much? You know, can you actually have product available? Yeah. And I mean, I hated those guys. I was so mad at them because they were, you know, they didn't give a shit.

They didn't pay. They didn't they didn't give a shit. They didn't know how to do anything they were just high on cocaine and running around and bumping their heads into the wall and going to parties and shit and junk and stuff you know so i was seriously working you know and i didn't like that so took off and went and did the 60 cities and and got back to san francisco and the the Joker was being played twice an hour, 24 hours a day on every radio station in the United States that played music. And when I was going to do my last gig in Oakland at the Fox Theater, right,

you're still playing 2000 seat rooms. I went on the way over. I was listening to the radio and the joker was on four of the five channels in in the bay area and i was pissed off because it wasn't on the fifth one you know at the same time you know it was like crazy then i came down to la and you know i was the greatest guy in the world and whatever i wanted to do is just great and blah blah blah blah blah how much did that thing sell that song it know, I don't know. It's, I mean, it's,

it's so mixed up in the greatest hits and all these other things. It's sold millions and millions and millions and millions of copies. I mean, you're probably play is nuts. You're still making money on that song right now. As we're talking, you're making a few. As we're speaking, the Joker's being played somewhere in Fiji. There's a Vigian band playing the Joker, and then they're going to do Space Cowboy. Well, you get those satellite residuals.

You get those sound exchange checks. Those things still process through. They do, but, you know, it's, oh, man, it's so different. I mean, the 90s were the last of that, you know, where everything was. The ASCAP money? Yeah. different i mean the 90s were the last of that you know where where the ass cap money yeah i mean the it's the only money we really make now is when we tour and you know that's that's the same for for everybody unless you're just the world's biggest superstar and blah blah blah blah blah and so putting out records is really a completely different kind of game it used to be a really

fun game you know trying to make hits and trying to get on top of the charts and beat the beatles or whoever it was you know there's all that stuff going on you know for producers of records and that's what i was i was producing myself and and working on on that side of the game too which i really loved what was the big change you made when you took over i mean what what was the difference in your approach to production with uh the joker that that changed the the sort of sound into what became your vision was it just putting the vocals up front more uh you know it was the way it was mixed yeah it was the way the recording sessions were done i i uh before every every making every album was always such a big deal and it cost so much money

and you had so many people involved in it and and it was like uh you had a lot of people telling you what to do and and i was always arguing with people all the time. Ben and I used to argue all the time about the records we worked on. And Glenn Johns and I used to just have knock down, drag out, four o'clock in the morning, kind of fights about it. And finally, I got rid of all those people. Like every time I go in to make an album, like the producers, the engineer would be the producer's pal, not my pal.

Yeah. You know, that it was always like that. And I just got rid of it, got rid of them all. And I picked my own engineer. I brought the band in and cut the tracks in two days and then spent, you know,

15 days over dubbing and mixing and editing and cutting and, you know, rewriting a paragraph here and there and, you know, dusting it off. mixing and editing and cutting and you know rewriting a paragraph here and there and you know dusting it off and that was done it's interesting because glenn johns is like a massive producer oh yeah glenn is he was like um a rock star when we first started working with him he'd already done the stones and the Who. And it's kind of funny, you know, like a lot of people love the way he records and makes records and a lot of people don't. And the Eagles and I both had the same kind of like, nah, we're out of here kind of feeling.

I learned a lot from Glenn. He taught me a lot about making records. I made my first album in England at Olympic Studios. That's where I got Children of the Future. So I started at Capitol and went down there and did my first session and my second session, and the engineering staff walked out at 2 in the morning. They just said, fuck this, and they left. And so I was going to tear up my contract with capital and i called my producer and said hey you can have the money back i'm gonna go somewhere else and he said no no no no no

and part of my my that deal i told you about i had was that i could produce my own records and i could go anywhere i wanted to record i didn't have to work at capital records right usually record companies made you rent their studio you you know, you became a client of theirs as well. And so we went to London to Olympic Studios and Glenn was an engineer. We got him to be our engineer. Wow. That's how I started. And we were overdubbing and stuff. And so I kind of went to school in the school of English, making English pop records. Yeah, that makes sense, man. That makes sense in terms of the sound. So then it took three years for you to put together Fly Like an Eagle?

Why? Because you were on the road with the Joker or what? Yeah, I mean, I got back from the Joker, and I had been on the road for 11 years, and I'd been fighting for 11 years. And I went into the studio at Capitol records. They were just like more right in the studio, come back, come back. And I went, I went in and, um, I remember it was about two o'clock in the afternoon and I just sort of strummed my

guitar and looked at the guy and said, you know, I got nothing to say, nothing to do. i'm out of here you know i'm just exhausted yeah so cut everything off and um uh went uh to san francisco and found a had a check for 380 000 in my mailbox and bought a house yeah with a junk mail man i was I was like, you know, it was like that. And I opened up and went. And that's when I went, I've got to hit it. Shit, this is great. So I bought a house. I bought a 3M 8-track tape recorder and set it up in the living room. And I just moved there and lived there by myself.

We're at Bay Area? Yeah, in Novato. Yeah. You know, outside of the city. And found a really cool old house in the woods and set it up and just sat there and got real bored and got real used to that and just not going out and partying and just working. Yeah.

And started working. And I wrote wrote i don't know 25 songs probably wrote 50 songs throughout half of them and ended up with 25 songs or so and and uh called up gary malibu great drummer got lonnie turned to the bass player and said we're going to go in and cut the basic tracks just as a trio i don't't want the less people there are, the more I can control what's going on. We went in and cut all the tracks for Fly Like an Eagle and Book of Dreams and all those hits as a trio. Both records? Yeah.

Cut them in 11 days. Cut everything. Oh, no shit. We were doing two tracks a day. Right. And then they all took off, went and did what they did and then i went back to my house and just thought about my tracks i had them on a i had an eight track tape recorder and i'd cut them 16 track and i mixed it down to a stereo mix i had a sync tone so that

left me five open tracks so i had a sync tone a stereo mix of the the rhythm tracks and five open tracks and and i just engineered everything myself and i sang all the parts myself and i played all the guitar parts myself and i did it over and over and over and over until i was really happy with what i had or it was the way i wanted it yeah wiped the tape a hundred times you know and started again it was really the limitations were great five tracks you know and started again it was really the limitations were great five tracks you know and and that's what you did that all that's what the record is yeah then we took it back to the studio synced it up to the 16 track yeah so we now had like eight tracks of drums and you know whatever sure and and just took my stuff that i recorded in my living room with a sure level lock

and a electro voice microphone and you know i was done wow and mix the album in it in 17 hours you know we just sat down and mixed it and we did stereo mix we did a quad mix and we did the singles mixes all in one session quad mix 1976 quad yes yeah baby that's amazing man i did you know i just noticed something i and this is the first time i noticed it you're playing a left handed strat right handed on the cover yeah so reason being i had um you know i i first saw Jimi Hendrix at the Montreux Festival. I mean, the Monterey Festival. Did you know him? Well, yeah, I met him there.

Yeah. That was so cool. He looked like Eartha Kitt with a guitar. He just walked around the corner, and I went, Eartha Kitt with a guitar. And we started talking. uh-huh he just walked around the corner and i went earth a kit with a guitar and you know he was he was like very shy and real i mean he was as a very humble sweet guy and we became friends and he used to let me sit on the stage when he played so i was probably sitting four feet away from him you know at the corner of the stage just he played. So I was probably sitting four feet away from him, you know, at the corner of the stage,

just out of the range of his monitor where he would be playing during those, all those winter land shows. And what I noticed was that, I mean, he, he was such a great guitar player. So I was studying how he played. I didn't want to play his exact stuff, but his techniques and stuff. And what he could do was he could pick up a strat like this, right? Yeah. And because it was upside down, the vibrato bar was this way.

So he could hold it with his thumb and he could go. And he was do that. That's how he was doing a lot of those. Just squeezing it. Yeah. With his his hand like he wasn't doing this right right right and to do that you had to have an upside down guitar oh so it was mostly for the vibrato effect but isn't isn't the intonation a little weird too because the way the pickups are aligned yeah i mean it it is and it isn't so i went i went to new york went to manny's and jimmy had ordered these two uh left-handed strats and which i thought was really odd and he had just died and and uh they said do you want them and i said yeah i do because they were left-handed so i took them

then i sent them to nashville had flipped so I could play. And then the hardest part was learning to turn the volume off when you wanted to turn the volume up. Many times I would step out to take a solo and turn my guitar off. And that particular guitar, I still have the white one. The black one got stolen. But the white one I still have, and it's a great, great-sounding Stratocaster. And I never changed the pickups. I didn't move them around or anything. And cut some great records with that. And that's why I did it.

I mean, I thought, yeah, controls up here and everything. I've since made Strats that have the, you know, regular controls, but they're, you know, I've made left-handed guitars, but made sure that the controls worked like right. You had them made for you. Yeah. Well, what was it? So like I'm watching that 77 thing, the thing that you're, you know,

you're releasing, it's like, what's with all those, the big, the Ibanez. Well, you know, it's, it's kind of cool. What you guys are playing matching Ibanez's? Well, you know, it's kind of cool. You guys are playing matching Ibanez. And the other dude has a fucking music man. I mean, it's like a whole onslaught of unhip instruments. Right. And what was going on? Those guitars we had are actually great.

They sound great. No, I'm not saying they didn't sound good. like now yeah everybody i know what you're saying yeah but here was the thing like fender told me to go fuck myself gibson wouldn't pick up the phone i you know i was trying to work with guitar makers and stuff and and the only there was uh the only company that was interested was Ibanez. There was a guy named Jeff Hasselberger, who's a great, great guitar guy. And he came to me. He said, we'll make you anything you want, man.

What do you want? And I started going, well, I want one of these. I want one of those. Yeah, that's great. Can I get one with the tree of life? Bob Weir did it. Bob always got the fancy guitars. Like, when I see Bob play his Ibanez, it's got more inlay than 10 guitars. You know? Bob Weir did it. Bob always got the fancy guitars. Like when I see Bob plays Ibanez,

it's got more inlay than 10 guitars. So Bobby and I were working with Hasselberger and developing these guitars, and they'd make us any kind of pickups we wanted. And they were making me eight-string basses, all sorts of stuff. And they were all great instruments sure and and they were the only they were the only people that even you know had any interest in me as an artist

at all really well that's interesting the Ibanez deal and you guys and Bob Weir too Bob Weir like boy he's a he's a troubadour you guys buddies buddies? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I spend a lot of time with Bob. What I like best, I put backup bands behind Bob, you know, for private gigs and parties and stuff like that. And I love to do that. And I get him there and get him singing. And he's a really great singer, you know and i've put some really great bands together how is that your job stuff well we kind of uh hang out in the you know the

bay area and there's like part it's like a party so we're having a party man put put a band together for this and you guys come over and you know the party's for you and us and everybody it's picking up a little that tech money those 250 000 garden gigs uh no but those gigs are nuts yeah you know i i did one of those gigs with uh let me let me think billy gibbons oh yeah christine mcvee mick fleetwood and then like all the best la backup players yeah yeah and and it was a great fucking gig it was for some guys in texas of course uh-huh fleetwood can fucking swing huh yeah he's great i i he and i've been pals from the film or days and uh i loved that the fleetwood Mac when they first showed up. Did you know Peter? I knew Peter.

I played with Peter. Most of the time that I spent with him was later, and it was really difficult. Because he was out there? He was out there in a kind of way that made you want to say, quit fucking around and play it yeah yeah come on god damn it what do you think we're not gonna put up with that bullshit he he he would just drive people crazy i don't know what it was there was just something about him he's

such a great guitar player you know and i think he was hard on himself yeah and i think he had problems i mean the last time i played with him he was playing um with uh what was that are your eggs done no it's a computer one of them i got it it was someone texted me go ahead he we did he and my eggs are done thanks yeah right john mayall john mayall was playing in uh the fillmore yeah and peter green was playing at the fillmore with his own band and mayall invited me over to come over and play and you know it's just a great this was like you know 19 i don't know 97 or 8 or something or maybe later so it's fat old peter green yeah yeah yeah right and um it was you know really a great gig but and peter was there and peter wanted to come and play with

us and we were trying to talk him into playing with us so he shows up with a band of guys who like you know they all look like 80s rock stars old middle-aged 80s rock stars with dyed black hair and you know guitars that look like axes and they come out and play like 45 minutes of just absolute bullshit and then peter green came out and played like two songs with them didn't play any of his good shit and then left the stage yeah and you know sooner or later somebody has to behind the stage say what the fuck is wrong with you you know and and nobody would do that you know everybody was afraid to do that and and uh i just yeah you know i didn't have time to screw around with whatever happened to him i don't know what it was

and i wasn't around him that much i just know that i love his records man no one can move through between that major and minor like him man it's like no man he's the best he's just really a wonderful one-off great guitarist yeah soul it's huge you know and just broken something broke something broke inside him there are a lot of fragile people trying to do this you know well yeah that's what i was saying about you you know you never struck me like you know like you were gonna die mid-song and you always like i don't know man there's a buoyancy to the whole trip and that fly like an eagle record that's that that took care of you for life huh well it it established me and gave me uh the success i needed to be able to go and grow for the rest of my life yeah and you know you

just the hardest thing is to follow up a big hit with a big hit and then follow up that second big hit with a third big hit and then a fourth big hit and then a fifth big hit there are three big hits on that record yeah i don't know what what they are rocking me take the money and run fly like an eagle wild mountain honey and i mean a lot of them have turned out to be hits the the thing that was weird about this was at that time we wanted we wanted to keep putting out singles off the record, and Capitol Records said, it'd really press our credibility with radio.

We're not going to put any more singles out. What? After which we're selling, you know, 100,000 copies a week. What is wrong with you? I mean, it was crazy. The arguments we had with them. I don't know why. It's crazy.

And then the next one which you basically wrote all those songs at the same time jet airliner swing town jungle love from paul pina wrote jet airliner i just rearranged it you know shuffled the lyrics around a little bit but that was a paul pina tune book of dreams and and fly like an eagle were sort of done within the same period of time. Yeah. Wild, man. Big records, dude. Yeah.

Well, I learned that from the Eagles, too. And I mean, the Eagles, probably from the Eagles as well, but from the Beatles. Because when I met the Beatles, they had 40 songs in the can. I'd never seen anything like it. Yeah. They had hit after hit after hit after hit. And what happens when you get ahead of it instead of like, yeah, we just had the biggest hit of our lives and we're all going to go get high and fucked up for 18 months and then we're going to come back and go to work.

Yeah. You know, that's the wrong way. They were able to just, their timing was just bullet fast, just as fast as they needed to have another when they had it. And that's what I tried to do with Fly Like an Eagle and Book of Dreams, was they were both in the can before I'd left to go on the road with Fly Like an Eagle. Oh, it's amazing, man. And then you knocked out a couple of hits more here and there,

but it seems like you kept making good records. Yeah, I tried to make good records i just sort of lost my finger on the pulse of pop music and grew up you know got older but it's interesting to me is that like here in your blues records the last couple records where you're going back to it you know doing those jimmy vaughn songs jimmy reed song stuff like it always like is is beautiful to me when when guys who have the passion for that stuff and you realize at some point that like any idiot can play the blues right so it's just the nature of the music it's it's the the great thing about it and also the horrible thing about it is that

right a bar band could do a pretty good job you know with a blues tune so it's dangerous that bar band level yeah oh yeah but like what makes a person you know have a voice and and sound different with that music and like when the stones put out that record a couple years ago blue and lonesome that was fucking unbelievable to listen to that that this is that could have been the the song list of their first album ever. So now they're coming back to it, what, 50 years later, and it sounds exactly like the Rolling Stones. Those old blues songs, and you're coming back to these old blues songs, and it's like exactly Steve Miller coming back around to the music you love, to the music that speaks to you the most,

and singing it with thoroughly as your own guy and making it your own in a way that you couldn't have done at the beginning no that's that's right that's astute i mean and that's kind of what happens you know like my goal really from the time i was five years old and saw les paul was to be a musician i didn't want to be a celebrity or a rock star in fact i didn't even know what that was when i was a kid because that didn't you know the successful rock and roll people were like Fabian. Right. You know, people who made surf movies and, you know, and Dion's doing blues now has been doing it for over a decade.

Yeah. Dion's great. Yeah. Yeah. And I always loved Dion scene, like, like run around soon. That stuff. Like I would watch Dion and the Dick and the whatever that Dick Clarkark tv show american bandstand i'd watch those guys yeah i love doo-wop stuff i always loved anything with soul that was good and if it was like

total utter pop crap you know like how much is that dog in the window right you know i just you know who cares yeah and and so it i don't if anybody had soul i always dug it yeah you know, I just kind of go, you know. Who cares? Yeah. And so if anybody had soul, I always dug it, you know. And I love the doo-wop records. And I loved all the R&B stuff. And I loved Dion and the Belmonts and, you know, a lot of those groups. And they were all, you know, the doo-wop stuff was all vocals, too. And I'm all about the vocals i love vocal harmonies that's when you make what i call pop records you want to have hooks and

vocal harmonies yeah sure you know we want to sing along with it while we're driving to arizona yeah man so you but you like going back to the blues oh all the time into jazz jazz and blues jazz and blues and i'm working at jazz at lincoln center now on developing the blues pedagogy for them really i like that i know that guy over there i talked to winton uh genius it's great dude i love working for winton winton collared me and asked me to come help him do that and i've've been doing that for six years. I do a series of shows every December at jazz and Lincoln center at Rose theater. And, uh, you know, I did, I brought Charlie muscle white and Jimmy Vaughn in, and then I get to have a jazz at Lincoln center horn section and rhythm

section. And, you know, uh, the, the players are so great and I've met so many great players. I've moved to new york so i moved about um eight years ago you're in new york right now years ago yeah we're upstate yeah i'm out of the city right now i'm in the hudson valley oh nice man yeah i know guys up there i'm like you know avoiding the pandemic i've been here for 15 months you know looking at beautiful rolling hills and stuff i'd give anything to just get back into some of those dives sure man and i've learned so much it's been

such a great thing for me and my playing man the thing that's doing to my personal playing and my personal musical growth that's great man you seem really engaged and fucking in it oh yeah yeah that's it's phenomenal mean, being in, I'm really glad I moved to New York and got, got out. I was living in Idaho and there was nothing to do there except ride bicycles, run, ski, train, stay in. Hey, go buy sports equipment, you know, and there was no, nothing else there, you know, and.

Except for everything else. You mean there was no music, man. No music. There was no culture, you know. And the culture there was, it was all bar bands. And so I just, you know, said to Janice, I'm going to move to New York. And she's a New Yorker. So she said, yeah, let's go. So we moved in.

It was like jumping off a cliff, man, when I first got here. I'd never really lived in the gritty city. I'd been living out with mountains and stuff. And I don't know, the first year, I was kind of afraid to go outside at night. And I didn't want to go for a walk in the park. It was rough. But you get used to it. Now I'm turning into a New Yorker.

you know you get used to it now i'm turning into a new yorker you know it's in the the uh the quality of musicianship and people i've met and just the intelligence and the different people i got another gig at at the metropolitan museum in the musical instrument department working on that and we've done those big guitar shows that you saw you know the the Play It Loud and the Arch Top Guitar Show and the Martin Guitar Show and everything. So I got two anchors right in the culture of the city just right away when I showed up in town just by luck. Just walked through the door and they said, hey, why don't you do this? And I went, okay. Well, man, well, I'm happy for you, man. You sound great.

And it was an honor talking to you. And I hope people enjoy the little movie. And always, I know they love the music, but it's great to hear you doing so many things. And take care of yourself, man. Mark, thanks, man. I love your show. I love what you're doing. And it's an honor to have a little conversation with you.

Thanks for listening and for all the hard prep work you did. Oh, it was great, man. Take it easy, Steve. All right. I'll see you around the block, man. Bye-bye. That was Steve Miller. As I said earlier, Steve Miller Band Live, Breaking Ground, the concert album from August 3rd, 1977, comes out this Friday, May 14th. And that video we talked about, the live concert film featuring the full performance and his red suspenders with his Ibanez guitars, is available to stream on the Coda Collection on Amazon Prime Video.

Now I will play guitar like usual. Thank you. Boomer lives. Monkey, La Fonda. Cat angels everywhere. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category,

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