On Music

...What sets his apart from most of the rest that came out of San Francisco in the '60s is the quality of musicianship...

...How long has it been since you've seen that at a concert...

...He did it as an encore and, for me, it easily surpassed the version done by Eric Clapton...

...Released first as a single, it sold over a million copies...

...of 1976...

...It occured to me, as I listened to Miller and his group, finding myself transfixed by the accompanying light show, that they really had succeeded in going back in time: This was as close as anyone might ever come to reproducing the sights and sounds of almost a decade ago...

...Today, they are but dim memories...

...His voice is indistinct and rather ordinary, the kind that makes you suspect you or your bass-playing cousin might be able to do as well...

...Unlike the earnest folk poets who have proved so popular, Miller's best lines are pointedly satirical, even when they concern what he feels most deeply about...

...Fly Like an Eagle blends so perfectly with his past recordings that one has a feeling of deja vu—particularly in the case of the title tune and "Lost in Space.' Yet the album's familiarity does not detract from its distinction: Sometimes we listen to music, after all, in order to have expectations satisfied, to hear what we like...

...More than a survivor, though, Steve Miller is a mover...

...That was where I saw him—at a former capital movie palace with wonderful acoustics, a gilt-and-silver monstrosity called the Warner Theater...

...Although he has long been an extremely accomplished instrumentalist, his singing is only passable...

...Many listeners (myself included) would have written Miller off then and there, if it hadn't been for the other side of the record...

...He could have gone out on a tour of sports arenas, packed them in, and counted the cash...

...And he did...

...Something of a guitar prodigy, he had early success while in high school with a teen-age band called the Marksmen...

...No less than Boz Scaggs was featured on guitar...

...Steve Miller simply was and is a dubious candidate for mass appeal...

...The album for which it was originally intended (called The Joker, naturally) also hit the million mark...

...Now 32, he was present at the creation and has been on hand for every twist or turn taken by rock in the past 20 years...

...Comparisons aside, however, the important thing is Steve Miller's return to action...

...Only Steve Miller appears to be left to tell the tale, and he told it most eloquently on a recent national tour...

...Even the bands that continue to make music—Jefferson Starship (nee Airplane) and the Grateful Dead—seem mere specters: More often in retirement than out, they materialize occasionally to remind us of the rock-and-roll past...

...College brought Miller north to the University of Wisconsin, then a seedbed of '60s radicalism...

...they bounced up and down, applauded wildly, jumped out of their seats to dance...

...In 1973, when Miller was almost 30, he recorded one of his ironic persona songs, "The Joker...

...But he didn't...

...The crowd was right, too: Instead of spacily, silently, listening, they were with the music...

...The one number from this collection that made a good showing on the singles charts, "Take the Money and Run," is a story-song only two beeps and a bop away from outlaw-country music in the manner of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson...

...What's more, his face seems 20 years behind the times: Moon-shaped and apple-cheeked, it was surely not the right one for stardom in the '60s...

...instead, he went into semiretirement for over a year to try to decide what he wanted to do next in music...

...If the new album, Fly Like an Eagle (Capitol ST 11497), provides the guitarist's answer, we seem to be in store for more of the pre-Joker Steve Miller...

...Do yourself a favor and give him your attention...

...Where are the rest of those gallant Robespierres and Dantons of the rock revolution, who dispatched their shock troops from command post West at Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco and proceeded to take America by storm...

...By the time he left, in 1967, his guitar playing was good enough to take on whatever competition the West Coast had to offer...

...Miller's poetry on "Look Through the Window" is effective, and he makes his contribution to the rock-and-roll revival with "Rockin' Me" and the Sam Cooke song, "You Send Me...

...That he is equally consistent in concert is remarkable in a way, because when a band is as dedicated to the moment of performance as his is, it is easy to let down musical standards a little and give the audience only what it wants...

...In six months, he could have brought out another LP, Son of the Joker or The Joker Strikes Back, with all kinds of Alvino Rey talking guitar tricks on it, and really cleaned up...

...He soaked up the anger, put it in his music, and took it with him down to Chicago...

...Nor has his writing been the kind that would win him a huge, loyal following...

...Yet he was not an immediate sensation in San Francisco...

...Along with Mike Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield, Miller went out and jammed every night with the big bosses of urban blues—heavyweights like Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells...

...For years these people remained the nucleus of Miller's audience...

...In fact, initially his group was called the Steve Miller Blues Band...

...Miller always gives us good songs, interestingly arranged and brilliantly executed...

...Capitol Records, with whom he has always been associated, wisely kept him on, satisfied with his modest sales and apparently confident that eventually he would break loose with a smash...

...Appearing in converted movie houses and small auditoriums, he managed to recreate the spirit of the old Fillmore West in cities as far away in geography and style from the 1968 San Francisco as the Washington, D.C...

...By the second or third album this was shortened to the Steve Miller Band, but there was still a good deal of righteous blues feeling in every number...

...Indeed, as fine as the quieter part of the show was, the high point of the concert was his exciting up-tempo rendition of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads...

...Actually, something could be said about every cut on the album, and that is precisely what is most impressive about it: the uniform excellence of the music...

...Both sets featured his brilliant harmonica man, Norton Buffalo, and all the music was beautifully performed...

...Back in the '50s, the music was just beginning to shake the country and Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent, and Buddy Holly were tearing up the South...

...Remembering the lessons he learned on Chicago's South Side, Miller has always been strong on the blues...

...His sole excursion into solemn "message music," "Children of the Future," was a sort of science fiction cantata that took up one side of his first LP—issued in 1968—and provided its title...

...The rock-and-roll fans at the Warner Theater did get what they wanted, but on Steve Miller's terms: a full set of ballads and acoustic material (including several blues) before he plugged in his Fender to rock...

...Young Steve, the doctor's kid, shook a little earlier and harder than his friends as they grew up to rockabilly in Dallas, Texas...

...That displayed a good sampling of what we have come to think of as vintage Steve Miller, highlighted by a first-rate performance of the Big Bill Broonzy blues, "Key to the Highway...

...Even though the band didn't have a hit to its name, it could fill the small halls around the country with the couple of thousand hard-core music freaks in every town it played who cared more about performance than position on the charts...

...While not much different from several others he had done, this one, perhaps because of some comic guitar effects in the arrangement, caught on with the general public...

...Miller's groups play with great energy and drive—but so do many other bands...

...There are two fine blues on the disk, the satirical "Mercury Blues" and the straightforward, down-home "Sweet Maree...

...Eager to achieve success, Miller took a cut in profits so he could play to audiences of the size and quality he was used to...

...Miller's old chum Boz Scaggs played in the early SMB, helping to make it more interesting musically than the other San Francisco combinations and gain it a cult following nationally...

...He knew it and played to them...

...In pecuniary terms—the language your run-of-the-mill pop superstar seems to understand best—this meant that Miller made a lot of money and had a chance to make a lot more...

...In 1968, the year of hard rock, youthquake, the psychedelic sound, and give-peace-a-chance, we listened to groups like Moby Grape, the Sons of Champlin, the Quicksilver Messenger Service, Loading Zone, and Electric Flag, as well as to individual performers like Mike Bloom-field, Buddy Miles and Skip Spence...

...The long solos Miller took made it clear that he is still one of the finest pickers in rock...

...There he rounded off his musical education in the toughest classrooms of all: the blues bars on the South Side...