You can’t escape him on classic rock radio. Every few hours, wedged between Elton John and Billy Joel and the Eagles, a familiar, twangy guitar riff will whir through the speakers. Maybe it’s the psychedelic “tick, tock, do do do do” of “Fly Like an Eagle” or the oddly-patterned drumbeat of “Rock’n Me.”
Or perhaps those distinctively nasal vocals transport you back to the period in the ’70s when music mattered. When it was fun to stand in front of the bathroom mirror and play air guitar to the swinging chords of “Jungle Love.”
Steve Miller remembers those days well. And he knows that they’re never coming back.
It has been 14 years since Miller, 52, had a radio smash. His last, “Abracadabra,” with its poppy keyboards and trivial “I heat up, I can’t cool down” lyrics, was a half-hearted attempt to gain acceptance in the synthesizer-driven ’80s. The song was his only hit to remain at No. 1 on the charts for more than a week–and a disappointing, if commercially successful, venture for an artist who prided himself on his musicianship.
But that was back when Miller thought he still had a chance in an industry that chews up and spits out its talent faster than yesterday’s leftovers. Before he realized he was being categorized as a leftover himself.
The sudden betrayal by the music world left Miller so bitter and disgusted, he soon disappeared from the recording industry in 1982. Another casualty of time, he thought, until a new radio format cropped up in the early ’90s — classic rock of the ’70s.
Programmers at all-’70s stations around the nation readily admit that Miller is one of their Top 10 core artists, so his music is an inevitable staple on their playlists. Miller doesn’t mind being lumped in with a handful of greats from yesteryear, but, unlike Joel or John, who continue to produce hits, Miller has been unable to shake his ’70s stigma.
His last commercial release, 1993’s “Wide River,” flopped; his experiments as a blues artist have been personally fulfilling, yet no record company is willing to financially support his new material. It’s a situation that still gets Miller peeved, but he’s tired of fighting a winless war.
“Record companies, they’re just like lemmings,” Miller says from a tour stop in Boston. “They nail my feet to the floor when it comes to releasing new stuff. My master (tapes) are with Capitol Records, but we’re like Siamese twins who hate each other. They think I’m a hard-nosed, mean man, and I think they’re a bunch of nincompoops.”
Even without a favorable product to spur ticket sales, Miller and his band have toured consistently since 1987.
“I feel sorry for these young bands because their managers are screwing with their careers and three years from now they’ll be in a death struggle with their lawyers,” Miller says. “Generally what you see happen is these talented kids make a great album, but they don’t have a chance unless they have someone working with them who has integrity. They get thrown out by MTV and radio in six weeks, and they don’t get any time to grow.
“We are living in a country that has taken the short view on everything. We have sold our future. We have screwed with our environment. We have a culture that’s going crazy, and it’s all being propelled by the trillion-dollar advertising corporations. People like (Capitol Records president) Gary Gersh, who discovered Nirvana, should be put in jail for throwing them out on the road.”
But it’s reflective times like this when Miller often realizes that his side-lined position in this current era of music isn’t so bad after all.
Maybe the four blues concerts that he recorded last year will never make it onto an album, but he can still perform them live. Maybe he’s sick of the “cigar-smoking old men” who he believes rule the radio industry, but as long as “time keeps on tickin’,” Miller still receives a royalty check every time his songs are played. He has even modified “Fly Like an Eagle” for live performances, adding some extra verses and an elastic, hip-hop beat.
Miller knows that his popularity is based solely on his accomplishments from two decades ago–fans don’t flock to his shows to hear his blues material because most of them aren’t even aware of his affinity for the Mississippi Delta. Give ’em “Jet Airliner,” and they’ll go home happy.
But Miller is mostly thankful for his Regular Joe appearance, a luxury that many artists of his status are never able to dodge.
“I love that I can go anywhere and do anything, and nobody knows who the hell I am,” Miller says. “I can walk off the tour bus and fans will ask me where Steve Miller is, and the amazing thing is, if I want to be Steve Miller, I pull off the Ray Bans, and bam!, there he is.”
