QLS Classic: Steve Miller

Hall of Fame guitarist, singer and songwriter Steve Miller talks about the early lessons he learned from Les Paul and T Bone Walker, sitting in on an impromptu recording session with The Beatles and performing with greats like Chuck Berry, Sly Stone and more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Of Course, Love Supreme is a production of I Heart Radio.
This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
What's Up? This is on pay Bill from quest Love Supreme.
For the next coolest classic, we get back to Steve
Miller's January ten without the eighteen appearance. Rock and Roll
Hall of Famer talks about the early lessons he learned
from less Ball and Tebow and Walker singing on a

(00:21):
prompted recording session with the Beatles and performing with greats
like Chuck Barry sly Stone Moral Fly like an Ego.
Back to episode Safety six, sum sum roll Call, Suprema, Suprema,

(00:44):
roll Call, Suprema, sup roll Call. What's love in the Place? Yeah,
I want to talk about what what space? So yeah,
I'm a starting a question inside the theme song. Steve Miller,

(01:04):
I just have to ask you why that was, What
was on your mind when you were making Blue Odyssey
in Space and just in in less than thirty seconds, please,
I had, uh, just got a really really cheap synthesizer,
my first one, and I immediately hooked it up to

(01:26):
my echo plex, and I had an eight track tape
recorder and I just was building in electronics soundscapes like
broadening the horizon so I could put something in it. Beautiful.
Thank you. Call call Call. My name is Fonte, your

(01:49):
favorite rapper. Yeah, I worked my magic, abracadaver m U Frimo.
Roll call. My name is Sugar. Yeah, Sugar, Sugar Baby,
Sugar Baby, Sugar Sugar Baremo. Roll call So premare road

(02:18):
calls bills in the place. Yeah, We're gonna have some fun.
Yeah and learn how the bis. Yeah, take some money
in runs. Roll call call so Frema, roll call Yeah. Yeah,
Steve Miller, I'm stoked. I don't. I just want to

(02:39):
say smoker and joker. Yeah, that's how I feel. Roll call, Frema,
roll call. Some people call me Maurice. Some people call
me the space Cowboys. Some people call me Stevie. But
I'm gonna tell you that cowboy. Wow. Well, good morning,

(03:19):
good morning. I feel much better. Cool ladies and gentlemen,
we are honored here today to have the legendary the
artist Artist. I'm very glad that you're on the show
because I've always wanted to talk someone that to whom
it took more than seven albums to finally break going

(03:42):
through to the other side. So I'm not allue in
this world. No, no, you're not. I yeah, I would.
I would like to think, if I can insert myself
inside of my own radio show, that if yeah the
first time lot, uh, that if we were out in
the sixties, if the Roots were out in the sixties,
we probably traveled the same path that Steve Miller took.

(04:05):
A guy who had relentless, uncompromising artistic uh goals in
life that he set and he didn't cowtown or bow
down to the man. And you know, true a true
story of artist development and and innovation. And we thank
you for coming. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome. Steve Miller

(04:26):
always left supreme. Well that's that's pretty humbling. Um. You know,
we would have had had we been rolling at the
same time, we probably would have been touring together because
it would have been trying to do artistics, make pop music, uh,

(04:48):
intellectual and do artistic things and be political and make
a change and and in our society that was those
were all things that I see the Roots as being
very interested in. When I listened to your records, I
kind of go, oh, yeah, I know, yeah, they're in
this studio now, you know, and and uh it's uh

(05:10):
It's really really sweet of you to say all those
nice things, you know, because nobody really says that stuff,
and you feel like that when you're working on it.
And seven albums was a long time, you know, but uh,
well you did it. You know. I was never not
gonna you know, So that's the way. Yeah. So I

(05:31):
mean being as though, I mean, you definitely came from
an era in which UM songs had to speak for themselves. UM,
where there's actual grass fRoots, uh kind of work, putting,
putting into spreading the word and word of mouth and
those sort of things. It wasn't like you know today,

(05:52):
where your celebrity determines how far are you're going to
go and you know, even sadly as of two thousand seventeen,
I mean, talent really isn't even a fact. A matter
of fact, it could be a hindrance, say, you know,
to say the least. So come on, now, buck up,
cheer up. What I'm saying talent out here, you know,

(06:15):
but I understand what you're what you're getting. I know
a lot of your music, but I just don't know
a lot of your your journey and your life that
that got you to the point. So my journey is crazy.
I can give it to you in aph. So. I
was born in Milwaukee to a family. Uh. My mother's

(06:37):
side of the family were all musicians, and my father's
side of the family they were kind of inventors and doctors.
So my dad was a pathologist. He had a tape
recorder and when I was four years old, I met
Less Paul and this is Are you ready for that? Yeah?

(06:58):
It was just a few years after World War Two
and Les Paul showed up with an electric guitar and
how well he He came to Milwaukee to put his
act together with Mary Ford before he went to New
York to do a TV show. It was one of
the first TV shows. It was a real weird little
TV shows, like fifteen minutes long. It had kind of

(07:20):
come on at three thirty in the afternoon from his
house and they were putting. They were rehearsing at a
supper club just down the block from where we lived,
and my dad went down and said, I have a
tape recorder, which was this brand new technology that came
over from Germany after World War Two. It was one

(07:41):
of the first tape recorders. So, uh, he said, can
I record your shows. U Less said, yeah, of course.
So I went down with my father with Pops and
we watched Les Paul play every night. And I was
like four years old sitting on the bench next to
him watching this tour player. And then they would come

(08:03):
over the house to listen to the tapes and party.
So there were lots of parties, lots of drinking, lots
of smoking, lots of musicians, lots of people hanging out.
And that's the beginning. And I knew that you could
speed tape up, you could slow it down, you know,
if you sped the tape up and recorded and then
slowed it down, you know, the guitar and sound like

(08:24):
a bass, or if he recorded at three and a
half and you know, played the league part and then
put back up to seven, it would be twice as fast.
And I understood that Mary Ford was singing multiple tracks,
and this is like wasn't even a thing yet. They
had just invented it, seeing Patty Page and Less with

(08:45):
the multi tracking, and and so I just there. I was,
I was like five years old, kind of going yeah,
multi tracking. And then of postcards came to our house
after they went in New York, and they had their
TV show, and it was a hundred postcards and they
were all stamped and they were all addressed to the

(09:07):
same radio station in Milwaukee, but they were all written
in kind of phony, different handwriting, and that was to
promote their next single. So it's ninety and I'm walking
around going, man, I love show business, and you know,
I want to be a musician. And Mead Lux Lewis

(09:29):
was my guy. He honky Tonk Train was the greatest
shuffle in the world and he's just listened to that
over and over and over as a baby, and and uh,
that's what I wanted to do. And uh, you know,
my godfather, Les Baul was doing it, so I was
watching him from a distance. So I had all that.
And then we moved to Texas and Texas was like, um,

(09:53):
really amazing because it was segregated and I had never
been in a segregated community before. And I was a Yankee.
I didn't know what anybody was talking about. I was
in the second grade and I was going, what what
what are you talking about? You know? And I was
going to Stonewall Jackson Elementary School. It was like that.

(10:17):
And uh, my dad was running this lab his pathology
lab and a friend of his was taking care of
this guy named T bone Walker, and so my dad goes,
uh he introduces himself to T Bone and they become
friends and T Bone uh comes over to the house.

(10:38):
So my parents rented a piano. I'd never seen a
piano before, and I got six, stayed home from school
and played with a piano all day. And this is true.
At five o'clock in the afternoon, T bone Walker drove
into our We lived in this suburb where they were
like five thousand houses that looked the same and everybody
had this little yard and that was the deal. And

(11:01):
T Bone pulled into the driveway and a flesh colored
Cadillac convertible with leopard skin seats and uh suit and
tie on and a great, big old Gibson guitar case.
And he came in and he opened up his case

(11:22):
and I was just all over him. You know, it's
just like, are you T Bone Marker? How do you
do this? How you do that? And um they uh.
He would come over and play parties, and my dad
recorded all of this, so I have the recordings of
like the first night I met T Bone Walking, Yeah, man,

(11:46):
And and they're really great recordings and t Bone is
whoever it was on piano is just unbelievably cool. And
U t Bone played from about six o'clock at night
to about five o'clock in the morning. And uh so
I have these, uh these tapes from one and fifty
two and and so he taught me how to play

(12:09):
the guitar behind my head and do the splits. I
was nine when when I met him, and um so
I was the main thing was. I was sitting there
watching t Bone and play lead guitar this far away
from him, and there's I was listening to all of
these tapes just the other night. We listened to them

(12:31):
all the time. And uh t boone turnship. He says,
what you want to sing, Steve, And I said nothing.
I don't want to do. It's just like watching. But
uh so from there, I mean in Texas and there's
like country music, there's a big djambo read, there's like
black radio stations, there's white radio stations. Jimmy Reid is

(12:55):
like pop music. Uh it's um just full of of
great music. And um I ran into a kid who
had been taking drum lessons since he was five years old,
and he was like twelve, and he was like a

(13:16):
professional drummer. He was just absolutely together and his dad
was really cool. He had a music room and we
used to go over and listen to screaming Jay Hawkins
records and stuff. And we started playing together and we
started a band. And it was nineteen fifty six, and
mimeographed a letter sent it out to all the high

(13:37):
schools and colleges and fraternities and sororities and churches and
boys and girls clubs and synagogues, any place that had
live music, saying we had a rock and roll band,
and there weren't any rock and roll bands there was
nineteen fifty six. Can I ask one thing, what city
in Texas was this? Dallas? And uh Freddy King was

(13:58):
on television in the afternoon. Saturday afternoon, there was an
R and B show on TV, and um Lightning Hopkins
was coming through town. There was a lot of jazz.
All of h Charles's band lived in Fort Worth, fed
at Newman. Those guys were in and out of town
and and so there was this really cool music scene

(14:19):
going on. And I was listening to Jimmy Reed and
Build Dog. Those were when I was eleven and twelve,
that was the stuff I really liked, and that's what
our band played. And um, so we sent these letters
out and I had the band booked for like a
whole school year, like in three weeks, and um uh,

(14:43):
nobody knew how old we were because we're twelve. And
it was a really good band. Boss Giggs was in
the joined the band the next year, and and you know,
we had a really good repertoire. We did a lot
of blues and out of of R and B tunes

(15:04):
and and that band stayed together all through high school
and then followed me into college. And so I grew
up in the in the middle of this sort of
jazz scene. My parents love jazz, and jazz musicians were
always coming over and how accessible were because I mean,
the story that you're telling is just not the average story,

(15:25):
where like Teva and Watson. So first of all, I mean,
as as a five year older or even okay, I'll
put you up for the a's a ten year older.
I mean, are you truly absolutely knowing that you're witnessing
history right here and this should be preserved and and

(15:49):
huh so I say I had no I just thought
what I was witnessing was great music, and um, being
a musician was a lousy job, you know, like in
growing up in a middle class family, you know, and
I had I had, Like my my uncle my mother's side,

(16:10):
had been in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. He was a
hot jazz violinist and uh he played in that orchestra.
And then when the depression came, he and his brothers
all went to medical school and became doctors. So in
my family, it was kind of like my father and
my grandfather really raised themselves up. You know. My my

(16:32):
grandfather was an orphan and uh he became a doctor.
He went to medical school and he was forty four
years old, and so it was all like, you're gonna
get an education, You're gonna work. You know, you're gonna
take care of yourself. You're gonna provide. You're gonna be
a provider. And boy, don't you just love this musician music.

(16:53):
But you're not gonna be a musician. There's never any
didn't encourage you to. It's really amazing. You know. It's
like my father, like, uh, I was playing rock and
roll and he would every now and then he would
show up at some gig and he'd just embarrass the
hell out of me. You would stand in and go
like turn it down, you know. And this was when

(17:20):
we were like playing through one Fender amp. And I
said on volume three, well, so I didn't know, and
and I didn't get um. I didn't make my leap
into the great unknown until I was about twenty one
years old, because the whole time I was playing, I

(17:41):
was just having the greatest time in the world. I
had always had the best bend in town wherever I was,
and was working more than anybody, you know, just we
had we just had the best time and it was
just fun. And I went to University Wisconsin, went back
to Madison, and I spent a about eight months. I

(18:04):
took a a year and went to Europe and I
went to the University of Copenhagen, and I was gonna
be a writer and a journalist in comparative literature, creative writing,
that kind of stuff. And it was the first time
since I was twelve years old, I hadn't had a band,
you know. I didn't actually play any gigs for about

(18:25):
seven months, and I just couldn't stand it. And I
got back to the States. I got my band right
back together at the University of Wisconsin and then, um,
I just had a meeting one day with my student
advisor counselor, you know, and I was looking at these
guys arguing over the size of their desks and stuff,

(18:46):
and I just went, I'm done. I'm a musician. And
uh I was lucky because Muddy Waters and holl And
Wolf and Paul Butterfield were all playing in in in
nightclubs in a small area in Chicago all the time,
So just ninety miles away. That's that's as far as
I had to go to jump into this very mature,

(19:11):
beautiful music scene that I was gonna ask you how
I knew that Milwaukee and in Chicago in proximity to
each other, But how did those records? How did those
how did that blue scene even get to you? At
the time? In was like everybody's all records. So were

(19:33):
they on the radio at the time or was it
still like in in in uh Texas? Uh? Was? I mean?
In Milwaukee was all records? And you know, uh, when
I got to Texas, Texas was like a really different place.
And in radio Top forty radio was invented in Dallas

(19:55):
at KLi F by a guy named Gordon McClendon. Yeah.
I used to plow sitar on those radio ads that
kal yeah da. Those were all made of Pam's recording
studio in Dallas and sold all over the United States,
and guys who owned radio stations went, Okay, we like
this program, let's do this top forty thing and stop
tend thing and they built all that there. Before that happened, Um,

(20:23):
you heard all kinds of music on uh pop radio
on AM radio, and we had we had like um
uh there was a station called w r R UH
in Dallas that played nothing but blues at night and
it was like a blues pedagogy. This guy Jim Low

(20:45):
was just the greatest DJ in the world and he
just played all blues records. So that was like something
that everybody growing up listen to. Blues like blues. We
were were into like you know, Little Walter had hit
records in Dallas when I was like thirteen and fourteen

(21:06):
years old. You know, Bo Diddley, all those guys were
just right there and they came through town a lot
and played a lot. So there was this music scene
that people went to and it was you receive these shows. Yeah,
So back then, Like how much would a show cost too?
To see these acts? Like what was the typical building. Oh,

(21:28):
Frankie Avalon, I mean Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers and
Al Hibbler and Chuck Berry and uh the Cadillacs or
somebody like that would come through and it'd be like
two dollars at the sporting tour, you know, and as
a package tour and just yeah, they were all package tours.
Then how long would those shows be? Because you I'd

(21:49):
see the marquis of some of these shows and I
would think that, okay, even at three to four songs each,
this could be uh three to four hour fair. But
I know that they're doing mattenee shows, afternoon shows, eatning shows,
night shows, and yeah, they were, um, you know, I
kind of remember him as being like three hours long.

(22:10):
You know. He used to go to the Sportatorium. The
Sportatorium had the big de Jamboree and had all the
R and B shows and they had there really weren't
a lot of rock shows there, you know, there wasn't
a lot Like I remember when um Carl Perkins showed
up at one of these shows and did blue suede

(22:31):
shoes and that was like, oh wow, this is really different.
And they came up out of the crowd. They had
a big double bass and a cocktail drum and he
just like jumped up out of the stage. It was
during Al Hitler's act and came and did a few
things and everybody went nuts and then he left. So
that's kind of what it was. You'd do three tunes
and then move on. It wasn't anything like it is

(22:54):
now and um, so you say that these shows that
you saw, it was mostly black acts and idea of
like Elvis culture and more white oriented rock acts or
the people that would established it, you know, like like
like that was. Yeah, there were R and B shows
that came came through that everybody went to. And then

(23:17):
when the white acts came through, like I remember seeing
Ricky Nelson, you know with James Burden. Wanted to go
see James Burden play guitar and and he was big
enough to come and do a show in a theater.
He played at the Majestic Theater. But mainly it was like, uh,
you know, these arena kind of big all star review

(23:41):
kind of shows. What the term rock and roll even popular?
But at point not, No, it was you know, we
didn't call it race music, but uh, it was totally
segregated on the airwaves. But it wasn't. I mean people,

(24:05):
you know, everybody listened, Like everybody I went to school
with listened to K and okay, which was the black
radio station, because that was always going to be a
lot better than uh K l i F, which had like,
you know, Frankie Avalon. You know, like if you go
back and and sort of look at the pop list
and stuff and and don't make fun of the Mills brothers,

(24:27):
they're great, you know that's ever Uh but yeah, I
mean it was like there was this really square white
music and like guys like Pat Boone. Pat Boone had
a TV show in Fort Worth where he dressed like

(24:47):
a soda jerk. He had that you know, the little
white paper had on saying all those groovy versions of
and he was going to be like Big Crosbie. That's
that's where that was going. We were it interested. So
even then there was counter you're saying that there was
counterculture in mainstream squares total, that's that's sort of playing.

(25:08):
I was walking around in the seventh grade with my
Jimmy Reid records going listen to this baby, you know,
and and what were people saying back to you. Oh yeah,
everybody loved it. Everybody loved it, and we we uh hell,
I used to back up Jimmy Reid when I was
fourteen years old. We played and backed up Jimmy Reid,

(25:31):
and Jimmy Reid was like one of the most popular
acts in Dallas. In Dallas for white kids, black kids,
that didn't matter, you know, he was those were hit records.
So you must have been the ship at fourteen to
like your peers because you're playing behind him. So what
was that like? Well, you know, nobody even cared about that.

(25:53):
There wasn't anybody, no no, no, no, no, no, no,
no no, that we were our bar band. There weren't
you know, these careers that exist now, people like us
sitting here right, you know, pontificating about how Gordon to
us and how deep we thought didn't even exist. If

(26:15):
you were a musician, you know, you were working in
bars and nightclubs, or you were on the Dick Clark bus,
you know, with forty people, you know, going to town
to town to town, and there wasn't nothing was you know,
the people that had the big careers were like Bob
Hope and uh uh Anette Funicello. Yeah it was. They

(26:38):
were on TV and and you know, careers lasted eighteen
months and uh, you weren't. Nobody thought they could make
a living doing this. And I never thought I would
ever make a record until I saw Paul Butterfield when
I was twenty one, and he was like he had
signed a record and they were writing about him, and
I went, he got a record, man, I can do that.

(27:01):
I could get a record deal. Now. I've been fooling
around with tape all my life, playing with it, never thinking, uh,
anything like we think now or did in the sixties
of the seventies days, none of that even existed as
as an idea in the fifties. You mentioned about these

(27:27):
shows in sports arenas, Okay, because I know that you're
uh stickler for sounding engineering, just because I'm from an
era in which you know, big speakers and back line
and those things. How were those shows able to translate
sonically and a large sports arena with infury what I

(27:55):
what I was assuming was inferior sound. Well an audience
is generally they weren't big, big, huge sports or any
like the Sportatorium is what I said. In the Sportatorium
was like this funky kind of yeah. I think it
held like people or something, and there was a place
where they had boxing matches and they had music and

(28:16):
so it was small enough that you know, you could
sing through your amplifier. And the volume levels were totally different.
There were nothing like rock and roll volume levels. The
first big rock show I saw was, I mean where
I went, Holy cow, look at that. Was Paul Revere

(28:37):
and the Raiders at Chicago and they're playing in nineteen
thousand people and they had two voices of the theater
five ft by five ft speaker boxes, one on each
side of the stage, and we were just going, oh,
look at that. Of course, you couldn't hear a word,
and the the shows were like, you know, it's like
those Frank Sinatra shows where everybody was just screaming and

(28:59):
passing out stuff like that, and so you didn't hear anything.
He was wondering about that, because I know that's why
the Beatles stopped wing shows, because they're like, you can't
hear us anyway, Well, the Beatles stopped doing shows because
they thought they were going to be assassinated. Yeah, and
I was about to say, you were there for that
mighty argument. I'll get to that in a b They
thought they were gonna be killed. But but like if

(29:20):
you look at the sha Stadium show, you know, like
the way I see this, that Shase Stadium should I go, wow,
look at that. They're on second base there, but a
hundred and twenty feet away from the audience, and look
there's three bookshelf speakers. There's one on the ground, name here,
there's one, and there's a little under the front, you know,

(29:42):
and you just go, what were these people thinking? Can't
hear them? You couldn't hear anything. So that was like
one of the things I'm proud of that I actually
worked hard on, was we went from that era to
building the p a s to getting the stuff that
everybody enjoys right now in your monitors, you know, in

(30:03):
your monitors. Man, I spent three hundred thousand dollars developing
those Oh wait you literally yeah, you know. Very interesting.
So there was this guy in California was kind of
nuts who Stevie Wonder had hired, and uh he had

(30:24):
Stevie was playing. He had one little earpiece and it
was the way they figured out how to do it
was you had a little transformer and a little FM
transmitter and you made this custom eer piece and one
ear piece. And then he stopped doing it, and it
just sat there for five years. And I had taken

(30:45):
a lot of time off in the eighties. I thought
my career was over there from AD three to like
eighty eight or something like that, and UH was convinced, Hey, no, man,
come back. You know you can do shows and everything.
So I was doing shows and when I got back,
the size of the monitors on the stage or the
size of an ice box laying on the floor. And

(31:07):
I had a twenty two year old kid running my
monitors and it was so loud. I fired him. I
got hired another kid, fired him, and then I got
an audiologist out and I put a body cavity, one
of those plastic things, and but started measuring and I said,
you see, man, it's a hundred and twenty one dB
out here. You're fired. And I tested everybody's hearing, and

(31:30):
I tested We had a crew and everything. It was
like fifty five people, and we were doing these big,
big outdoor shows, and I tested everybody's hearing from the
truck and bus drivers to the musicians, and the guy
that had the best hearing was my house mixer. The
guy who had the second best hearing was my monitor mixer.

(31:51):
I had the third best hearing, and everybody else was deaf.
They had just dropped at four thousand. Just nobody could
hear any siblings, nobody could hear anything from all this damage.
So we went and found this guy. We built five
FM transmitters. We had separate power units because if the

(32:17):
Feds caught us, they would take the power in cool,
so we had Japanese Japanese FM radios for our transmitter
receivers because they had a lower FM frequency than we
had here. And we broadcast the shows. I mean it
was a three block area and so what was cool

(32:40):
about it was if you were one of the bus drivers,
you could turn on the radio and listen to the show.
What was dangerous about it was all the sound checks
were being broadcast. Every time we turned the thing on.
We were broadcasting about three block area. You couldn't talk
about last night. Hey what the you know? What don't

(33:00):
you you know? Yeah? I mean it was like we're
on the air and we could really be fine. Seriously,
So we've snuck around and did that. Wait, so you
had to even though it's for monitor purposes, were sting
still to use. Well, no, we were illegally broadcasting FM.

(33:21):
We had five pirate radio stations stacked up so each
guy could hear. And and this is this is how
she gets invented. It's always simple and really dumb. And
and so here we are and we're setting this up

(33:42):
every night, and we're broadcasting. And we're the first band
that ever went out wearing ear monitors. And the ear
monitors were made out of clay and they really hurt.
And we went out there and I remember the first
night I went out on a stage in front of
like eighteen thousand people in ear monitors, the whole bands,

(34:03):
and we're the first band, and it was like kind
of dangerous. But then, you know, then we went, okay,
now we gotta like process the sound. You know, everything's
gotta sound good. Oh, now we got the sound processed.
Now we gotta figure out how this transmission stuff is

(34:25):
gonna work. And then uh, some a guy named Marty
Garcia came in and said, FM transmitters, are you guys nuts?
Let me show you how to do this now and
here's the money, man build it and went from there. Yeah,
in ears, did you get any thank you from the neighborhood,
like anybody ever come up to you? Like, Man, that
show was awesome last night, I said on my couch.

(34:48):
And we never got busted. You know, we got away
with it. I still have these things me under everybody warehouse.
It's like it's like, you know, it's like the first
space capsule or something that you look at it and
just go. But you know, it's like tape echo and
the stuff less Paul worked out. All of these ideas

(35:08):
start from you know, you kind of go like, I
gotta get this done, Honey, hand me that vacuum cleaner.
I'm gonna hook this thing up and blow that thing
out there and turn this on and make this organ work. Yeah.
You just you do what you gotta do. And and it's, uh,
you know, I just did it because I needed it.

(35:30):
I didn't do it do it to, you know, to
start to start a company or or do anything like that.
I just knew that I wanted to protect my hearing
for life. Um well that's the show, leads and gentlemen,

(35:51):
I brought enough audiologist and we're gonna test everybody. Now, Larry,
we need that. So wait, did you did you develop
it to the point where it was like, did you
patent it? Did you sell it to your No? No,
I gave it to Marty and and and look there
are you know, it's like all this kind of stuff.

(36:12):
A lot of uh people were thinking about it. But
I was the guy who went like, I can't work
in this situation. You guys got to stop this. This
is nuts, you know. I. I mean, if you're on
a stage and it's a hundred and twenty dB, you
can't sing, you can't think, you can't rest, you can't

(36:33):
sleep after the show, you can't hear the next day.
You know that. You know all that. So that's that
had to be fixed. So that that was all. And
I remember kind of thinking like, you know, uh, it
took off really quickly people, you know, right away people
wanted to know about it, and the uh Marty started

(36:57):
a company and started, you know, doing in your monitors.
And the last in your Monitor story was like, so
now it's like or ninety three or something, and the
dead want to have an in your monitor system and
they know that we had used we had been using
it now for four years. You know, they said, well,

(37:18):
we want to work with you guys, Let's go do
ten shows together something And I said, okay. So in
my iniar monitor system with the band, I have a
little foot switch where I can like step on the switch.
It takes my voice out of the p A. But
I can talk to the sound guy or the light guy,
or I can say, hey, you know there's some guy

(37:38):
down here and there's two guys in a fight in
the front row. You need to come fix that, or
you know something's wrong, or go to the bridge or
forget the next song or whatever. And it's it's so
weird because you know, it's like I'm talking to and
that's gonna yeah, well all right, then we're gonna go.
You see when you're doing it, and you're like, you

(38:00):
kind of realize people they don't they don't even notice.
It's like weird, you could do all this year. So
that's that's the band leader control. So the first show
doing with the Dead at some football stadium, there's eighty
thou people. We go out. They immediately invite me to
come out and jam. I go out and put on
my ear in ear monitors and they're all arguing with

(38:24):
each other while somebody's playing a solo stiff Man, you know,
just this giant conversation everybody. Everybody's got their own pedal,
everybody's got their own thing, nobody's listening to anybody. They're
just like it was just all you know, I just went, man,
how can you guys do that? You've literally described Steve

(38:50):
was Was that in Buffalo by any chance? Uh? That
was the last gig of that tour? Yeah? Yeah, that
was That was a really amazing run it two. Maybe
I think it's you know, because yeah, I was in
the parking lot during the opening and what were you doing?

(39:16):
You know, those shows were really funny, and bands that
played with the Grateful Dead usually got shunned, you know,
like I Staying had done it before I had done it,
and they said, yeah, you know, like there'd be eleven
thousand people in the stadium while Sting was doing his set. Well,
I wasn't gonna happen with me, and so uh, we
went out and we just started and we just started

(39:38):
with like four or five hits, and by the third hit,
people just running into the stadium and by the time
our set was over, the whole stadium would be singing
along and then we turned it over to Jerry. Think
it's interesting because you said when you got with them,
it was kind of like a two for one deal,
like on top of getting the band, they get the
ineur monitors. Is that what most bands were thinking at

(39:58):
that time about you guys? No, No, they had they
had got a system. They wanted they wanted to see
how we used it. They wanted to learn how the best.
They wanted to learn how to do it, you know,
and see see how it worked. And that was you know, uh,
real common. I remember Guns and Roses came by, you know,

(40:21):
and wanted to see how the inter monitors because we
were the guys at the end of your monitors, you know.
And uh, that's weird because I've I've thought that it
was invented because by the time we started using it
in like two thousand, I felt like, well, okay, there's
probably like three years old already. I felt like came
around like or something. You know, I was like ten

(40:42):
eleven years old by then. But you know, you have
to develop that stuff. But for me, I think because
of less you know, and and being around him when
I was little, and like you were saying, well, did
you know, I didn't know he was a genius. I
didn't know anything about him except that he he was
like this great, great guitarist and he was really funny.

(41:06):
Every show he did was always sold out, and uh,
you know, he always had somebody come and sit in
with him. So one night I'm in the club and
tal Farlow comes into the club and it's like a
gunfighter cutting session, you know. I tal Farlow's here in
Les Paul's right in the middle of some great solo

(41:29):
and he just puts the handkerchief over his hand and
he's just playing in talk so can't steal his lips.
That kind of just you know, pulled the handkerchief without
you know, it just he must have practiced it a

(41:49):
thousand times, you know. But but that's what it was
like hanging out with him. And so I got so
lucky to be around the technology, the idea of recording,
the idea of promoting a single, the idea having fun
at a show and it's a jam session that cats
are all coming by and they're all gonna play. And

(42:10):
so Charles Mingus was at the House of Milwaukee led
Normal just the and they were just adults. They were
just people, you know, hanging out and listening to the
tape recorder and drinking and laughing and having a good time,
you know. And so that was the way I saw life,

(42:31):
you know, when I started. And then we took that
and moved into Texas, and we were considered communists, you know. Uh,
you know, my dad was arrested for having a race
party at his laboratory, you know, because he had black
technicians and white technicians working together in a laboratory. Two

(42:53):
of the technicians went on to become pathologists, and they
were arrested, photographed, handcuffed picture on the front page of
the Dallas Morning News. And he was described as like
a swanky you know, kind of sleazy swanky doctor having
a race party and they were working, they were they

(43:15):
were it was like three o'clock in the afternoon on
December Probablymber, December twenty three, the lab Christmas party. Well,
you know, racists, you know, and and uh, I want
to be a sleazy swanky doctor, you are. Yeah, Well,

(43:36):
you know, swanky's good. So has has less left you
any of his like artifacts, Like did he give you
a first guitar or do you have like an amp
that tape record. Kid, Yeah, I don't have to have course,
I have a guitar. I have a one a Gibson

(43:58):
one seventy five that uh, he gave me in what
I used to steal from him as guitar picks. And
it was a big joke because the well, the first
time I went to see Less play at Fat Tuesdays.
You know, he worked at Fat Tusies for he stayed
in New York for thirty years. He had his heart

(44:18):
attack at sixty three and when he was sixty three
years old, and then he played until he was ninety three.
So I hadn't seen him in a while. I mean
I hadn't seen him in like seven or eight years.
And and I've been on the road and I was
in New York and he was playing, and I went,
I'm gonna go see Less. So I go to see him,
and I go say hi, and come on up here, kid,

(44:39):
come on, you know, come out and place, come out
and play something, you know, And I said, well, gosh,
I didn't bring my guitar, which he thought was just
awful that I was so dumb not to bring my guitar.
But on top of the piano was this white Less
Paul Deluxe model with three gold pickups and just beautiful.
Just take this. And he gives me that guitar and uh,

(45:03):
I didn't have a pick, hands me a pick. I
get the guitar, plug it in and we start to play.
And I noticed that the volume control doesn't work. It's
totally out of tune. The tuning pigs don't work, nothing
works on it, you know. So I got the stooge guitar, right,
you bring your own acts next time. And then, uh,

(45:26):
you know, so there I am, you know. And and
then I looked down at the pick that I borrowed
from him, and it was made out of plexiglass and
it had some some sandpaper turned to a certain angle
that had been glued on. I was a handmade pick,
no h. So every time I would see him, I
try and get some of the picks, and he didn't

(45:47):
like it, you know. And finally was I was doing
a show like this, it was being filmed, and he
was sitting right here, and I said, you know, Less
is eighties six years old, and you know, he's such
an interesting man. He's always working on things. I bet
you he's got pocket full of custom made picks right now,
come on, let's let's see. And he pulled them out
and put them on the table bit and I just
scooped up. And so I have his beautiful collection and

(46:11):
his handmade picks and one of his guitars and and
But the best thing was I used to talk to
him at least once a month, and he'd call me
up and start talking to me, and I wouldn't even
know what he was talking about. He'd be talking about
digital this and digital that, and I'd be going, well, gee,
I don't know less he was. He was so far
ahead of of of everything and everybody and and that.

(46:36):
But it was all simple. His ideas were all real simple.
So I know that the city of San Francisco. I
was about to say, we we do have to start
discussing your actual music there. I can actually stay off topic,
out of your your discography forever. Um, but you eventually

(46:59):
uh migrate to San Francisco, Which is we're considering that
even though there's psychedelic leanings and a lot of your music,
I wouldn't necessarily peg you as part of that dead
uh kind of jam band yeah kind of no, no, no,
even though there are elements of that and and a

(47:20):
lot of your music. What I'm just like the witty
writing and all that stuff, But you're straight blues. So
how did you get into the Bill Graham circle? And
more specifically, I know that, uh well, your first record
with Chuck Berry. How did that even happen? Because I
know that Chuck is in the toy Yeah. I was

(47:41):
about to say, I know you have five hours of
Chuck Berry for those who don't know. And this is
even from my experience of seeing Chuck in person as
a kid. Uh he never Sometimes he would meet his
band maybe five minutes before going on stage. And similar
to that, the Bootsy Collins James Brown story. Hey material,

(48:04):
so just hit it, like Chuck is notorious for just
flying into town and just all right, hit it and
you're supposed to follow it. What tell us a Chuck
Berry story? Please? Well, Chuck Berry is my best Chuck
Berry stories, the one I said have told Keith Richards

(48:25):
before he made the movie. We woke up the stage
and I say, if you ever fucking do that to
me again, you motherfucker, get your own fucking band, get
your own fucking amplifier, and get your own people. Man.
Fuck you, I'm never gonna back you up again. Yes,

(48:52):
and then from that time on he was great. What
he was Chuck Berry bro no, no, no, there there
are two guys that used to do this trick. So
now this is a Chuck Berrying, a Lightning Hopkins story
and San Francisco story. So I dropped acid in Madison
in nineteen three and it was lysurgic acid. It was

(49:16):
pure at that show too, and that was before anybody
knew what it was or what was really going on,
and so you were so So my first trip was poetry,
Marvin Gay, Robbie Shankar, literature, mind expanding, consciousness throwing thing,

(49:41):
you know, before there were hippies. Then I go to
So I'm in Chicago and we're hearing about San Francisco,
these gigs in San Francis, lightshell, Butterfields out there, man,
and he's like making money and they're playing to like
people at night and not a hundred and And I'm
working in a nightclub in Chicago from nine o'clock at

(50:03):
night to four o'clock in the morning, six days a week,
making a hundred and twenty five dollars a week, and
I'm thinking to myself, I gotta go to California. Man,
there's you know people five hundred dollars a night. I'm going,
you know, so, so I'm you know, the the beat

(50:23):
coming from there was just huge. And then all the
bands were coming through Chicago. Chess Records was there, and
the Rolling Stones have been through town, and we were
doing this blue We were in this great blues scene
that was just magical for a few years. When I
say magical, it's like, hey, as soon as we finished
doing this radio show, Holling Wolfe's playing across the street, Man,

(50:46):
let's go. Hubert's with him, Let's go, you know, And
Muddy's gonna be here, and Butter's over here, and we're
over here, and they're over here and this and that.
It was just like that for like about three years,
and then it disappeared San Francisco. So I go to
San Francisco and I get out there and U I'm
living in my Volkswagen bus. Now things have have gone down.

(51:10):
I tried to go to music school at the University
of Texas. They wouldn't accept me. They wouldn't teach me
how to read or write music. So I left. I
got to California and I had five bucks in my pocket,
and I went uh to see Butterfield play at the
at the Fillmore and I saw what the Fillmore was
and I went, Okay, I gotta do it here. This
is Greg Man. That should be me up there. You know,

(51:33):
I want to go do that. And I got a
gig at the Matrix playing bass for Lightning Hopkins for
ten dollars a night. And this ten dollars was like
a million dollars to me. Man, that was that three
dollars for a tank of gas and the Volkswagen bus
and food for a week. You know, I needed this money.

(51:53):
And it's Lightning Hopkins. So I'm playing bass with Lightning
and as you know, Lightning place like thirteen and a
half bar blues and then Worten barb Blues and the
ten barber blues, and you kind of kind of watch
him and I'm playing with him, and I'm kind of
doing real good. You know. Now I'm kind of beginning
to play he wait a minute, Wait a minute, wait
a minute, everybody stop, Nobody do nothing but me, and

(52:16):
there's just him and me on the stage. I mean,
it's the most embarrassing, emulating moment in my life. And
I needed the ten dollars. Yeah, I did. I kept
the gig, you know, and and U Chuck Berry started

(52:38):
doing that to the band, and I just couldn't tolerate that.
And later, like five or six years later, I was
at home by myself and I was watching UM Austin
City Limits and Lightning Hopkins is playing a stratocaster with
a wah wah pedal, just doing this show, holding it

(53:00):
with this great bluesman behind him, and they're just ripping
it up, and all of a sudden he goes, hold on,
hold on, hold, everybody stop, Nobody do nothing but me,
and I went, it's a riff. It's like, let's have
a hand for what's your name? Welcome to the blues club,
you know, and and so uh when Chuck did that,

(53:22):
you know, um, I had done so many gigs with him,
but first gig I did with Chuck Barry was like
went like this Bill Graham came from me. This is
and you're right. We got first of all, we got
to San Francisco and I just went, what the hell
is this? You know, the Grateful Dead were like standing

(53:43):
around for fifteen minutes and they do like a bad
version of in the Midnight hour for twenty minutes. It
wasn't good, you know, twenty minutes of like come on man,
you were sober. Yeah, yeah, yeah, look at the time,
you know, so uh it was it was all the
bands were like, uh, they weren't really good bands. And

(54:08):
they were like guys who'd been playing acoustic guitar who
decided they were gonna get some beetle boots and a
groovy coat and a scarf and grow their hair long
and have a rock band and they were gonna be
rock stars. So I got out there. I've been working
in Chicago where Junior Welles would steal your gig if
he sat in, if he could, you know, I mean,
everybody had to be really good. And I was like

(54:30):
on time, great sets, everything was really good. So I
was like the first real professional band in the scene.
So right now you're destroying the myth of what we
thought that the San Francisco musician was about. Like you're
just saying that they were mediocre at best or just
the bands were uh a social phenomena. No, no, And

(54:59):
you know that Jeffrey Sinn Airplane was kind of interesting.
They did some things good and then other things were
just like and sufferably boring, you know, and and it's
so it was what I finally realized was I'm standing there, going,
what is this? You know, what's going on here? And
I finally went, It's a social phenomenon. This is like,

(55:20):
this is about acid, this is about an awakening, this
is about a renaissance. This is about a moment in
time that's like happens maybe every three or four hundred years.
But music and and music is the the the hook
they're hanging it on. And so I like that once

(55:44):
I understood it, because I went, I get it. It's
a social phenomena. I like that. I like that. But
I want to change things. I want to see the
world change too. I'm I don't want to have a
crew cut anymore. I don't want to go to, you know,
some company and get trained for six weeks and then
worked there for the rest of my life, you know,
and do that that fifties early sixties thing. I want

(56:06):
a life, a much different life. And so, you know,
the the expanse and the mind expansion that took place,
and then it filtered into the music, and then all
of a sudden things started getting good. And what was
hip was so we go to Bill Graham and goes, hey, man,
you gotta get James Cotton out here. You gotta get
Junior Wells out here. You gotta get Holling Wolf out here.

(56:28):
You gotta get Rolling Kirk out here. You should get
Miles Davis to come here. You know, Johnny Cash should
come here and play. You should have you know, and
we just started giving him name. You were the influence
that brought them out, because were like, you know, a
lot of us were, you know, but I was like, yeah,
I was a guy who went and picked up how
and Wolf and my bus. You know, when he arrived

(56:49):
at the airport. You know, James and his band stayed
at my house, you know, when they came to town.
But and you know, I was there the first night
BB King played. I was there. I backed up John
Lee Hooker on his first night. I did the Chuck
Berry Show and the BB King show at the Fillmore.

(57:09):
You know, they talk about it and bb cried that
night and all that stuff. It was pretty amazing him.
It was like everybody was just King's going to be here,
you know, and I'm opening for BB King and uh
I got you know, I do my sound checking stuff
and then we're getting ready to play and I noticed,
you know, BB King's guitar tech has put Baby King's

(57:32):
Lucil on his guitar stand on the stage during my set,
and I get a little spotlight on it. You know,
what's this? You know? I don't like that, you know.
So I'm playing doing as good as I can because
Baby's in the house. And I break a string and

(57:55):
and I go, fuck it, he's gonna put his guitar
on the stage, picked it up, plugged it in. Hey
this listen, I'm in competition with BB King slot. You know,
that's the way music is. You know, there's no Once
you play in Chicago, you learned very quickly this is

(58:18):
serious business, you know. And if somebody's sucking around with
you in your stage, you know, I'm back. Yeah, but
I wasn't looking to until I broke the strength. However,
when I picked up Lucille and plug it in and
looked at the controls, I went, what boomoo. You know

(58:43):
it's it's totally basic and everything, and and you know,
it was one of those stereo Gibson things, you know what,
I've never used. And then um, I got the tone
and I note and the guitar was so delicately said,
up the bridge collapsed. I just went pop and the

(59:05):
strings went flat and and uh and I pulled it
break up, I can't strings back on it and kind
of like ended the set and got left the building.
How long that's going on? How long is this process
that we that the audience is watching you like grab

(59:26):
the guitar. Well, I'm sure you didn't. Let no no, no,
no no no, that just was like it broken string,
put the guitar down. Here's another one, picked it up
up eating but good night baby. Yeah. I saw a
baby come out and do a show one time and
break a string and uh, reach into his well. First

(59:46):
of all, he broke a string while he was singing,
and he just kept singing. He never looked at it.
He went down here and he like took the string
off and I'm not making any of this up, reached
into his pocket and pulled out up string in a
package and took the string out, and he's singing the
whole time. He put it in here, and he just

(01:00:07):
kept doing this and then he went bang dude, du dupe,
and off he went, you know, and it was like
without looking once, he just put the string on. I'm
telling you, man, I to him. It was in a
little club and Sun Bally, Idaho was sitting right there
like that, and I just went, how many times? You know,

(01:00:29):
it's like the handkerchief trip, Like, how many times do
you have to do that before you can or have
that happen? You know, have you ever tried to do that? Uh? No?
So I know that I know that you had your
eyes on on Paul Butterfield's slot. You know that I
want that, um. But one thing you didn't mention was

(01:00:50):
the desire to get a record deal, which I'm wondering,
why did you choose San fran over Los Angeles? And
how did so? I had a record deal with Barry Goldberg.
We had the Goldberg Miller Blues Band in Chicago, and
and we got he had oh swanky sleazy manager. Yeah yeah,

(01:01:15):
and uh swanky and and uh we were giving a
day and a half to make a record. And while
we're making the record, some guy came in and was
going there and you guys, you know, you guys should
be doing some Jerry Lee Lewis tunes or you know,
he's trying to tell us what to record and what
to do and everything. The engineers hated us. The earphone

(01:01:35):
was on those little black, hard rubber things, you know,
with one side and a big pole coming out of it.
We made this record and went to New York and
we were on the Hullablue show with the Supremes and
the Four Tops and Um. We got We did the show,

(01:01:55):
and then we stayed in New York and went into
the un Club here right after the Young Rascals left
and we saw the whole New York scene. I went
back to Chicago. The whole Chicago scene was gone, just
in two months. It just disappeared because what had happened
was Wolf and Muddy had gotten gigs in colleges and

(01:02:19):
now they could make a whole lot more money than
playing in nightclubs. Their careers were over. When when we
were all working in Chicago, they had had their hits.
It was done. They were back in Chicago and they
were just working, you know, in nightclubs. That's the only
work they got. And now they were The whole scene
just dispersed. So Um and I had a gig playing

(01:02:42):
rhythm guitar and Buddy Guys band and for three weeks,
and you had to have a shot of bourbon before
each set, and they were like seven sets a night,
and I lasted like three weeks and just a buddy
a kid, and I went and I got to San Francisco.
So what happened in San Francisco was okay. It had

(01:03:06):
a record deal. I realized a whole bunch of things
really quickly, and I had gotten out of that deal
um forcefully. I made them fire me in Chicago and
publicly because I figured I was gonna have a tractual
problem with Barry's manager later, which I did, but I
kicked his butt. So but so I went to to uh,

(01:03:31):
San Francisco and was there for about six or seven months.
Did the Chuck Berry thing, which just came up out
of nowhere, like hey, Chuck Berry's coming to town. Made
him rehearse for two days. We I'm surprised you did that. Yeah.
What he did that was upsetting was he rehearsed for
two days and we hung for two days, had a

(01:03:52):
great time, and then five minutes before the show started,
a friend has showed up. They went out and got
high on some smack or so, and then he came
in and did the whole show like at halftime. It
was just very slow set, and that was disappointing, you know,
But so I'm now I'm seeing this, and now there's

(01:04:13):
a feeding frenzy in San Francisco to sign anything that's walking,
you know. I mean they were given thirty dollars to anybody,
and yeah, ten times what it was in Seattle. It
really so. I mean I had fourteen record companies giving

(01:04:37):
me offers, fourteen of them. So now I'm in a
feeding frenzy, and I got everything's going the way I
wanted to go because I've had a little taste of
the record business, and I learned very quickly that I
wanted complete artistic control over everything, every picture, every cover,
every album, everything they said, anything they put out, any
music I did. I had to own all the publishing,

(01:05:00):
all of it. I had to own my songwriting. No,
you can't have any of that. And not only that,
I need enough money in a no cut contract to
make five albums because I gotta learn how to do this,
and and uh how I was like, who when you

(01:05:22):
run a band from the time you're twelve years old,
life is really simple, you know, Like the things I
just told you, You know, when you talked to brilliant musicians,
and they go, good man, how did you How are
you so smart to know you should keep your publishing
because I kept track of the money, clown. You know what,

(01:05:42):
you think somebody's gonna take care of that for you know,
nobody ever takes care of that, you know. And so
like if somebody said, hey, man, we want you to
come to street Port, Louisiana playing a gig. We're gonna
pay you hundred five dollars, I'd say, well that will
cover the gas. You know, it's gonna be two thousand
dollars or whatever. I mean. I just and I always

(01:06:03):
I always said, I'm not gonna like gouge anybody, but
I'm not gonna be taking advantage of I just want
to be in a kind of a little win win
situation for everybody, except with the record company. And I
had a friend who was a prosecuting attorney and San Francisco,
and he didn't care about being a music industry lawyer

(01:06:23):
because all music industry lawyers work for record companies. Rather
than I don't worry about that. I'll will take care
of Jimi Hendrix. I'll get him signed up here and
everything will be great, you know, whatever that happened. All
the time. My guy was didn't care. And I went
to him and I said, this, this is like slavery.
They want to you know, but you know, if I

(01:06:44):
sell a million records, they're gonna want to give me
a car, you know, and you know, four thousand dollars
in cash and stuff. This is the way it's treated,
you know. And uh, I want to own everything, and
these are the things I want. And oh we just
started and they said, well, nobody gets that. And he said,
well I don't want it. I'm not signing and I wouldn't.

(01:07:07):
What I did was said no for nine months. And
it's like the term of pregnancy, you know. It took
nine months of just nothings. No, No, he's not not interested.
And I had guys coming to see me and asking
me to do all kinds of stupid things. And every
time a record company would say like, well, hey man,
why don't you come on over to the studio tomorrow morning.

(01:07:29):
We'd like to cut some tracks to see how you
guys do in the studio and go. You expect me
to carry my gear from this. You just saw what
I do, and you want me to come over and
you want to test me. You go back to Hollywood
and tell the president of the record company if he
wants to talk to me, here's my number, you know.
And everyone was a suit. Everybody was a sister because

(01:07:53):
you hear people like, I'm so passionate about music. But
were they all just suits? No, they were all suits,
and they were all hustle ers. And we really began
to look at everybody from l A is kind of
like a weasel and a rat. And and somebody was
trying to steal everything. And I did my contract. I
got my contract done, and I brought my contract down

(01:08:15):
to a community band meeting at the Carousel Ballroom and
gave it to everybody. He said, this is what you
need to get. So there was this kind of community
going on. We had our newspapers and our poster art
and our shows, and we were we were inventing at all.
It was all coming from San Francisco. L A wasn't

(01:08:35):
turning out any anything said pop crap. You know, come
to San Francisco. There's some flowers in your hair, you know,
that kind of stuff. And we were like beginning to
go out. And so when we would come to your town,
it was like we were carrying the culture on a platter.
Here we are, here's the culture. Here's what it is.

(01:08:56):
Here's the light show. Excuse us while we jam on,
fly like an eagle for an hour, you know. And
it just that's what it turned into. And and it
it grew and grew and grew and grew, and people
came from all over the world. So there's a huge awakening.
And it happened in San Francisco, and it happened around

(01:09:18):
psychedelic drugs, really, and it happened in an area where
there was a lot of um leeway for artists and
bohemians and poets, and you know, San Francisco is a
really great place. And then it's, uh, were you've a
loan cynic in that whole atmosphere. Yeah, for a while

(01:09:40):
I was down Hate Street and people just put a
flower in your lapel, like I mean, I was. I was.
I was a cynic about the bands. I started regret
a lot of what I said about a lot of
these people who have now known for fifty years and
they're still playing, you know. But I used to go,
this is just such nonsense. I know you're saying it
now in hindsight, but were you honest, back when you

(01:10:01):
doing Press seventy like yeah whatever, you know, like, oh no, no,
it was there was no slices stone whatever. Well, okay,
that was my I was in the studio. Sly was
cutting his tracks and I never heard rhythm tracks like
that in my life. Just the whole building was just

(01:10:24):
doing it. I opened for Sly one time, another hard gig.
This is this is when Sly was healthy and he
was okay damn, and it was unbelievable. It's what it
was like. It was one of the greatest nights you
ever saw in your life. And I'm down to like

(01:10:46):
playing as a power trio, you know, like you know,
it's like we're a power trio now because that's all
we could have. You know. It's like nineteen whatever it was,
and people are going get off the fucking stage where
slides and I'm like playing Space Cowboys. This really here,

(01:11:09):
it's I gotta get up the stage, gonna leave now,
so you and I'm watching slide play and it's the
only time in my life I've ever left the building.
I said, we have to leave the building because the
balcony is gonna collapse. Come on, we gotta go, right
now right now, the balcony was doing this. It was good,

(01:11:34):
you know, and then it was gonna like that, you know.
And seriously, yeah, seriously, I've never seen any never seen
that in my line. I'm telling you man, I had
I left the building because I just thought, you know,
I took my guys with me. I said, we have
to leave, we have to get outside. This is not
this isn't gonna last, you know. But Slye was until

(01:11:59):
the drug soly was like one of the greatest things
that ever happened. And and I didn't like the San
Francisco bands, and I didn't like that much of the
San Francisco music, and I, you know, I like Moby Grape.
You know. I kept seeing all the bands, like, you know,
when Steven Stills in Buffalo Springfield came in, you know,
like I didn't like them and't like that kind of

(01:12:20):
cowboy buckskin gretch guitar than uh. They were all egomaniacs.
They didn't really get down and play, you know. And
the band I did like was The Doors. You know,
Dars came up and I coming in. That's that's smart man,
that guys get that little base thing there and it's

(01:12:41):
real clear and it sounds good, you know, because most
of the time it sounded pretty bad. You know. And
these bands, really they didn't have enough experience. I had
already played, you know, a thousand gigs from the you know,
the seventh grade through college. I mean, I had really
played a lot, and it was you know, wanted things
to sound good. You know. Sound was a big important part.

(01:13:03):
And then you know, when the Dead started, like their
approach this would be the San Francisco approach to sound,
two hundred Macintosh stereo amplifiers hooked up to a bunch
of speakers stacked right behind the band. The temperature behind
the stage was four hundred and seventy you know, I mean,

(01:13:27):
you know, the approach was like um, crazy and and
drugged out and too much money and too much stuff.
And like I looked at all those bands, like they
all had kind of drug dealers for for managers, so
they had all this money. They were the local guys.
I was from out of town. I had to make

(01:13:47):
my way. I had to you know, do my way.
I felt like I personally kept the film or auditorium
open for Bill Graham. I played their hundred and twenty times,
you know, I mean, when they needed help, I was
the guy that had to be, you know. But uh,
the scene just grew and it kept growing, and it
it got better, and it gave me a place where

(01:14:11):
I could do a steak and get a recording contract.
My concept of a recording contract was like the Beatles
or something. Man. I was, Man, I can't wait to
get in there and make some records. And I had
worked as a you know, a janitor at a recording
studio in Dallas, and I had been ping ponging back
and forth and quarter inch track tapes, you know, stereo

(01:14:34):
machines for years and working on all of this stuff,
trying to you know, get stuff together. But um, very
rarely was able to get into a studio. And the
studios were crappy, you know. They were like four track,
and then i was eight track, and there was twelve track,
and then it was sixteen track, and then it was

(01:14:54):
so getting a record deal. Being able to do that,
I thought it was gonna be really great. And I
went down to l A to do the first sessions
at Capitol Records, and I'm thinking, man, I'm finally saying
the deal. I got everything I want. These guys are
gonna help me produce my record. This is gonna be

(01:15:14):
really great. Got there and they said, well, your studios
time starts at midnight, and so why is that and
they said, well, you know the studios are booked, but
we've we've got you a session at midnight, okay, and
we man, We've driven down in the bus, you know,
with the we had the B three in there, the
band in there, everything, you know, the Leslie all our stuff.
We get in there and set it all up and

(01:15:37):
it's about three o'clock in the morning, about time we're
ready to really start with I'm too tired, but you
know we're sat like we got you know, we got
a good drum sound. Let's let's come back tomorrow and
we'll start, okay. I said, well it's gonna be midnight again.
So all right. So we get there, you know, eleven

(01:15:57):
o'clock or and they say you have to move all
your equipment from Studio BE to Studio A because somebody
else needs studio. So we move it and he set
it up and we get ready to record and the
engineering department walks out now walked out of the building.
They just left, and we were just standing here, what
do you mean they what? So I go call my

(01:16:22):
executive producer, John Palladino, and I say, you know, I'm
here at the studio. This is what's happened in the
last two days. You can have your money back, you
can have your contract back. You know, I'm I'm done here.
You know. Oh no, no, no, no, no no no
no no no no no, no no no. And that's when, yeah,
I went, okay this. I've been so naive and stupid

(01:16:45):
about record companies. You know, there's there's nobody's gonna help
me do anything. I'm in a cess pool. Everybody's fighting
for the same resources. And guess what, all the engineers
are sort of right wing crew cut kind of Vietnam
Vet kind of guys who don't like me at all.
In fact, they don't really want me here because I'm
this dirty hippie, you know. And that's what it was.

(01:17:07):
So because I had been so smart and made that
great deal, the fact there's stuff up, budded on the
U s s. United States and went to London and
recorded an Olympic studios. I was gonna say, because the
legendary h Glenn John's was involved with the first four records,

(01:17:27):
correct yeah, and he he was our engineer. He was
and he was always legendary. But I was gonna say,
did you purposely for the like Glenn John's like shaped
rolling stone stuff, But I mean more importantly, like that's
just the way he engineered, especially with Led Zeppelin's like records. No, No,
that's his brother Andy. Wait so they're two of them. Yeah,

(01:17:50):
there's two. So here's the thing. Glenn Johns was this
very rigid British pop guy who had a pop haircut
and an alligator skin jacket in a briefcase and drove
an x K and come on, lads, here we go.
He's like, and he had done he and and he was.
He had come up as an engineer in the British,

(01:18:11):
the London pop scene, pop music. So they made good records.
We got to Olympic Studios and as soon as we
got there, there's a guy named Dick Sweat and Hum
who invented a whole lot of great stuff. It was
like working on the board and we just went, oh,
this is gonna be great. They really really want to
make the guitar sound good. We'd record in the States

(01:18:31):
and you cut something and it sound great, and you
go in, let's do it, and you know it sound
this big and you go, god, what, So start working
with Glenn. He's our engineer, and I'm just totally at
war with him because I like the stack sound and
like the otis writing sound. I like that dry reel sound.
And he's got everything going through a plate and it's

(01:18:54):
all kind of in a reverb chamber. And we're just
arguing about presence every day, argue, argue, argue, argue, argue.
But you know, at the same time, he knew how
to like get guys together and organized, but he was
up for fast multi tracking and stuff. So we started
learning quickly, you know, how to make records, how to

(01:19:16):
cut tracks, how to really do it. Was this one
for eight tracks by the time. Yeah, okay, Now I
have a question. Um, a lot of your one of
your signature trademarks are well, obviously you're you're an album's
based artist instead of just for electronic music. Well, but

(01:19:42):
you don't understand I can't wait for wait. But what
I'm saying is that a majority of your albums sort
of have this cinematic intro to it. You don't I'm
discounting space. Even with the UHST record I mean all
of you, most of your records. You start this album

(01:20:05):
with the damn near a two minute drone rock, so
in your mind, I mean, I know that in the
late sixties the whole don't Borris get to the chorus,
you know, just throw your hit sing out front and whatever.
Well that's singles. Albums are different, right, But I'm just
saying that no one's truly thinking in terms of crafting albums.

(01:20:26):
So well, there there were you know, like the Beatles
were doing it and and um um this stuff comes
from like symphonic music and like Bozo goes to the
circus turnpage to put your next disc on, and you know, uh,

(01:20:46):
Sparky and radio mystery shows and all of that stuff
that I listened to all the time as a kid
made making an album cinematic. So it's more like we're
gonna go someplace. We're going into this special place. We're

(01:21:07):
gonna listen to this thing. It's gonna be real wide
and broad and deep, and there's a you know, if
you're willing to do this, you know, And and that
was always my goal. And I was into Stockhouse, and
I don't know if you've listened to stock Housing, but
uh um, I don't. Went to Germany and met him
man and went to his studio and saw how he

(01:21:28):
did things, and and I always loved the idea of
creating a big horizon or a space and having it
be like a story, like it's a musical journey, it's
not just one tune. And at the same time, then
you have to pull the one tune out, and then

(01:21:49):
that's a whole another game. Making single records and that's
a whole another art. So it's too two different approaches
as far as engineering is concerned. You would re engineered
and mixed a song that was going to be a
single for specific reasons or yeah, yeah, as soon as
we could, yes, And and you know it was always hard.

(01:22:10):
I mean like back then, you know, like if you
want to change the running order, you had to cut
all the tunes up and put them on separate reels.
You know, if you had fourteen songs or twelve songs,
you had twelve different reels, and you go, okay, give
me song number six. I'm gonna make a song number two. Okay,
splice it together. Okay, now splice all fourteen of them.
Give us this that No, that's not right. Take it apart,

(01:22:30):
let's just do it again. You know, it could take
weeks just just doing the sequencing. So I always I
just always like that sort of sense of like you're
going on a journey. And when I when I tell
you it's Bozo Goes to the Circus, there is an
actual album called Bozo Goes to the Circus, and it's

(01:22:50):
kind of like that. As far as your your approach,
I mean a lot of that earlier off was just
blues heavy. Um, how did you Well, the thing is
the one thing I didn't do even though I had Okay,
so I went through two phases of discovering music naturally

(01:23:14):
having it of course, you know, my my dad had
like a couple of records, and then later my sister
had a few records, and then once hip hop came
to play, then I had to buy everything that any
any artists ever made. Just can study their discography. So
the thing is, though I never looked at or even
new of rock critics disdain for for white blues, which

(01:23:41):
you know, I mean like Rolling Stone notoriously would tear
up well, I mean because they were well, you know,
you didn't live this authentic blues life, so why are
you approximating it, and you know what white Blues is.
I mean, it sounds weird when you say it like
that was give me like three like I mean this
whole Yeah, I mean his whole career. I mean the

(01:24:04):
basis of his career is taken. But the thing is
is that I'm now realizing the life that you live
from Les Paul, entering your life into all the people
that you backed them when you couldn't help. But take
the torch and I when I got to Chicago and
everybody I met in Chicago, when these are just a
bunch of white kids have been listening to records, I

(01:24:26):
just went, he's got a record contract. Give me the
mic hill because where I grew up were they were
they amazed that, like you listen to him I played,
he was in my living room like I was trying
to steal Muddy waters gig. Oh So even then, Muddy

(01:24:46):
Waters wasn't like a god. He was still competition. And
it's like I told you, Muddy's career was over. They
had had their hit singles, they were done. There weren't
any gigs for Muddy Waters except in these clubs in
Chicago on the South Side and the near North Side.
That was it. They might go to Detroit. Maybe they

(01:25:09):
were living at home. Muddy was I think Muddy was
working as a janitor at Chess Records when the Rolling
Stones came in and and uh, I mean it's just
where it was there and that was considered normal. You know,
you made three records, you were a star for eighteen months,

(01:25:31):
and you know, now it's the hula hoop somebody else's got.
You know. Yeah, in a minute, everything everything would change.
And so when I got to Chicago, they were talking
about this blue scene and they were talking about uh,
Paul Butterfield. Now butter had a great band, and it

(01:25:53):
was was like the little Walter Records sound before Mike
Bloomfield joined the band and screwed it up in my opinion,
And I know, people go crazy. It was. It was
so sweet. It was such a great blues band, you know.
But I always felt like these were kids are like

(01:26:13):
sat around and you know, I did this with records
and and I never felt that way because I was
listening to blues all of my life. When I was
around blues musicians all of my life, and then growing
up in Texas, I was around them all my life
and t Bone was the guy I learned to play
lead from. So I didn't have I didn't have that
issue of like, I want to be a blues artist

(01:26:36):
and I'm gonna dress like one, and I'm gonna talk
like one, and i'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, I'm
gonna get a guitar just like that. I mean, it
wasn't like that. It was just like, I want to
play music, and this is the music that i'm I
can see in front of me. So that was my difference.
But wasn't it technically always going to be a disconnected
Now I'm getting what y'all was saying about white blues
black blues, But wasn't it always going to be a

(01:26:58):
disconnect since Muddy Water and all the black musicians were
speaking from a place of pain, and regardless too, if
you were in their room, the room with them at
the time, you would never really feel right what they are.
White people have pain, y'all a different It's a different

(01:27:19):
kind of pain in America. So but I think, like,
first of all, first of all, like I used to
hear Muddy Waters and Otis Span and that great band
playing a room the size of the room, We're in
right now, And what I was thinking was, uh, how

(01:27:42):
great this sounds. How what a phenomenal you know, adults
playing adult music. This is this is jazz, this is
this is incredible. And um you know, um, I think
you know, the music just gave you empathy, you know,

(01:28:02):
I never I mean, I didn't have this. Are you
qualified to play black blues? Yeah I am. You know,
let me show you. Let's play some blues. Let's play
forty four blues baby, you know that kind of stuff.
So I just it was my music if I didn't
look at it as I'm learning Muddy Waters music. And

(01:28:25):
so when I was around Muddy and Hollywoof, I started
growing up as a musician and I started, uh seeing
somebody who like played really great harmonica and I could
learn some things from that. Or I saw somebody who
was doing something. But I didn't see anybody playing guitar

(01:28:47):
like tebon Walker and me. I didn't think Buddy Guy
was you know, I thought Buddy Guy and Junior Wells
were like pretenders, you know, they were like the Junior set.
They were just they were they were they were clowns.
They were clowning around. They were just fucking around. In

(01:29:08):
the minute they got their record contract, they stopped playing
blues and Junior did a solo album. Wanted to be
James Brown. So everybody's human here, you know. And so
what were your thoughts on the what was the electric
album that Muddy Waters did or even that where he
said Muney Waters hates. What were you what were your
feelings on I didn't really like that that that that approach,

(01:29:33):
and and um I was um asked to do a
record with John Lee Hooker, and I said, well, yes,
I'd love to. So I go over to the studio
and there's like, here's what it was like, this is
the White Blues Syndrome. Is a white guy producing the record,
going okay, John, all right, that's fine, just sit over there.
And John Lee Hooker is like in a in the corner,

(01:29:55):
you know, like he is, you know, kind of stuttering
and sitting there and very shy man, you know. And
outside there's like five white guys with long hair and
guitar cases like next, and inside there's like a good
rhythm section and they're just coming next and they're just
gonna make this this album. So I walked in and

(01:30:17):
just said this is all wrong, and I started talking
to John and I said, Man, let's do this, let's
do that, let's work on this, let's get going, you know,
and do and stuff. And uh, I did one tune
and I was gone. You know, when you saw those
kind of albums, those are terrible. So what you really
want is the real deal? Now, Butterfield is the real deal. Um.

(01:30:42):
You know, there are white musicians who are the real deal.
There are black musicians who are the real deal. And
and it shouldn't you know. It's like I get all
the social you know, differences and the fight about it,
but really and truly, Uh, when you get into the
room and you just start really playing music, some people

(01:31:04):
play the real stuff. And when that happens, then all
that other stuff just falls aside and it becomes great.
And um, and the record companies promoted all that bad stuff.
That was just some give a and our guy doing
trying to make money. Okay, so there's a question. Now,
I believe you when you're you know, even though I
wasn't there to see these bands in San Francisco or

(01:31:26):
any bands that you've seen, you're like, Okay, he's good,
he's not good. Their quality there all right, But sort
of the way that the three of us would know.
And I'm pointing a fante and and Bill, the three
of us would know, uh equality producer all right, Dilla like,
and we respect his, his drum patches, all of his

(01:31:48):
you know, his his whole arrangement. And then we'll hear
an unnamed imitator that might be more popular, and you're like,
oh man, his batches are horrible and the sounds. So
what the one thing I could never because the thing
is is that because I'm from another generation, I saw,
or at least feel, the beauty and the stuff that

(01:32:10):
you might not necessarily see as the real deal. But
what what are the qualifications for? Yeah? What like, what
do you look for technique? Do you look for a
specific uh vibrato or tone in their guitar playing? You know,
none of that space in their phrasing, you know, I mean,

(01:32:34):
it's presence. It's right now, right right here, what you
know you're doing right while you're here. And some people
can be just technically totally incompetent and can be great,
and other people can be just unbelievably technically competent and

(01:32:56):
just and so it's all the idea, you know, it's
that's the material and the and the presence. Well, can
I ask, as a blues guitarist, what is what was
your opinion of Hendricks as a blues guitarist? Absolutely fantastic
now as an amateur. Okay, not me being an amateur,

(01:33:20):
but if I'm coming from an amateur standpoint, and I
have this problem with musicians today they think, Okay, I
gotta overplay everything to make up for for technique. And
I knows that with with with blues guitar players, that
the guys that are often praised are the guys that
have the least amount of the least amount of not

(01:33:44):
so my favorite blues guitar players Jimmy Vaughn, Okay, Jimmy
Vaughn and Eric Clapton just at his seventieth birthday party
at the Garden and John Mayor was there, and that
was there in Buddhoo Boop blast there and howe how
I was and then and He's got all the guitar
players and Jimmy's there and everybody's coming out and they

(01:34:08):
get to do their solo and they're all playing like
Eric with that sort of soprano woman tone that what's
it called them all over the place right, you know,
just fast and fantastic and like you think that was good,
dig this thing that and Jimmy came out and hit
one note and kind of went splank and they kind

(01:34:29):
of hit the floor and went flap, and the whole
building kind of went oh, oh, oh okay, you know,
And that's the difference. And some people have got it.
And look, there are people who make millions of dollars
selling bullshit. We know that, you know, and and the

(01:34:50):
public is easily fooled, you know. And they go along
and their packages are sold, and things are managed and
weights pushed put behind certain things. But when it gets
down to the real, just unvarnished truth, then somebody who's present,
who's really saying something, really playing from the heart. That's

(01:35:10):
the first thing who from that era never got their
props or their respect that you felt deserved. God's status.
My god, we're never going to get to like we're know,
but I'm not mad. Curtis Salgado and the Stilettos. I

(01:35:31):
hate to save this. Curtis Salgato and the Stilettos. Check
them out, you know there, Uh, phenomenal blue songwriter and
singer and great harmonica player and badass band leader. And
he said like four or five bands. He's really funny

(01:35:54):
with his bands. Every every time he has a new band,
I just go, God, Curtis, where did you find that
guitar player? So I don't like that guy. I'm firing him.
My rhythm guitar player came from Curtis's band. I was
just going, when are you going to fire him? Thank you?
All right, I'm gonna trying to skip ahead a little

(01:36:15):
bit because I gotta talk about all right, So I
want to go to a Brave New World. Now, I've
heard a lot of stories throughout the years about especially
with My Dark Hour. Can you confirm or deny that
you were witnessed? Well, you guys are smiling already because

(01:36:37):
you know I'm gonna come with now. The rumor was
that you were privy or in the presence of the
actual breakup of the Beatles, that both from what I heard,
was that both of you were an Olympic of Olympia's
studios or yeah, i'll tell you what, tell me what happened.
So I went to London to mix Brave New World, okay,

(01:37:01):
and Glenn was gonna mix it, and he was working
with the Beatles at Olympic Studios, and he said, they're
running a couple of days over, so just come and
stay at my house, and you know, uh, we'll we'll go.
We'll start in a couple of days. And then he said,
let's go over to George's house. And George's house. She says, yeah,

(01:37:23):
George's house. So we go and go to George's house
and George opens the door and he's just sweet as
he can be, and he says, oh, Man, Children in
the Future. You know, Sailor. I love those two albums.
I was you do Tworld, twirld of, you know, the
prayer Wheel and look at the synths and I'm going, okay,

(01:37:48):
And I was just like that, you know. And so
you did like the Beatles. I love the Beatles. I
thought the Beatles were just going to the greatest things
that ever happened in the blues that I just didn't
think that was even you. Oh, I love pop. We're
just talking about so uh. He says, all right, we're

(01:38:11):
gonna go over there doing a session tonight, so come
on with me. So I go into the control room
and John comes in, and Paul comes in, and Linda
comes in and uh Oko Yoko comes in stop and

(01:38:35):
they're doing uh Jojo, get back, Get back, Yeah, And
they just walked in, sat down, sang it in twenty
minutes and we're done. And then John had to leave
and go do a TV show that was like the
Johnny Carson Show of England, and he went and he

(01:38:55):
said something that just turned the whole country over and
shook the change at everybody's pockets or something, you know,
And then he came back and they didn't do anymore
that night, and um, it was like if the Beatles
were in this room, it'd be like they were like
four hundred tubes with cameras. These would all be cameras.

(01:39:16):
I mean that's the way it felt, and it'd be like, uh, okay,
John's talking to Paul, now okay, Paul got up, he
walked over towards Then they felt like, I didn't know
how they did what they did, and they were very
relaxed and the whole situation real nice. So the next
day they're gonna do a session and uh, John and

(01:39:39):
Ringo didn't show up. George showed up and Paul showed up,
and so we're sitting around and they had set up
the gear. They had the drums and they amps and
stuff and uh glances. Why don't you get do you
and Paul go out and jam a little bit? And
he said okay. So I borrowed got Lennon's epiphone and
then plugged into some cool little lamp and I'm playing

(01:40:01):
this this riff and Paul is playing drums. You know,
I don't think about all these things the way a
fan would think about him. And I was pretty you know,
shy meeting the Beatles. But the next thing I know,
I'm doing this recording with Paul. And Paul's a great drummer.
You just heard it. And I was just going, oh,

(01:40:22):
this guy can and I'm going, yeah, we'll dig this lick.
Well yeah, And We're in here doing this now, you know,
and I'm not thinking about it, and um so we
start building a song. And we're building the song and
Paul comes back out and plays the bass. I did
the second guitar, and he says, I got a pedal

(01:40:44):
steel in the other room. You want to play? And
I said, I've always wanted to play. Can you know
you just plus listen to me, So put that on
and then we're doing the background vocals doing the My
Dark Hour part. And while we're doing this, uh, the
session gets stopped and a newspaper article is brought in

(01:41:06):
that um, Brian Epstein's mother, Brian had died. Their manager
had just sold the Beatles Publishing to Northern Songs for
I think it was four point nine million pounds, and
that's when they found out that they're publishing had been sold.

(01:41:28):
The TV nor happened that moment. Yeah, I mean it
came in, it was announced in Enemy New Music Express
and hey, look at this, and and so we're kind
of reading it and I'm sitting there going, fuck, you
don't own your own published. And then we start talking

(01:41:50):
about Alan Klein and John wants to sign with Alan
Klein and Paul doesn't. And I'm going, you don't want
to sign with Alan Klein, Alan Cleanel, Steve, all your publishes.
You know, those guys are gangsters. You don't want your right,
don't do that. And I'm sitting here going, I can't
believe that I'm sitting here talking to like somebody that

(01:42:12):
one of the few people in my life that I
really really have just in awe of as a talent.
And I'm I'm good. I'm better off than Paul. I
own my own stuff. I can't believe this, you know.
And so there was poison between Linda and Yolko, and
I remember the one thing that Yoko did that that

(01:42:33):
really blew my mind was they were mixing get Back
and she was on the phone and she said, Hey,
could you turn that down? I'm on the phone. And
I was like a fly in the room, like I
didn't want to move anything, you know. I was just
like they were doing it, and they go, what do
you think about that? It's really great? I mean that's

(01:42:55):
the why I felt while they were doing it. I
really wasn't relaxed yet. I hadn't played any music at
them or done anything. You know. The next day was
a whole different deal. And that wasn't the day they
broke up, but I saw the stuff that was going on,
and you know, it was just like Boss and I
had this kind of thing like Bos wanted to go
sign a quick deal with some guy who you know.

(01:43:19):
Boss was going on, we need this guy, you know,
Lenny's gonna be our manager or whatever it was, and
I was going to Boss your nuts. We can't let
you know, we have to keep control of our business.
No no, no, no, no no. And there was a
lot of that. You know. It's like, hey kid, I'm
gonna take care of you. I'm gonna you know, the
whole deal, you know, and and uh, Lennon just it

(01:43:40):
seemed to me like he just wanted somebody to take
care of this stuff and haven't stopped driving him nuts.
And Paul was kind of going like, I want to
own my own publishing. I want to own my own stuff.
We need a good manager. We gotta be smart. This
isn't gonna work. And that was, you know, when it
was going on. But they hadn't broken up yet, so
I wasn't there then if they broke up. But I saw,

(01:44:02):
I saw what the key elements were. Yeah, Steve, did
you ever have a manager? Never? Yeah, I've had a
couple of people managed me. And my first manager got
me busted when I was in London, fired him and
uh yeah, he had a heart shaped Valentine with a

(01:44:26):
pound of weeds to him. I didn't tell anybody. It
didn't arrive and he left town. Yeah, I mean it's
just stuff like that, you know. I have never I
had a I got a lot of help from a
guy in Chicago named Frank Freed, who was was a
good man who helped manage me for a while, did

(01:44:48):
get part of my publishing but sold it back to
me for nine thousand bucks, which is the last nine
thousand bucks I ever had. I mean I had at
the moment, but after that, I never could find anybody
it was smart enough to be my manager. And by
that I meant they didn't know which lawyers to use,
They didn't know what kind of insurance to get. They
were full of ship. They were hanging out in some office.

(01:45:10):
They thought it was a party. They weren't. They didn't
have the kind of connections I wanted. And I was
always scared of guys like Irving A's off, you know,
they I was the Irving would skin me. You always
turning out to be one of the best guys there
is for artists. But you know, during that time, so
mafia infused that, you know, you could everything was mafia

(01:45:30):
or record company. And the managers, I mean a manager
was a guy who was like in Los Angeles going, Hey,
what what do you mean? The hotel's bad, the p
A doesn't work. Listen, I gotta talk to Madonna. You
know you know. I mean they were just playing everybody
and there wasn't very much respect for artists. And I
just didn't in my run, I didn't run into the

(01:45:54):
right people. I never ran into somebody who was like
going to be doing as much as I was doing
and earning their equal share of what what it was
ship around at that time, it was Shun and I
love Shep, you know, and and he's you know, you
think one of the ones that was And you know,

(01:46:19):
I didn't want a drug dealer or a kid to
be my manager. I wanted I realized that I needed
more than that, you know. And um, it's taken me
a lifetime to figure out what what it really takes,
you know. I mean I've been doing this now for
a long, long, long time about you know, sixty sixty

(01:46:41):
five years and uh uh, it's it's a it's been
a long life and I've I've learned a lot about
business and there are very few managers people can really
actually manage you through the stages of a career and
they always want to own you forever, you know. So
do you want to given advice to anybody that's listening

(01:47:01):
on what to look forward to manager? Like I mean yeah,
like or maybe like things for them to to, you know,
sign for them to obviously an organization really well, yeah, yeah,
an organization that's honest. You know, honesty is the is
really important, and of course knowledge too, but uh, it's

(01:47:23):
really really, really a difficult thing, and you have to decide.
You know, when people make these decisions, they don't even
know what they're getting into. They don't even know what
their lives are going to be. You know. It's the
only place in the world where, you know, somebody comes
up to you when you're eighteen or twenty years old
and goes, I'm going to manage you, and I'm gonna

(01:47:44):
own part of this for the rest of your life,
and I probably sell it and make more money off
of it than you will later. You know, that's kind
of what management is really looking to do, honest though. Yeah, yeah,
got so, okay, I guess we should awesome at least
Space Cowboy on the record, did you plan on that

(01:48:08):
being a main single? Because I always wanted to know
why I was at the end of side too, because
I would normally think that, okay, your your first single
or your big singles should at least be in the
first three songs. I hated to put it on the record,
so it was it an accidental hit? Uh? Yeah. It
was one of those kind of things like I have had.

(01:48:33):
I've written myself out of what I call the rock ghetto,
you know, uh, several times by luck and and um,
Space Cowboy was a poorly executed, executed tune, poorly written,
done in fifteen seconds, and and but the idea was

(01:48:56):
really really great, and we knocked it out without any respect,
and we didn't take Like when I was talking to
Paul about writing to McCartney, I was going, man, how
did you do? What? What about all that? And he said, oh,
he said, God, we did those things so fast. I
wish I had taken more time with some of these songs.

(01:49:16):
And that was kind of like which one the long
winding road? Was that too short? Or which one was
it that wasn't didn't meet your standards? You know. But
when you look back and you see stuff like that,
like you know, space Car was just a terrible track,
and that's why it's stuck on the end, and everybody's going,
are you crazy? You still maintain that to this day. No,

(01:49:39):
it's a great song. Now. I completely redone it were
when you hear the original, you're just like, I get
I sweat and blush. Dude, I mean, but you see
there's a Simpsons episode about it, so at least like, okay,

(01:50:00):
maybe maybe you know. Here's the thing, like, I've never
met any artist who has any concept to who they are.
It was so obvious Chuck Berry didn't have a clue
who he was. You know, I didn't know who Chuck
Berry was. You know, I don't know who Steve Miller is.
I'm inside is Steve Miller trying to think this stuff

(01:50:20):
up and do it? So when somebody comes up and goes, oh, Man,
Steve Space Cowboy, you know, the Steve and goes, god,
that was the lamest track we ever cut. That can't be.
It sounds terrible as an awful mix. Guitar solos like
why did I have that effect on that? Get? You
know that's me, That's the way I'm looking at it.

(01:50:41):
And somebody else's got god Man's Space Cowboy saved my
life and you have to you know, it's really hard
to just shut up and go thanks, thank you. You know,
so it's really hard to know who you are to
other people. I have a hard time with that, you
said only take fifteen minutes and one take. Yeah. Well,
in contrast, you said in an interview once that I

(01:51:03):
think The Joker took three weeks to make. Oh no,
that's the whole album, okay, not just know the Joker album.
I thought you meant okay, I thought the song The
Joker was really quick. That was like seventeen days for
the whole thing. Oh man, okay, So every thanks for
putting that song and guitar here. All my kids love
that song, you know, God bless it. You know. I

(01:51:26):
love the fact that little kids love my music and
they all sing it and they all like it, and
they can sing the parts. You know. That's that's as
good as it gets. Not that I think, well, I
don't know, if you see. I like to think that
everything that you've done on your records had some sort
of scientific, purposeful meaning to it, and I know you're
gonna be like, I don't know what I was thinking. Okay,
on the on the Joker album. Right at the beginning

(01:51:51):
of Come to My Kitchen, I mean, you have this
monster group. It's it's only for like eighteen seconds, but
it feels like you're gonna do a live concert, and
this monster group starts and then it just fades away,
and then you go into coming to my kids, why
and where is that group? Because that group was kind
of a sound check. Yeah, but and and uh and

(01:52:15):
and uh still have all of it. And it was
it was a great groove, and and I wanted, I
want I wanted to do you know, I wanted to
create this environment and I wanted that it was. I
knew it was such a great piece of music. I
wanted to put it on the record, but I didn't
know more what to do with it. And and so
we mixed it with the Kitchen Blues, which was this

(01:52:37):
live performance, and it just like was it us like
walking into the concert hall as it's kind of like
to me, it's always like the spaceship Lands, you know,
it's like there's a lot of that. Like I was
always playing the echo plex wll wall wall wah wah
wah wah wall, you know, into another thing, you know,

(01:52:59):
And um, I don't know, you know why I didn't
take that and write write a great piece of music.
You know. I was always very serious about making my
albums and trying to say, uh, entertain people, say good
things kind of educate people have it be a little
bit more than maybe what they were thinking they were

(01:53:21):
gonna get. And um so it's always you know, serious
about it. It wasn't just like, oh, I don't know
what I was doing, but sometimes I didn't know what
I was doing. Like on Space Cowboy, I thought it
was a great idea. I just you know, we made
five albums I think in eighteen months, and that was

(01:53:41):
the third one or something. You know, it was like
we were really moving fast when you're making these records,
do you. I mean, they also have a it's gonna
be weird maybe for you to say this. I don't
know if anyone's ever described it to you before, but
I mean, I consider these hip hop seeds hip hop

(01:54:03):
records because there's some of them are so groove based,
and the way that you mix them, it's it's like
R and B records, even with with like I mean,
I'm not even talking about like Take the Money and
Running or whatever that have breakbeats at the top of them,
but just in general, like, were you mindful of soul

(01:54:24):
grooves and maybe that somewhere out there there's a black
audience that would embrace you as well, or that sort
of thing. Stop. We had a black audience we had
and everywhere we played it was really a mixed audience,
and we were a mixed band. And uh so you know,

(01:54:47):
Gerald Johnson was one of the greatest bass players from
the whole fucking planet. You know, he's great, and uh
we had you know, before the sheds, it was all integrated.
And as soon as the sheds were built and they

(01:55:07):
moved out to the suburbs, like all of a sudden,
I was just playing to an all white kind of
like man music. We'll see our said is actually in
the interesting actually our sids in the hood music Center
and Philly Man Music centers right in the hood. Yeah,
and the Plateau were played one of the you know,

(01:55:29):
I played there many times and had one of the
most corrupt gigs of my life was done there. And
then music Center was the name Larry Maggott brought into plays. Yes,
it was okay, Larry Magant stories my dad's so so

(01:55:50):
that explains everything. Well, I was reading your book, so
I was like, yeah, so alright. So Larry Magot, like
a friend of mine who had started off as an
equipment manager for Santana Herbie Herbert, put together created and
thought up the band Journey. He thought up the poster art,
he thought up the t shirt business. He's the guy
who created the t shirt business now. And he picked

(01:56:12):
the people in Journey and he said, we're gonna have
a rock pant and we're gonna do this and he
was unbelievably successful. And um he uh told me this
story about Larry. So so they played in Philly at
the Football Stadium and got paid on a sold out
show fifty six thousand people or something like that. A

(01:56:35):
couple of weeks later, to get a satellite photo from
a friend of theirs in the Air Force, he goes, congratulations,
you guys had seventy eight thousand, two hundred and forty
two people at your show. And he said, can you
do that from a satellite? He said, oh yeah, right
to the you know there it is. So there's a
huge lawsuit brought against Larry Maggot who was like skimming

(01:56:56):
like by people. You know, everything was a skim, right,
So stealing, skimming, stealing, skimming off everybody. So Paul McCartney
seeing him, grateful dead, suing him, Journey seeing him somebody
else is suing him. Somebody else. Yeah, they see him.
A vice president from the company has to go to
jail for eighteen months and then pull start as an

(01:57:18):
article saying, so, Larry, how's business senn He says, well,
ticket sales A is great sales at all. So that's
a So I'm playing there and I go do this.
I get there and the building manager is not there,
the fire commissioner guy is like on vacation, and those

(01:57:40):
three hundred pound union guys and Philly who are all
like hey, yeah, yeah, you know. And I got into
it with those guys, Yeah I did. I went in.
They were all eating chicken and I said, look at
you guys. While I was talking, I was going, what
am I doing? They're like it And there, you know,

(01:58:00):
eating half chickens and nothing was set up, and they
were trying to charge us an extra ten thousand dollars
to set up our second laser screen, and you know,
they were just jerking us around everything. And I go
out and I look at outside and I go, holy
sh it, this place is so oversold. This is the
most dangerous house I've ever been into my life. There

(01:58:21):
was not space for one more person. There was there
were no aisles there or nothing. And I just had
to like, you know, the show was like very delicate.
I didn't want to get anybody too excited or anything.
And then the rear fence was broken down and three
thousand people more came in. And then later we found

(01:58:43):
out that the union had a van that they were
they were selling cocaine in the the union. The union
guys that worked, they were selling coke in the audience,
and they were reselling tickets. So I had a seizure,
you know. And then and then you know, we get

(01:59:06):
in the cars and that's the end of the East
Coast and we're going to Denver, and you know, three
days later we're playing the different we fly the stuff.
So I'll bet we get to Denver, we get out
the Red Rocks and the guys go, what did you
guys do in Philly? Man? You know, because the union
had called them. You know, I thought our tires were
gonna be slashed, our equipment stolen, but that that was

(01:59:28):
always Philly. You know. It was a very so you know,
when when people ask me about business and you asked
me about management, I've been dealing all my life with mafia, UH,
illegal police, UH, corrupt business people, UM, dishonest record companies.

(01:59:51):
The union designed to protect me never protected any of
my interests and and abused me. And uh, you know
they asked caps of the world, have you know I'm
always in the wrong program When I when I got
my hit boy too bad, you know, you would have
made more of shell game, you know, all of that

(02:00:11):
kind of stuff. So my whole business experience has been
dealing with people who are dishonest or trying to steal
from me and trying to do me harm, you know.
So that's that's what That's the kind of manager you need,
is you need the space cowboy man, you need the
champion of justice. Sounds like we need to Stephen Miller
book though what I mean I think I think you know,

(02:00:36):
the book has been written. You know what the problem
I found was what people would say, you know, like, well,
that's an acceptable contract that they would have you know,
of you're publishing. That's that's the industry standard. And I
just from my twelve year old days of getting paid
for what I did and what I thought was mine,
I would just say, well no, And that still you

(02:00:58):
think that's realistic in twenties eventeen, you think that you know,
some courage field artists can go in the office and
be like I want it all. Yeah, but it's so
different because here's here's the thing. You know, like here,
here's the thing. You can only do that when the
situation is right. So when I told you I had

(02:01:18):
a feeding frenzy, I thought you understood what a feeding
frenzy is. Feeding frenzies, you know when I when I
told you that nineteen sixty six, there was this giant
awakening in San Francisco. I'm not talking about some little
scene in the club. I'm talking about the world movement.
A thing popped out. You know. It was like whoa, whoa,

(02:01:39):
there's a whole different way that's gonna all work. So
these things are like, you know, situations, timing, all that
kind of stuff, Unicorn in a way with the kids
called like the call it these days. Well, you know,
if you want to get, if you want it so
bad you'll do anything that's then then then you know,
I can get all your publishing and your shoes and

(02:02:00):
your watch and your ring and your wallet. You know,
in thirty minutes that's now with three yeah uh and
all of that because they know it and the kids
don't know it, and you know, kids always want to
you know, you just want to do it, but you
have to say no. You have to learn in your
favor if you if you have even even if it isn't,

(02:02:21):
you have to say no for a while. You know,
Like I never did anything I didn't want to do,
and I had people trying to get me to do stuff.
You know, hey, man, go do this thing for this
DJ for free, and he'll do that and go, fuck
you man. You know there's gonna be four thousand people there.
Sure you want me to come? I always had that attitude.

(02:02:42):
You know that you gotta pay me if you want
me to put the amp in the car and drive
there and set it up and plug it in. Man,
it's work, It's work, Okay. So I have a question
in in in retrospect, was there one historical event or
one laboration or even some of his miniscule as a

(02:03:03):
soundtrack song, one slight misstep that you made that you
regret not doing, Like did you get an offer for
woodstock but you're like the paying for me gas? Nope?
Or what it stock? I was calling, uh Frank Freed
in Chicago. The guy was helping me out. That good Frank.
We gotta play Woodsuck. We're gonna say, yeah, you don't

(02:03:24):
want to play there. It's gonna be many, it's gonna
be in me. I say, it's already bloked, you know, Frank,
we gotta come on, you don't want to you know
that was one uh Monterey Pop Festival was you know,
we were talking about how the San Francisco guys really
considered the l A guys gangsters and criminals, which they were,
and we were right to have that. But the other

(02:03:46):
day I was reading about the Monterey Pop Festival and
somebody was talking about how my manager and typical San
Francisco fashion talked my talked us out of being in
the film. You know, it's like, we're not gonna let
you guys film us. We're not gonna do that. You
did it and you're not own film. Yeah, right, and
your wife is twelve minutes of us that that Penny

(02:04:10):
Baker himself shot anyway, in spite of which shows you right. Yeah,
And you know Bill Graham was the same way. I
mean he legally videotaped and recorded every show I ever did.
There they're putting it out, said she said that. Janna said,
they're putting it out. Oh yeah, well we've called them

(02:04:31):
up and said, hey, you remember what we said. We
didn't mean it. Sixty seven or whatever was Come on,
you know, I can't believe this. We're finally getting into
nine already. I promise you I would end it right now.

(02:04:58):
All right, I had the get to Fly light. Wait,
I'm here now now I'm so overwhelmed. I don't know
what to ask about it. You. Fly Like an Eagle
was um a song that was developed over two three years.
And our gigs used to be we'd we'd like, you know,
go come to Detroit and play the Grandy ball roomor

(02:05:18):
be in Boston at the Tea Party year be you
know whoever it was. And UM, a lot of what
we did was like we play a couple hours to
three hours, and we'd have a mirror ball, and you know,
a mirror ball is a great thing, and you know,
it's like a dark room. It wasn't like a big
show spotlights and all that. The would be some you know,
kind of oily kind of stuff going on behind you

(02:05:40):
in the mirror ball would be on. Everything would be
kind of cool and we'd just start jamming. And so
Fly Like an Eagle was a jam and it was
a long piece. Back in those days, the show wasn't
something where he had to come out and do like,
you know, nine songs and forty five minutes like bang
bang bang bang bang bang, thank you very much. You know,
it was like a whole evening and it was kind

(02:06:03):
of like we're just hipping the gun and everybody's gonna relax.
You know, it's like music tonight. And so that song
was developed started like that and um, that riff. You know,
my dark hour didn't feel like you know I got.
I gave him the song before it was really finished,
and we did it in seven hours and it was

(02:06:24):
done and I wasn't done with that that idea at all.
So yeah, come back to because there was a slow
I believe on Midnight Special in see You did a
version of flat like the Eagle. That's half the halftime,
the slower version of it. So it's always been your repertoire. Yeah,
like for me personally, like and this is this is

(02:06:49):
the whole reason why you're here, is the next question.
You you you gotta understand, all right. So my my
my first day of school back in seventy um, which
is weird because because my dad had both Silk Degrees

(02:07:10):
and Fly Like an Eagle eight track in the car.
It was far far drive from school, so like my
memory of of hearing Fly Like an Eagles on my
dad's eight track player in the car, and also with
with bos Gags record, which you know, it's kind of
weird that you two appaired together. We didn't know that
back then. But you know here in the space intro,

(02:07:34):
which Steve will probably want to kill me, because any
space intro is just my go to reference point for
anything that in my head that's like slow motion or
needs atmosphere and whatever like that's my my go to
reference for any keyboard player we ever had, Steve. And

(02:07:55):
so while I was listening to one of your records
today before I came over, I think understood that, Well,
it's kind of like we could do this is the
same stuff. We're just yeah, just me when I was
a kid, it made me feel like I got fly Yeah.
But I'm so glad that's that's great because that's exactly

(02:08:22):
what the way it made me feel when I was
playing it and discovering it and doing it, and it
was so magical to do that, you know, And I
I had this this thought, you know when before I
came over today because I was listening to some things
that I can of it. Yeah, this is this is

(02:08:47):
like the same kind of work like this is these
are these people, and I mean this is like what
I'm doing. This is where where I am when I'm
in the studio, when I'm lame back, and I kept
thinking Macho City, dude, well, I want to talk about
Mazo City because freaking hip hop. When when you're creating

(02:09:08):
Macho City and the political rap that comes with it,
it's like a year before the message. What what were
you thinking? Like were you as far as like, okay,
well hip hop is is just going to be a
thing because hipp hip hop really wasn't a thing. Here's
what you can't understand that I was thinking about hip

(02:09:30):
hop at all. I was just doing something. So you
didn't hear any grand Master Flash records like oh we
could know. I was believe you too, because you know,
I was just doing what I do and um that's um.
It was a new way as a sort of a

(02:09:50):
new like when new Wave came, Like, were you abhorted?
Because I felt like if you didn't do Macho City,
probably talking heads could have attempted to do it something
like who are your peers in that moment that I
didn't have any peers, because what what what had happened
was I had uh been sort of I had I

(02:10:18):
had done abricad Abra, had played these shows. I've been
playing football stadiums. American Record Company said, abercad aber sucks.
We're not going to do anything with it, and sorry,
and I said, okay, well, I'm canceling my United States tour.
I'm going to Europe then, because I had a different
deal with Phonogram from Capital, I went to Europe. It

(02:10:38):
was number one all over Europe. In the United States,
was in Europe but not it was so so it
was number one everywhere, and and I came back. I
did a whole big tour of Europe and came back
to the States and now it was like coming up

(02:11:00):
the charts, and then it finally went to number one.
And I got back and the sheds had just opened
three I think, and I had booked eleven of them,
and I've been playing football stadiums. I got back at
three and they were like three thousand people and each
at each gig, and it was a whole new place

(02:11:21):
and a whole new thing, and I was just kind
of going, like, God, my business, this it okay, the
I'm at the end man, all right. I sold him,
you know, twenty million albums, and I played football stadiums
and I did all this stuff. But I ain't gonna
come back and playing places that are like a quarter
full and so. And at the same time, all the

(02:11:42):
press stuff like I think at the same time, I
think Mancho City and the l A Times called it
unmitigated slop and said that the Capitol Records should be
embarrassed for releasing my work as an artist. And then
they ran it again at New Year's you know, like that.
It was. It really hurt so so I just kind

(02:12:03):
of went like, okay, that's it. I'm out of here.
So I didn't tour for six years. Wait a minute,
you let that hamper you No, no, yeah, that that
was the final straw. But I had I had just
been on the road from nineteen three and I just

(02:12:26):
just I mean, I was really tired of the whole thing.
And I didn't have any a manager, and I didn't
have any plan. I just you know, whatever happened happened,
and I worked where and I've worked it to my
advantage as much as I could, and I was tired.
I needed a break. So we you were were that
like the amazing Modjo not mod Yeah, like they were

(02:12:49):
playing that on black radio up in Detroit, like in
heavy rotation, Like that song had legs on it. No see,
you know, like um no, I was living in a
farm in Oregon. That's it was good. And you know, uh,

(02:13:11):
that's that's the world I want to live in, where
everybody where, all cultures are intertwined, and people are all
listening to each other, and the audience is diverse, and
the music is diverse, and you know, in an odd sense,
that's kind of what was cool about San Francisco is
that it was diverse. You know, a Monday night, it
might be Johnny Cash, and on Tuesday night it might

(02:13:32):
be the Modern Jazz Quartet. And on Wednesday nighted be
you know, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and on Thursday night it
be Muddy Waters, you know, and it was very diverse.
Or Roland Kirk or you know, Charles Lloyd or a
lot of people were just coming through all the time.
That's the world I want to live in and play

(02:13:52):
in and breed in and you know, be in. That's
that's the way I feel. Okay, you know, like when
someone tells you joke and then you get the punch
line like five years later. Okay, that just happened to me.
So I hate going back to the film more. But
you said, Rashan Rolling Kirk, Yeah, okay, Now we used

(02:14:12):
to jam all the time. This is what I gotta
know with these jazz pairings come into the film more.
Were they truly open or did it just look good
on the poster? Like looking on the poster, it's like,
you know, air Clappton cream and I'm using hypothetical John

(02:14:32):
Coltrane in essence, did it really work that night? Or
were there people that were just like, all right, let
me know when the sunshine you love guy comes home
outside or smoke? No, no, no, it was like, were
they truly open to You don't understand, man, It was
at the whole building was different. It wasn't like when

(02:14:55):
you go to work and tickets are sold and managers
are there and pop stars are there and big video
screens are on and people are in control and people
are being wound up to be hysterical and ship like
that that's rolling Stones English ship. This was like warm
and real and great. I used to go see Roland
Kirk on Sunday afternoon. He'd play a set Sunday afternoon

(02:15:16):
and play another set Sunday night. Or you were just
open to whatever he and you know who you remind
me of? The drummer or not Clifton No, no, no, no, Buddy, Buddy.
I know Buddy, really, really really well. I was there

(02:15:36):
the day Buddy came to town. He came to my house.
I definitely wanted to steal him from Mike Bloomfield right
away and put a band together with him, because he
was really cool. He went on a long pad trip
and had a you know, a lot of bad things
happened to him. But I don't know if you know
much about Clifton Shanir. But it's Cajun blues, accordion blues,

(02:15:59):
see right. And the drummer sits in the middle of
the stage with his drums like at this level, and
it's like he's got a bat and he's just going
and things are happening in the little bass player and
the guitar player doing little steps and bopping up to
the side and off to the side and Clifton sneers
in the middle and there's a guy on his knees

(02:16:19):
playing his chest, you know, playing the thing and some
of the greatest music man funky funky, funky stuff. That
stuff was going on all the time, and everybody was
high the lights the whole thing. It was like not
like show business. It was a different It was like church, man,
a musical church is what it ended up being. That

(02:16:44):
was being manipulated by certain groups and certain people. But
in spite of the Bill Grahams of the world, you know,
because while all this was going on, Bill Graham was
stealing from everybody, you know, stealing from the group, stealing
from people, over selling the stuff up, doing lying about
the books, bullshitting everybody, you know. But in spite of

(02:17:05):
all of that, there was this really great heart and
soul changing musical scene going on. So with the song,
with the song the Joker, you had this global hit
basically right, and that was humongo, humongous um. So and then, uh,
did you feel did something click at that point where

(02:17:27):
you said, Okay, now I understand what's going to truly
help me translate to the pop charts and have mega
hits and and then sort of start pumping out like
once you had said, okay, wow, I found a unique
sound here. It was. It was different than that. When
I left down The Joker was my last album, and
Capitol Records nobody was talking to me about renewing my contract.

(02:17:52):
It was the first album where I kicked all the
producers and everybody. I was the first record I produced
myself with just by my so yeah, and I brought
my band in for two days and cut all tracks
and sent them home, and then spent fifteen days doing
the vocal overdubs and all this stuff and mixing it
and putting it together. And I had this little playback
for the record company, and some kid in the playback

(02:18:15):
and he said that Joker, I like that. I think
I think that could be a hit single. And I
turned to him and I said, I don't care about
hit singles anymore, you know, because I couldn't get played
on AM radio every single I put. I mean, just
could not do it. So I said, here's an album,
here's a list. I'm going to go play sixty cities

(02:18:37):
in the next ninety days just to have some records
in the towns where I'm playing. This time okay, thank
you very much, goodbye. And I got back from that
tour of ninety days later, and there was a check
in my mailbox for three d and eighty seven thousand
dollars in the junk mail. Kind of holy yeah. And

(02:19:02):
and I called up my agent and said, I'm taking
the next year off. You don't want to while the
iron was hot, Well, I went. Two things happened. I
went to the studio to Capitol to try and do something.
And I was exhausted. I was so burned out, man.
And they said, I can't. I haven't written anything, I
can't think of anything. I'm wasting money here. Let's stop.

(02:19:25):
So we stopped for a couple of weeks. Then I
went up to Seattle and I booked a studio up there,
flew the band up. The band got there and quit.
They flew to Seattle and quit in maths right, And
I said, and and Gerald was there, and Gerald was
giving me all this stuff, and I said, Gerrold Jerrold, Gerald, listen,

(02:19:48):
I never really tired. Don't burn any bridges. We may
want to work together again. Don't say it now, man.
So they all quit, and uh, I was just sitting
there kind of going like we're done. We had we
had been struggling for so long, for so hard, trying
to get this done, and um, so I took I

(02:20:10):
was going to take a year off, and I took
eighteen months off. And what it did was it allowed
me to sit down and think, and I basically lived
alone by myself for eighteen months. And about eight months
into it, I called up Lonnie and and Gary Gary

(02:20:31):
Malabar drummer, Lonny Tuner, bass player, took him into the
studio in San Francisco, cut twenty two tracks, and eleven
days sent them home, and then I just went back
to my house and engineered everything and just did all
the vocals and the guitar parts over and over and
over and over and over, and just worked on this
thing that felt like a masterpiece. And I just kept

(02:20:54):
working on it, and I had to race it all,
and I'd do it again, and I'd race it all,
and I do it again. I had an eight track
tape recorder and there were two tracks with the stereo mix.
One track had a sync tone. So they gave me
five open tracks, and so I did everything that way.
I had five open tracks, and when I got it
all finished, I basically had done everything that I had

(02:21:20):
set out to do. McCartney. The thing with the Beatles
and sixty nine was, I went there and and when
I saw what they had in the can, I just went,
oh my god, they've got forty six songs in the can. There, God,
there are four albums ahead. They're ahead. That's how they
do this timing, you know, that's how it is. It's

(02:21:41):
not like the boys are trying to write something. They'll
be back in eighteen months. You know. They were way ahead.
And Paul, you know, told me about that, and so
I went, I got to get two albums ahead. So
I had all these singles and I was looking at
him and I knew what FM raid you needed. I

(02:22:01):
wasn't thinking about AM Radio. I had helped build FM radio.
You purposely did it? Yeah, okay, yeah, I mean I
was making an album for you know, AM radio wouldn't
touch me with a ten foot poll. You know, they
did with a joker, but you know, and they really did.
I mean, when I came back from that tour, the
joker was. I remember driving to do a gig in

(02:22:23):
Oakland and putting the radio and just going through to
see or where it was on, and it was on
four of the five top forty stations in San Francisco.
What I was piste off because it was not any
of this, you know, you never stop and go. Isn't
this great? I was like, you know, But so I

(02:22:44):
knew that I was writing something really great for FM radio,
that I was writing something great for radio itself, that
this was how radio needed to sound, that this was
where it needed to go as the material they need it.
And my you know, songwriting of my music was going

(02:23:05):
on at the same time, and my understanding of how
to make records had grown quite a bit, and I've
worked on it and worked on it, and worked on it,
worked on it. When I was finished, I took it myself,
took to the tape and I had two slides, the
cover and the back of Fly like an Eagle, and
I took it to the president. I said, this is
gonna sell four million copies anyway. He said, well, let's

(02:23:30):
go down and see the art department. And so we
went down and talked to to John Vanderswelt and he
did the covered just like that and put it out
and we ended up like uh, dominating AM radio and
FM radio at its height when it so when I said,

(02:23:51):
when both of them were at its most powerful, and
so it was a great time to you know, my
timing was right. Everything, just my creative work came together
at the right time, and the whole thing just went
way way up. I think we sold god thirteen million
records and so I don't know, two and a half,

(02:24:12):
three year or something like that, and had a lot
of singles and um dominated airplane. It was really the
thing for me that was cool was that when the
FM radio put the record on, they played the whole
side for the first three months. Man, they never took
it off, and and that was always part of the

(02:24:34):
thing was I wanted those segues to just bring people
in it. You know, when I listened to music, that's
what I want. I want to go on Bozo Goes
to the Circus with John Coltrane, you know, or Miles
or whoever it is I'm listening to where when I
got my eyes closed and I'm in space and I'm
listening and I'm feeling and I'm enjoying myself. You know,

(02:24:56):
that's the way I want to be, is like nice,
long good so essentially fly like an eagle and I
guess Book of Dreams. That's that group of songs that
you're talking about. They all sort of made it the
same same same same equipment, same techniques, maybe recording because
I was really asking sonically, you know, um, you know,

(02:25:16):
it's funny. We took it took seventeen hours to mix
Fly like an Eagle, and we did a quad mixed too.
I just went in the studios quad mix. Yeah. You
were really big on that, weren't you. Yeah. I don't
have quite I mean I had the quad versions of
some of these records, but I don't have the quad
yeah equipment. It never sounded any good, you know, but
but it was if you're in the west Wood room,

(02:25:38):
like these are Westwood speakers here, and uh, you know
this is maybe this is a Western room. It looks
like when and uh, you know, we could get the
tape here and play it and it'd be good. But
you know, like Stock housing man Stock hasn't built a circle.
Two Jestic don't put them together for a circle. But
the floor in the middle brought the stairs. This is

(02:26:00):
at the Japanese World's Fair. Stairs up and you go
up in the middle and you walk through it and
the speakers the sounds going underneath you and going like
this all around you in circles, you know, like three
sixty for real, underneath you and above you have all
of that kind of stuff just makes the horizon better

(02:26:20):
and bigger and more delicious. I don't know if I
want my music sneaking up from me from behind. You know,
we're currently here at Electric Lady Studios in New York,
home of Jimi Hendrix. I've never recorded here, ever been
here at all or um no, I think this is

(02:26:43):
my first time here. We brought him here, you did,
thank you very much for inviting me. And wait, well,
I mean just guitars and stuff. You know you clearly
like them, so you know, I mean, Steve wanted to
make sure you were somewhere special. Seriously, he was like,
we can't. We have to have Steve Miller in Electric Lady. Yeah,

(02:27:03):
that's only right, Okay, I would be remissing. And I
know you're tired of telling about your account of it.
I want to ask about the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame. Oh yeah, the year later, do you feel
better about it or what's the controversy? I'm sorry, brief me. Well,
I mean, are you are you not in it. He's

(02:27:25):
in it. Yes, he's been inducted. I watched him getting Okay, yes,
you were there with those I was next to David Burton. Dude, okay, amazing.
I totally forgot. So you read sticky fingers right, yes, yeah,
that's that's the problem with the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame. So I don't get that right. So half

(02:27:45):
the staff what what what bothered me about the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame was? And I said all
of this in the Billboard article the next day, was Uh.
There was no gathering, there was no party, there was
no dinner, there was no anything from the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame at all. I wasn't introduced to

(02:28:06):
any of the inductees, not introduced to one I was
met at. I was told that no, I couldn't make
any suggestions about who I wanted to inductrinduc you. I
was told that if I wanted extra tickets for my
band member, there were ten thousand dollars a piece at

(02:28:26):
at my table, ten thousand dollars a ticket. I was
set a contract that was worse than any record contract
I'd ever seen in my life, that was so purposely
written in a way that was impossible to understand that
I would. I just laughed at it. And uh I
was asked to start, you know, giving over things, delivering guitars,

(02:28:52):
giving special stuff and the contractually. There was like a
three month argument before I ever got there. So when
I got there, some women came up to me and goes, hi,
my name's Shirley, and I'm your minder. I'm from like
you know, uh entertainment services or something, you know, with

(02:29:13):
a clipboard, and took me to a little cement room
with two metal Chaeristick Jannis and Ei there and said
we need you to wait here for an hour and
then we're gonna call you and we're gonna come down
and do this thing. Right. So, uh, you know I
was going to do that. So I went out of
the hall, ran into a few people and stuff like that,

(02:29:34):
and then there was some little sort of cocktail party
that was open to anybody and everybody, kind of hustler party,
and got out of that. Next day, we go to
do the sound check we're giving like about twelve minutes.
My house mixer can't mix. My monitor man is not
allowed to use the monitor mixer. We've got a guy

(02:29:55):
who's doing the monitor mixing an iPad two feet away. Uh,
hurry up, you got twelve minutes. Let's go, let's go,
let's go get out of here. So we do that,
and uh, time goes by, and then all of a sudden,
it's time for the show to start, and somebody just
takes me out. And then I'm sat at a table

(02:30:15):
where I don't know anyone at the table, soying and
my band, my band is three d feet over that
way somewhere I hadn't seen them, and I'm I'm sitting
there and and and I'm I'm sitting there thinking like,

(02:30:36):
let's see, I would have had a party. I would
have introduced everybody, and then I would have had like,
you know, some little kids from the let's you know,
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Music School come
up and play you know, one of Steve songs and
wanna you know there whoever you know, n w A
songs whatever, and do this, and and then I'd explained

(02:30:56):
about our music education program and how we're really glad
had to have these new inductees together, and we really
wanted your help on these programs and wanted to you know,
rope you into the Hall of Fame, beacon of light
for music education. This was like the coldest grab for
a profit to get money for a TV show. And
I'm telling you, man, when I walked off the stage

(02:31:19):
in the back and these little smarmy kids were going like, hey,
so you were up for twenty three years and they
didn't put you in. How does that make you feel?
You know, it's kind of like to fuck you. You know,
I'll you know this that. And I walked out the
door man and the door Claus, and I had a
little statue at in my hand and my lovely wife
with me, and Jimmy Vaughan and Rob and his wife

(02:31:41):
and said, well, let's uber a car and go home.
No car to take you. I feel bad for Janns
because I know it was a lot of motherfucker's that night,
right was it? A lot? Never wrong? You know? And
that's what So the way I looked at it was
like I could really really helped this place. I could

(02:32:02):
have really done a lot of good for the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. And they didn't even ask,
they didn't even they weren't even interested. And I know
that I'm in here because they want to make a
television show. There are two good things that happened. One was, uh,
the night ended. I to be Ice Cuban Dr Dre

(02:32:32):
in the middle of him right, this picture going, this
is a cool picture. And I don't really care about
pictures and stuff, but I've got this is gonna be
a great picture. And I'm really proud to be here.
And so I go. So Dre, that was a fly
like an eagle you sampled and killer Killer right, Oh yeah,

(02:32:54):
I said, that's okay, Okay, it was like classic man,
thank you because you know you don't play that. Okay.
My last question, and that's it. I promised, uh, your three,

(02:33:14):
just your three, because I knew you're passionate about music.
Your three all time favorite albums, could you? And I
don't mean like Desert disc or whatever. Just kind of blue, okay,
Miles David's kind of Blue? Yeah? Uh um, yeah, I'm

(02:33:38):
not sure the name of the album. It's it's uh,
I think it's Bob Crossby and the Bobcats with a
big Noise from Monette Go and honky Tonk Train and
um uh probably you know a Jimmy Reed album. You
know those are you know my those those that's the

(02:34:02):
music that just really bocked myself. Well, I gotta say
I got more than WHATOUT bargain for it, because I
thought it was just going to be the history of
the Steve Miller band. But we got, we got, I
got more than I bargain. I'm saying that. Yeah, Like

(02:34:23):
for me, my favorite type of interviews are either engineers
or like artists that were there for historic like these
historical meetings, or you know, historical moments that you never
even think about. But yeah, this is such a major
major education. Before I signed off, is any other historical

(02:34:44):
things happened to that I don't know about? The dude
has jammed with literally every person. I was just like,
you know, next time we'll talk about otis reading a moderation. Wait, wait,
we can, we can. We can go for two momentutes,
we can go for some moments. If you're having any

(02:35:07):
pains in your dair year, you should know that Jimmy
jam was sports to do this for six hours and
I didn't even know his butt was numb. Okay, I
will sign off now, but as an Encore, yes, thank
you for tuning, and now for our court The odist
writing story by Steve mowin so uh Monterey Pop Festivals, right,

(02:35:31):
and there's a lot of kind of like Johnny Rivers
and Laura Nero and uh, it's kind of what are
what's going on? Right? And U all of a sudden,
I'm backstage and I just hear this groove and I
just jump snap, just like that, and said, I gotta go,

(02:35:55):
I gotta go, gotta go, running to the stage and
got up on the stage and it's Booker to the
MG's and they're just warming it up. And then I
think it was the barcase with a horn section, and
the barcase had the trumpet player had this little pocket

(02:36:15):
trumpet and he's like they're beginning to do these steps
and they're just playing these instrumentals and they're walking back
and this little this little trumpet players just this mean
little guy and he's gotta turn it up. And I'm
sitting there watching this, just going this is gonna be
the greatest thing in the world. And Otis came out

(02:36:39):
on the stage and he grabbed the mic and he
just hit the first note and it was like this
giant punch to the solar place of the whole audience
just went oh. And this mood just came over the
whole place and he just killed it. Just didn't stop

(02:37:00):
for a second. Man, the whole the whole show was
just It was the most beautiful show I ever saw
in my life. And the last thing I remember about
it was like I was standing outside away from it,
and I was watching people in the parking lot leave
and everybody was happy. Everybody man, as far as you
could see, there was just this warmth and I thought

(02:37:22):
he was like the greatest that. I thought that was
one of the greatest live performances I'd ever seen it.
I've seen Ray Charles and I've seen James Brown with
the Flames, and I've seen a lot a lot of
great shows, and that was like probably the the most
powerful performance I think I ever saw an artist do.

(02:37:45):
That was just one more night. We have a Boss, Bill,
I'm bi Bill Sugar. Steve, It's like, yeah, and fantigolo,
Thank you, Steve Miller. Appreciate it. Man, another extravaganza episode
of Quest Love Supreme. It's a it's a great honor

(02:38:06):
to be here. And I really um appreciate who you
are and what you do and and uh your intellectual
curiosity and I want to play some music with you.
I think we should go to the studio and we
should like start with something and just take it somewhere.
You know that would just don't let him bring in.

(02:38:27):
Don't let them sat don't let him from bringing my
ecoplex and my from your mouth to Steve, because if
we've grown up together, we would be doing this together.
I know we would have. Yeah, thanks you have that's awesome.
All right, So Steve, we got our new Yeah next

(02:38:47):
album sounds good, Timothy and is that you? And of
course that's you. Of course even the Smithsonian comes to visit.
All right, Thank you very much, Steve Bill. I appreciate it.
The next go around, this was okay, Peace, love and happiness,
m h M. What's Love Supreme is a production of

(02:39:15):
I Heart Radio. This classic episode was produced by the
team at Pandora. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.