Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholds on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: So I had an absolute blast on this week's podcast. Um,
Speaker 1: Steve Miller, he literally is a rock and roll star.
Speaker 1: When I was in high school, his albums were ubiquitous. Uh,
Speaker 1: Fly like an Eagle, Book of Dreams. Those were always
Speaker 1: on the radio. I've been a fan of his for
Speaker 1: a while. Uh, I wish we had more time. We
Speaker 1: were talking for ninety minutes. I got to like a
Speaker 1: third of my questions. Every single question led to a
Speaker 1: another story of his. And when a guy like Steve
Speaker 1: Miller is telling you stories, you sit there, you shut up,
Speaker 1: you listen and enjoy the ride. It. It was really
Speaker 1: a blast. Uh. One other funny, little, funny little story.
Speaker 1: So the show finishes, they have to go somewhere, and
Speaker 1: I promised I would get them out of on time.
Speaker 1: We're still a half hour late. Where we finish up,
Speaker 1: he signs a couple of albums for me, which was
Speaker 1: really nice. He didn't have to do that. He did
Speaker 1: a little picture of of the Joker on one of
Speaker 1: the albums. I thought that was super cool. Um, I'll
Speaker 1: take a picture and post it on Twitter. But then
Speaker 1: we're outside and I take we're taking photos in order
Speaker 1: to you know, I take a photo of every guest,
Speaker 1: and it's he and I taking a photo. And as
Speaker 1: as as we're taking the picture, who walks by in
Speaker 1: front of us, but none other than Mr Mike Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: And generally the protocol at the Bloomberg building when anybody
Speaker 1: famous is around, you know, it's a quiet nod. It's
Speaker 1: very low key. Every time I'm there, there's some famous
Speaker 1: hedge fun manager, musician, actor. I'm in and out of
Speaker 1: the I'm in and out of the green room for
Speaker 1: Charlie Rose. Because where Bloomberg Radio is is adjacent to that,
Speaker 1: I always see all sorts of amazing guests there. But anyway,
Speaker 1: we're standing there having our photos taken, and it was
Speaker 1: cute to see Steve Miller sort of gush over a
Speaker 1: celebrity to him, Hey, there's the mayor, Mr mayor, Hi,
Speaker 1: nice to see you. It was. It was really very
Speaker 1: amusing and very charming, and and the mayor just kind
Speaker 1: of nodded and walked by. I can't imagine that he
Speaker 1: had any idea who this was, um, but this was
Speaker 1: just a charming and delightful interview. If you are at
Speaker 1: all interested in the music industry, recording rock and roll,
Speaker 1: anything along those lines. This was really a crazy educational experience.
Speaker 1: All your worst expectations of of the record industry are
Speaker 1: met with no further ado my conversation with Steve Miller.
Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Berry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: My special guest today has gone by a number of names.
Speaker 1: You might know him as the Space Cowboy, the Gangster
Speaker 1: of Love, or just Maurice. He's best known as Steve Miller,
Speaker 1: an American singer, songwriter, guitarist. He first formed his band
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six in San Francisco. His greatest hits
Speaker 1: album V sold thirteen million copies. He has twelve albums
Speaker 1: in the top forty in the United States, and all told,
Speaker 1: he has sold over sixty million copies. Steve Miller, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. Hi Berry, how are you great? I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to have you. I have a million questions for you. Um.
Speaker 1: I've been a fan of yours for a long time.
Speaker 1: I've seen you live several times, both with the Steve
Speaker 1: Miller bands and when you were supporting Lawrence Jubert at
Speaker 1: the cutting room. That was a wonderful evening. Um, let's
Speaker 1: let's go way back. You grew up early in your
Speaker 1: childhood in Wisconsin, and the rumor is you were taught
Speaker 1: your first three chords by none other than Less Paul.
Speaker 1: How on earth did that come about? This? It was
Speaker 1: really interesting. My um my family lived in Milwaukee, so
Speaker 1: I was born in Milwaukee, and it was ninety three
Speaker 1: when I was born, so World War two was still
Speaker 1: on in nineteen fifty, nineteen fifty somewhere in there. It
Speaker 1: was about five, so I guess it was forty eight.
Speaker 1: Less Paul came to town and he and Mary Ford
Speaker 1: were not married yet, and they were playing at a
Speaker 1: nightclub around the corner from this funky downhouse we lived
Speaker 1: in downtown Milwaukee. My dad had a Magna Order, which
Speaker 1: was one of the first professional tape recorders in the
Speaker 1: United States. It was like German technology stolen during World
Speaker 1: War Two and now America had tape instead of wire recorders.
Speaker 1: And the old man was really you know, he had
Speaker 1: a Magna Order, and he went around the corner and
Speaker 1: introduced himself to Less Paul and said, I got a
Speaker 1: Magna order, and I'd like to come in and record you.
Speaker 1: Unless said that'd be great, come on down. So my
Speaker 1: father started taking me to a place called Jimmy Fazzio's
Speaker 1: Supper Club was where this west and started taking me
Speaker 1: into the nightclub. And I was watching Less Paul and
Speaker 1: Mary Ford and what they were doing was they were rehearsing.
Speaker 1: They were playing in front of an audience at a
Speaker 1: nightclub in Milwaukee off the beaten Path, right, putting their
Speaker 1: show together for their television show where they were going
Speaker 1: to come to New York into this tele vision show.
Speaker 1: So we'll Wolfie Way off Broadway. Yeah, and you know
Speaker 1: a little side tracking close to where less Less was
Speaker 1: born and where his mother lived and stuff like it.
Speaker 1: So we're watching Less Paul and Mary Ford perform, and
Speaker 1: my father's recording it, and so less Paul is coming
Speaker 1: over to the house and listening to it. And pretty
Speaker 1: soon Less and Mary and Sonny and Bert, my mom
Speaker 1: and dad were really good friends. A lot of drinking, smoking, carousing,
Speaker 1: listening to music. And pretty soon, you know, Charles Mingus
Speaker 1: and you know, tal Farlowe and Red Norvau and all
Speaker 1: these people were hanging out at the house. And I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, boy, this this looks like fun. You know,
Speaker 1: this this playing music is really great. I already had
Speaker 1: a guitar. My uncle was a musician, and another uncle
Speaker 1: who played in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. He's a hot
Speaker 1: jazz violinist. So you have a lot of musical influences
Speaker 1: in your family. And my mother is a great singer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so uh. During the depression, all my relatives went
Speaker 1: to medical school and became doctors. So my dad was
Speaker 1: a doctor. He was a pathologist, So this was all
Speaker 1: hobby stuff for them. I got my uncle's guitar, les
Speaker 1: Paul shows up at the house, shows me my first
Speaker 1: three chords. I'm in love with Mary Ford. She's the
Speaker 1: most beautiful woman in the world. And knowingly I understand
Speaker 1: that he's like speeding this tape recorder that we have
Speaker 1: up and down. He's making his guitar solo sound faster,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's records it slow, so you played back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he records faster, and it's got a baseline when he
Speaker 1: plays it back at normal speed. And that Mary singing
Speaker 1: multiple parts, well, you know, thirty five years later or
Speaker 1: whatever it was. That's that's how I started making my living,
Speaker 1: was playing multiple parts. Guitarists and doing multiple vocal tracks.
Speaker 1: So that raises an interesting question. At what point did
Speaker 1: you say to yourself, Hey, I can make a living
Speaker 1: with this this music. Then well, I didn't really think
Speaker 1: I could make a living in this music until about
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, after I had gone to the University
Speaker 1: Wisconsin for four years and the University Copenhagen for a year.
Speaker 1: I never really thought i'd be a professional musician because
Speaker 1: I came from this very middle class like, hey, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to get a job, and uh, as much
Speaker 1: as everybody loved musicians, there weren't any good gigs. Being
Speaker 1: a musician wasn't a good gig. Yeah, working in a nightclub,
Speaker 1: you know, basically with drug dealers and hookers and cops
Speaker 1: and mafia people. So not a lot of money and
Speaker 1: not great surround it. So after the after school, I
Speaker 1: went down to Chicago and Paul Butterfield was playing Paul
Speaker 1: Butterfield Blues blues band at a place called Big John's
Speaker 1: and he had a record contract, and I went record contract,
Speaker 1: Hey I could do this, Maybe I could make a
Speaker 1: litting doing this, and said I moved to Chicago immediately
Speaker 1: put a band together with a guy named Barry Goldberg,
Speaker 1: a great keyboard player and writer. We immediately got our
Speaker 1: record contract, had the worst manager in the world, and
Speaker 1: I learned all the things not to do very quickly
Speaker 1: got out of that and then ended up in San
Speaker 1: Francisco and had a reset and was able to get
Speaker 1: my own contract and do my own and you very
Speaker 1: famously had a tremendous contract that was different from a
Speaker 1: lot of standards. You know, it's it's funny, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's what all I did was just common sense.
Speaker 1: And um, I did a couple of things. I knew
Speaker 1: a couple of things, and one was I needed to
Speaker 1: own my publishing and I and I had had this
Speaker 1: little taste of recording in Chicago with Barry for Epic
Speaker 1: Records I think or Mercury, I can't remember what it was,
Speaker 1: and we had a little run. We were on Hullabaloo
Speaker 1: with the Supremes and the Four Tops, and then it
Speaker 1: was all over. And I learned that, like, I didn't
Speaker 1: want anybody coming in and telling me what to play
Speaker 1: or record, like, hey kid, you need to move more,
Speaker 1: and you know, you have to change those trousers. You know.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of that, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't want anyone to own any of my songwriting.
Speaker 1: So when I got to San Francisco, I was in
Speaker 1: the middle of a feeding frenzy. I had fourteen record
Speaker 1: companies trying to sign me. Only three of them were important.
Speaker 1: The rest of them were all like you know, fly
Speaker 1: by night, independent, small, big promises, no delivery kind of guys.
Speaker 1: And I had a friend who was a prosecuting attorney
Speaker 1: and I went to him and I said, these guys
Speaker 1: are thieves that this built in theft. Uh, they're they're
Speaker 1: gonna want to do this, this, this, And what I
Speaker 1: need is complete artistic control. I need to own my publishing,
Speaker 1: in my songwriting, and I need enough money to make
Speaker 1: five albums. It's gonna take that long. And as long
Speaker 1: as they're here, I don't I'm not signing a deal
Speaker 1: until I get those things. And everybody went, well, that's
Speaker 1: unheard of. And you know, basically it was just common sense.
Speaker 1: There wasn't anything. You know, sometimes big ideas like that
Speaker 1: just seem so simple, like Les Paul was a genius,
Speaker 1: but all the stuff he invented was really simple and straightforward.
Speaker 1: And do you think about it later, forty years later,
Speaker 1: of what he achieved. And you know, this multiple track
Speaker 1: tape recorder your engineers fooling with, you know, is a
Speaker 1: direct result of Less Paul's ideas in the forties. So
Speaker 1: what's the what's the old expression? Uh? Common sense is
Speaker 1: surprisingly uncommon. Yeah, I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Masters
Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is
Speaker 1: Steve Miller, best known for the Steve Miller Band. He
Speaker 1: is a singer, songwriter and guitarist and pretty much beloved
Speaker 1: by musicians all over. We were talking earlier about the
Speaker 1: feeding frenzy in San Francisco when you first went out there. Um,
Speaker 1: you told an interesting story some time ago about how
Speaker 1: Capital try to put you into their midnight recording slot.
Speaker 1: If I'm remembering that correctly, and you would have nothing
Speaker 1: of it, you ended up going to the UK. Well,
Speaker 1: it was what happened was we were a San Francisco group.
Speaker 1: There's a big dichotomy between l A and San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and l A was like this horrible commercial group of sharks,
Speaker 1: and San Francisco was this hippie peace, love and happiness
Speaker 1: kind of community where all the bands shared information and everything.
Speaker 1: So Alan Livingston the president of Capitol Records was the
Speaker 1: guy who negotiated it with me for nine months and
Speaker 1: finally said, okay, you can. We'll give you the contract
Speaker 1: you want. We really want to sign you. So we
Speaker 1: load up all our gear and we go down to
Speaker 1: l A to do our first recording session. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: I just signed with Capitol Records, less Paul's label, my
Speaker 1: godfather's label. I can't believe this. This is so cool,
Speaker 1: and now I've got all these great resources and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be you know, I'm gonna make this great album.
Speaker 1: They said, well, we don't have any studio time open
Speaker 1: until midnight at midnight. And they said, yeah, we're just
Speaker 1: booked and said, but we've got you booked at midnight.
Speaker 1: So I come in at midnight and we spend a
Speaker 1: couple hours unloading all our gear we just drove down
Speaker 1: from set versus setting it up, and we start to
Speaker 1: do a session. It's like four in the morning, and
Speaker 1: I just said, I can't do anymore. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't sing. I'm I'm exhausted. I gotta go to bed.
Speaker 1: So I said, all right, we'll come back tomorrow at midnight.
Speaker 1: I come back the next night at midnight and they said,
Speaker 1: you gotta move all your equipment out of Studio B
Speaker 1: and put it in stood d O A. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: we just set it up. What's going on here? And
Speaker 1: they said, I got somebody else coming into the studio.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to move it. So we moved it
Speaker 1: to Studio A, got ready to record, and the engineering
Speaker 1: staff walked out. So they didn't like us. They thought
Speaker 1: we were hippies. They they thought we were anti war
Speaker 1: demonstrating bad people. They really did not. And these were
Speaker 1: a bunch of like crew cutted, ex Vietnam veteran kind
Speaker 1: of union studio guys. And and this was a situation
Speaker 1: where as a musician, I was not allowed to touch
Speaker 1: a microphone or the console, and there was a guy
Speaker 1: from the Musicians Union who sat in the control booth
Speaker 1: to make sure nobody did it. It was the craziest
Speaker 1: goofy ist, overly featherbedded, just everything that's wrong with unions
Speaker 1: was on display right there in l A. So second night,
Speaker 1: I've had it, so I call up my my executive
Speaker 1: producer at Capitol Records, John Palladino, an ex marine by
Speaker 1: the way, It was a great guy. And I loved him,
Speaker 1: and they said, John, you can have the money back,
Speaker 1: you can have your contract back. Nuts to you, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm done, you know. And oh no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: God no no, Steve, no no no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no, I'm gonna you know, listen, this just
Speaker 1: isn't And so because I had all of this control,
Speaker 1: I then started looking around for different studios and I
Speaker 1: realized that like these guys in l A didn't like me,
Speaker 1: and they weren't gonna help me. They're gonna sabotage me.
Speaker 1: And that this new deal I just made with Capitol Records,
Speaker 1: where I thought I was going to get all his help,
Speaker 1: I was one of like two hundred bands fighting for
Speaker 1: limited resources with razor Blade men, you know, and management
Speaker 1: and stuff. I mean, I just jumped into a world
Speaker 1: that was like I was so naive about the politics
Speaker 1: of the record company, of the corporate world. Those are
Speaker 1: all the worst stories you've ever heard about the record
Speaker 1: industry in Los Angeles and what it's like to a
Speaker 1: major You lived it, Yeah, So, so what did you
Speaker 1: do in response to no studio available? So I started
Speaker 1: looking around in London and we found out about Olympic Studios,
Speaker 1: talked to George Martin, who's the producer of the Beatles.
Speaker 1: He was willing to do it, but he wanted to
Speaker 1: have five percent or something and I wouldn't give it
Speaker 1: to him. Well he's George Martin, Yeah, and I was
Speaker 1: going no, no, no, no, no, it's way too much.
Speaker 1: So I worked with Glenn John's and Glenn was an engineer.
Speaker 1: So we pack up everything board the U s s
Speaker 1: United States in January making Atlantic Crossing. That was I
Speaker 1: was seasick for five days. When it's just oh my god,
Speaker 1: whatever you do. Get to London, go over to Olympic Studios,
Speaker 1: set up and procol Harem's there, Peter Frampton's there, the
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones are there, the who just left you know,
Speaker 1: I mean just Jimmy Hendrix has been to town. Everything's
Speaker 1: going on, you know, and we're right in the middle
Speaker 1: of it, Walkington and you have yet to record your
Speaker 1: first album, right, this is the first one. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: land there and as soon as we started playing, it
Speaker 1: was like we had brought manna from heaven. We were
Speaker 1: the most juicy, live, ist, greatest sounding band in London
Speaker 1: at that particular time. Everybody else sounded real stiff and
Speaker 1: you know, working real hard to make pop records and stuff,
Speaker 1: and they just loved us. So we had this great,
Speaker 1: great period of sessions and we ended up making I
Speaker 1: think the first four albums were actually you know, Wally
Speaker 1: Hiders in San Francisco and then back to Olympic to
Speaker 1: mix and back and forth. Nicky Hopkins was playing with us,
Speaker 1: and we were just in the middle of this world
Speaker 1: international scene. It was much better than being in l A.
Speaker 1: And engineering was much hipper. And there was a guy
Speaker 1: there named Dick Swettenham who invented a lot of the
Speaker 1: digital equipment we all used today. He was one of
Speaker 1: the inventors of it. I mean, he was talking about
Speaker 1: the digital, the coming digital world, and we were going,
Speaker 1: what it's gonna be on crystals? There's not gonna be
Speaker 1: any tape what you know. We didn't know this nineteen seven,
Speaker 1: and so that's how it all started and it was
Speaker 1: really exciting. I read something I think it was with
Speaker 1: Um Gibson guitar had a a series of interviews with you.
Speaker 1: If I'm remembering correctly, and that may be wrong, but
Speaker 1: you talked about the process that the Beatles had for recording,
Speaker 1: where you would spend days on a song and they
Speaker 1: would bang stuff out. Well. You know, later in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, I got to meet the Beatles and um,
Speaker 1: they were working in their last album and Glenn was
Speaker 1: the engineer and I recorded with Paul and I was
Speaker 1: hanging out with these guys for a few days, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, it was so hard as a writer to
Speaker 1: get to our player to have rubber soul come out,
Speaker 1: you know, and you're getting what you know, it's so great,
Speaker 1: you know. They just were so in the moment and
Speaker 1: so incredibly talented. If we had the book of the
Speaker 1: four hundred songs at the Beatles recorded and we went
Speaker 1: through it, you and I would both be going, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I forgot about those I forgot about Oh
Speaker 1: my god. Look look, look, look it's an astonishing It
Speaker 1: is an astonishing catalog, all done under incredible pressure, horrible
Speaker 1: situations of just you know, being followed by the press
Speaker 1: of If we were the Beatles in nineteen nine and
Speaker 1: we were doing this interview, there'd be fifty people right
Speaker 1: outside that window, going, Steve just or Paul just scratched
Speaker 1: his head, or they he just stood up, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, they'd be reporting on everything. These guys did.
Speaker 1: And how they were creative I don't know. But what
Speaker 1: I found out was they had a language. Paul and
Speaker 1: John communicated at a level that was so funny and
Speaker 1: so witty and so clever. I mean, Paul walked into
Speaker 1: the studio and said, good morning everybody, and you kind
Speaker 1: of went, wasn't that great? Did you get that on tape?
Speaker 1: Did did you hear that? It was just that good?
Speaker 1: You know? And their conversation back and forth and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I just went, ah, I really am in the
Speaker 1: presence of you know, Rogers and Hammersteiners, something believable writers
Speaker 1: and this I I have limitations these guys don't and
Speaker 1: I don't have I can't be as great as they are.
Speaker 1: And then I found out that they just made they
Speaker 1: It was like work. They got to the studio ten
Speaker 1: thirty morning, they were done at three thirty in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: They had their tea break, and they went home and
Speaker 1: they recorded four songs and if they needed something else,
Speaker 1: he wrote, Hey Jude that night and had come in
Speaker 1: the next day and do it. It was like that.
Speaker 1: And what I found out even that was even more
Speaker 1: interesting was when I was there, I saw them record,
Speaker 1: get back and uh, um, come Together, I think was
Speaker 1: the other one. And uh, they had forty songs in
Speaker 1: the can already waiting to come out. Yeah, and they yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it was an unbelievable lesson forty songs. They
Speaker 1: were ahead of the game forty songs. Everybody else was like, well,
Speaker 1: the boys are working on the album, and uh, they've
Speaker 1: got a tour right now and it'll probably be you know,
Speaker 1: two years until they come out with another record. What
Speaker 1: what was the name of the band? You know, And
Speaker 1: these guys were so far ahead of the game, um
Speaker 1: that they did a couple of things and they just
Speaker 1: pulled like eight other songs and they threw an album out.
Speaker 1: I went to Paris to go play a gig, and
Speaker 1: when I came back three days later, that song and
Speaker 1: record was number one in Europe, was already recorded, released
Speaker 1: an out. I mean it was recorded the week before,
Speaker 1: it was out in the next three days. And I
Speaker 1: mean it was like totally different than America, where they
Speaker 1: go all right, to finish the album, now next January,
Speaker 1: we're going to release it was fooling around, hot off
Speaker 1: the press, number one, and and Paul liked those first takes.
Speaker 1: He said that each subsequent take wasn't as good. I
Speaker 1: recall you saying something that's right. It was always the
Speaker 1: first take is the one that has the magic. So
Speaker 1: if you're not really paying attention, you kind of going, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I want to do that again. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna be as good, and then I can make
Speaker 1: that better than it just goes down. The level of
Speaker 1: inspiration or presents gets duller and duller and duller. But
Speaker 1: when you walk in and lay it down, you're done.
Speaker 1: I'm Barry rid Halts. You're listening to Masters in Business
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this week is a
Speaker 1: rock and roll star. It's Steve Miller or the Steve
Speaker 1: Miller band, singer, songwriter, guitarist. Um has band dissold over
Speaker 1: sixty million copies, and he was recently inducted into the
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which led to some
Speaker 1: interesting controversy. So so let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Is this a
Speaker 1: cultural institution or is this really just a tourist trap
Speaker 1: in Cleveland. We know it's not a tourist trap in Cleveland.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful museum in Cleveland and a beautiful site,
Speaker 1: and uh, it is a cultural institution and a lot
Speaker 1: of great work has been laid down and put in place,
Speaker 1: and the current leadership is exhausted, doesn't have a vision
Speaker 1: and basically as just running it too to gather funds
Speaker 1: for the future. And what they're doing right now is
Speaker 1: very flimsy. You know, They've set up a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: but they're out following through very well. So the Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame, you know, when Ahmad Ergan
Speaker 1: put it together and Jan Winner was his little henchman,
Speaker 1: and Alan Grubman was their lawyer. He basically had a
Speaker 1: combination of three egos and the communicator was Ahmad Air
Speaker 1: again and Jan Winner on snarky little tabloid magazines and
Speaker 1: that's the way he plays artists. So you have a
Speaker 1: situation where you have just horrible legal requirements for people
Speaker 1: who are inducted, absolutely the worst. It's not just a
Speaker 1: straight up, hey, you're inducted, show up at the States.
Speaker 1: We had a ninety day argument. It never has been
Speaker 1: totally resolved, completely unreasonable. Uh, we had all of these problems,
Speaker 1: and so what what you have when when the leadership
Speaker 1: is snarky and legally incorrect. You have a situation where
Speaker 1: most artists that I saw were kind of going, I
Speaker 1: don't care, I'll sign anything. I'm in the Hall of fame. Man.
Speaker 1: It's just like when you're the kid who's written the songs,
Speaker 1: and I bring you to my office, take you out
Speaker 1: for dinner, then I take you over to the recording studio.
Speaker 1: Then I bring you back to my office with the
Speaker 1: Platinum Records in the wall. I hand you a thirty
Speaker 1: page contract and you sign it, and I give you
Speaker 1: a check for ten thousand dollars, and now I own
Speaker 1: everything you've ever you'll ever do for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. That's exactly the way they operated. And I
Speaker 1: just looked at it and said, you're nuts. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: not doing that. You know, I'm not signing this. I'm
Speaker 1: not giving you, you know, lifetime rights to that. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to provide this until you provide, you know, clear.
Speaker 1: Their contract work was so goofy, it was just silly.
Speaker 1: So the pushback, well, I should say the controversy that
Speaker 1: developed was, um, you basically criticize them, you in in
Speaker 1: salt your language, then we're using here you had you
Speaker 1: had less lovely things to say and it really carried
Speaker 1: quite a distance. And I want to read a quote
Speaker 1: to you. Bob left Sets, who's the music industry insider
Speaker 1: and has been writing about the industry for a long time, said,
Speaker 1: what's what's so astonishing about this Steve Miller thing? The
Speaker 1: reach it's gotten. That's the power of truth, that's the
Speaker 1: power of the bully pulpit. So what's been the reaction
Speaker 1: to to your criticize and criticism of the Rock and
Speaker 1: Roll Hall of Fame? Or have have other musicians been
Speaker 1: mostly positive or negative? What's the feedback last um? Everybody
Speaker 1: I've talked to, from people who have been on the
Speaker 1: nominating board to musicians who have been inducted, have said
Speaker 1: the same thing. They just say, it's just awful. And
Speaker 1: people on the nominating board have said, you know, we'd
Speaker 1: go have these meetings, we talked about groups and then
Speaker 1: Jan Winner and a few people going to the room
Speaker 1: and they'd come out and tell us what had happened.
Speaker 1: And I you know, one guy talked to quit after
Speaker 1: two years. He just said this was a waste of time.
Speaker 1: So what's happened is the Rock and Roll Hall of
Speaker 1: Fame is a whole lot bigger than John it's much
Speaker 1: bigger than his vision, and it has a much more
Speaker 1: important mission. We're talking about it now. People really care
Speaker 1: about it all over the world, and they're really missing
Speaker 1: an opportunity to spread music education and to um you know,
Speaker 1: basically make it a better, better organization. And right now,
Speaker 1: the board all the people that operate and run the
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When you have as
Speaker 1: you have New York, which is disruptive, snarky and out
Speaker 1: of touch and living in a bubble in Long Island
Speaker 1: and thinking they know everything there is to know about
Speaker 1: the world, and you have the under underpaid people running
Speaker 1: the museum in in uh you know leveland who are
Speaker 1: scared to death, who're afraid they're gonna lose their jobs,
Speaker 1: who have these tiny little budgets, who have a beautiful building,
Speaker 1: and they don't really have any leadership or any direction.
Speaker 1: So it's just sitting there, just spinning its wheels. So
Speaker 1: what do you think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Speaker 1: What do you think it was? Like me? I've never
Speaker 1: been yeah, I mean, but when you watched the Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame, I mean you see it
Speaker 1: on television, what do you think? So I used to
Speaker 1: watch the shows when they were on HBO, and they
Speaker 1: were a little you know, all all Awards shows are
Speaker 1: full of hot air and a lot of pontification. And
Speaker 1: you know, I have some of the criticism I've read.
Speaker 1: Aren't a whole lot of people of color, aren't a
Speaker 1: whole lot of women. It's pretty much a narrow group
Speaker 1: and they need a little more diversity in the committee
Speaker 1: that's deciding who has entree. And I think that's reasonable criticism. So,
Speaker 1: you know, all of that's all obvious, obviously true. But
Speaker 1: I mean, just when I saw it, it it always looked
Speaker 1: like a party. It always looked at me like Paul mccarton,
Speaker 1: who was having a great time with Elton John, who
Speaker 1: was having a great time with you know, whoever whoever
Speaker 1: was there, you know, with Chuck Berry, with whoever is
Speaker 1: ever on the stage. They're all there. It's all this
Speaker 1: great evening. You know what it was for my class
Speaker 1: this year of was a legal argument where they started
Speaker 1: off going, no, you can't. You can only have two tickets.
Speaker 1: We want your band to come and play. You have
Speaker 1: to come and play, but we're not giving your band tickets.
Speaker 1: Starting the seats are are really expensive, well, there're ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a piece, you know, and so so, I
Speaker 1: mean it was just absurd. And then the contracts commitments
Speaker 1: were just absurd. Nobody would sign. Anybody with any kind
Speaker 1: of care about themselves wouldn't sign anything like this. And
Speaker 1: you'd say, well, what about these elements you want, We'd
Speaker 1: like to have some input. No, there's no input. Well
Speaker 1: who's going to induct us will tell you who's going
Speaker 1: to induct you. You're not allowed to do. They just were.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to have to spend any time listening
Speaker 1: to what I wanted to do. It was like, we
Speaker 1: don't want to hear any of your ideas, any of
Speaker 1: your opinions. We don't have time to fool. If you
Speaker 1: were making a television show, your sound check is next
Speaker 1: Wednesday at three o'clock in the afternoon period. So, if
Speaker 1: I was running the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
Speaker 1: there would be a dinner for inductees and inductors and
Speaker 1: the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: the night before, and I would present to the inductees
Speaker 1: the programs that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: is actually working on. And I would say, you know
Speaker 1: now that you're going to be inducted tomorrow night. We'd
Speaker 1: really like to have your help. You can join us, Steve,
Speaker 1: we know you know about you know, publishing rights and stuff.
Speaker 1: Can you help us develop this? Could you teach a
Speaker 1: music class? Would you be willing to go to Cleveland?
Speaker 1: And you know all of that, none of that, there
Speaker 1: was nothing. You know, you didn't see each other. The
Speaker 1: inductees were really even introduced to each other. That's shocking
Speaker 1: to to. You know, we put on a conference every
Speaker 1: year and the night before there's a big dinner and
Speaker 1: everybody gets to meet each other and you find out,
Speaker 1: like all sorts of fascinating thing. This was the cheapest
Speaker 1: crewdst ugliest, nastiest group of people I've ever worked with.
Speaker 1: And the great thing about it, the odd thing about
Speaker 1: it was somehow they make the television show look like
Speaker 1: everybody's having the best time. The guys who made that
Speaker 1: television show from HBO, they get my vote. I want
Speaker 1: them to shoot my next concert because they could make
Speaker 1: anything look good. You know. Saturate It Live just had
Speaker 1: their fort anniversary and Jimmy Fallon was telling the story
Speaker 1: of what the band was like. It was a NonStop
Speaker 1: rotating group of people showing up on stage and like
Speaker 1: an insane a list of all time stars, and they
Speaker 1: would see someone in the audience and pull them up
Speaker 1: and they start and that's to answer your question. And
Speaker 1: he described it as just amazing. And that's what I
Speaker 1: visualize the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame event to
Speaker 1: be like. But that's what that's nothing. I thought this
Speaker 1: is gonna be great. So what I found out was
Speaker 1: everybody was leaned on and pressured and treated poorly. We
Speaker 1: were never introduced. I never even met the Black Keys
Speaker 1: when I walked in and went through security to get
Speaker 1: in the building. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: was a sound check. I had a hired handler. High.
Speaker 1: My name's you know, Cindy, and I'm from you know,
Speaker 1: Celebrity Services, and I'm going to be your handler. Come
Speaker 1: on over here and sit down in this little cement
Speaker 1: room with these two metal chairs, you and your wife.
Speaker 1: We need you to stay here for about an hour
Speaker 1: and then we'll call you for your sound check. Go
Speaker 1: do the sound check, then back to the little room.
Speaker 1: Then there was like a cocktail party for thirty minutes
Speaker 1: that we went to and then left, and then it
Speaker 1: was like there's your table over there, and we were
Speaker 1: taken to a table, sat down at a table with
Speaker 1: people we didn't even know. So this does not sound
Speaker 1: like a Then we're inducted. And then went up in
Speaker 1: the stage and did my little acceptance speech, then went
Speaker 1: over and played three songs, then back down to watch
Speaker 1: the rest of the show, then back up for the
Speaker 1: completely phony jam session at the end that was just noise.
Speaker 1: And then uh into the back where I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: they didn't induct you for twenty three years, how does
Speaker 1: that make you feel? You know, some punk kid, you know.
Speaker 1: So this went well, you know, here's how I feel.
Speaker 1: And it was told them, well, you know, somebody came in,
Speaker 1: some women came in and said all right, that's enough.
Speaker 1: We're gonna shut this down right now. And that's when
Speaker 1: I said, you need to sit down and learn something,
Speaker 1: you know, because they're just kids and they don't know
Speaker 1: what they're doing. You know. The people running it are tired,
Speaker 1: their weak, their worn out. They need They did a
Speaker 1: good job, they got a museum built, they they inducted
Speaker 1: the people they cared about. Now the gene pool needs
Speaker 1: to really be enlarged, you know. And and there's a
Speaker 1: lot that that that museum can do. And it's a
Speaker 1: And my tour this year started in Cleveland. I booked
Speaker 1: it in Cleveland. I went right to the museum and
Speaker 1: went over and went through the whole museum and looked
Speaker 1: at it all and looked at what they were doing.
Speaker 1: And you know, they need a lot of help at
Speaker 1: that museum. They have an incredible building and they're trying.
Speaker 1: You know, they've got some new kids in who are
Speaker 1: trying to run it right now, but they don't have
Speaker 1: any money. Their displays are terribly you know, executed. The
Speaker 1: light leaks in the black tunnels. It's cheap, it's dumb.
Speaker 1: You you go in there, and they have all this
Speaker 1: great stuff, but you know you can't see it. You can't.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a it's a museum design problem, you know.
Speaker 1: And they, I mean, they're they're in conflict with what
Speaker 1: the building is. The building is all light, it's all glass,
Speaker 1: and they've liked built these dark tunnels. Look so look,
Speaker 1: I mean it starts right at the bottom, and it
Speaker 1: starts at the top, and it filters down and and
Speaker 1: and right now, like these guys need to retire. They
Speaker 1: need to be given a little badge and a little
Speaker 1: party and a pad in the back, and let's give
Speaker 1: him a big round of applause. And they need to
Speaker 1: be put out to pasture. And this needs to be
Speaker 1: taken away from Jon Winner who uses it as a tabloid.
Speaker 1: You know, he uses it to drive tabloid sales. That's
Speaker 1: what he does. That's his trick. Hey, the black Keys
Speaker 1: don't like you, Let's print their article in your response.
Speaker 1: What do you say, Steve? You know, and you just
Speaker 1: go Yon, I'm not helping you sell anything, you know,
Speaker 1: So that aside, you know, he needs to be removed Grubman.
Speaker 1: Those contracts, the stuff they give the inductees, that needs
Speaker 1: to be completely thrown out and made simple and clear
Speaker 1: and honest and transparent. Their business is cloudy, deliberately murky.
Speaker 1: They don't want any input, they don't want to have
Speaker 1: to waste any time with you sticky artists. They're worse
Speaker 1: than any record company I ever ever worked with. Really,
Speaker 1: absolutely that that's amazing. I'm Barry rich Halts. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest
Speaker 1: today is Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band. And
Speaker 1: let's jump right into our conversation about the future of music.
Speaker 1: We know recording isn't the money maker it once was,
Speaker 1: so so how do musicians make a living these days? Well,
Speaker 1: the first thing is, you gotta write yourself out of
Speaker 1: this ghetto. You know. We just had this, uh discussion
Speaker 1: about legal problems that people have and uh, the Grubbin's
Speaker 1: of the world, in the corporations of the world that
Speaker 1: use the Grubman's of the world to develop these these contracts,
Speaker 1: and so we're in a situation now where very few
Speaker 1: people can actually make a living writing music or performing it.
Speaker 1: And we're you know, we're kind of in a Sia circle,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean right now, if you're not an
Speaker 1: actor and a dancer and a video star and all
Speaker 1: of these things and groomed by maybe Disney from the
Speaker 1: time you're four years old, you know, you're kinda gonna
Speaker 1: have a hard time. It's always been kind of like that.
Speaker 1: There's always been those kind of entertainers. But the real
Speaker 1: the only way to get out is uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: the tech companies are so far ahead of the government
Speaker 1: and regulation and law, and they've stolen so much just
Speaker 1: because it's so easy, and I can't audit anything. I
Speaker 1: have a half a billion streams a year and I
Speaker 1: get paid something like, you know, thirty seven thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for it, and I'm always in the wrong program. It's
Speaker 1: like the old as cap game, Like, oh g, you're
Speaker 1: in the wrong songwriter's program. If you'd been in this one,
Speaker 1: you would have we would have paid you the same
Speaker 1: as Frank Sinatra. But you're not. You know, it's always
Speaker 1: a shell game for musicians, and it's always the artists
Speaker 1: are always the last to wake up and understand what's
Speaker 1: going on. So, you know, the guys who were running
Speaker 1: all of these streaming companies, they're screwing people like me.
Speaker 1: You know, they're stealing from me. They're using my work
Speaker 1: and making billions of dollars and developing their future because
Speaker 1: they can, because nobody can catch up to them. They're
Speaker 1: so far ahead. So if you're an artist and you
Speaker 1: can't do what I did was like make a record
Speaker 1: and take it to a radio station and go give
Speaker 1: me a shot. Come on, man, play this, see if
Speaker 1: anybody likes it. My artist's name is Elvis. Put this on,
Speaker 1: you know, do the Sam Phillips things. You know, that's
Speaker 1: all gone and and you know, to to promote a
Speaker 1: new album costs about five or six million dollars to
Speaker 1: do the justin Timberlake, where you spend forty million dollars
Speaker 1: and you sell nine hundred thousand records, but then you
Speaker 1: make six million dollars a night touring. That's a really
Speaker 1: that's that one tenth of one percent, and then everybody
Speaker 1: else is down here. I mean, Justin is a great artist.
Speaker 1: I really I like his work and I like his writing,
Speaker 1: I love his dancing, I love his bands, I love
Speaker 1: his arranging and all that stuff. But he's in the
Speaker 1: world like like in five days. He can make what
Speaker 1: I make doing seventy cities with twenty five people in
Speaker 1: a year. So that's that's the dichotomy. And I'm considered
Speaker 1: like a real successful band because I go out now
Speaker 1: and six thousand people come to see me play or
Speaker 1: ten thousand people you know where it used to be
Speaker 1: the football stadiums and stuff like that. But that's what
Speaker 1: I do. I go out and I love performing. So
Speaker 1: I'm doing seventy shows a year. I have to travel
Speaker 1: the seventy cities and buses and trucks and planes and
Speaker 1: with people in all that gear. You know, and that's
Speaker 1: a lean and mean machine. So let's talk about the technology.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about this previously. But you have the
Speaker 1: streaming companies like Spotify and Pandora on the one hand.
Speaker 1: Then you have the all you can eat deals from
Speaker 1: Amazon and Apple, and then you have the iTunes you
Speaker 1: can buy an album in its digital form. Are any
Speaker 1: of these lucrative for artists anymore? None? Not, even if
Speaker 1: someone is. So if I go to buy an album
Speaker 1: off of iTunes or or Amazon and it's ten bucks,
Speaker 1: it's like the old days, ninety cents goes to the
Speaker 1: artist or something like that. Yeah. If and when you
Speaker 1: go to Apple and say, okay, everybody put their hands up,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do an audit, there's no audit. There's no audit,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no a, there's no regulation, there's no
Speaker 1: group there, there's nothing you can do. You know, if
Speaker 1: you call up Apple and say hey, I don't like
Speaker 1: what you're doing, they go, we don't like what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and you know what, we're gonna sue you for interfering
Speaker 1: with our right to do business. And what our business
Speaker 1: is cutting up your work and selling it anyway. We
Speaker 1: want to so shut up or get sued. That's what
Speaker 1: Apple said to me. And I called him up and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't want you to download Fly Like an Eagle
Speaker 1: as an album because I just downloaded it and paid
Speaker 1: for it and it came out in the wrong order.
Speaker 1: This is a book. It's a chapter. You know, you
Speaker 1: don't you don't print a book starting with chapter seven
Speaker 1: and then go to chapter one and then chapter nine.
Speaker 1: And that's what you guys are doing. You're just cutting
Speaker 1: up my music. Oh you can't handle segways. You don't
Speaker 1: know how to do something that folds over something else.
Speaker 1: You're just gonna cut it in the middle wherever you think.
Speaker 1: Then don't even touch my music, okay. And they said,
Speaker 1: we're going to sue you for interfering with our right business.
Speaker 1: That's what it's like. Wow, that's that's crazy. So let's know.
Speaker 1: And so if I took your income and I knocked
Speaker 1: it down by and said, hey, what are you complaining about.
Speaker 1: You can do seven radio shows a week. You're only
Speaker 1: doing one a week. You're lazy. Get back in here
Speaker 1: and go to work. You know, you guys, it's really great.
Speaker 1: You would look at that and just kind of go
Speaker 1: are you kidding me to say the least. So, so
Speaker 1: let's shift gears a little bit and talk about music,
Speaker 1: because really that's let's let's take this one step far.
Speaker 1: So in the nineties, when I was touring and doing
Speaker 1: seventy cities a year, I was selling a million and
Speaker 1: a half records a year without any advertising from Capitol Records,
Speaker 1: to my fans, to the people who came to see
Speaker 1: me play. I had maybe of the songs, and those
Speaker 1: records were mine that I wrote, I owned the publishing,
Speaker 1: and all of that in come augmented what I did,
Speaker 1: what I could pay my band, the size of production
Speaker 1: I could do, and the kind of money I could
Speaker 1: spend on producing new records. All of that income is
Speaker 1: gone gone. It's just went from like three or four
Speaker 1: million dollars a year to me at the just ninety
Speaker 1: cents of record out of the fifteen dollars they're selling
Speaker 1: it for, you know, the dollar plus the performance, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, all of that is gone. That that money
Speaker 1: is just gone. That money is now what's made Spotify
Speaker 1: people billionaires and Doora. Go down the list that you
Speaker 1: just go down the list, man and there's there's four
Speaker 1: or five guys that are sitting here going, oh, I
Speaker 1: can't believe we got away with this. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean that's what they did. And every
Speaker 1: artist you've ever talked to has said the same thing.
Speaker 1: And so you're tell music like, yeah, but now you
Speaker 1: can go out and tour. Well, who's gonna like be
Speaker 1: able to build a career now that you can't even
Speaker 1: it's impossible to get a career unless you've got five
Speaker 1: six million dollars to start it. You could go out
Speaker 1: and tour, but an up and coming band doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: Been touring for fifty years. So I have a built
Speaker 1: in audience, and I have this deal with my audience.
Speaker 1: You come to my show, we're gonna really give it
Speaker 1: up for real. You're gonna have a joyously good, great time.
Speaker 1: And this is real music. We're not singing to sample
Speaker 1: tapes and a fake drum machine and music, live band,
Speaker 1: live music, live sound, live, p a, live everything. I've
Speaker 1: seen you several times. I saw you at Westberry Music
Speaker 1: Fair in the rounds. So the best part about that
Speaker 1: place is I get to watch like thirty seven guitars.
Speaker 1: It's been right, like you have a different guitar for
Speaker 1: every song, let's talk about guitarist and less about so
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about you. Very famously said at a
Speaker 1: Christie's auction where Richard gears guitar collection went up, and
Speaker 1: you know you said that quote. I felt bad because
Speaker 1: it sounded like I wasn't impressed with his collection, which
Speaker 1: was a great collection, and there were some really wonderful
Speaker 1: instruments and that collection. And I have friends with Martin
Speaker 1: Guitar who were the guys on the phone buying their
Speaker 1: guitars back. He had some great Martins in there. So
Speaker 1: someone said to you, you're not bidding and what was
Speaker 1: your response? Well, I just didn't see anything that you know,
Speaker 1: I needed in the in that that group. And I
Speaker 1: have an amazing collection guitars. I have about four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty instruments, and I invest in guitars like you invest,
Speaker 1: you know about you know, I went, I called up
Speaker 1: a friend of mine and said, if I buy these guitarists,
Speaker 1: do you think what do you think this stuff will
Speaker 1: be worth later? And they said, oh, you can probably
Speaker 1: make fifteen on your money, Steve, and I kind of went, oh,
Speaker 1: and I get to play with them, and you mean
Speaker 1: it's I have to go buy guitars nuts. People want
Speaker 1: to find your music you're writing, they go to where
Speaker 1: the where's the best place for well, you know the website,
Speaker 1: you know, Steve Miller band dot com. I mean that's
Speaker 1: all the music and all the news and are complete
Speaker 1: catalog is listed there, the type everything else. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: whenever we work on new projects and stuff, we talk
Speaker 1: about those, and um, you know there's lots of stuff
Speaker 1: going on that that Now it's just kind of just
Speaker 1: stuff for fun, you know. You know. So I started
Speaker 1: and then I started building guitars. I started collecting guitars,
Speaker 1: and I started going around. Here's what it's like. Two
Speaker 1: weeks ago, I was in Paso Rovos, California, and a
Speaker 1: friend of mine said, Steve, my father in law as
Speaker 1: a musician all his life. He's eighty years old, and
Speaker 1: he has a couple of guitars. Would you take a
Speaker 1: look these? Sure, there's a nineteen fifty five strat in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five gifts in uh E S three fifty t.
Speaker 1: These are all worth a lot of money, aren't they
Speaker 1: Just unbelievable? You know. So there are guitars out there
Speaker 1: all the time, and these are are really great, great instruments,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna help them sell them for for for that,
Speaker 1: for their father in law needs the dough. Now, I've
Speaker 1: seen some old less Poles the nineteen fifties. Let's pull
Speaker 1: that tore so yeah, and so that's what you know,
Speaker 1: I think, Richard. I can't remember what what was exactly
Speaker 1: at that show, but there was a Less poll or
Speaker 1: two and some stuff, and they weren't particularly the greatest ones.
Speaker 1: And I had all these people egging me on, saying,
Speaker 1: why don't let's make a film about you searching for
Speaker 1: this number one guitar? And I got there, said it's
Speaker 1: not the one I'd like to make the move of me,
Speaker 1: but you know not now. And um, what I do
Speaker 1: is I take like the latest and greatest guitarist that
Speaker 1: Gibson makes the just you know, I think in my
Speaker 1: estimation to Billy Gibbons Pearly Gates reissue fifty nine, and
Speaker 1: I got that guitar. I bought eight of them, and
Speaker 1: I went all over the world found him and bought
Speaker 1: eight of him and brought him back. And then I
Speaker 1: had another friend who had been spent his lifetime collecting
Speaker 1: real nineteen fifty nine p a f pickups and instead
Speaker 1: of paying three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a
Speaker 1: guitar like that, I took the fifty nine pickups, put
Speaker 1: in the Billy Gibbons guitar. Went Okay, let's call us
Speaker 1: at number one. That's on the road with me now.
Speaker 1: So I love guitars. It's it's it's an unending uh game.
Speaker 1: And I just put sixty of my guitars. I'm seventy three,
Speaker 1: I'll be seventy three and a couple of weeks and
Speaker 1: so now it's time to like share this collection. It's
Speaker 1: time to move it, call it down to just the
Speaker 1: you know, I mean I've spent years and years and
Speaker 1: years collecting it. And they're all out, they're all they're
Speaker 1: in three different locations and they all hang on the
Speaker 1: walls and you can walk into room and yell at
Speaker 1: them and all the strings vibrate. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: it's really so they're not in cases in the dark room,
Speaker 1: SCE and it's just time to sell them. And we
Speaker 1: put sixty of them up for sale and sold like
Speaker 1: I think thirty thirty two or three of them in
Speaker 1: the first forty eight hours. So there's a serious group
Speaker 1: of collectors who pursue these There's people all over the world, musicians, collectors,
Speaker 1: both collectors. We've been speaking with Steve Miller, rock and
Speaker 1: roll songwriter, singer, guitarist. If you enjoy this conversation, be
Speaker 1: sure and sticking around for the podcast after his will
Speaker 1: we keep the digital tape rolling developed by LS Paul
Speaker 1: and continue talking about all things rock and roll. If
Speaker 1: you would like to check out my daily column, you
Speaker 1: can go to Bloomberg View dot com or follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at rid Halts. I'm Barry Rid Halts. You've
Speaker 1: been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast, Steve. Thank you so much for for
Speaker 1: doing this. Barry, it's a pleasure talking to you. I've
Speaker 1: been I've been a fan of yours for a long time,
Speaker 1: and I first met you going to Lawrence Juber Show,
Speaker 1: someone else who I've been a fan of for a
Speaker 1: long time. Not only did you sing happy birthday to
Speaker 1: his wife, but you were absolutely gracious afterwards. You remember
Speaker 1: the show I'm referring to, You're absolutely gracious afterwards when
Speaker 1: I interrupted you to to say to l J, who
Speaker 1: was actually pretty hilarious. L j come talk to me
Speaker 1: on the radio about being music, about what's the name
Speaker 1: of the show masters in business? He goes, what am
Speaker 1: I gonna tell you what stocks to pick? No, you're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about all the stuff that you've talked about today.
Speaker 1: So it's been really, really interesting, fascinating stuff. There's so
Speaker 1: much I didn't get to that I want to jump into.
Speaker 1: Um wet So we'll talk about books. I have to
Speaker 1: talk to you. Hold on, Hold on books for a second.
Speaker 1: There are two things I must ask you about. One
Speaker 1: is the Metropoleum Museum and the other is The Joker
Speaker 1: following the car accident, and I suspect these are both
Speaker 1: interesting stories. So I'm a big fan of of blues
Speaker 1: as well as jazz and rock and roll. You mentioned Chicago.
Speaker 1: I've been to Kingston Mines. I've been to all these
Speaker 1: places there. And you really began as a blues guitarist.
Speaker 1: That seems to be your biggest influence. You have a
Speaker 1: car accident, you break your neck, it takes a long
Speaker 1: time to recuperate, and then you come out of that
Speaker 1: and there's this radical change in the songwriting and playing,
Speaker 1: and the first album, The Joker just blows up So
Speaker 1: what took place during that convalescence that had you shift
Speaker 1: so much? I think you're kind of like, um, this
Speaker 1: is all after the fact. Yeah, I mean, you know, basically,
Speaker 1: like I had I started out, the game was to
Speaker 1: make hit records. Les. Paul made twenty five hit records.
Speaker 1: You know, the Beatles had hit singles. Hit singles was
Speaker 1: was the important game when you made records coming out
Speaker 1: of San Francisco, the groovy you know, long play, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Children in the Future, all those things were
Speaker 1: still trying to make hit singles, and we're learning, you know,
Speaker 1: and we were untouched by a M radio. We were
Speaker 1: like unclean to them. We were underground progressive rock, psychedelic
Speaker 1: dungeon hippies, you know. You know, we got stigmatized immediately,
Speaker 1: and we couldn't get any airplay. And Capitol Records to
Speaker 1: kind of went like, we can't get in the airplay.
Speaker 1: We don't understand what the underground FM radio. It's nobody
Speaker 1: cares about that anyway, you guys are finished. So we
Speaker 1: were selling a lot of albums, but we were not
Speaker 1: selling singles. And so I was, you know, selling two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand copies of Children in the Future and three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand copies of Brave New World and three thousand
Speaker 1: copies of whatever. The next one was in two or
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand copies number five and and and we
Speaker 1: were working like two hundred and fifty nights a year,
Speaker 1: and we were broke. Were like two guys to a
Speaker 1: holiday in eating Handburgs and riding around in a step
Speaker 1: van with one roadie, you know, doing gig after gig
Speaker 1: after gig after gig, and then going to Europe and
Speaker 1: making the records and then coming back and going to
Speaker 1: Europe and tour and not being paid at all for that,
Speaker 1: and you know, we were really struggling and um. On
Speaker 1: the way to hear Up, I was in a car
Speaker 1: wreck in New York. We were going to the airport,
Speaker 1: and I had a new guy who was driving, and
Speaker 1: we were in tandem. You know, there were three of
Speaker 1: us in a convoy. And I said, listen, Convoy driving
Speaker 1: is different. You can't go through a yellow light. You're
Speaker 1: leading the convoy or the guy in the back. You know,
Speaker 1: you you everything. You gotta slow down and you gotta
Speaker 1: get everybody through. We can't lose the third car, got it? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just right into it. You know, and screwing up and
Speaker 1: he's going through the singing, and I was really concern
Speaker 1: and I would turn like this, and we got rear
Speaker 1: ended it about thirty five and I got a hairline
Speaker 1: fracture in my neck. You felt it when it happened.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you know, you know how everybody used to
Speaker 1: laugh at people that had suffered with flash. I felt
Speaker 1: like every joint in my body had crushed glass in
Speaker 1: it for six months. I'm mean, if I didn't keep
Speaker 1: moving all the time, if I went to sleep, I'd
Speaker 1: wake up and got to go like, I don't want
Speaker 1: to move my wrist. It really was. So it didn't
Speaker 1: work for a year or so. And during that, you know,
Speaker 1: I started thinking, Wow, you know, I'm kind of like
Speaker 1: it me at the end of my deal. Here, I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is the seventh album is coming up, and nobody's
Speaker 1: calling me from Capitol Records. Hey, you know we you know,
Speaker 1: you and your lawyer need to come in here. We
Speaker 1: need to talk about where going forward. Nothing And I
Speaker 1: had so a lot of albums, but they just were
Speaker 1: I was just off their radar. I was fighting with
Speaker 1: them all the time. And this kid came to my
Speaker 1: house and he delivered some wood and Mr Miller, would
Speaker 1: you listen to my cassette? And yeah, sure, I put
Speaker 1: it on. I went, God, I'm sitting here arguing with
Speaker 1: fifty year old men who don't like me, don't understand me,
Speaker 1: and this kid writes better songs, and I do it.
Speaker 1: Least I've got a contract. He's delivering wood to my house.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go down and make a record. So
Speaker 1: I went to make The Joker. I got the band
Speaker 1: in for two days. I cut a bunch of R
Speaker 1: and B tunes. Quickly, I thought I was at the
Speaker 1: end of my career. I wasn't some oh boy, this
Speaker 1: is the Joker's a hit single, that's a pop too old,
Speaker 1: that something, you know, And I figured, man, I'm done,
Speaker 1: you know, twenty three to thirty something, and and I um,
Speaker 1: I go in and it's I got rid of all
Speaker 1: my producers. Is the first record that I produced myself,
Speaker 1: was the Last Chance, my last record. And I finished
Speaker 1: the album in seventeen days. I had a very brief
Speaker 1: meeting with you know, some people of Capitol Records finished it.
Speaker 1: And then that afternoon, you know, we we snuck into
Speaker 1: like the executive room and like found out their speakers
Speaker 1: were out of phase and fixed all that a back
Speaker 1: stuff so that when we actually played it for them,
Speaker 1: they could hear it properly. I mean, it was amazing
Speaker 1: how incompetent that they were there and played it. And
Speaker 1: this one kid goes, I think the Joker sounds like
Speaker 1: a hit single to me. Kid in the room, and
Speaker 1: I hand him a piece of paper and I said, look,
Speaker 1: here's a list of sixty cities I'm going to play in.
Speaker 1: And these are sixty cities. You need to have the
Speaker 1: albums and records stories when I get there. You guys
Speaker 1: am not paying any attention to where I play. And
Speaker 1: you need when I go to you know, Gross Point
Speaker 1: in Michigan to play at ann Arbor, you know, for
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan, you need to have five thousand
Speaker 1: records in town because I'm gonna go play to thousands
Speaker 1: of people there, and you know, and they were just
Speaker 1: that's the argument left town and the Joker came out
Speaker 1: and it went viral. What we call going viral right now,
Speaker 1: Capital records and spending money, and they didn't promote it.
Speaker 1: They just you know, printed some copies and sent him out.
Speaker 1: Off it went and when I got back three months
Speaker 1: later after doing the sixty Cities, I was I was
Speaker 1: driving to the theater, the Fox Theater in Oakland to
Speaker 1: go play another small little gig and The Joker was
Speaker 1: on four radio stations at the same time, and I
Speaker 1: was angry because it was not all five major radio
Speaker 1: stations since Everrances. They were only five then, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, it's here, who it's there? It was there.
Speaker 1: They were playing it twice an hour, twenty four hours
Speaker 1: a day for a year on every AM radio station
Speaker 1: in the United States. And so I went from this
Speaker 1: underground guy who couldn't even talk to a DJ. I
Speaker 1: couldn't get arrested before that, but no television, no nothing,
Speaker 1: and and um, you know, to king of AM radio.
Speaker 1: So it's time for new contract then. So when you
Speaker 1: were writing The Joker, did you have any sense that, oh,
Speaker 1: this is the one. I mean, the guitar lick is
Speaker 1: kind of unique and kind of really different. So I
Speaker 1: was really slow. It's really it's got a great groove, right,
Speaker 1: it's laid back, but it's so different than anything you did.
Speaker 1: Did you you had no sense and you know, this
Speaker 1: something really something happening. Yeah, I'd stop thinking about singles. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you do the new contracts and then the next
Speaker 1: two albums are just monstrosity. Yeah. So I come back
Speaker 1: from that tour and is so good right back in
Speaker 1: the studio, come on, make another one. I'm call it
Speaker 1: my agent, Milt Leave. I said, Milt, I'm taking a
Speaker 1: year off work. Last night anyway, what you know, And
Speaker 1: I said, I'm taking a year off man, I'm exhausted.
Speaker 1: I'm so burned out, you know. It took the band
Speaker 1: into the studio. We're there for two days, and I
Speaker 1: just went, let's get figured they were just wasting money.
Speaker 1: And uh then I went back to California and and
Speaker 1: there was a check for three five thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: my mailbox with the junk mail for for what for
Speaker 1: the joker? Oh that was all the radio. Really, Hey,
Speaker 1: I think I'll maybe a house. Maybe we'll go back
Speaker 1: into the Let's get an eight track tape recorder and
Speaker 1: put it in the house. And so I put it in.
Speaker 1: I bought a house. I bought a new house. Where
Speaker 1: was that in Nevato, California, Just the past Mill Valley,
Speaker 1: a little bit north of the city. And and I,
Speaker 1: uh put an eight track tape recorder in there, Dick
Speaker 1: sweating him the guy had met in UH nine seven
Speaker 1: at the Olympic Studios built me my own little board,
Speaker 1: the first one that where you could have stereo panning
Speaker 1: and eight separate tracks for a headphone set, and did
Speaker 1: some technology things like that, and I started work on
Speaker 1: Fly Like an Eagle and Book of Dreams, and I
Speaker 1: did them both at the same time, just like with
Speaker 1: the Beatles when they were ahead went I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: ahead of this. I'm gonna have thirty songs. So you
Speaker 1: were you were paying attention and learning from from your experience.
Speaker 1: When I turned in Fly Like an Eagle, Book at
Speaker 1: James was done and that did you let them know
Speaker 1: that or you held that back? No, I didn't tell
Speaker 1: him anything. So before we get to the books, because
Speaker 1: there is stuff that I want to talk about. Um,
Speaker 1: there's some really interesting electronic effects in both of those
Speaker 1: and what otherwise could have been an intro to a
Speaker 1: song is separated as a separate cut, and I read
Speaker 1: somewhere that that was done on purpose. Well, I was
Speaker 1: very interested in electronic music way before this all started.
Speaker 1: I was into stock housing in the early sixties and
Speaker 1: that was all electronic music. And I met Stockhausing. I
Speaker 1: went to Germany and met him and watched him do
Speaker 1: recording sessions and stuff, and and those seg ways were
Speaker 1: pieces of music. Now Capitol Records just want to go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's just nothing to but the segways and Fly like
Speaker 1: an Eagle. That album was designed so you couldn't take
Speaker 1: it off the turntable. And and those in those interstitials
Speaker 1: are so musically interesting and transition from song to songs.
Speaker 1: So when they were longer than a certain amount of time,
Speaker 1: I I copy wrote them. I mean I had them
Speaker 1: copy written as compositions song as they are. And you know,
Speaker 1: I remember taking a scuba diving course one time in
Speaker 1: Hawaii and kind of went in for the class and hey, hey,
Speaker 1: and they had stolen my music and used it in
Speaker 1: their diving films. People used that stuff all over the world. Man,
Speaker 1: that that was like hot sauce to people. Jet Jetliner
Speaker 1: and all all those you know, the segue into Fly
Speaker 1: like an Eagle, all that off is used and it's
Speaker 1: licensed and they are compositions. Well that turns out to
Speaker 1: be very um pressing and fortuitous to go to my thesaurus,
Speaker 1: because those two albums sold exceedingly well, and pretty much
Speaker 1: the greatest hits is the bulk of those um as
Speaker 1: well as a couple of other um other covers. Uh
Speaker 1: you sent me if I'm remembering that, that was a
Speaker 1: beautiful version of that song. Like you don't, you don't
Speaker 1: do a lot of covers. You don't do a lot
Speaker 1: of other people's No, you know, I, um, actually I have.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just the stuff I've written over shadows
Speaker 1: that I've done lots of covers. That's not true. I've
Speaker 1: done lots of Jimmy Read tunes and lots of blue stuff,
Speaker 1: done lots of you know, let your Hair Down and
Speaker 1: Bingo were all covers, and so I've done. If you
Speaker 1: guess you take the the full body of work and
Speaker 1: you say how many covers, you know, maybe it's like
Speaker 1: sevent original twenty five percent other people's material. I was.
Speaker 1: I was listening to Bengo this morning. I like it
Speaker 1: a lot. I'm surprised. Um, well, back to the roots,
Speaker 1: back to the blues. It's really Yeah, those were great
Speaker 1: tunes that and that sounded like you're having fun doing it,
Speaker 1: which leads me to a question we skipped before, So
Speaker 1: what sort of stuff. Do you really enjoy playing? And
Speaker 1: then we'll jump right into the books. Well, I you know,
Speaker 1: this is sounds pretty stocked, But I really loved playing
Speaker 1: my music with my band. I mean, I'm tomorrow, I'm
Speaker 1: flying to Chicago and I'm playing tomorrow night and I
Speaker 1: can't wait. Really, yeah, you said you're coming up on
Speaker 1: fifty years. You still love to hit the stage? Is
Speaker 1: still love performing? I love the interaction between a live
Speaker 1: audience and a live band. And all my songs are
Speaker 1: sort of just signed where there's some spontaneity. I learned
Speaker 1: from jazz and blues. That's what I really the people
Speaker 1: I learned from. And you know, when I was watching
Speaker 1: les Pa, i was five years old. He was soloing
Speaker 1: like a bandit and it was all spontaneous and it
Speaker 1: wasn't the same note note every night. It was always different.
Speaker 1: And I learned that. So it's like you don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what's gonna happen. I compared to like playing basketball
Speaker 1: in the playoff level. It's the playoffs. Okay, you've just
Speaker 1: done you know, played you know, ninety games or whatever
Speaker 1: it is, and now it's in the new six week
Speaker 1: season to get to the final, and you gotta take
Speaker 1: it up a notch. You gotta be really good every night.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be so good you're flat the
Speaker 1: next night. You don't want to ever be flat ever
Speaker 1: you wanted. At this high professional level, everybody's dialed in,
Speaker 1: everybody's paying attention. Everything set up and it's like basketball.
Speaker 1: The ball bounces on the floor and then the game
Speaker 1: starts and it's a different way around the court for
Speaker 1: each song. And so that's what I really I love that,
Speaker 1: And I mean I love playing blues. I like playing
Speaker 1: eclectic blues tunes like Louisiana Blues, forty four blues that
Speaker 1: I have these odd rhythm signatures and they're kind of
Speaker 1: Delta Appalachian, kind of early American things, you know that
Speaker 1: got pulled out of Memphis and up to Chicago. That
Speaker 1: stuff is fascinating to me. So so we've talked about
Speaker 1: your music, We've talked about your guitar collection. How did
Speaker 1: you get involved with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and
Speaker 1: a couple of shows that you've you've done with them.
Speaker 1: What I've decided to move to New York four years ago.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to live here just because of the culture,
Speaker 1: and um Rudy Penza who has a music store of Rudy's.
Speaker 1: I've been working for the longest time to get the
Speaker 1: Metropolito Aton to do uh a guitar show. And it
Speaker 1: was called Guitar Heroes, Legendary Craftsman from Italy to New York.
Speaker 1: It was about arch top jazz guitars like Bucky Plays.
Speaker 1: You know John's dad and John you know those are
Speaker 1: arch top guitars. Well, that guitar comes straight from Strata
Speaker 1: By It's just started in fourteen ninety nine or whatever
Speaker 1: it was. And they've been making those instruments, right, And
Speaker 1: there were some Italian guys in New York, di Equisto
Speaker 1: being you know, one of them in Diangelico being one
Speaker 1: in monteleone, right, So they decided they were going to
Speaker 1: do a show at the met on these guitars. Oh,
Speaker 1: Steve Miller, you have seven di aquesto guitars. Jimmy was
Speaker 1: a really good friend of mine. He made my instruments.
Speaker 1: They were the best instruments in the world. Those are
Speaker 1: the ones I wanted to play. And um, can we
Speaker 1: use three of your instruments at the Metropolitan Museum. And
Speaker 1: I was gonna go well, you know, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. And I'm talking to him from Sun Valley, Idaho,
Speaker 1: where I live and at my studio. Right they said,
Speaker 1: it an air condition humidified air ride druck from New
Speaker 1: York to Sun Valley to pick up the three guitars
Speaker 1: and take them back to the met Very impressive. So
Speaker 1: I said, all right, all right. So they said, well, look,
Speaker 1: we know you're going to be in New York. Why
Speaker 1: don't you come by and say hi and we'll do
Speaker 1: a little video interview. I said, I'd love to. So
Speaker 1: I go in and I meet all the people in
Speaker 1: music instrument department, and I meet Jason Dabney and I
Speaker 1: meet Sally Brown, and there's like I'm in a room
Speaker 1: and there's like forty t Angelico guitars or something good.
Speaker 1: You want to play this one? You want to try
Speaker 1: that one? And and I'm looking at him and I said,
Speaker 1: you guys are going to have a concert, right, you
Speaker 1: got a theater here, And they said a concert? How
Speaker 1: would we do that? And I said, well, let me
Speaker 1: put a concert together for you. I mean, you should
Speaker 1: do that. So I really liked them, They really liked me.
Speaker 1: I helped him put a concert together. They said, we
Speaker 1: want you to join the board of the musical instrument
Speaker 1: department at the met So I said, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: So now that after that, then we did the Martin
Speaker 1: Show and we're now we're redesigning the gallery. So I
Speaker 1: just slid into town and took over the Metropolitan Museum. No,
Speaker 1: I mean I was invited, you know, I'm just by luck.
Speaker 1: And and you know, the same thing happened at Jazz
Speaker 1: at Lincoln Center. I went to see went and play,
Speaker 1: and he said, I want you to help me put
Speaker 1: the blues pedagogy together for Jazz at Lincoln Center. We
Speaker 1: we don't know what the hell we're doing, and we
Speaker 1: need to teach this and we need to design these programs.
Speaker 1: And the next thing I know, I ended up on
Speaker 1: that board. And and so you've become real cultural as
Speaker 1: part of new really have jumped right into the heart
Speaker 1: of it, and have found that so many people receptive
Speaker 1: of my ideas. And maybe I'm giving Alan Grubman a
Speaker 1: hard time. He deserves a hard time. You know. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of great culture here and there's so
Speaker 1: many great people working. I mean, I've met so many
Speaker 1: interesting people in the projects I'm working on now a
Speaker 1: ton of energy in the are really wonderful projects in
Speaker 1: the circles of support around all of it is amazing,
Speaker 1: and the educational reach of it is all great. That's
Speaker 1: why I can look at the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 1: of Fame and just smack those guys around and say
Speaker 1: you need to wake up. They're telling me we have
Speaker 1: to wrap you have places to go. Okay, I got
Speaker 1: lots of other questions. We have to we have to
Speaker 1: bring you back. And I want to get your readers
Speaker 1: some books. Yeah, okay, can we do a quick book
Speaker 1: run really quick? Okay, so you know your readers, your listeners, listeners.
Speaker 1: Here's a list of great books for you to read. Okay.
Speaker 1: In other Words by Anthony da Curtis, really interesting articles
Speaker 1: about musicians. These are all music books. Alta Blues by
Speaker 1: Ted Joya last trained to Memphis, Peter very Famous, Sam Phillips,
Speaker 1: A Man who vented rock and Roll by Peter Girl
Speaker 1: nick Um, How Music Got Free by Stephen With That
Speaker 1: is literally sitting on my night table, the red red
Speaker 1: cover right. The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman,
Speaker 1: which is, yeah, that's do you have to read that
Speaker 1: his New York Magazine stories have propelled of course. And
Speaker 1: and I'm Your Man by Sylvie Simmons Simmons, which is
Speaker 1: a book about Leonard Cohen that's fascinating. So you want
Speaker 1: to read some musical biographies. And then the last one,
Speaker 1: I recommend to everyone if you really want to laugh,
Speaker 1: get the Eddie Fisher bio. It's it's unbelievably, it's hilarious. Um.
Speaker 1: I saw k D. Lange do a version of Leonard
Speaker 1: Cohen's Hallelujah that makes the hair on my name unbelieve.
Speaker 1: She did a version of the joke her no kidding, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she did, she did. She was the only person
Speaker 1: that's covered the joker and nailed it. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: to have you back. I have so many more questions
Speaker 1: for you. Next time. I want you to bring the guitar.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll play a couple of songs. You know I
Speaker 1: can do that next time you're in town. Um, we've
Speaker 1: been speaking to the one and only Steve Miller. Um
Speaker 1: um le defense. That's right, Uh A rack contour in
Speaker 1: a difference in addition to being a UH singer, songwriter, guitarist.
Speaker 1: That that's that's exactly right. UM. If you enjoy this conversation,
Speaker 1: be sure and look up an Inch or down an
Speaker 1: Inch on iTunes, where the other hundred and nine of
Speaker 1: these are available for free download. That's how much I
Speaker 1: make from iTunes. Is exactly this, UM. I would be
Speaker 1: remiss if I did not think Charlie Volmer, my recording engineer,
Speaker 1: Taylor Riggs, my booker. UM, you've been listening to Masters
Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio two