Editors Note: This is a user-supplied article, which we are grateful for. Music plays such an important place in our lives, listening to it, playing it, making lyrics a personal memory. Once again, we here at MFU thank you for your readership. Together, we can keep the history of Rock and Roll alive.

Hardly a soul exists in a developed country that hasn’t heard some Steve Lukather guitar playing at one time or another, and many have no awareness that what they’re listening to is his playing. He worked in the late 70s and 80s mostly as a session player for too many names to list but two of the big ones are Cher and Michael Jackson. He also got together with his session player buddies to form a band called Toto. Since 1989 he has also put out a variety of solo work. More recently, he’s been a part of Ringo’s all star band

I have listed this post as incomplete, because I have listened to a rather small amount of Toto’s catalogue, only 2 of their 14 studio albums. I found out about Toto while working at a grocery store. I would hear Hold the Line on the store radio and liked it. I later looked it up and that was the first time I heard the name Toto. I believe I’ve heard Rosanna on those “hits of the 80s” type CDs being advertised on TV in the 90s. In 2012 I found out that some guy called Steve Lukather was going to be playing a Joe Satriani’s G3 that year. My reaction was, “Who the hell is that?” So that actually got me to check out his solo records starting with 2008’s Ever-changing Times. Since then I have been meaning to give Toto a chance and only did so about half a year ago. I also recently finished reading Lukather’s book, so some of the information here is coming from that. He likes to go buy Luke as a result of knowing too many Steves like Steve Porcaro for example, so I’ll refer to him as Luke from here on.

What I remember from the book is that during the 70s Luke had a little high school band going. He did a little bit of session work, but somewhere along the way he got picked up by Boz Scaggs to be his touring guitarist not long after he was out of high school. He ended up doing two solos on Scaggs’s eighth studio album, Down Two Then Left.

This is a very Lukather-esque solo that works as a good representation of his style.

This was a one take solo that helped establish his session player career. Word tended to make its way around the music community of L.A. when something like that was down. I honestly prefer the A Clue solo to this one. It was also not long after that the his session player buddies decided to form Toto with him.

I’ve been thinking about how odd a band Toto is. All of the musicians in the band are really, really good but at the same time there’s a complete lack of the coolness factor in their music. They are a group of music nerds doing really great music but nobody is going to think you’re one of the cool kids (or cool, uhh, older guy) if they hear you listening to Toto. Some true rocker types might even put you down for it. So anyway, let’s start with:

The typical Toto approach was shared vocal duties, and Luke takes the lead on this one. I honestly find the sound of his voice to be quite good. He’s a baritone and no legendary singer, but he’s got a pleasant, natural tone to his voice. That’s actually Cheryl Lynn singing the “Georgy porgy” chorus. In this video you might also notice how dorky the members of Toto look. Totally not cool at all. Jeff Porcaro, the drummer, could play some drums but those glasses look so terrible. Anyway, Luke is bringing some nice slide guitar at 2:00 with an oddly-placed solo in the middle of the song.

Not surprisingly, this song started as a piano song, and Luke added that complementary guitar riff on top of the piano foundation. This is an excellent example of the kind of thing Luke (probably most members of Toto as well) did. He has an excellent ability to add a complementary guitar track that enhances a song and makes it even better. Some of Luke’s best work is not his soloing or lead guitar, but his additions to what end up being rather full mixes with a lot of instruments doing a lot of work.

Again, he’s singing on this one, and I find his voice quite pleasant. I love those two notes he plays in the transition from the softer sections to the rockin’ part (1:57).

After a pretty successful first album based off the success of “Hold the Line,” they decided to go for more rock credibility with their next effort, Hydra.

There’s a short transition solo at 1:20 and a much longer solo found at 2:19. He nailed it on both of them, and then there’s another sort of solo squeezed in there during the transitional section at 3:08 and outro soloing to take us home at 4:04. All well done.

I don’t have a solo to point you to here, but what I love about his song is his complementary rhythm playing that starts at 0:40 and repeats several times throughout the song. I’m assuming this was another Hold the Line type piano song that he added guitar on top of.

Yes, that famous song. Luke got to sing the verse and the higher stuff was done by Bobby Kimball, the tenor. The hardest rockin’ parts of the song are created by Luke’s guitar and makes the song more complex and interesting than the piano pop ditty it is in most places. He starts soloing at 3:13 and does the outro solo thing later on.

My knowledge of Toto stops there.

I do know the Luke is the one playing rhythm guitar and bass on MJ’s Beat It. He also contributed guitar work and solos to 80s/90s hits like (Solo at 2:17):

In 1989 Luke released his first solo album. I recall reading about how he got shafted as far as it being released in the USA. So he didn’t really have much success with it. The first two tracks might have had some radio success. The first one features an unlisted Eddie Van Halen in there. I’m not sure what he did on the track.

I haven’t listened to 1994’s Candyman much, but I enjoyed his 1997 release entitled Luke.

Songs like this reveal Luke is more than just a guitar player. He really did a great job on the lyrics and vocals here. I really like the continuous vocal drops during the chorus that mimic a slide guitar or other instrument that goes between the notes. His solo here does not disappoint either (3:16).

In 2003 he released a Christmas album called Santamental. Which features a lot of guests, so it’s listed as Steve Lukather and Friends. One of those guests is Eddie Van Halen on the first track.

After an instrumental presentation of the song, there’s a long soloing section featuring alternating solos between Luke and Eddie for a total of 6. This is probably the coolest and craziest version of Joy to the World you’ll ever hear.

I’m including this song, because it’s actually a modern, original Christmas song that perfectly mimics that traditional Christmas feel. Honestly, I thought it was a traditional Christmas song until I read in his book that he wrote it with help from a friend.

In 2008 he released Ever-Changing Times. Overall it is a good collection of rock songs and ballads, but I can’t choose a song that really stands out.

In 2010 he released All’s Well That Ends Well, which is a similarly excellent piece of work.

Again, Luke brings it as more than just a guitar player but as a singer and lyricist as well. He also got excellent keyboard work done. That additional guitar track at 0:46 was a brilliant addition. He starts a solo at 2:43 and just kills it. Another great solo in a great song.

He’s got himself a nice little riff going on this one with some masterful soloing starting at 2:56.

Finally, his solo career stops in 2013 at this point with an album simply named Transition. This guy puts out great stuff now and this is another overall great effort. The nine-track album starts off with 3 negative songs. The first two are about all the hate spewed on the internet by keyboard warriors, and the third about getting divorced. It’s followed up by a song called Right the Wrong and then the title track, Transition. There are then two positive songs and a love song written by a friend who gave him permission to use it. Finally, it ends on an instrumental cover of Charlie Chaplin’s Smile. I leave you with the opening track.

I kept my coverage of the solo albums pretty brief. I’m sure I left out some great work and great solos, and really, I would recommend checking out the full albums from 2008 to 2013 if you like a wide variety music with excellent musicianship. If you know more about Toto than me, you can contribute some Toto songs and moments I haven’t heard yet.

Hits: 8

So who is the “you” referred to in this song? In an interview with Jon Anderson, he answered:

Probably God. Or it could be we collectively. The audience and I, collectively we look for reality of being a true understanding of the beauty of life. We reach over the rainbow for an understanding of things. You and I climb closer to the light.

Few song titles start with the word “and”; a more logical title would be “You And I.” Jon Anderson stated why the conjunction appears at the beginning:

I sang it that way as I was writing it with Steve (Howe) and it just stuck: ‘And you and I climb over the sea to the valley.’ It’s all about the reasons that we have to call our connection with the Divine. So it was something that just rhythmically worked.

The song, which opened Side 2 of “Close to the Edge”, was the lone single from Yes’ platinum-selling farewell album with original drummer Bill Bruford, was the last of four consecutive Top 50 Yes songs dating back to March of 1971, was Yes’ final such Billboard entry until “Owner of a Lonely Heart” shot to No. 1 more than a decade later.

The song is just over ten minutes in length and consists of four movements. The first and second parts of the song were released as a single edit.

I. Cord of Life
The song opens with Steve Howe on 12-string acoustic guitar, and his voice can be heard at the beginning of the track, then playing mostly natural harmonics, played around what will become the central melody, using a 12-string acoustic guitar which quickly forms into a simple chord progression over distant organ chords. Then, the Moog enters for a simple solo, presenting a subsequent phrase, albeit differently arranged. The vocals begin at about 1:40. The line “All Complete in the sight of seeds of life with you” is sung, which is repeated throughout the song. At about 2:50, there’s a distinct change: Anderson sings a sharper melody, accompanied by a second vocal track by Anderson harmonizing with himself, plus Chris Squire and Steve Howe providing a counter-melody and alternate lyrics, with their voices fed through a Leslie speaker.

II. Eclipse
“Eclipse” is the slowest part of the song based on a measured and deliberate melody reminiscent of Sibelius. It is led by Rick Wakeman’s epic Mellotron and Minimoog with a thematic quote from “Cord of Life” played by Steve Howe on a delay-soaked Sho Bud Pro1 Pedal Steel guitar. The lyrics are all from the first stanza of “The Cord of Life”, but are sung in a different melody, which is also epic and slightly sad. In this section, the song cycles from the key of D to the key of A, E, and finally B, in which it remains for the duration of the song. It ends with the 12-string acoustic guitar leading into “The Preacher, The Teacher”.

III. The Preacher, The Teacher
The melody and lyrical structure is very similar (for the most part) to that of “The Cord of Life”, with some variations. The exception is that “The Preacher, The Teacher” has a fast synthesizer solo by Rick Wakeman at one point during the song. The last stanza again consists of lines from “The Cord of Life”, now sung in a different order and a completely different mood. At 8:34 there is a reprise of the previous section “Eclipse”, which lasts until 9:12. The section ends with a cadenza-like orchestral statement, on Mellotron and Minimoog, reminiscent of neo-Wagnerian compositions from Strauss or Bruckner.

IV. Apocalypse
“Apocalypse” is the shortest piece of the song, only about 40 seconds long, it consists only of four lines, accompanied only by Howe’s guitars. The lyrics are taken from “Cord of Life”, but are sung in the key of B, making them more upbeat:

And you and I climb, crossing the shapes of the morning.
And you and I reach over the sun for the river.
And you and I climb, clearer, towards the movement.
And you and I called over valleys of endless seas.

While many have analyzed and attempted deep interpretations of the lyrics of this song, Alan Gullette of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville wrote:

…one might argue that the poet had a specific meaning in mind, one which he was trying to express. This I feel: the words of these poem are not an end in themselves, but only a means for the expression of the poet Jon Anderson. In them, Anderson creates a beautiful world of imagery and takes us into that world. He speaks to us of the most important things: life, emotion and expression, the world, growth: of existence moving toward essence. As a poet, a human being, he states his purpose simply:

… I reach out for reasons to call

To which I would add:

Coming quickly to terms of all expression laid
Emotions revealed as the ocean made
As a movement regained and regarded both the same
All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you.

Here is a live version they performed in Montreux, Switzerland in 2003 with the then current members.

A two-part edit of “And You and I” released in the United States reached number 42 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

On April 7 2017, Yes were finally inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Controversially, the institution’s complex rule system meant that of the 17 people who have officially passed through the band’s ranks, just eight were eligible: Jon Anderson, Steve Howe , Trevor Rabin, Bill Bruford, Alan White, Tony Kaye, Rick Wakeman, and, posthumously, Chris Squire. That meant no place for founding guitarist Peter Banks, vocalist/producer Trevor Horn or current members Geoff Downes, Billy Sherwood or Jon Davison.

Hits: 10

The song “Year of the Cat” began as “Foot of the Stage”, a song written by Stewart in 1966 after seeing a performance by comedian Tony Hancock whose patter about “being a complete loser” who might as well “end it all right here” drew laughs from the audience: Stewart’s intuitive response that Hancock was in genuine despair led to the writing of “Foot of the Stage”. Stewart is quoted:

He came on stage and he said ‘I don’t want to be here. I’m just totally pissed off with my life. I’m a complete loser, this is stupid. I don’t know why I don’t just end it all right here.’ And they all laughed, because is was the character he played… this sort of down-and-out character. And I looked at him and I thought, Oh my god, He means it. This is for real.” Hancock killed himself in 1968 with a drug overdose. Many of Stewart’s songs have alternate lyrics, and he wasn’t happy with the Hancock-inspired words, as he didn’t want to take advantage of the man’s tragedy, and besides, no one in America knew who Hancock was.

It was the melody for this never-recorded song which Stewart set the lyrics of “Year of the Cat” to in 1975.

The acoustic lead is played by Peter White with Tim Renwick then taking the electric lead. Recording engineer Alan Parsons, who also recorded Pink Floyds “Dark Side Of The Moon” and formed the Alan Parsons Project, had Phil Kenzie add the saxophone part of the song — and by doing so transformed the original folk concept into the jazz-influenced ballad that put Al Stewart onto the charts. According to Al Stewart on an episode of In the Studio with Redbeard (which devoted an episode to the making of the Year of the Cat album), Phil Kenzie was watching a movie and didn’t want to be bothered with going to do session work; but as a favour to Alan Parsons he went to Abbey Road, and the sax solos were recorded in one or two takes, after which Phil left the studio to go back home and watch the rest of his movie. Al also told Redbeard that he didn’t like the sax solos at first but grew to like them.

When he played Royal Albert Hall on May 16, 2015, Stewart talked about this song:

This one came about in a really strange way. Tim Renwick previously played in a band called The Sutherland Brothers, and they had a keyboard player called Peter Wood. I was touring in America in 1975 and Peter Wood continually, at every soundcheck I ever went to, he played this riff on the piano. After I heard it about 14 times I said, ‘You know, there’s something about that. It sounds kind of haunting and nice. Can I write some lyrics to it?” And he said: “Sure, go and write some lyrics.’

Somehow or other, in between all of that and Vietnamese astrology, we came up with this. Thank you, Peter Wood, for writing the music. He’s no longer with us but thank you, Peter.

Pianist Peter Wood was given a co-writing credit on the song in recognition of his piano riff on the recorded track.

Stewart:

But that was the easy bit. The difficult bit was writing the lyrics. Eventually, I came up with a set of lyrics about an English comedian called Tony Hancock and the song was called ‘Foot of the Stage.’ He committed suicide in Australia and I saw him right before he went there and I knew there was something terribly wrong. And so, I wrote this song about him and the chorus was:

Your tears fell down like rain
At the foot of the stage

The American record company said, ‘We’ve never heard of Tony Hancock. We don’t know who he is.’ So, then I thought, ‘Well, that’s annoying so I’ll take the piss out of them.’ So, I wrote a song about Princess Anne called “Horse of the Year”

Princess Anne rode off
On the horse of the year

They didn’t like that either.

I was beginning to lose my mind because I had this piece of music forever and I couldn’t think of any words. I had a girlfriend at the time and she had a book on Vietnamese astrology, which was kind of obscure, and it was open at a chapter called ‘The Year of the Cat.’ Now that’s, I think, the year of the rabbit in Chinese astrology. I’m not too sure. I don’t know a whole lot about a whole lot of things but I recognize a song title when I see one and that was a song title.

But then another problem: what do you do? ‘The Year of the Cat.’ OK, well:

I used to have a ginger Tabby
And now I have a ginger Tom
The first one made me crabby
The new one…

I thought, ‘You can’t write about cats, it’s ridiculous.’ And I was absolutely lost and then the Casablanca movie came on television and I thought, ‘I’ll grab Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre and see where it goes.

The 1942 Humphrey Bogart movie Casablanca produced a huge hit with “As Time Goes By,” but “Year of the Cat” is the most popular song that is based on the film itself. In Casablanca Bogart plays Rick Blaine, the owner of a Moroccan nightclub that attracts refugees desperate to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. Peter Lorre, as the scheming Ugarte, takes advantage of their plight by murdering two German couriers for letters of transit that will secure the buyer passage to neutral Portugal:

You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime

Rick is thrown for a loop when an old flame, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), walks through the door.

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolor in the rain

Ilsa needs the letters so her husband, a fugitive Czech Resistance leader, can flee to safety. Rick and Ilsa rekindle their romance and consider staying together, but he convinces her to leave with her husband.

You know sometime you’re bound to leave her
But for now you’re going to stay

Hits: 49

“Deacon Blues” was recorded at Village Recorders in West Los Angeles. Jazz guitarist Larry Carlton used Fagen’s demos to transcribe the chords into a rhythm section that featured Carlton’s guitar on the song’s opening. Saxophonist Tom Scott wrote the horn arrangements for not only “Deacon Blues” but for all of the songs on Aja, a task that he completed in less than two weeks. After the song was recorded Becker and Fagen decided to add a saxophone solo and asked their producer, Gary Katz, to arrange for Pete Christlieb to record the solo. At the time, neither Becker nor Fagen knew Christlieb by name, only by his reputation as a musician on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Christlieb went to the studio and recorded the solo after taping the show one evening.

“They told me to play what I felt. Hey, I’m a jazz musician, that’s what I do … so I recorded my first solo … we listened back and they said it was great. I recorded a second take and that’s the one they used. I was gone in a half hour. The next thing I know I’m hearing myself in every airport bathroom in the world.”

As midlife-crisis songs go, Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues” ranks among the most melodic and existential. Recorded for the album “Aja” in 1977, the song details the bored existence of a ground-down suburbanite and his romantic fantasy of life as a jazz saxophonist. Written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen in 1976, “Deacon Blues” was released in 1977 on Steely Dan’s album “Aja,” which in the fall reached No. 3 on Billboard’s album chart, where it remained for seven consecutive weeks. The song also was a hit single in early 1978. With Steely Dan appearing in New York at the Beacon Theatre from Oct. 6-17, Mr. Fagen, Mr. Becker, guitarist Larry Carlton and saxophonists Tom Scott and Pete Christlieb recalled the writing, arranging and recording of the cult classic. Edited from interviews:

Donald Fagen: Walter and I wrote “Deacon Blues” in Malibu, Calif., when we lived out there. Walter would come over to my place and we’d sit at the piano. I had an idea for a chorus: If a college football team like the University of Alabama could have a grandiose name like the “Crimson Tide,” the nerds and losers should be entitled to a grandiose name as well.

Walter Becker: Donald had a house that sat on top of a sand dune with a small room with a piano. From the window, you could see the Pacific in between the other houses. “Crimson Tide” didn’t mean anything to us except the exaggerated grandiosity that’s bestowed on winners. “Deacon Blues” was the equivalent for the loser in our song.

Mr. Fagen: When Walter came over, we started on the music, then started filling in more lyrics to fit the story. At that time, there had been a lineman with the Los Angeles Rams and the San Diego Chargers, Deacon Jones. We weren’t serious football fans, but Deacon Jones’s name was in the news a lot in the 1960s and early ‘70s, and we liked how it sounded. It also had two syllables, which was convenient, like “Crimson.” The name had nothing to do with Wake Forest’s Demon Deacons or any other team with a losing record. The only Deacon I was familiar with in football at the time was Deacon Jones.

Mr. Becker: Unlike a lot of other pop songwriting teams, we worked on both the music and lyrics together. It’s not words and music separately, but a single flow of thought. There’s a lot of riffing back and forth, trying to top each other until we’re both happy with the result. We’ve always had a similar conception and sense of humor.

Mr. Fagen: Also, Walter and I both have jazz backgrounds, so our models are different than many pop songwriters. With “Deacon Blues,” as with many of our other songs, we conceived of the tune as more of a big-band arrangement, with different instrumental sections contributing a specific sound at different points. We developed “Deacon Blues” in layers: first came the rhythm tracks, then vocals and finally horns. Many people have assumed the song is about a guy in the suburbs who ditches his life to become a musician. In truth, I’m not sure the guy actually achieves his dream. He might not even play the horn. It’s the fantasy life of a suburban guy from a certain subculture. Many of our songs are journalistic. But this one was more autobiographical, about our own dreams when we were growing up in different suburban communities—me in New Jersey and Walter in Westchester County.

Mr. Becker: The protagonist in “Deacon Blues” is a triple-L loser—an L-L-L Loser. It’s not so much about a guy who achieves his dream but about a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life.

Mr. Fagen: The concept of the “expanding man” that opens the song [“This is the day of the expanding man / That shape is my shade there where I used to stand”] may have been inspired by Alfred Bester’s “The Demolished Man.” Walter and I were major sci-fi fans. The guy in the song imagines himself ascending the levels of evolution, “expanding” his mind, his spiritual possibilities and his options in life.

Mr. Becker: His personal history didn’t look like much so we allowed him to explode and provided him with a map for some kind of future.

Mr. Fagen: Say a guy is living at home at his parents’ house in suburbia. One day, when he’s 31, he wakes up and decides he wants to change the way he struts his stuff.

Mr. Becker: Or he’s making a skylight for his room above the garage and when the hole is open he feels the vibes coming in and has an epiphany. Or he’s playing chess games against himself by making moves out of a book and cheating. A mystical thing takes place and he’s suddenly aware of his surroundings and life, and starts thinking about his options. The “fine line” we use in the song [“So useless to ask me why / Throw a kiss and say goodbye / I’ll make it this time / I’m ready to cross that fine line”] is the dividing line between being a loser and winner, at least according to his own code. He’s obviously tried to cross it before, without success.

Mr. Fagen: By the mid-‘70s, we were using session players in the studio. Steely Dan became just Walter and myself. We’d handpick musicians for the sound we were looking for on each song. We tended to go through quite a few musicians looking for the results we wanted. Sound-wise, we were influenced by the jazz albums of engineer Rudy Van Gelder, the engineer who recorded many of those legendary Prestige and Blue Note albums in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Mr. Becker: The thing about Rudy’s recording technique is how he got each instrument to sound intimate, with musicians playing close to the microphones. The way he recorded, you had the continuity of lines and the fatness of tone that made solos jump out. We wanted all of our recordings to sound that way.

Larry Carlton: When I met with Donald, he gave me demos of him singing and playing “Deacon Blues.” I transcribed the chords and built an arrangement for the rhythm section that was tight but left plenty of space for other layers—like horns and background vocals that I knew they would add later. The song’s famous opening is my guitar and Victor Feldman’s Fender Rhodes electric piano playing the exact same chords and voicings, plus drummer Bernard Purdie’s cymbal figures. To keep the song’s rhythm-section arrangement from sounding stiff, I added guitar ad-libs here and there to create contrast after Donald’s vocal was in place. They were there to frame his voice.

Mr. Fagen: Once the rhythm track and my vocal were set, horns were added to give the song a dreamy, reedy sound. We brought in saxophonist Tom Scott to write the arrangement. We told him we wanted the horns to have a tight, romantic “Duke Ellington cloud” feel.

Tom Scott: When I arrived at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, where Donald and Walter were recording, they played me the rhythm track. Donald said he wanted to add four reeds, two trombones and a trumpet—but not a high-note trumpet. I heard right away how I’d arrange the horns—adding 9ths and 11ths and other jazz dissonances that were implied but not there. I had about a week and a half to write arrangements for all the songs on “Aja” where they wanted horns. For “Deacon Blues,” I used a sound that mirrored Oliver Nelson’s orchestral style. I wrote in these “rubs”—two notes close together in the middle register played by the tenor and baritone saxophones. This produces a really thick, reedy sound.

Mr. Fagen: When everything was recorded—the rhythm section, the horns and the background vocals—Walter and I sat in the studio listening back and decided we needed a sax solo, someone to speak for the main character. We liked the sound of a tenor saxophonist who played in Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show band, a cat who blew like crazy when the show went to a commercial. He had this gutsy sound, but we didn’t know who it was.

Mr. Becker: We had our producer Gary Katz ask around and he found out it was Pete Christlieb. Pete had invented any number of cool harmonic devices that made his playing sound unique. He just sounded like a take-charge soloist, a “gunner.”

Pete Christlieb: I went over to the studio one night after the Tonight Show finished taping at 6:30 p.m. When I listened on headphones to the track Tom had arranged, there was just enough space for me to play a solo. As I listened, I realized Donald and Walter were using jazz chord changes, not the block chords of rock. This gave me a solid base for improvisation. They just told me to play what I felt. Hey, I’m a jazz musician, that’s what I do. So I listened again and recorded my first solo. We listened back and they said it was great. I recorded a second take and that’s the one they used. I was gone in a half-hour. The next thing I know I’m hearing myself in every airport bathroom in the world.

Mr. Fagen: The song’s fade-out at the end was intentional. We used it to make the end feel like a dream fading off into the night.

Mr. Becker: “Deacon Blues” was special for me. It’s the only time I remember mixing a record all day and, when the mix was done, feeling like I wanted to hear it over and over again. It was the comprehensive sound of the thing: the song itself, its character, the way the instruments sounded and the way Tom Scott’s tight horn arrangement fit in.

Mr. Fagen: One thing we did right on “Deacon Blues” and all of our records: We never tried to accommodate the mass market. We worked for ourselves and still do.

Hits: 285

While traveling on his tour bus with the Four Tops on May 15, 1969, Four Tops member Renaldo “Obie” Benson witnessed an act of police brutality and violence committed on anti-war protesters who had been protesting at Berkeley’s People’s Park in what was later termed as “Bloody Thursday”. A disgusted Benson later told author Ben Edmonds:

I saw this and started wondering ‘what was going on, what is happening here?’ One question led to another. Why are they sending kids far away from their families overseas? Why are they attacking their own kids in the street?

Returning to Detroit, Motown songwriter Al Cleveland wrote and composed a song based on his conversations with Benson of what he had seen in Berkeley. Benson sent the unfinished song to his bandmates but the other Four Tops turned the song down. Benson said:

My partners told me it was a protest song. I said ‘no man it’s a love song, about love and understanding. I’m not protesting. I want to know what’s going on.’

Benson and Cleveland offered the song to Marvin Gaye when they met him at a golf game. Returning to Gaye’s home in Outer Drive, Benson played the song to Gaye on his guitar. Gaye felt the song’s moody flow would be perfect for The Originals. Benson, however, felt Gaye could sing it himself. Gaye responded to that suggestion by asking Benson for songwriting credit of the song. Benson and Cleveland allowed it and Gaye edited the song, adding a new melody, revising the song to his own liking, and changing some of the lyrics, reflective of Gaye’s own disgust. Gaye finished the song by adding its title, “What’s Going On”. Benson said later that Gaye tweaked and enriched the song, “added some things that were more ghetto, more natural, which made it seem like a story and not a song … we measured him for the suit and he tailored the hell out of it.” During this time, Gaye had been deeply affected by letters shared between him and his brother after he had returned from service over the treatment of Vietnam veterans.

Gaye had also been deeply affected by the social ills that were then plaguing the United States at the time, even covering the track, “Abraham, Martin & John”, in 1969.

Gaye cited the 1965 Watts riots as a pivotal moment in his life in which he asked himself, “with the world exploding around me, how am I supposed to keep singing love songs?” One night, Gaye called Berry Gordy about doing a protest record while Gordy vacationed at the Bahamas, to which Gordy chastised him, “Marvin, don’t be ridiculous. That’s taking things too far.”

Reuniting at their parents’ suburban D.C. home, Marvin’s brother Frankie discussed the events of his tenure at Vietnam, detailing experiences that sometimes left the two brothers consoling each other in tears. Then after Frankie explained witnessing violence and murder before he was to depart back to the states, he recalled Marvin sitting propped up in a bed with his hands in his face. Afterwards, Marvin told his brother, “I didn’t know how to fight before, but now I think I do. I just have to do it my way. I’m not a painter. I’m not a poet. But I can do it with music.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Marvin Gaye discussed what had shaped his view on more socially conscious themes in music and the conception of his eleventh studio album:

In 1969 or 1970, I began to re-evaluate my whole concept of what I wanted my music to say … I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam, as well as the social situation here at home. I realized that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people. I wanted them to take a look at what was happening in the world.

Worldwide surveys of critics, musicians, and the general public have shown that “What’s Going On” is regarded as one of the landmark recordings in pop music history, and one of the greatest albums of the 20th century. This song was ranked number 4 on Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

Hits: 10

Mark Farner, guitarist and songwriter, himself does not explicitly state what the song is about, and indeed prefers that listeners be able to use their own imaginations when listening to songs in general. Nor did the other band members have any real idea of what Farner was getting at; Drummer Don Brewer has said, “I think it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people.”

Mark Farner wrote the lyrics of this song before he wrote the music, which was opposite of how he usually composed most of his songs. He explained to Nightwatcher’s House of Rock:

I had gone to bed and prayed. Our mother had taught us kids to pray the ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ so I finished that part of the prayer, and put a P.S. at the end of it, and I asked the Creator to give me a song which would reach and touch the hearts of people that he wanted to touch. With love, because I just felt the love. I just felt for my good friends, my high school buddies who had died in Vietnam. I saw their parents, and I saw their families, and I think that’s what inspired it.

It came in the middle of night to me as words, and I didn’t even realize it was a song, because I write words all the time. In fact, my wife has a file that she has where she’s picked up napkins and notes here and there that have all these words that come out. At least we have a place to start putting them together, like a puzzle. But I grabbed those words in the morning, because I was playing my guitar in the kitchen of the farm. I was sipping on my coffee, had my feet kicked up in the chair, and I had my flattop guitar. As I was strumming the intro chords to ‘I’m Your Captain,’ I went, ‘Hey man, maybe this is a song.’ So I went and got the words, and started constructing the song out of it. I took it to rehearsal that day and the guys said, ‘Man, this song’s a hit.’ And, lo and behold they were right.

Approaching the rest of the band, drummer Don Brewer and bassist Mel Schacher, Farner had the “I’m Your Captain” part of the song fairly completed. The idea of extending it came about as they rehearsed it the first few times. Don Brewer, in a Songfacts interview, explained:

We used to rehearse at a place called The Musicians Union Hall in Flint, Michigan. We used to work all of our stuff out there. Mark came in one day with basically the beginning of the song, the ‘I’m your captain part.’ We always worked out everything with a jam -- he would have an idea, somebody would have an idea for a bass part of whatever, and we’d just kind of work on these things and jam out. For a day or two we worked on this song and it just didn’t go any place, that was about as far as we could get with it.

One day, coming out of a jam that we were working on, we fell into that half time part, and that’s when Mark came up with the lyrics, ‘I’m getting closer to…’ So we had that, and we all felt, ‘Oh man, that’s great, we’ll put that piece together with that, and that’s going to work,’ then we said, ‘What are we going to do from there?’ So we got into the guitar part where it breaks into full time again. Then we had a brainstorming session, ‘What are we going to do for the rest of the song?’

At the time, rock bands had experimented with orchestras, and we said, ‘Let’s put an orchestra on this thing, we’ll just play endlessly, and we’ll get Tommy Baker, our friend down in Cleveland, to write the score for it, and we’ll put an orchestra on it. It was a new thing for us, kind of new for the day -- there hadn’t been too many bands using orchestras. When we recorded the song in Cleveland, we didn’t have the orchestra there, we didn’t know what the final outcome was going to be, we hadn’t even recorded the string arrangements, we just recorded the end of the song on and on and on over and over, knowing they were going to come in and put an orchestra on it later. When we finally heard the song about two weeks later, it just blew us all away. It was a religious experience.

Inspired by groups like The Moody Blues, they came upon the idea of using an orchestra, and hired Tommy Baker, an arranger and trumpet player who was working on the Cleveland television series Upbeat. He suggested they extend the ending so that his orchestral score would have space to develop in, so the band extended the jam on it. Producer Terry Knight brought in the Cleveland Orchestra to record it. The band members never heard the full version until Knight played it for them back in Flint. Farner nearly cried when he heard it, and Brewer has said of their reactions, “We were just like, ‘Wow!'” and “Oh my God, it was magnificent.”

Some stations played an edited version that was cut to about 5 minutes, eliminating most of the fadeout. This truncated version of the song was a modest hit single when first released, but the track achieved greater airplay on progressive FM rock radio stations as they tended to play longer, more involved tracks. It has become a classic rock staple and has appeared on several audience-selected lists as one of the best rock songs of all time. In 1988, the listeners of New York rock station WNEW-FM ranked it the 71st best song of all time, while twenty years later in 2008, New York classic rock station Q104.3’s listeners ranked it the 112th best song of all time and by 2015 listeners of the same station had voted it up to being the 9th best of all time.

We weren’t concerned with FM radio, we knew FM radio could play 7 or 8-minute songs. It wasn’t a matter of being confined to anything, so we knew it could get airplay -- that wasn’t a restriction. Capitol wanted to cut it and do an edited version for a single, and we said, ‘No, you can’t edit that song, just leave it alone.’

In promotion of the song the band bought a 60-foot Times Square billboard advertising Grand Funk’s 1970 “Closer to Home” album that cost an estimated $100,000. The stunt unexpectedly benefited from a New York City workers strike that caused the billboard to stay up several months after it should have been taken down.

Guitarist and singer Mark Farner, drummer Don Brewer and bassist Mel Schacher started 1969 as unknown musician in Flint, Mich., and, by the end of 1971, they had released six albums that incredibly had all gone gold – without the benefit of a hit song. The band was formed as a trio in 1969 by Mark Farner (guitar, vocals) and Don Brewer (drums, vocals), both from a band called Terry Knight and the Pack, and Mel Schacher (bass) from Question Mark & the Mysterians. Knight soon became the band’s manager, as well as naming the band as a play on words for the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, a well-known rail line in Michigan. First achieving recognition at the 1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival I, the band was signed by Capitol Records. After a raucous, well-received set on the first day of the festival, the group was asked back to play at the 1970 Atlanta International Pop Festival II the following year. Patterned after hard-rock power trios such as Cream, the band, with Terry Knight’s marketing savvy, developed its own popular style. In August 1969, the band released its first album titled “On Time”, which sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold record in 1970. In February 1970, a second album, Grand Funk (or The Red Album), was awarded gold status. Despite critical pans and a lack of airplay, the group’s first six albums (five studio releases and one live album) were quite successful.

Grand Funk Railroad came into being when Brewer and Farner, both struggling to make it as musicians, contacted Terry Knight, the former frontman of their old band the Pack. They were at such a desperate point that they agreed to sign with Knight as their “manager, producer, press spokesman and musical mentor,” even though Farner thought Knight was a chameleon and a con man.

Knight initially had little luck interesting record labels in Grand Funk. He did manage to score them the opening slot at the Atlanta International.  Pop Festival on July 4, 1969, which led to the band getting a deal with Capitol Records. The Capitol deal, in fact, was with Knight’s production company, which Grand Funk was signed to. This arrangement would become more significant later on.

Once described as someone who “fancied himself as the Colonel Tom Parker of the ’70s,” Knight took a very hands-on approach with Grand Funk Railroad. Knight produced their albums, helped write the songs and even designed the album covers. He kept Farner, Brewer and Schacher away from the press and handled the interviews himself. Unlike most managers, Knight didn’t try to befriend rock critics. In fact, he seemed to revel in antagonizing them and he used the negative-to-vicious reviews (Rolling Stone called them the “worst band in the world”) to promote Grand Funk as a the “people’s band.”

Nearly two years to the day from their Atlanta debut, Grand Funk Railroad became the first band since the Beatles to play Shea Stadium — and they sold out Shea in 72 hours, faster than the Beatles did. This crowning achievement, however, also started the cracks that soon derailed Grand Funk Railroad’s meteoric rise to super-stardom.

Knight, however, still saw Grand Funk Railroad as his gravy train as 1971 ended. The band’s sixth album, “E Pluribus Funk”, released that November, reached No. 5 on the Billboard chart, and Grand Funk had sold more than 20 million records in less than three years. In early 1972, Knight met with the band to share his idea to top the Shea Stadium success: a five-night stand at Madison Square Garden. Although Farner, Brewer and Schacher dutifully signed the paperwork for the concerts, they were starting to question Knight’s autocratic control. They griped about their touring and complained about his producing skills and songs he wouldn’t let them record.

Their biggest beef involved money. In early March, the band had found out that Knight, through his production deal with Capitol, was getting 16 percent of the album profits while they were receiving only 6 percent. Knight also had his cut as their manager, as well as a share in the song royalties and had 21 percent of GFR Enterprises, the corporation Knight created to handle Grand Funk Railroad’s business. This didn’t sit right with the trio. They were generating a lot of money but getting only a couple hundred dollars in a weekly stipend from GFR. As Brewer explained to Rolling Stone in 1972, “We wanted to hear what was happening with the money and Terry didn’t give us the right answers. He gave us the runaround.” Knight, meanwhile, believed the guys simply “began to believe their own press.” He told his side to Rolling Stone, explaining that Farner, Brewer and Schacher could have been more involved in their financials and the making their albums, but “they had a Lear jet sitting at the airport the night the “E Pluribus Funk” album was finished.”

Feeling uneasy about Knight, Brewer contacted John Eastman, a respected music business lawyer who also had helped his brother-in-law Paul McCartney go solo from the Beatles. Knight was shocked when he discovered that the group had fired him as manager and backed out of the Madison Square Garden concerts. That’s when the writs hit the band. On March 21, 1972, Knight filed a lawsuit against Eastman, alleging interfered with Knight’s contractual arrangement with Grand Funk. A week later, Knight sued the band for fraud and breach of contract, with his suits adding up to approximately $57 million. Knight later proclaimed on Behind the Music that “if they’d have waited three months, they would have been out of the  contract.” Grand Funk countered with their own $8 million lawsuit against Knight, charging him with defrauding them and misuse of their money. Knight would continue to file suits – one accused the band of trademark infringement and another charged Capitol Records with royalty illegalities. He sued retailers and concert venues that were dealing with Grand Funk. Two sides also played out their cases in the press, taking out ads to state their side of the lawsuits.

Knight’s most notorious move came on Dec. 23, 1972. Grand Funk were scheduled to perform a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden (where Knight had planned to have the band play a series of shows earlier in 1972). Knight arrived before the concert, with sheriff deputies and a court order authorizing the confiscation of the band’s equipment as part of what Knight alleged the band owed him. Fearing a cancellation would cause a riot, a compromise was reached with Knight taking the group’s gear after the show.

The legal battle of the bands eventually resolved in February 1974 with a settlement reached in the 30-plus lawsuits. The band got to keep its full name, Grand Funk Railroad, while Knight got a load of money, publishing rights and the group’s investments. Both Brewer and Farner stated in Behind the Music that they settled because the band wouldn’t have survived if a court fight lasted longer. For his part, Knight proclaimed that he didn’t mind wearing the black hat “as long as I can wear the black hat to the bank.”

Despite the lawsuits’ emotional and financial strain, Grand Funk ironically achieved their greatest popular success after they separated from Knight. The band, which had re-signed with Capitol in 1972, released their signature song “We’re an American Band” in 1973. The song hit No. 1 and their Todd Rundgren-produced album was their highest charter at No. 2. Their next album, Shinin’ On (also produced by Rundgren) spawned another No. 1 hit, a cover of the old Little Eva tune, “The Locomotion.” Another cover, “Some Kind of Wonderful,” reached No. 3 in 1974. But that year’s LP, “All The Girls in the World Beware!!!”, was their last gold album. While Knight might have won the legal battle, he lost the war. The other band he
managed, Bloodrock, also left him in 1972. He was dropped by Capitol, and Brown Bag Records, the label he started in 1972, closed shop by 1974, and Knight basically left show business soon after that. In 2004, Knight was stabbed to death while trying to protect his daughter from her boyfriend.

In 1972, Grand Funk Railroad added Craig Frost on keyboards full-time. Originally, they had attempted to attract Peter Frampton, late of Humble Pie; however, Frampton was not available, due to signing a solo-record deal with A&M Records. The addition of Frost, however, was a stylistic shift from Grand Funk’s original garage-band based rock and roll roots to a more rhythm and blues/pop rock-oriented style.

After Grand Funk initially disbanded in 1976, Farner released his first self-titled solo album in 1977, and his second, “No Frills”, in 1978. In 1981, Farner and Don Brewer launched a new Grand Funk line-up with bassist Dennis Bellinger and recorded two albums, “Grand Funk Lives” and “What’s Funk?”. Neither album achieved much critical acclaim; but the single “Queen Bee” was included in the film Heavy Metal and its soundtrack album. After they disbanded a second time in 1983, Brewer went on to tour with Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band.

Farner went solo again with 1988’s “Just Another Injustice” on Frontline Records. His third Frontline release was 1991’s “Some Kind of Wonderful”, which featured a revamped faith-inspired version of the Grand Funk classic of the same name. Farner enjoyed success with the John Beland composition “Isn’t it Amazing”, which earned him a Dove Award nomination and reached No. 2 on the Contemporary Christian music charts.

In 1996, Grand Funk Railroad’s three original members once again reunited and played to 250,000 people in 14 shows during a three-month period. In 1997, the band played three sold-out Bosnian benefit concerts. Two years passed before the two remaining members (Brewer, Schacher) recruited some well-regarded players to reform the band. Lead vocalist Max Carl (of 38 Special), former Kiss lead guitarist Bruce Kulick, and keyboardist Tim Cashion (Bob Seger, Robert Palmer) completed the new lineup. Grand Funk Railroad continues to tour.

In 2005, Grand Funk Railroad was voted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame. Due to his heritage, Mark Farner was honored with the Lakota Sioux Elders Honor Mark in 1999. During the concert in Hankinson, North Dakota, a special presentation was held honoring Mark’s Native ancestry and his contributions. Members of the Lakota Nation presented him with a hand-made ceremonial quilt. He has also been honored with the Cherokee Medal of Honor by the Cherokee Honor Society.

(Partial writing credit to Michael Berick/ultimateclassicrock.com)

Hits: 30

Is there anything musically Edgar Winter hasn’t done? Keyboardist, guitarist, saxophonist, percussionist, producer, singer, composer. Starting out professionally with his older brother Johnny Winter, they were nurtured at an early age by their parents in musical pursuits. Edgar and his brother began performing at an early age. When he was eight years old, the brothers appeared on a local children’s show with Johnny playing ukulele.

The boys’ father sang in a barbershop quartet, in their church choir, and played saxophone in a jazz group. Edgar and Johnny, who’s three years older, began performing together as teens, playing local watering holes like Tom’s Fish Camp before they were old enough to drink. The pair’s early R&B and blues groups included Johnny and the Jammers, the Crystaliers and the Black Plague.

Edgar Holland Winter was born to John Winter II and Edwina Winter on December 28, 1946, in Beaumont, Texas. Both he and his older brother Johnny were born with albinism, and both were required to take special education classes in high school. Winter states,

In school I had a lot of friends. I wore a lot of white shirts to, like, blend in I guess. No one really gave me a hard time about being albino or taking special education classes. Then again, I wasn’t really popular.

In high school, Edgar became fascinated with the saxophone stylings of Julian “Cannonball” Adderley and Hank Crawford, and he began playing alto sax in earnest. As a pre-teen he had played ukulele like his older brother, but by the time he was of college age, Edgar had become competent on keyboards, bass, guitar and drums.

Although he’s often skirted the edges of blues music, at heart Edgar Winter is a blues musician. Edgar Winter has always pushed himself in new directions, synthesizing the rock, blues and jazz melodies he hears in his head. As a consequence, his fan base may not be what it could have been, had he made a conscious effort to stay in a blues-rock mold over the years.

After appearing on Johnny Winter’s first Columbia album “Johnny Winter”, Edgar was signed to Epic Records in 1970. He recorded “Entrance”, his debut album, which featured himself on most of the instruments. After radio success accompanying his brother on “Johnny Winter And”, he formed a large horn ensemble called White Trash. Although it was a short-lived group which broke up in mid-’72, Winter assembled another group to record two more albums for Epic Records, “White Trash” and “Roadwork”. Winter’s single, “Keep Playing That Rock ‘n’ Roll,” reached number 70 on the U.S. rock radio charts, and the album “Roadwork” hit number 23 on the album charts. By the summer of 1972, through constant touring, (and a ready willingness to do interviews, unlike his older brother), Winter formed The Edgar Winter Group in the summer of 1972.

Winter brought together Dan Hartman, Ronnie Montrose, and Chuck Ruff to form The Edgar Winter Group, who created such hits as this number one “Frankenstein” and “Free Ride” (with lead vocals by its writer Hartman). Released in November 1972, “They Only Come Out at Night” peaked at the number 3 position on the Billboard Hot 200 and stayed on the charts for an impressive 80 weeks. It was certified gold in April 1973 by the RIAA, and double platinum in November 1986.

Winter invented the keyboard body strap early in his career, an innovation that allows him the freedom to move around on stage during his multi-instrument high-energy performances.

After “They Only Come Out at Night”, Winter released “Shock Treatment”, featuring guitarist Rick Derringer in place of Ronnie Montrose.

Winter also kept busy doing session work, playing sax on Meat Loaf’s “All Revved Up With No Place to Go”, Dan Hartman’s solo hit “Instant Replay”, Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” and David Lee Roth’s remake of “Just A Gigolo”, as well as appearing on material by Rick Derringer, Johnny Winter, Ronnie Montrose, Todd Rundgren, Michael McDonald and many others.

Edgar Winter’s live shows consistently receive rave reviews. His music is always evolving and he is a master at stretching his skill and imagination to produce amazing results. He continues to thrill audiences with his live performances, always remaining on the cutting edge of music and style.

Although he’s never matched that kind of commercial radio success again, Winter has continued to tour and record at a prolific pace. He relocated from New York City to Beverly Hills in 1989 to pursue movie score work, which he’s had some success with, most notably with a slightly reworked version of “Frankenstein” for the movie Wayne’s World II.

Hits: 22

Many know him as the “Space Cowboy” who “speaks of the pompatus of love”. The “Gangster Of Love”, and “The Joker”. This song, from the album of the same name, was Steve Miller’s first #1 hit. It took a while, as this album was the seventh album released in his long career. He had already produced a few popular and familiar songs; “Living in the USA”, “Space Cowboy”, and “My Dark Hour” (we’ll get back to this last one). The song and album of “The Joker” represented a change in direction of sound and started a string of well-known hits. Let’s start from his beginning.

Steven Haworth Miller, born October 5, 1943, was raised in a musical home with his mother, Bertha, whom he described as a remarkable jazz-influenced singer, and his physician father, George, known as “Sonny” who, in addition to his profession as a pathologist, was a jazz enthusiast and accomplished amateur recording engineer. Guitar virtuoso Les Paul and his musical partner Mary Ford were regular visitors at the Miller house. Dr. and Mrs. Miller were best man and maid of honor at the December 1949 wedding of Les Paul and Mary Ford. Les Paul heard Steve, who was four, on a wire  recording made by Dr. Miller, as the youngster was “banging away” on a guitar given to him by his uncle, Dr. K. Dale Atterbury. Paul encouraged Miller to continue with his interest in the guitar … and “perhaps he will be something one day.” Steve’s uncles were also musicians – one played violin in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra – but when the Depression hit and the opportunities dried up, they became doctors instead.

Here’s a 20 minute video of Steve and Les (the Les Paul Trio) joking around, and tossing in some tasty jamming, in July 2007:

Les Paul would not be the only artist to influence, teach, and encourage him. His father had many distinguished musicians come to the house to record and Steve absorbed much from many “greats” right in his living room, such as T-Bone Walker, Charles Mingus and Tal Farlow. T-Bone Walker taught Steve how to play his guitar behind his back and also with his teeth in 1952.

Then, when I was 9, T-Bone Walker came to our house to play a party. I sat right next to T-Bone all night and watched him play. He taught me how to play the guitar behind my head and do splits. He became a regular at our house, and that’s how I learned to play lead guitar.

In 1955, he formed his first band, “The Marksmen”. He taught his older brother Buddy to play the bass and also instructed his classmate, future musical star Boz Scaggs, a few guitar chords so that he could join the band.

I thought, ‘Why don’t we mimeograph a letter and just send it to all the local fraternities, sororities, schools, boys clubs, and country clubs saying we have a rock and roll band and we’re looking for gigs?’” Miller said. “The phone rang off the wall. This was 1956. I was 13. There were no rock and roll bands at the time. Of course, we never said how old we were. I had this band booked every Friday and Saturday night for the entire school year. I eventually taught my older brother how to play bass so that he could drive us. We were so young, but we were really good, and we were making a living. We worked all over Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, but especially around Dallas, where we’d back up Jimmy Reed. I was making $300 a month, which is like $3,000 now. It was crazy!

Playing these local gigs for about 7 years, he moved to Wisconsin, and entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he formed “The Ardells”. Still not ready to settle into a full-time position of being a musician, he travelled to the University of Copenhagen in Denmark for a semester in his senior year to study comparative literature, he dropped out six credit hours shy of a literature degree, opting to pursue a music career with his mother’s encouragement and his father’s misgivings:

[Interviewer:] When you look back over the span of your career, what are the lasting moments, the sweetest highs?

[Miller:] I would have to say my father’s relationship with Les Paul and T-Bone Walker when I was young. Growing up in Dallas, being part of that phenomenal music scene. I found a way to do what I really wanted to do, which is so important for a kid. Near the end of college, my parents said, ‘Steve, what are you going to do?’ I said, ‘I want to go to Chicago and play the blues.’ My father looked at me like I was insane. But my mom said, ‘You should do it now.’ So I went to Chicago. And that was a special time. I played with Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. I got to work with adults and realized music was what I wanted to do, what I loved.

Upon his return to the United States, Miller moved to Chicago where he immersed himself in the city’s blues scene. During his time there, he worked with harmonica player Paul Butterfield and jammed with blues greats Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Buddy Guy, all of whom offered the young guitarist encouragement to pursue a musical career.

In 1965, Miller and keyboardist Barry Goldberg formed the “Goldberg-Miller Blues Band” and began playing on the Chicago club scene. They signed with Epic Records and released a single, “The Mother Song”, and soon began a residency at a New York City blues club.

Although the collaboration with Goldberg didn’t ultimately work out, Miller got an extraordinary education in Chicago.

I must have seen Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf 100 times in a room the size of my living room.

He picked up a gig as rhythm guitarist in Buddy Guy’s band but didn’t have the stamina to see it through.

We played from nine at night until four in the morning six days a week. And Buddy’s rule was that we had to have one shot of bourbon before each set. After about three weeks, I just said, ‘Buddy, I can’t do this.’

Instead, he moved to San Francisco, where by virtue of his chops and reliability, Miller became a force on the scene, playing the Fillmore more than 100 times. He pulled a band together and, partly because record companies had become so enamored of San Francisco, he landed a five-album deal with Capitol for nearly $1 million, a massive figure at the time. The Steve Miller Band released two LPs in 1968: “Children of the Future” and “Sailor”. The latter rose to the Top 40 and included “Living in the U.S.A.,” which became a staple on the album-oriented format of FM radio. “Brave New World”, the band’s third album, rose to Number 22, and included “Space Cowboy,” another FM favorite, and “My Dark Hour”.

I told we’d get back to this, and here’s why. Not only had he made a name for himself around the West coast and starting to attract attention in the U.S., he started to be recognised in the U.K. This song shows he was noticed by a guy who played bass, drums, and backing vocals on this track, who’s name was credited as Paul Ramon. Don’t recognise that name? Maybe you know him better as Paul McCartney. If you listen, not even too closely, you will pick up quite a few riffs that would appear in one of Steve’s later hits. This song sounds a lot like an early rough draft of “Fly like An Eagle”, even a hint of “Livin’ In The U.S.A.” at the end. His guitar abilities firmly show why he was quickly becoming a recognised artist and a bright future ahead.

The band’s next two albums, “Your Saving Grace” (1969) and “Number 5” (1970), both cracked the Top 40, but it seemed as if the band had peaked. Miller was regarded as a credible figure, but none of the first five albums had gone gold. He had to make a decision.

We had recorded five albums in something like 18 months,” Miller said. “We had been playing 200 gigs a year. The band was going through changes. I wasn’t hearing anything from Capitol about a new contract. So I thought, I’ll get some musicians, go down to L.A. on my own, and produce my own record. I finished it in about 19 days.

That album was “The Joker”.

My little secret formula is that a hit single has to have five hooks. I made it as cleverly as I could. In the car, driving, people love to sing harmony. There was the slide solo, the whistle, the chorus, the ‘mid- night toker’ – a secret language that kids’ parents don’t understand. It had a little bit of everything. And it caught on.

The style and personnel of the band changed radically with “The Joker” (#1, 1973), concentrating on straightforward rock and leaving the psychedelic side of the band behind. The title track was certified platinum, reaching over one million sales. It was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA on January 11, 1974. Three years later, the band returned with the album “Fly Like an Eagle”, which charted at  No.  3. Three singles were released from the album: “Take the Money and Run” (#11), “Fly Like an Eagle” (#2) and their second  No. 1 success, “Rock’n Me”. Miller credits the guitar introduction to “Rock’n Me” as a tribute to the Free song, “All Right Now”.

Book of Dreams (#2, 1977) also included three successes: “Jet Airliner” (#8), “Jungle Love” (#23), and “Swingtown” (#17). 1982’s “Abracadabra” album gave Steve Miller his third #1 success with the title track.

Miller’s string of hits ran out at that point. The 80s were a confusing time for many veteran artists, Miller among them.

I never had a manager. I didn’t take advantage of all my opportunities. If I could do it over again, I would have worked harder to find someone who could have helped grow my business during that time. That run from 1967 to 1983 was nonstop. We started out in 3,000-seat theaters, and nine months later we’re playing in football stadiums. Staying on top of all that – writing songs, releasing records, running the band – it was a lot of work. I was pretty much burned. Consequently, Miller said, ‘Fuck it.’ I bought a 53-foot cruiser, named it Abracadabra, and went cruising the Inside Passage for six years.

When Miller returned to music, he returned to the styles he loved from the very start: blues and jazz standards.

When I was a kid, I didn’t want to be Elvis Presley or any of the pop stars of the time, like Frankie Avalon. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be like Miles Davis. I wanted to be like Muddy Waters. I wanted to be like T-Bone Walker. I wanted to play real music.

And he certainly did just that. Over his career he recorded 18 studio albums (including one solo album by Steve Miller), 6 live albums, 7 compilation albums, and 30 singles.

In 2016, Miller was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The ceremony caused controversy, due to Miller’s disparaging remarks about the experience being “unpleasant” and that the Hall of Fame was misogynistic and “need to respect the artists they say they’re honoring, which they don’t.” His interest was always more in his music rather than the commercialization of the industry.

Hits: 36