Interview With Steve Miller: Masters in Business (Audio)

another story of his. And when a guy like Steve Miller is telling you stories, you sit there, you shut up, you listen and enjoy the ride. It. It was really a blast. Uh. One other funny, little, funny little story. So the show finishes, they have to go somewhere, and I promised I would get them out of on time. We're still a half hour late. Where we finish up, he signs a couple of albums for me, which was really nice. He didn't have to do that. He did a little picture of of the Joker on one of

the albums. I thought that was super cool. Um, I'll take a picture and post it on Twitter. But then we're outside and I take we're taking photos in order to you know, I take a photo of every guest, and it's he and I taking a photo. And as as as we're taking the picture, who walks by in front of us, but none other than Mr Mike Bloomberg. And generally the protocol at the Bloomberg building when anybody famous is around, you know, it's a quiet nod. It's

very low key. Every time I'm there, there's some famous hedge fun manager, musician, actor. I'm in and out of the I'm in and out of the green room for Charlie Rose. Because where Bloomberg Radio is is adjacent to that, I always see all sorts of amazing guests there. But anyway, we're standing there having our photos taken, and it was cute to see Steve Miller sort of gush over a celebrity to him, Hey, there's the mayor, Mr mayor, Hi,

nice to see you. It was. It was really very amusing and very charming, and and the mayor just kind of nodded and walked by. I can't imagine that he had any idea who this was, um, but this was just a charming and delightful interview. If you are at all interested in the music industry, recording rock and roll, anything along those lines. This was really a crazy educational experience.

All your worst expectations of of the record industry are met with no further ado my conversation with Steve Miller. This is Masters in Business with Berry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today has gone by a number of names. You might know him as the Space Cowboy, the Gangster of Love, or just Maurice. He's best known as Steve Miller, an American singer, songwriter, guitarist. He first formed his band in nineteen sixty six in San Francisco. His greatest hits

album V sold thirteen million copies. He has twelve albums in the top forty in the United States, and all told, he has sold over sixty million copies. Steve Miller, Welcome to Bloomberg. Hi Berry, how are you great? I'm thrilled to have you. I have a million questions for you. Um. I've been a fan of yours for a long time. I've seen you live several times, both with the Steve Miller bands and when you were supporting Lawrence Jubert at the cutting room. That was a wonderful evening. Um, let's

let's go way back. You grew up early in your childhood in Wisconsin, and the rumor is you were taught your first three chords by none other than Less Paul. How on earth did that come about? This? It was really interesting. My um my family lived in Milwaukee, so I was born in Milwaukee, and it was ninety three when I was born, so World War two was still on in nineteen fifty, nineteen fifty somewhere in there. It was about five, so I guess it was forty eight.

Less Paul came to town and he and Mary Ford were not married yet, and they were playing at a nightclub around the corner from this funky downhouse we lived in downtown Milwaukee. My dad had a Magna Order, which was one of the first professional tape recorders in the United States. It was like German technology stolen during World War Two and now America had tape instead of wire recorders.

And the old man was really you know, he had a Magna Order, and he went around the corner and introduced himself to Less Paul and said, I got a Magna order, and I'd like to come in and record you. Unless said that'd be great, come on down. So my father started taking me to a place called Jimmy Fazzio's Supper Club was where this west and started taking me into the nightclub. And I was watching Less Paul and Mary Ford and what they were doing was they were rehearsing.

They were playing in front of an audience at a nightclub in Milwaukee off the beaten Path, right, putting their show together for their television show where they were going to come to New York into this tele vision show. So we'll Wolfie Way off Broadway. Yeah, and you know a little side tracking close to where less Less was born and where his mother lived and stuff like it. So we're watching Less Paul and Mary Ford perform, and my father's recording it, and so less Paul is coming

over to the house and listening to it. And pretty soon Less and Mary and Sonny and Bert, my mom and dad were really good friends. A lot of drinking, smoking, carousing, listening to music. And pretty soon, you know, Charles Mingus and you know, tal Farlowe and Red Norvau and all these people were hanging out at the house. And I was like, yeah, boy, this this looks like fun. You know, this this playing music is really great. I already had a guitar. My uncle was a musician, and another uncle

who played in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. He's a hot jazz violinist. So you have a lot of musical influences in your family. And my mother is a great singer. Yeah, and so uh. During the depression, all my relatives went to medical school and became doctors. So my dad was a doctor. He was a pathologist, So this was all hobby stuff for them. I got my uncle's guitar, les Paul shows up at the house, shows me my first three chords. I'm in love with Mary Ford. She's the

most beautiful woman in the world. And knowingly I understand that he's like speeding this tape recorder that we have up and down. He's making his guitar solo sound faster, and you know, he's records it slow, so you played back, Yeah, he records faster, and it's got a baseline when he plays it back at normal speed. And that Mary singing multiple parts, well, you know, thirty five years later or whatever it was. That's that's how I started making my living,

was playing multiple parts. Guitarists and doing multiple vocal tracks. So that raises an interesting question. At what point did you say to yourself, Hey, I can make a living with this this music. Then well, I didn't really think I could make a living in this music until about nineteen sixty three, after I had gone to the University Wisconsin for four years and the University Copenhagen for a year.

I never really thought i'd be a professional musician because I came from this very middle class like, hey, you're gonna have to get a job, and uh, as much as everybody loved musicians, there weren't any good gigs. Being a musician wasn't a good gig. Yeah, working in a nightclub, you know, basically with drug dealers and hookers and cops and mafia people. So not a lot of money and

not great surround it. So after the after school, I went down to Chicago and Paul Butterfield was playing Paul Butterfield Blues blues band at a place called Big John's and he had a record contract, and I went record contract, Hey I could do this, Maybe I could make a litting doing this, and said I moved to Chicago immediately put a band together with a guy named Barry Goldberg,

a great keyboard player and writer. We immediately got our record contract, had the worst manager in the world, and I learned all the things not to do very quickly got out of that and then ended up in San Francisco and had a reset and was able to get my own contract and do my own and you very famously had a tremendous contract that was different from a lot of standards. You know, it's it's funny, you know, like it's what all I did was just common sense.

And um, I did a couple of things. I knew a couple of things, and one was I needed to own my publishing and I and I had had this little taste of recording in Chicago with Barry for Epic Records I think or Mercury, I can't remember what it was, and we had a little run. We were on Hullabaloo with the Supremes and the Four Tops, and then it was all over. And I learned that, like, I didn't want anybody coming in and telling me what to play or record, like, hey kid, you need to move more,

and you know, you have to change those trousers. You know. There was a lot of that, and uh, you know, I didn't want anyone to own any of my songwriting. So when I got to San Francisco, I was in the middle of a feeding frenzy. I had fourteen record companies trying to sign me. Only three of them were important. The rest of them were all like you know, fly by night, independent, small, big promises, no delivery kind of guys.

And I had a friend who was a prosecuting attorney and I went to him and I said, these guys are thieves that this built in theft. Uh, they're they're gonna want to do this, this, this, And what I need is complete artistic control. I need to own my publishing, in my songwriting, and I need enough money to make five albums. It's gonna take that long. And as long as they're here, I don't I'm not signing a deal until I get those things. And everybody went, well, that's

unheard of. And you know, basically it was just common sense. There wasn't anything. You know, sometimes big ideas like that just seem so simple, like Les Paul was a genius, but all the stuff he invented was really simple and straightforward. And do you think about it later, forty years later, of what he achieved. And you know, this multiple track tape recorder your engineers fooling with, you know, is a direct result of Less Paul's ideas in the forties. So

what's the what's the old expression? Uh? Common sense is surprisingly uncommon. Yeah, I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Steve Miller, best known for the Steve Miller Band. He is a singer, songwriter and guitarist and pretty much beloved by musicians all over. We were talking earlier about the

feeding frenzy in San Francisco when you first went out there. Um, you told an interesting story some time ago about how Capital try to put you into their midnight recording slot. If I'm remembering that correctly, and you would have nothing of it, you ended up going to the UK. Well, it was what happened was we were a San Francisco group.

There's a big dichotomy between l A and San Francisco, and l A was like this horrible commercial group of sharks, and San Francisco was this hippie peace, love and happiness kind of community where all the bands shared information and everything. So Alan Livingston the president of Capitol Records was the guy who negotiated it with me for nine months and finally said, okay, you can. We'll give you the contract you want. We really want to sign you. So we load up all our gear and we go down to

l A to do our first recording session. And I'm thinking, I just signed with Capitol Records, less Paul's label, my godfather's label. I can't believe this. This is so cool, and now I've got all these great resources and it's gonna be you know, I'm gonna make this great album. They said, well, we don't have any studio time open until midnight at midnight. And they said, yeah, we're just booked and said, but we've got you booked at midnight.

So I come in at midnight and we spend a couple hours unloading all our gear we just drove down from set versus setting it up, and we start to do a session. It's like four in the morning, and I just said, I can't do anymore. I mean, I can't sing. I'm I'm exhausted. I gotta go to bed. So I said, all right, we'll come back tomorrow at midnight. I come back the next night at midnight and they said, you gotta move all your equipment out of Studio B and put it in stood d O A. And he said, well,

we just set it up. What's going on here? And they said, I got somebody else coming into the studio. You're gonna have to move it. So we moved it to Studio A, got ready to record, and the engineering staff walked out. So they didn't like us. They thought we were hippies. They they thought we were anti war demonstrating bad people. They really did not. And these were a bunch of like crew cutted, ex Vietnam veteran kind

of union studio guys. And and this was a situation where as a musician, I was not allowed to touch a microphone or the console, and there was a guy from the Musicians Union who sat in the control booth to make sure nobody did it. It was the craziest goofy ist, overly featherbedded, just everything that's wrong with unions was on display right there in l A. So second night, I've had it, so I call up my my executive producer at Capitol Records, John Palladino, an ex marine by

the way, It was a great guy. And I loved him, and they said, John, you can have the money back, you can have your contract back. Nuts to you, guys, I'm done, you know. And oh no, no, no, no, no, God no no, Steve, no no no, no, no, no, no no no, I'm gonna you know, listen, this just isn't And so because I had all of this control, I then started looking around for different studios and I realized that like these guys in l A didn't like me, and they weren't gonna help me. They're gonna sabotage me.

And that this new deal I just made with Capitol Records, where I thought I was going to get all his help, I was one of like two hundred bands fighting for limited resources with razor Blade men, you know, and management and stuff. I mean, I just jumped into a world that was like I was so naive about the politics

of the record company, of the corporate world. Those are all the worst stories you've ever heard about the record industry in Los Angeles and what it's like to a major You lived it, Yeah, So, so what did you do in response to no studio available? So I started looking around in London and we found out about Olympic Studios, talked to George Martin, who's the producer of the Beatles. He was willing to do it, but he wanted to have five percent or something and I wouldn't give it

to him. Well he's George Martin, Yeah, and I was going no, no, no, no, no, it's way too much. So I worked with Glenn John's and Glenn was an engineer. So we pack up everything board the U s s United States in January making Atlantic Crossing. That was I was seasick for five days. When it's just oh my god, whatever you do. Get to London, go over to Olympic Studios, set up and procol Harem's there, Peter Frampton's there, the Rolling Stones are there, the who just left you know,

I mean just Jimmy Hendrix has been to town. Everything's going on, you know, and we're right in the middle of it, Walkington and you have yet to record your first album, right, this is the first one. Yeah. We land there and as soon as we started playing, it was like we had brought manna from heaven. We were the most juicy, live, ist, greatest sounding band in London at that particular time. Everybody else sounded real stiff and you know, working real hard to make pop records and stuff,

and they just loved us. So we had this great, great period of sessions and we ended up making I think the first four albums were actually you know, Wally Hiders in San Francisco and then back to Olympic to mix and back and forth. Nicky Hopkins was playing with us, and we were just in the middle of this world international scene. It was much better than being in l A. And engineering was much hipper. And there was a guy there named Dick Swettenham who invented a lot of the

digital equipment we all used today. He was one of the inventors of it. I mean, he was talking about the digital, the coming digital world, and we were going, what it's gonna be on crystals? There's not gonna be any tape what you know. We didn't know this nineteen seven, and so that's how it all started and it was really exciting. I read something I think it was with Um Gibson guitar had a a series of interviews with you.

If I'm remembering correctly, and that may be wrong, but you talked about the process that the Beatles had for recording, where you would spend days on a song and they

would bang stuff out. Well. You know, later in nineteen sixty nine, I got to meet the Beatles and um, they were working in their last album and Glenn was the engineer and I recorded with Paul and I was hanging out with these guys for a few days, and um, you know, it was so hard as a writer to get to our player to have rubber soul come out, you know, and you're getting what you know, it's so great, you know. They just were so in the moment and

so incredibly talented. If we had the book of the four hundred songs at the Beatles recorded and we went through it, you and I would both be going, oh my god, I forgot about those I forgot about Oh

my god. Look look, look, look it's an astonishing It is an astonishing catalog, all done under incredible pressure, horrible situations of just you know, being followed by the press of If we were the Beatles in nineteen nine and we were doing this interview, there'd be fifty people right outside that window, going, Steve just or Paul just scratched his head, or they he just stood up, you know, I mean, they'd be reporting on everything. These guys did.

And how they were creative I don't know. But what I found out was they had a language. Paul and John communicated at a level that was so funny and so witty and so clever. I mean, Paul walked into the studio and said, good morning everybody, and you kind of went, wasn't that great? Did you get that on tape? Did did you hear that? It was just that good?

You know? And their conversation back and forth and stuff, and I just went, ah, I really am in the presence of you know, Rogers and Hammersteiners, something believable writers and this I I have limitations these guys don't and I don't have I can't be as great as they are. And then I found out that they just made they It was like work. They got to the studio ten thirty morning, they were done at three thirty in the afternoon.

They had their tea break, and they went home and they recorded four songs and if they needed something else, he wrote, Hey Jude that night and had come in the next day and do it. It was like that. And what I found out even that was even more interesting was when I was there, I saw them record, get back and uh, um, come Together, I think was the other one. And uh, they had forty songs in the can already waiting to come out. Yeah, and they yeah.

I mean it was an unbelievable lesson forty songs. They were ahead of the game forty songs. Everybody else was like, well, the boys are working on the album, and uh, they've got a tour right now and it'll probably be you know, two years until they come out with another record. What what was the name of the band? You know, And these guys were so far ahead of the game, um that they did a couple of things and they just pulled like eight other songs and they threw an album out.

I went to Paris to go play a gig, and when I came back three days later, that song and record was number one in Europe, was already recorded, released an out. I mean it was recorded the week before, it was out in the next three days. And I mean it was like totally different than America, where they go all right, to finish the album, now next January, we're going to release it was fooling around, hot off the press, number one, and and Paul liked those first takes.

He said that each subsequent take wasn't as good. I recall you saying something that's right. It was always the first take is the one that has the magic. So if you're not really paying attention, you kind of going, oh, wait a minute, I want to do that again. It's not gonna be as good, and then I can make that better than it just goes down. The level of inspiration or presents gets duller and duller and duller. But when you walk in and lay it down, you're done.

I'm Barry rid Halts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this week is a rock and roll star. It's Steve Miller or the Steve Miller band, singer, songwriter, guitarist. Um has band dissold over sixty million copies, and he was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which led to some interesting controversy. So so let's talk a little bit about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Is this a cultural institution or is this really just a tourist trap

in Cleveland. We know it's not a tourist trap in Cleveland. It's a beautiful museum in Cleveland and a beautiful site, and uh, it is a cultural institution and a lot of great work has been laid down and put in place, and the current leadership is exhausted, doesn't have a vision and basically as just running it too to gather funds for the future. And what they're doing right now is very flimsy. You know, They've set up a lot of stuff,

but they're out following through very well. So the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you know, when Ahmad Ergan put it together and Jan Winner was his little henchman, and Alan Grubman was their lawyer. He basically had a combination of three egos and the communicator was Ahmad Air again and Jan Winner on snarky little tabloid magazines and that's the way he plays artists. So you have a situation where you have just horrible legal requirements for people

who are inducted, absolutely the worst. It's not just a straight up, hey, you're inducted, show up at the States. We had a ninety day argument. It never has been totally resolved, completely unreasonable. Uh, we had all of these problems, and so what what you have when when the leadership is snarky and legally incorrect. You have a situation where most artists that I saw were kind of going, I don't care, I'll sign anything. I'm in the Hall of fame. Man.

It's just like when you're the kid who's written the songs, and I bring you to my office, take you out for dinner, then I take you over to the recording studio. Then I bring you back to my office with the Platinum Records in the wall. I hand you a thirty page contract and you sign it, and I give you a check for ten thousand dollars, and now I own everything you've ever you'll ever do for the rest of your life. That's exactly the way they operated. And I

just looked at it and said, you're nuts. Well, I'm not doing that. You know, I'm not signing this. I'm not giving you, you know, lifetime rights to that. I'm not going to provide this until you provide, you know, clear. Their contract work was so goofy, it was just silly. So the pushback, well, I should say the controversy that developed was, um, you basically criticize them, you in in salt your language, then we're using here you had you had less lovely things to say and it really carried

quite a distance. And I want to read a quote to you. Bob left Sets, who's the music industry insider and has been writing about the industry for a long time, said, what's what's so astonishing about this Steve Miller thing? The reach it's gotten. That's the power of truth, that's the power of the bully pulpit. So what's been the reaction to to your criticize and criticism of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Or have have other musicians been

mostly positive or negative? What's the feedback last um? Everybody I've talked to, from people who have been on the nominating board to musicians who have been inducted, have said the same thing. They just say, it's just awful. And people on the nominating board have said, you know, we'd go have these meetings, we talked about groups and then Jan Winner and a few people going to the room and they'd come out and tell us what had happened. And I you know, one guy talked to quit after

two years. He just said this was a waste of time. So what's happened is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a whole lot bigger than John it's much bigger than his vision, and it has a much more important mission. We're talking about it now. People really care about it all over the world, and they're really missing an opportunity to spread music education and to um you know, basically make it a better, better organization. And right now, the board all the people that operate and run the

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When you have as you have New York, which is disruptive, snarky and out of touch and living in a bubble in Long Island and thinking they know everything there is to know about the world, and you have the under underpaid people running the museum in in uh you know leveland who are scared to death, who're afraid they're gonna lose their jobs, who have these tiny little budgets, who have a beautiful building, and they don't really have any leadership or any direction.

So it's just sitting there, just spinning its wheels. So what do you think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? What do you think it was? Like me? I've never been yeah, I mean, but when you watched the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I mean you see it on television, what do you think? So I used to watch the shows when they were on HBO, and they were a little you know, all all Awards shows are full of hot air and a lot of pontification. And you know, I have some of the criticism I've read.

Aren't a whole lot of people of color, aren't a whole lot of women. It's pretty much a narrow group and they need a little more diversity in the committee that's deciding who has entree. And I think that's reasonable criticism. So, you know, all of that's all obvious, obviously true. But I mean, just when I saw it, it it always looked

like a party. It always looked at me like Paul mccarton, who was having a great time with Elton John, who was having a great time with you know, whoever whoever was there, you know, with Chuck Berry, with whoever is ever on the stage. They're all there. It's all this great evening. You know what it was for my class this year of was a legal argument where they started off going, no, you can't. You can only have two tickets.

We want your band to come and play. You have to come and play, but we're not giving your band tickets. Starting the seats are are really expensive, well, there're ten thousand dollars a piece, you know, and so so, I mean it was just absurd. And then the contracts commitments were just absurd. Nobody would sign. Anybody with any kind of care about themselves wouldn't sign anything like this. And you'd say, well, what about these elements you want, We'd

like to have some input. No, there's no input. Well who's going to induct us will tell you who's going to induct you. You're not allowed to do. They just were. They didn't want to have to spend any time listening to what I wanted to do. It was like, we don't want to hear any of your ideas, any of your opinions. We don't have time to fool. If you were making a television show, your sound check is next

Wednesday at three o'clock in the afternoon period. So, if I was running the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there would be a dinner for inductees and inductors and the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the night before, and I would present to the inductees the programs that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is actually working on. And I would say, you know now that you're going to be inducted tomorrow night. We'd

really like to have your help. You can join us, Steve, we know you know about you know, publishing rights and stuff. Can you help us develop this? Could you teach a music class? Would you be willing to go to Cleveland? And you know all of that, none of that, there was nothing. You know, you didn't see each other. The inductees were really even introduced to each other. That's shocking

to to. You know, we put on a conference every year and the night before there's a big dinner and everybody gets to meet each other and you find out, like all sorts of fascinating thing. This was the cheapest crewdst ugliest, nastiest group of people I've ever worked with. And the great thing about it, the odd thing about it was somehow they make the television show look like everybody's having the best time. The guys who made that

television show from HBO, they get my vote. I want them to shoot my next concert because they could make anything look good. You know. Saturate It Live just had their fort anniversary and Jimmy Fallon was telling the story of what the band was like. It was a NonStop rotating group of people showing up on stage and like an insane a list of all time stars, and they would see someone in the audience and pull them up and they start and that's to answer your question. And

he described it as just amazing. And that's what I visualize the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame event to be like. But that's what that's nothing. I thought this is gonna be great. So what I found out was everybody was leaned on and pressured and treated poorly. We were never introduced. I never even met the Black Keys when I walked in and went through security to get in the building. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was a sound check. I had a hired handler. High.

My name's you know, Cindy, and I'm from you know, Celebrity Services, and I'm going to be your handler. Come on over here and sit down in this little cement room with these two metal chairs, you and your wife. We need you to stay here for about an hour and then we'll call you for your sound check. Go do the sound check, then back to the little room.

Then there was like a cocktail party for thirty minutes that we went to and then left, and then it was like there's your table over there, and we were taken to a table, sat down at a table with people we didn't even know. So this does not sound

like a Then we're inducted. And then went up in the stage and did my little acceptance speech, then went over and played three songs, then back down to watch the rest of the show, then back up for the completely phony jam session at the end that was just noise. And then uh into the back where I was like, hey, they didn't induct you for twenty three years, how does that make you feel? You know, some punk kid, you know. So this went well, you know, here's how I feel.

And it was told them, well, you know, somebody came in, some women came in and said all right, that's enough. We're gonna shut this down right now. And that's when I said, you need to sit down and learn something, you know, because they're just kids and they don't know what they're doing. You know. The people running it are tired, their weak, their worn out. They need They did a good job, they got a museum built, they they inducted the people they cared about. Now the gene pool needs

to really be enlarged, you know. And and there's a lot that that that museum can do. And it's a And my tour this year started in Cleveland. I booked it in Cleveland. I went right to the museum and went over and went through the whole museum and looked at it all and looked at what they were doing. And you know, they need a lot of help at that museum. They have an incredible building and they're trying. You know, they've got some new kids in who are trying to run it right now, but they don't have

any money. Their displays are terribly you know, executed. The light leaks in the black tunnels. It's cheap, it's dumb. You you go in there, and they have all this great stuff, but you know you can't see it. You can't. You know, it's a it's a museum design problem, you know. And they, I mean, they're they're in conflict with what the building is. The building is all light, it's all glass,

and they've liked built these dark tunnels. Look so look, I mean it starts right at the bottom, and it starts at the top, and it filters down and and and right now, like these guys need to retire. They need to be given a little badge and a little party and a pad in the back, and let's give him a big round of applause. And they need to be put out to pasture. And this needs to be taken away from Jon Winner who uses it as a tabloid. You know, he uses it to drive tabloid sales. That's

what he does. That's his trick. Hey, the black Keys don't like you, Let's print their article in your response. What do you say, Steve? You know, and you just go Yon, I'm not helping you sell anything, you know, So that aside, you know, he needs to be removed Grubman. Those contracts, the stuff they give the inductees, that needs to be completely thrown out and made simple and clear and honest and transparent. Their business is cloudy, deliberately murky.

They don't want any input, they don't want to have to waste any time with you sticky artists. They're worse than any record company I ever ever worked with. Really, absolutely that that's amazing. I'm Barry rich Halts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band. And let's jump right into our conversation about the future of music. We know recording isn't the money maker it once was,

so so how do musicians make a living these days? Well, the first thing is, you gotta write yourself out of this ghetto. You know. We just had this, uh discussion about legal problems that people have and uh, the Grubbin's of the world, in the corporations of the world that use the Grubman's of the world to develop these these contracts, and so we're in a situation now where very few people can actually make a living writing music or performing it.

And we're you know, we're kind of in a Sia circle, you know. I mean right now, if you're not an actor and a dancer and a video star and all of these things and groomed by maybe Disney from the time you're four years old, you know, you're kinda gonna have a hard time. It's always been kind of like that. There's always been those kind of entertainers. But the real

the only way to get out is uh. I mean, the tech companies are so far ahead of the government and regulation and law, and they've stolen so much just because it's so easy, and I can't audit anything. I have a half a billion streams a year and I get paid something like, you know, thirty seven thousand dollars for it, and I'm always in the wrong program. It's like the old as cap game, Like, oh g, you're

in the wrong songwriter's program. If you'd been in this one, you would have we would have paid you the same as Frank Sinatra. But you're not. You know, it's always a shell game for musicians, and it's always the artists are always the last to wake up and understand what's going on. So, you know, the guys who were running all of these streaming companies, they're screwing people like me.

You know, they're stealing from me. They're using my work and making billions of dollars and developing their future because they can, because nobody can catch up to them. They're so far ahead. So if you're an artist and you can't do what I did was like make a record and take it to a radio station and go give me a shot. Come on, man, play this, see if anybody likes it. My artist's name is Elvis. Put this on,

you know, do the Sam Phillips things. You know, that's all gone and and you know, to to promote a new album costs about five or six million dollars to do the justin Timberlake, where you spend forty million dollars and you sell nine hundred thousand records, but then you make six million dollars a night touring. That's a really that's that one tenth of one percent, and then everybody else is down here. I mean, Justin is a great artist.

I really I like his work and I like his writing, I love his dancing, I love his bands, I love his arranging and all that stuff. But he's in the world like like in five days. He can make what I make doing seventy cities with twenty five people in a year. So that's that's the dichotomy. And I'm considered like a real successful band because I go out now and six thousand people come to see me play or ten thousand people you know where it used to be

the football stadiums and stuff like that. But that's what I do. I go out and I love performing. So I'm doing seventy shows a year. I have to travel the seventy cities and buses and trucks and planes and with people in all that gear. You know, and that's a lean and mean machine. So let's talk about the technology. I hadn't thought about this previously. But you have the streaming companies like Spotify and Pandora on the one hand.

Then you have the all you can eat deals from Amazon and Apple, and then you have the iTunes you can buy an album in its digital form. Are any of these lucrative for artists anymore? None? Not, even if someone is. So if I go to buy an album off of iTunes or or Amazon and it's ten bucks, it's like the old days, ninety cents goes to the artist or something like that. Yeah. If and when you go to Apple and say, okay, everybody put their hands up,

we're gonna do an audit, there's no audit. There's no audit, there's no there's no a, there's no regulation, there's no group there, there's nothing you can do. You know, if you call up Apple and say hey, I don't like what you're doing, they go, we don't like what you're doing, and you know what, we're gonna sue you for interfering with our right to do business. And what our business is cutting up your work and selling it anyway. We want to so shut up or get sued. That's what

Apple said to me. And I called him up and said, hey, I don't want you to download Fly Like an Eagle as an album because I just downloaded it and paid for it and it came out in the wrong order. This is a book. It's a chapter. You know, you don't you don't print a book starting with chapter seven and then go to chapter one and then chapter nine. And that's what you guys are doing. You're just cutting

up my music. Oh you can't handle segways. You don't know how to do something that folds over something else. You're just gonna cut it in the middle wherever you think. Then don't even touch my music, okay. And they said, we're going to sue you for interfering with our right business. That's what it's like. Wow, that's that's crazy. So let's know. And so if I took your income and I knocked it down by and said, hey, what are you complaining about. You can do seven radio shows a week. You're only

doing one a week. You're lazy. Get back in here and go to work. You know, you guys, it's really great. You would look at that and just kind of go are you kidding me to say the least. So, so let's shift gears a little bit and talk about music, because really that's let's let's take this one step far.

So in the nineties, when I was touring and doing seventy cities a year, I was selling a million and a half records a year without any advertising from Capitol Records, to my fans, to the people who came to see me play. I had maybe of the songs, and those records were mine that I wrote, I owned the publishing, and all of that in come augmented what I did, what I could pay my band, the size of production I could do, and the kind of money I could

spend on producing new records. All of that income is gone gone. It's just went from like three or four million dollars a year to me at the just ninety cents of record out of the fifteen dollars they're selling it for, you know, the dollar plus the performance, right, Yeah, you know, all of that is gone. That that money is just gone. That money is now what's made Spotify

people billionaires and Doora. Go down the list that you just go down the list, man and there's there's four or five guys that are sitting here going, oh, I can't believe we got away with this. No, no, no, you know, I mean that's what they did. And every artist you've ever talked to has said the same thing. And so you're tell music like, yeah, but now you

can go out and tour. Well, who's gonna like be able to build a career now that you can't even it's impossible to get a career unless you've got five six million dollars to start it. You could go out and tour, but an up and coming band doesn't happen. Been touring for fifty years. So I have a built in audience, and I have this deal with my audience. You come to my show, we're gonna really give it up for real. You're gonna have a joyously good, great time.

And this is real music. We're not singing to sample tapes and a fake drum machine and music, live band, live music, live sound, live, p a, live everything. I've seen you several times. I saw you at Westberry Music Fair in the rounds. So the best part about that place is I get to watch like thirty seven guitars. It's been right, like you have a different guitar for every song, let's talk about guitarist and less about so

let's let's talk about you. Very famously said at a Christie's auction where Richard gears guitar collection went up, and you know you said that quote. I felt bad because it sounded like I wasn't impressed with his collection, which was a great collection, and there were some really wonderful instruments and that collection. And I have friends with Martin Guitar who were the guys on the phone buying their

guitars back. He had some great Martins in there. So someone said to you, you're not bidding and what was your response? Well, I just didn't see anything that you know, I needed in the in that that group. And I have an amazing collection guitars. I have about four hundred and fifty instruments, and I invest in guitars like you invest, you know about you know, I went, I called up a friend of mine and said, if I buy these guitarists, do you think what do you think this stuff will

be worth later? And they said, oh, you can probably make fifteen on your money, Steve, and I kind of went, oh, and I get to play with them, and you mean it's I have to go buy guitars nuts. People want to find your music you're writing, they go to where the where's the best place for well, you know the website, you know, Steve Miller band dot com. I mean that's all the music and all the news and are complete

catalog is listed there, the type everything else. Yeah, And whenever we work on new projects and stuff, we talk about those, and um, you know there's lots of stuff going on that that Now it's just kind of just stuff for fun, you know. You know. So I started and then I started building guitars. I started collecting guitars, and I started going around. Here's what it's like. Two weeks ago, I was in Paso Rovos, California, and a friend of mine said, Steve, my father in law as

a musician all his life. He's eighty years old, and he has a couple of guitars. Would you take a look these? Sure, there's a nineteen fifty five strat in nineteen fifty five gifts in uh E S three fifty t. These are all worth a lot of money, aren't they Just unbelievable? You know. So there are guitars out there all the time, and these are are really great, great instruments, and I'm gonna help them sell them for for for that, for their father in law needs the dough. Now, I've

seen some old less Poles the nineteen fifties. Let's pull that tore so yeah, and so that's what you know, I think, Richard. I can't remember what what was exactly at that show, but there was a Less poll or two and some stuff, and they weren't particularly the greatest ones. And I had all these people egging me on, saying, why don't let's make a film about you searching for this number one guitar? And I got there, said it's not the one I'd like to make the move of me,

but you know not now. And um, what I do is I take like the latest and greatest guitarist that Gibson makes the just you know, I think in my estimation to Billy Gibbons Pearly Gates reissue fifty nine, and I got that guitar. I bought eight of them, and I went all over the world found him and bought

eight of him and brought him back. And then I had another friend who had been spent his lifetime collecting real nineteen fifty nine p a f pickups and instead of paying three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a guitar like that, I took the fifty nine pickups, put in the Billy Gibbons guitar. Went Okay, let's call us at number one. That's on the road with me now. So I love guitars. It's it's it's an unending uh game.

And I just put sixty of my guitars. I'm seventy three, I'll be seventy three and a couple of weeks and so now it's time to like share this collection. It's time to move it, call it down to just the you know, I mean I've spent years and years and years collecting it. And they're all out, they're all they're in three different locations and they all hang on the walls and you can walk into room and yell at

them and all the strings vibrate. You know, it's like it's really so they're not in cases in the dark room, SCE and it's just time to sell them. And we put sixty of them up for sale and sold like I think thirty thirty two or three of them in the first forty eight hours. So there's a serious group of collectors who pursue these There's people all over the world, musicians, collectors, both collectors. We've been speaking with Steve Miller, rock and

roll songwriter, singer, guitarist. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and sticking around for the podcast after his will we keep the digital tape rolling developed by LS Paul and continue talking about all things rock and roll. If you would like to check out my daily column, you can go to Bloomberg View dot com or follow me on Twitter at rid Halts. I'm Barry Rid Halts. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Steve. Thank you so much for for

doing this. Barry, it's a pleasure talking to you. I've been I've been a fan of yours for a long time, and I first met you going to Lawrence Juber Show, someone else who I've been a fan of for a long time. Not only did you sing happy birthday to his wife, but you were absolutely gracious afterwards. You remember the show I'm referring to, You're absolutely gracious afterwards when I interrupted you to to say to l J, who

was actually pretty hilarious. L j come talk to me on the radio about being music, about what's the name of the show masters in business? He goes, what am I gonna tell you what stocks to pick? No, you're gonna talk about all the stuff that you've talked about today. So it's been really, really interesting, fascinating stuff. There's so much I didn't get to that I want to jump into. Um wet So we'll talk about books. I have to talk to you. Hold on, Hold on books for a second.

There are two things I must ask you about. One is the Metropoleum Museum and the other is The Joker following the car accident, and I suspect these are both interesting stories. So I'm a big fan of of blues as well as jazz and rock and roll. You mentioned Chicago. I've been to Kingston Mines. I've been to all these places there. And you really began as a blues guitarist.

That seems to be your biggest influence. You have a car accident, you break your neck, it takes a long time to recuperate, and then you come out of that and there's this radical change in the songwriting and playing, and the first album, The Joker just blows up So what took place during that convalescence that had you shift so much? I think you're kind of like, um, this is all after the fact. Yeah, I mean, you know, basically, like I had I started out, the game was to

make hit records. Les. Paul made twenty five hit records. You know, the Beatles had hit singles. Hit singles was was the important game when you made records coming out of San Francisco, the groovy you know, long play, all that stuff. Children in the Future, all those things were still trying to make hit singles, and we're learning, you know, and we were untouched by a M radio. We were like unclean to them. We were underground progressive rock, psychedelic

dungeon hippies, you know. You know, we got stigmatized immediately, and we couldn't get any airplay. And Capitol Records to kind of went like, we can't get in the airplay. We don't understand what the underground FM radio. It's nobody cares about that anyway, you guys are finished. So we were selling a lot of albums, but we were not

selling singles. And so I was, you know, selling two hundred thousand copies of Children in the Future and three hundred thousand copies of Brave New World and three thousand copies of whatever. The next one was in two or three hundred thousand copies number five and and and we were working like two hundred and fifty nights a year,

and we were broke. Were like two guys to a holiday in eating Handburgs and riding around in a step van with one roadie, you know, doing gig after gig after gig after gig, and then going to Europe and making the records and then coming back and going to Europe and tour and not being paid at all for that, and you know, we were really struggling and um. On the way to hear Up, I was in a car wreck in New York. We were going to the airport, and I had a new guy who was driving, and

we were in tandem. You know, there were three of us in a convoy. And I said, listen, Convoy driving is different. You can't go through a yellow light. You're leading the convoy or the guy in the back. You know, you you everything. You gotta slow down and you gotta get everybody through. We can't lose the third car, got it? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

just right into it. You know, and screwing up and he's going through the singing, and I was really concern and I would turn like this, and we got rear ended it about thirty five and I got a hairline fracture in my neck. You felt it when it happened. Oh man, you know, you know how everybody used to laugh at people that had suffered with flash. I felt like every joint in my body had crushed glass in

it for six months. I'm mean, if I didn't keep moving all the time, if I went to sleep, I'd wake up and got to go like, I don't want to move my wrist. It really was. So it didn't work for a year or so. And during that, you know, I started thinking, Wow, you know, I'm kind of like it me at the end of my deal. Here, I'm like, this is the seventh album is coming up, and nobody's calling me from Capitol Records. Hey, you know we you know, you and your lawyer need to come in here. We

need to talk about where going forward. Nothing And I had so a lot of albums, but they just were I was just off their radar. I was fighting with them all the time. And this kid came to my house and he delivered some wood and Mr Miller, would you listen to my cassette? And yeah, sure, I put it on. I went, God, I'm sitting here arguing with fifty year old men who don't like me, don't understand me, and this kid writes better songs, and I do it.

Least I've got a contract. He's delivering wood to my house. I'm just gonna go down and make a record. So I went to make The Joker. I got the band in for two days. I cut a bunch of R and B tunes. Quickly, I thought I was at the end of my career. I wasn't some oh boy, this is the Joker's a hit single, that's a pop too old, that something, you know, And I figured, man, I'm done, you know, twenty three to thirty something, and and I um, I go in and it's I got rid of all

my producers. Is the first record that I produced myself, was the Last Chance, my last record. And I finished the album in seventeen days. I had a very brief meeting with you know, some people of Capitol Records finished it. And then that afternoon, you know, we we snuck into like the executive room and like found out their speakers were out of phase and fixed all that a back stuff so that when we actually played it for them, they could hear it properly. I mean, it was amazing

how incompetent that they were there and played it. And this one kid goes, I think the Joker sounds like a hit single to me. Kid in the room, and I hand him a piece of paper and I said, look, here's a list of sixty cities I'm going to play in. And these are sixty cities. You need to have the albums and records stories when I get there. You guys

am not paying any attention to where I play. And you need when I go to you know, Gross Point in Michigan to play at ann Arbor, you know, for the University of Michigan, you need to have five thousand records in town because I'm gonna go play to thousands of people there, and you know, and they were just that's the argument left town and the Joker came out and it went viral. What we call going viral right now, Capital records and spending money, and they didn't promote it.

They just you know, printed some copies and sent him out. Off it went and when I got back three months later after doing the sixty Cities, I was I was driving to the theater, the Fox Theater in Oakland to go play another small little gig and The Joker was on four radio stations at the same time, and I was angry because it was not all five major radio stations since Everrances. They were only five then, and I was like, oh, it's here, who it's there? It was there.

They were playing it twice an hour, twenty four hours a day for a year on every AM radio station in the United States. And so I went from this underground guy who couldn't even talk to a DJ. I couldn't get arrested before that, but no television, no nothing, and and um, you know, to king of AM radio. So it's time for new contract then. So when you were writing The Joker, did you have any sense that, oh, this is the one. I mean, the guitar lick is kind of unique and kind of really different. So I

was really slow. It's really it's got a great groove, right, it's laid back, but it's so different than anything you did. Did you you had no sense and you know, this something really something happening. Yeah, I'd stop thinking about singles. Really, Yeah, so you do the new contracts and then the next two albums are just monstrosity. Yeah. So I come back from that tour and is so good right back in the studio, come on, make another one. I'm call it my agent, Milt Leave. I said, Milt, I'm taking a

year off work. Last night anyway, what you know, And I said, I'm taking a year off man, I'm exhausted. I'm so burned out, you know. It took the band into the studio. We're there for two days, and I just went, let's get figured they were just wasting money. And uh then I went back to California and and there was a check for three five thousand dollars in my mailbox with the junk mail for for what for the joker? Oh that was all the radio. Really, Hey,

I think I'll maybe a house. Maybe we'll go back into the Let's get an eight track tape recorder and put it in the house. And so I put it in. I bought a house. I bought a new house. Where was that in Nevato, California, Just the past Mill Valley,

a little bit north of the city. And and I, uh put an eight track tape recorder in there, Dick sweating him the guy had met in UH nine seven at the Olympic Studios built me my own little board, the first one that where you could have stereo panning and eight separate tracks for a headphone set, and did some technology things like that, and I started work on Fly Like an Eagle and Book of Dreams, and I did them both at the same time, just like with

the Beatles when they were ahead went I'm gonna get ahead of this. I'm gonna have thirty songs. So you were you were paying attention and learning from from your experience. When I turned in Fly Like an Eagle, Book at James was done and that did you let them know that or you held that back? No, I didn't tell him anything. So before we get to the books, because

there is stuff that I want to talk about. Um, there's some really interesting electronic effects in both of those and what otherwise could have been an intro to a song is separated as a separate cut, and I read somewhere that that was done on purpose. Well, I was very interested in electronic music way before this all started. I was into stock housing in the early sixties and

that was all electronic music. And I met Stockhausing. I went to Germany and met him and watched him do recording sessions and stuff, and and those seg ways were pieces of music. Now Capitol Records just want to go, oh, that's just nothing to but the segways and Fly like an Eagle. That album was designed so you couldn't take it off the turntable. And and those in those interstitials are so musically interesting and transition from song to songs.

So when they were longer than a certain amount of time, I I copy wrote them. I mean I had them copy written as compositions song as they are. And you know, I remember taking a scuba diving course one time in Hawaii and kind of went in for the class and hey, hey, and they had stolen my music and used it in their diving films. People used that stuff all over the world. Man,

that that was like hot sauce to people. Jet Jetliner and all all those you know, the segue into Fly like an Eagle, all that off is used and it's licensed and they are compositions. Well that turns out to be very um pressing and fortuitous to go to my thesaurus, because those two albums sold exceedingly well, and pretty much the greatest hits is the bulk of those um as well as a couple of other um other covers. Uh you sent me if I'm remembering that, that was a

beautiful version of that song. Like you don't, you don't do a lot of covers. You don't do a lot of other people's No, you know, I, um, actually I have. You know, it's just the stuff I've written over shadows that I've done lots of covers. That's not true. I've done lots of Jimmy Read tunes and lots of blue stuff, done lots of you know, let your Hair Down and

Bingo were all covers, and so I've done. If you guess you take the the full body of work and you say how many covers, you know, maybe it's like sevent original twenty five percent other people's material. I was. I was listening to Bengo this morning. I like it a lot. I'm surprised. Um, well, back to the roots, back to the blues. It's really Yeah, those were great tunes that and that sounded like you're having fun doing it, which leads me to a question we skipped before, So

what sort of stuff. Do you really enjoy playing? And then we'll jump right into the books. Well, I you know, this is sounds pretty stocked, But I really loved playing my music with my band. I mean, I'm tomorrow, I'm flying to Chicago and I'm playing tomorrow night and I can't wait. Really, yeah, you said you're coming up on fifty years. You still love to hit the stage? Is still love performing? I love the interaction between a live audience and a live band. And all my songs are

sort of just signed where there's some spontaneity. I learned from jazz and blues. That's what I really the people I learned from. And you know, when I was watching les Pa, i was five years old. He was soloing like a bandit and it was all spontaneous and it wasn't the same note note every night. It was always different. And I learned that. So it's like you don't know exactly what's gonna happen. I compared to like playing basketball

in the playoff level. It's the playoffs. Okay, you've just done you know, played you know, ninety games or whatever it is, and now it's in the new six week season to get to the final, and you gotta take it up a notch. You gotta be really good every night. You don't want to be so good you're flat the next night. You don't want to ever be flat ever you wanted. At this high professional level, everybody's dialed in, everybody's paying attention. Everything set up and it's like basketball.

The ball bounces on the floor and then the game starts and it's a different way around the court for each song. And so that's what I really I love that, And I mean I love playing blues. I like playing eclectic blues tunes like Louisiana Blues, forty four blues that I have these odd rhythm signatures and they're kind of Delta Appalachian, kind of early American things, you know that got pulled out of Memphis and up to Chicago. That stuff is fascinating to me. So so we've talked about

your music, We've talked about your guitar collection. How did you get involved with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a couple of shows that you've you've done with them. What I've decided to move to New York four years ago. I always wanted to live here just because of the culture, and um Rudy Penza who has a music store of Rudy's. I've been working for the longest time to get the

Metropolito Aton to do uh a guitar show. And it was called Guitar Heroes, Legendary Craftsman from Italy to New York. It was about arch top jazz guitars like Bucky Plays. You know John's dad and John you know those are arch top guitars. Well, that guitar comes straight from Strata By It's just started in fourteen ninety nine or whatever

it was. And they've been making those instruments, right, And there were some Italian guys in New York, di Equisto being you know, one of them in Diangelico being one in monteleone, right, So they decided they were going to do a show at the met on these guitars. Oh, Steve Miller, you have seven di aquesto guitars. Jimmy was a really good friend of mine. He made my instruments. They were the best instruments in the world. Those are the ones I wanted to play. And um, can we

use three of your instruments at the Metropolitan Museum. And I was gonna go well, you know, hey, you know, I don't know. And I'm talking to him from Sun Valley, Idaho, where I live and at my studio. Right they said, it an air condition humidified air ride druck from New York to Sun Valley to pick up the three guitars and take them back to the met Very impressive. So I said, all right, all right. So they said, well, look,

we know you're going to be in New York. Why don't you come by and say hi and we'll do a little video interview. I said, I'd love to. So I go in and I meet all the people in music instrument department, and I meet Jason Dabney and I meet Sally Brown, and there's like I'm in a room and there's like forty t Angelico guitars or something good. You want to play this one? You want to try that one? And and I'm looking at him and I said, you guys are going to have a concert, right, you

got a theater here, And they said a concert? How would we do that? And I said, well, let me put a concert together for you. I mean, you should do that. So I really liked them, They really liked me. I helped him put a concert together. They said, we want you to join the board of the musical instrument department at the met So I said, I'll do it. So now that after that, then we did the Martin Show and we're now we're redesigning the gallery. So I

just slid into town and took over the Metropolitan Museum. No, I mean I was invited, you know, I'm just by luck. And and you know, the same thing happened at Jazz at Lincoln Center. I went to see went and play, and he said, I want you to help me put the blues pedagogy together for Jazz at Lincoln Center. We we don't know what the hell we're doing, and we need to teach this and we need to design these programs. And the next thing I know, I ended up on

that board. And and so you've become real cultural as part of new really have jumped right into the heart of it, and have found that so many people receptive of my ideas. And maybe I'm giving Alan Grubman a hard time. He deserves a hard time. You know. Uh, there's a lot of great culture here and there's so

many great people working. I mean, I've met so many interesting people in the projects I'm working on now a ton of energy in the are really wonderful projects in the circles of support around all of it is amazing, and the educational reach of it is all great. That's why I can look at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and just smack those guys around and say you need to wake up. They're telling me we have to wrap you have places to go. Okay, I got lots of other questions. We have to we have to

bring you back. And I want to get your readers some books. Yeah, okay, can we do a quick book run really quick? Okay, so you know your readers, your listeners, listeners. Here's a list of great books for you to read. Okay. In other Words by Anthony da Curtis, really interesting articles

about musicians. These are all music books. Alta Blues by Ted Joya last trained to Memphis, Peter very Famous, Sam Phillips, A Man who vented rock and Roll by Peter Girl nick Um, How Music Got Free by Stephen With That is literally sitting on my night table, the red red cover right. The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman, which is, yeah, that's do you have to read that his New York Magazine stories have propelled of course. And and I'm Your Man by Sylvie Simmons Simmons, which is

a book about Leonard Cohen that's fascinating. So you want to read some musical biographies. And then the last one, I recommend to everyone if you really want to laugh, get the Eddie Fisher bio. It's it's unbelievably, it's hilarious. Um. I saw k D. Lange do a version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah that makes the hair on my name unbelieve. She did a version of the joke her no kidding, Yeah, and she did, she did. She was the only person that's covered the joker and nailed it. We're gonna have

to have you back. I have so many more questions for you. Next time. I want you to bring the guitar. We'll we'll play a couple of songs. You know I can do that next time you're in town. Um, we've been speaking to the one and only Steve Miller. Um um le defense. That's right, Uh A rack contour in a difference in addition to being a UH singer, songwriter, guitarist.

That that's that's exactly right. UM. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and look up an Inch or down an Inch on iTunes, where the other hundred and nine of these are available for free download. That's how much I make from iTunes. Is exactly this, UM. I would be remiss if I did not think Charlie Volmer, my recording engineer, Taylor Riggs, my booker. UM, you've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio two