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Interview With Steve Miller: Masters in Business (Audio) · Masters in Business

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholds on Bloomberg Radio.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: So I had an absolute blast on this week's podcast. Um,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Steve Miller, he literally is a rock and roll star.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: When I was in high school, his albums were ubiquitous. Uh,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Fly like an Eagle, Book of Dreams. Those were always
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: on the radio. I've been a fan of his for
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: a while. Uh, I wish we had more time. We
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: were talking for ninety minutes. I got to like a
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: third of my questions. Every single question led to a
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: another story of his. And when a guy like Steve
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Miller is telling you stories, you sit there, you shut up,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: you listen and enjoy the ride. It. It was really
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a blast. Uh. One other funny, little, funny little story.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: So the show finishes, they have to go somewhere, and
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I promised I would get them out of on time.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: We're still a half hour late. Where we finish up,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: he signs a couple of albums for me, which was
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: really nice. He didn't have to do that. He did
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: a little picture of of the Joker on one of
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the albums. I thought that was super cool. Um, I'll
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: take a picture and post it on Twitter. But then
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: we're outside and I take we're taking photos in order
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: to you know, I take a photo of every guest,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: and it's he and I taking a photo. And as
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: as as we're taking the picture, who walks by in
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: front of us, but none other than Mr Mike Bloomberg.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: And generally the protocol at the Bloomberg building when anybody
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: famous is around, you know, it's a quiet nod. It's
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: very low key. Every time I'm there, there's some famous
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: hedge fun manager, musician, actor. I'm in and out of
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: the I'm in and out of the green room for
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Charlie Rose. Because where Bloomberg Radio is is adjacent to that,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I always see all sorts of amazing guests there. But anyway,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: we're standing there having our photos taken, and it was
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: cute to see Steve Miller sort of gush over a
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: celebrity to him, Hey, there's the mayor, Mr mayor, Hi,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: nice to see you. It was. It was really very
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: amusing and very charming, and and the mayor just kind
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: of nodded and walked by. I can't imagine that he
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: had any idea who this was, um, but this was
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: just a charming and delightful interview. If you are at
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: all interested in the music industry, recording rock and roll,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: anything along those lines. This was really a crazy educational experience.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: All your worst expectations of of the record industry are
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: met with no further ado my conversation with Steve Miller.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Berry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: My special guest today has gone by a number of names.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: You might know him as the Space Cowboy, the Gangster
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: of Love, or just Maurice. He's best known as Steve Miller,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: an American singer, songwriter, guitarist. He first formed his band
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six in San Francisco. His greatest hits
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: album V sold thirteen million copies. He has twelve albums
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: in the top forty in the United States, and all told,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: he has sold over sixty million copies. Steve Miller, Welcome
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. Hi Berry, how are you great? I'm thrilled
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: to have you. I have a million questions for you. Um.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I've been a fan of yours for a long time.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I've seen you live several times, both with the Steve
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Miller bands and when you were supporting Lawrence Jubert at
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: the cutting room. That was a wonderful evening. Um, let's
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: let's go way back. You grew up early in your
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: childhood in Wisconsin, and the rumor is you were taught
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: your first three chords by none other than Less Paul.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: How on earth did that come about? This? It was
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: really interesting. My um my family lived in Milwaukee, so
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I was born in Milwaukee, and it was ninety three
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: when I was born, so World War two was still
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: on in nineteen fifty, nineteen fifty somewhere in there. It
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: was about five, so I guess it was forty eight.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Less Paul came to town and he and Mary Ford
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: were not married yet, and they were playing at a
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: nightclub around the corner from this funky downhouse we lived
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: in downtown Milwaukee. My dad had a Magna Order, which
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: was one of the first professional tape recorders in the
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: United States. It was like German technology stolen during World
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: War Two and now America had tape instead of wire recorders.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: And the old man was really you know, he had
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: a Magna Order, and he went around the corner and
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: introduced himself to Less Paul and said, I got a
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Magna order, and I'd like to come in and record you.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Unless said that'd be great, come on down. So my
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: father started taking me to a place called Jimmy Fazzio's
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Supper Club was where this west and started taking me
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: into the nightclub. And I was watching Less Paul and
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Mary Ford and what they were doing was they were rehearsing.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: They were playing in front of an audience at a
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: nightclub in Milwaukee off the beaten Path, right, putting their
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: show together for their television show where they were going
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: to come to New York into this tele vision show.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: So we'll Wolfie Way off Broadway. Yeah, and you know
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a little side tracking close to where less Less was
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: born and where his mother lived and stuff like it.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: So we're watching Less Paul and Mary Ford perform, and
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: my father's recording it, and so less Paul is coming
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: over to the house and listening to it. And pretty
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: soon Less and Mary and Sonny and Bert, my mom
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: and dad were really good friends. A lot of drinking, smoking, carousing,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: listening to music. And pretty soon, you know, Charles Mingus
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: and you know, tal Farlowe and Red Norvau and all
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: these people were hanging out at the house. And I
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: was like, yeah, boy, this this looks like fun. You know,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: this this playing music is really great. I already had
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: a guitar. My uncle was a musician, and another uncle
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: who played in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. He's a hot
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: jazz violinist. So you have a lot of musical influences
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: in your family. And my mother is a great singer. Yeah,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: and so uh. During the depression, all my relatives went
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: to medical school and became doctors. So my dad was
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: a doctor. He was a pathologist, So this was all
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: hobby stuff for them. I got my uncle's guitar, les
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Paul shows up at the house, shows me my first
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: three chords. I'm in love with Mary Ford. She's the
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: most beautiful woman in the world. And knowingly I understand
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: that he's like speeding this tape recorder that we have
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: up and down. He's making his guitar solo sound faster,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: and you know, he's records it slow, so you played back, Yeah,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: he records faster, and it's got a baseline when he
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: plays it back at normal speed. And that Mary singing
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: multiple parts, well, you know, thirty five years later or
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: whatever it was. That's that's how I started making my living,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: was playing multiple parts. Guitarists and doing multiple vocal tracks.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: So that raises an interesting question. At what point did
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: you say to yourself, Hey, I can make a living
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: with this this music. Then well, I didn't really think
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: I could make a living in this music until about
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, after I had gone to the University
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin for four years and the University Copenhagen for a year.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I never really thought i'd be a professional musician because
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: I came from this very middle class like, hey, you're
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: gonna have to get a job, and uh, as much
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: as everybody loved musicians, there weren't any good gigs. Being
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: a musician wasn't a good gig. Yeah, working in a nightclub,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: you know, basically with drug dealers and hookers and cops
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: and mafia people. So not a lot of money and
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: not great surround it. So after the after school, I
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: went down to Chicago and Paul Butterfield was playing Paul
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Butterfield Blues blues band at a place called Big John's
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: and he had a record contract, and I went record contract,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Hey I could do this, Maybe I could make a
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: litting doing this, and said I moved to Chicago immediately
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: put a band together with a guy named Barry Goldberg,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: a great keyboard player and writer. We immediately got our
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: record contract, had the worst manager in the world, and
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: I learned all the things not to do very quickly
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: got out of that and then ended up in San
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Francisco and had a reset and was able to get
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: my own contract and do my own and you very
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: famously had a tremendous contract that was different from a
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: lot of standards. You know, it's it's funny, you know,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: like it's what all I did was just common sense.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: And um, I did a couple of things. I knew
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: a couple of things, and one was I needed to
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: own my publishing and I and I had had this
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: little taste of recording in Chicago with Barry for Epic
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Records I think or Mercury, I can't remember what it was,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: and we had a little run. We were on Hullabaloo
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: with the Supremes and the Four Tops, and then it
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: was all over. And I learned that, like, I didn't
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: want anybody coming in and telling me what to play
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: or record, like, hey kid, you need to move more,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: and you know, you have to change those trousers. You know.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: There was a lot of that, and uh, you know,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't want anyone to own any of my songwriting.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: So when I got to San Francisco, I was in
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: the middle of a feeding frenzy. I had fourteen record
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: companies trying to sign me. Only three of them were important.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: The rest of them were all like you know, fly
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: by night, independent, small, big promises, no delivery kind of guys.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: And I had a friend who was a prosecuting attorney
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and I went to him and I said, these guys
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: are thieves that this built in theft. Uh, they're they're
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: gonna want to do this, this, this, And what I
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: need is complete artistic control. I need to own my publishing,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: in my songwriting, and I need enough money to make
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: five albums. It's gonna take that long. And as long
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: as they're here, I don't I'm not signing a deal
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: until I get those things. And everybody went, well, that's
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: unheard of. And you know, basically it was just common sense.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: There wasn't anything. You know, sometimes big ideas like that
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: just seem so simple, like Les Paul was a genius,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: but all the stuff he invented was really simple and straightforward.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: And do you think about it later, forty years later,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: of what he achieved. And you know, this multiple track
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: tape recorder your engineers fooling with, you know, is a
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: direct result of Less Paul's ideas in the forties. So
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: what's the what's the old expression? Uh? Common sense is
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: surprisingly uncommon. Yeah, I'm Barry Ridhults. You're listening to Masters
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Steve Miller, best known for the Steve Miller Band. He
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: is a singer, songwriter and guitarist and pretty much beloved
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: by musicians all over. We were talking earlier about the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: feeding frenzy in San Francisco when you first went out there. Um,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: you told an interesting story some time ago about how
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Capital try to put you into their midnight recording slot.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: If I'm remembering that correctly, and you would have nothing
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: of it, you ended up going to the UK. Well,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: it was what happened was we were a San Francisco group.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: There's a big dichotomy between l A and San Francisco,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: and l A was like this horrible commercial group of sharks,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and San Francisco was this hippie peace, love and happiness
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: kind of community where all the bands shared information and everything.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: So Alan Livingston the president of Capitol Records was the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: guy who negotiated it with me for nine months and
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: finally said, okay, you can. We'll give you the contract
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: you want. We really want to sign you. So we
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: load up all our gear and we go down to
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: l A to do our first recording session. And I'm thinking,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: I just signed with Capitol Records, less Paul's label, my
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: godfather's label. I can't believe this. This is so cool,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: and now I've got all these great resources and it's
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: gonna be you know, I'm gonna make this great album.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: They said, well, we don't have any studio time open
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: until midnight at midnight. And they said, yeah, we're just
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: booked and said, but we've got you booked at midnight.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: So I come in at midnight and we spend a
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: couple hours unloading all our gear we just drove down
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: from set versus setting it up, and we start to
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: do a session. It's like four in the morning, and
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: I just said, I can't do anymore. I mean, I
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: can't sing. I'm I'm exhausted. I gotta go to bed.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: So I said, all right, we'll come back tomorrow at midnight.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: I come back the next night at midnight and they said,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: you gotta move all your equipment out of Studio B
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: and put it in stood d O A. And he said, well,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: we just set it up. What's going on here? And
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: they said, I got somebody else coming into the studio.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have to move it. So we moved it
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: to Studio A, got ready to record, and the engineering
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: staff walked out. So they didn't like us. They thought
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: we were hippies. They they thought we were anti war
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: demonstrating bad people. They really did not. And these were
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: a bunch of like crew cutted, ex Vietnam veteran kind
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: of union studio guys. And and this was a situation
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: where as a musician, I was not allowed to touch
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: a microphone or the console, and there was a guy
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: from the Musicians Union who sat in the control booth
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: to make sure nobody did it. It was the craziest
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: goofy ist, overly featherbedded, just everything that's wrong with unions
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: was on display right there in l A. So second night,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I've had it, so I call up my my executive
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: producer at Capitol Records, John Palladino, an ex marine by
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: the way, It was a great guy. And I loved him,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: and they said, John, you can have the money back,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: you can have your contract back. Nuts to you, guys,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I'm done, you know. And oh no, no, no, no, no,
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: God no no, Steve, no no no, no, no, no,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: no no no, I'm gonna you know, listen, this just
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: isn't And so because I had all of this control,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: I then started looking around for different studios and I
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: realized that like these guys in l A didn't like me,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: and they weren't gonna help me. They're gonna sabotage me.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: And that this new deal I just made with Capitol Records,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: where I thought I was going to get all his help,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I was one of like two hundred bands fighting for
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: limited resources with razor Blade men, you know, and management
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and stuff. I mean, I just jumped into a world
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: that was like I was so naive about the politics
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: of the record company, of the corporate world. Those are
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: all the worst stories you've ever heard about the record
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: industry in Los Angeles and what it's like to a
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: major You lived it, Yeah, So, so what did you
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: do in response to no studio available? So I started
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: looking around in London and we found out about Olympic Studios,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: talked to George Martin, who's the producer of the Beatles.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: He was willing to do it, but he wanted to
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: have five percent or something and I wouldn't give it
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to him. Well he's George Martin, Yeah, and I was
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: going no, no, no, no, no, it's way too much.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: So I worked with Glenn John's and Glenn was an engineer.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: So we pack up everything board the U s s
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: United States in January making Atlantic Crossing. That was I
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: was seasick for five days. When it's just oh my god,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: whatever you do. Get to London, go over to Olympic Studios,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: set up and procol Harem's there, Peter Frampton's there, the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Rolling Stones are there, the who just left you know,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: I mean just Jimmy Hendrix has been to town. Everything's
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: going on, you know, and we're right in the middle
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: of it, Walkington and you have yet to record your
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: first album, right, this is the first one. Yeah. We
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: land there and as soon as we started playing, it
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: was like we had brought manna from heaven. We were
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the most juicy, live, ist, greatest sounding band in London
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: at that particular time. Everybody else sounded real stiff and
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: you know, working real hard to make pop records and stuff,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: and they just loved us. So we had this great,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: great period of sessions and we ended up making I
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: think the first four albums were actually you know, Wally
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Hiders in San Francisco and then back to Olympic to
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: mix and back and forth. Nicky Hopkins was playing with us,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and we were just in the middle of this world
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: international scene. It was much better than being in l A.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: And engineering was much hipper. And there was a guy
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: there named Dick Swettenham who invented a lot of the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: digital equipment we all used today. He was one of
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the inventors of it. I mean, he was talking about
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: the digital, the coming digital world, and we were going,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: what it's gonna be on crystals? There's not gonna be
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: any tape what you know. We didn't know this nineteen seven,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: and so that's how it all started and it was
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: really exciting. I read something I think it was with
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Um Gibson guitar had a a series of interviews with you.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: If I'm remembering correctly, and that may be wrong, but
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: you talked about the process that the Beatles had for recording,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: where you would spend days on a song and they
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: would bang stuff out. Well. You know, later in nineteen
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: sixty nine, I got to meet the Beatles and um,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: they were working in their last album and Glenn was
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: the engineer and I recorded with Paul and I was
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: hanging out with these guys for a few days, and um,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: you know, it was so hard as a writer to
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: get to our player to have rubber soul come out,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: you know, and you're getting what you know, it's so great,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: you know. They just were so in the moment and
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: so incredibly talented. If we had the book of the
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: four hundred songs at the Beatles recorded and we went
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: through it, you and I would both be going, oh
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: my god, I forgot about those I forgot about Oh
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: my god. Look look, look, look it's an astonishing It
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: is an astonishing catalog, all done under incredible pressure, horrible
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: situations of just you know, being followed by the press
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: of If we were the Beatles in nineteen nine and
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: we were doing this interview, there'd be fifty people right
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: outside that window, going, Steve just or Paul just scratched
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: his head, or they he just stood up, you know,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, they'd be reporting on everything. These guys did.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And how they were creative I don't know. But what
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: I found out was they had a language. Paul and
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: John communicated at a level that was so funny and
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: so witty and so clever. I mean, Paul walked into
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: the studio and said, good morning everybody, and you kind
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: of went, wasn't that great? Did you get that on tape?
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Did did you hear that? It was just that good?
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: You know? And their conversation back and forth and stuff,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: and I just went, ah, I really am in the
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: presence of you know, Rogers and Hammersteiners, something believable writers
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: and this I I have limitations these guys don't and
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I don't have I can't be as great as they are.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: And then I found out that they just made they
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: It was like work. They got to the studio ten
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: thirty morning, they were done at three thirty in the afternoon.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: They had their tea break, and they went home and
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: they recorded four songs and if they needed something else,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: he wrote, Hey Jude that night and had come in
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: the next day and do it. It was like that.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: And what I found out even that was even more
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: interesting was when I was there, I saw them record,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: get back and uh, um, come Together, I think was
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the other one. And uh, they had forty songs in
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the can already waiting to come out. Yeah, and they yeah.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: I mean it was an unbelievable lesson forty songs. They
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: were ahead of the game forty songs. Everybody else was like, well,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: the boys are working on the album, and uh, they've
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: got a tour right now and it'll probably be you know,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: two years until they come out with another record. What
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: what was the name of the band? You know, And
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: these guys were so far ahead of the game, um
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: that they did a couple of things and they just
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: pulled like eight other songs and they threw an album out.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I went to Paris to go play a gig, and
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: when I came back three days later, that song and
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: record was number one in Europe, was already recorded, released
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: an out. I mean it was recorded the week before,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: it was out in the next three days. And I
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: mean it was like totally different than America, where they
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: go all right, to finish the album, now next January,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: we're going to release it was fooling around, hot off
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: the press, number one, and and Paul liked those first takes.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: He said that each subsequent take wasn't as good. I
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: recall you saying something that's right. It was always the
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: first take is the one that has the magic. So
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: if you're not really paying attention, you kind of going, oh,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, I want to do that again. It's
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: not gonna be as good, and then I can make
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: that better than it just goes down. The level of
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: inspiration or presents gets duller and duller and duller. But
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: when you walk in and lay it down, you're done.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: I'm Barry rid Halts. You're listening to Masters in Business
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this week is a
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: rock and roll star. It's Steve Miller or the Steve
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Miller band, singer, songwriter, guitarist. Um has band dissold over
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: sixty million copies, and he was recently inducted into the
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which led to some
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: interesting controversy. So so let's talk a little bit about
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Is this a
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: cultural institution or is this really just a tourist trap
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: in Cleveland. We know it's not a tourist trap in Cleveland.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful museum in Cleveland and a beautiful site,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: and uh, it is a cultural institution and a lot
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: of great work has been laid down and put in place,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and the current leadership is exhausted, doesn't have a vision
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and basically as just running it too to gather funds
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: for the future. And what they're doing right now is
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: very flimsy. You know, They've set up a lot of stuff,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: but they're out following through very well. So the Rock
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame, you know, when Ahmad Ergan
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: put it together and Jan Winner was his little henchman,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and Alan Grubman was their lawyer. He basically had a
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: combination of three egos and the communicator was Ahmad Air
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: again and Jan Winner on snarky little tabloid magazines and
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that's the way he plays artists. So you have a
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: situation where you have just horrible legal requirements for people
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: who are inducted, absolutely the worst. It's not just a
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: straight up, hey, you're inducted, show up at the States.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: We had a ninety day argument. It never has been
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: totally resolved, completely unreasonable. Uh, we had all of these problems,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: and so what what you have when when the leadership
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: is snarky and legally incorrect. You have a situation where
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: most artists that I saw were kind of going, I
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: don't care, I'll sign anything. I'm in the Hall of fame. Man.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: It's just like when you're the kid who's written the songs,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: and I bring you to my office, take you out
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: for dinner, then I take you over to the recording studio.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Then I bring you back to my office with the
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Platinum Records in the wall. I hand you a thirty
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: page contract and you sign it, and I give you
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: a check for ten thousand dollars, and now I own
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: everything you've ever you'll ever do for the rest of
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: your life. That's exactly the way they operated. And I
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: just looked at it and said, you're nuts. Well, I'm
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: not doing that. You know, I'm not signing this. I'm
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: not giving you, you know, lifetime rights to that. I'm
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: not going to provide this until you provide, you know, clear.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Their contract work was so goofy, it was just silly.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: So the pushback, well, I should say the controversy that
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: developed was, um, you basically criticize them, you in in
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: salt your language, then we're using here you had you
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: had less lovely things to say and it really carried
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: quite a distance. And I want to read a quote
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: to you. Bob left Sets, who's the music industry insider
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: and has been writing about the industry for a long time, said,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: what's what's so astonishing about this Steve Miller thing? The
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: reach it's gotten. That's the power of truth, that's the
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: power of the bully pulpit. So what's been the reaction
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: to to your criticize and criticism of the Rock and
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Roll Hall of Fame? Or have have other musicians been
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: mostly positive or negative? What's the feedback last um? Everybody
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: I've talked to, from people who have been on the
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: nominating board to musicians who have been inducted, have said
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: the same thing. They just say, it's just awful. And
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: people on the nominating board have said, you know, we'd
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: go have these meetings, we talked about groups and then
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Jan Winner and a few people going to the room
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and they'd come out and tell us what had happened.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: And I you know, one guy talked to quit after
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: two years. He just said this was a waste of time.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: So what's happened is the Rock and Roll Hall of
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Fame is a whole lot bigger than John it's much
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: bigger than his vision, and it has a much more
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: important mission. We're talking about it now. People really care
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: about it all over the world, and they're really missing
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: an opportunity to spread music education and to um you know,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: basically make it a better, better organization. And right now,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: the board all the people that operate and run the
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When you have as
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: you have New York, which is disruptive, snarky and out
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: of touch and living in a bubble in Long Island
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: and thinking they know everything there is to know about
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: the world, and you have the under underpaid people running
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the museum in in uh you know leveland who are
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: scared to death, who're afraid they're gonna lose their jobs,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: who have these tiny little budgets, who have a beautiful building,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: and they don't really have any leadership or any direction.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: So it's just sitting there, just spinning its wheels. So
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: what do you think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: What do you think it was? Like me? I've never
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: been yeah, I mean, but when you watched the Rock
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame, I mean you see it
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: on television, what do you think? So I used to
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: watch the shows when they were on HBO, and they
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: were a little you know, all all Awards shows are
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: full of hot air and a lot of pontification. And
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I have some of the criticism I've read.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Aren't a whole lot of people of color, aren't a
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: whole lot of women. It's pretty much a narrow group
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: and they need a little more diversity in the committee
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: that's deciding who has entree. And I think that's reasonable criticism. So,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: you know, all of that's all obvious, obviously true. But
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, just when I saw it, it it always looked
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: like a party. It always looked at me like Paul mccarton,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: who was having a great time with Elton John, who
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: was having a great time with you know, whoever whoever
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: was there, you know, with Chuck Berry, with whoever is
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: ever on the stage. They're all there. It's all this
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: great evening. You know what it was for my class
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: this year of was a legal argument where they started
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: off going, no, you can't. You can only have two tickets.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: We want your band to come and play. You have
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: to come and play, but we're not giving your band tickets.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Starting the seats are are really expensive, well, there're ten
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars a piece, you know, and so so, I
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: mean it was just absurd. And then the contracts commitments
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: were just absurd. Nobody would sign. Anybody with any kind
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: of care about themselves wouldn't sign anything like this. And
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: you'd say, well, what about these elements you want, We'd
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: like to have some input. No, there's no input. Well
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: who's going to induct us will tell you who's going
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: to induct you. You're not allowed to do. They just were.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: They didn't want to have to spend any time listening
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: to what I wanted to do. It was like, we
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: don't want to hear any of your ideas, any of
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: your opinions. We don't have time to fool. If you
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: were making a television show, your sound check is next
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Wednesday at three o'clock in the afternoon period. So, if
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: I was running the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: there would be a dinner for inductees and inductors and
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: the night before, and I would present to the inductees
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the programs that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: is actually working on. And I would say, you know
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: now that you're going to be inducted tomorrow night. We'd
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: really like to have your help. You can join us, Steve,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: we know you know about you know, publishing rights and stuff.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Can you help us develop this? Could you teach a
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: music class? Would you be willing to go to Cleveland?
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: And you know all of that, none of that, there
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: was nothing. You know, you didn't see each other. The
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: inductees were really even introduced to each other. That's shocking
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: to to. You know, we put on a conference every
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: year and the night before there's a big dinner and
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: everybody gets to meet each other and you find out,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: like all sorts of fascinating thing. This was the cheapest
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: crewdst ugliest, nastiest group of people I've ever worked with.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: And the great thing about it, the odd thing about
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: it was somehow they make the television show look like
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: everybody's having the best time. The guys who made that
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: television show from HBO, they get my vote. I want
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: them to shoot my next concert because they could make
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: anything look good. You know. Saturate It Live just had
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: their fort anniversary and Jimmy Fallon was telling the story
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: of what the band was like. It was a NonStop
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: rotating group of people showing up on stage and like
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: an insane a list of all time stars, and they
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: would see someone in the audience and pull them up
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: and they start and that's to answer your question. And
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: he described it as just amazing. And that's what I
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: visualize the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame event to
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: be like. But that's what that's nothing. I thought this
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: is gonna be great. So what I found out was
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: everybody was leaned on and pressured and treated poorly. We
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: were never introduced. I never even met the Black Keys
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: when I walked in and went through security to get
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: in the building. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: was a sound check. I had a hired handler. High.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: My name's you know, Cindy, and I'm from you know,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Celebrity Services, and I'm going to be your handler. Come
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: on over here and sit down in this little cement
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: room with these two metal chairs, you and your wife.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: We need you to stay here for about an hour
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: and then we'll call you for your sound check. Go
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: do the sound check, then back to the little room.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Then there was like a cocktail party for thirty minutes
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: that we went to and then left, and then it
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: was like there's your table over there, and we were
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: taken to a table, sat down at a table with
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: people we didn't even know. So this does not sound
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: like a Then we're inducted. And then went up in
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: the stage and did my little acceptance speech, then went
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: over and played three songs, then back down to watch
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the rest of the show, then back up for the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: completely phony jam session at the end that was just noise.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: And then uh into the back where I was like, hey,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: they didn't induct you for twenty three years, how does
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: that make you feel? You know, some punk kid, you know.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: So this went well, you know, here's how I feel.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And it was told them, well, you know, somebody came in,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: some women came in and said all right, that's enough.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: We're gonna shut this down right now. And that's when
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I said, you need to sit down and learn something,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: you know, because they're just kids and they don't know
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: what they're doing. You know. The people running it are tired,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: their weak, their worn out. They need They did a
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: good job, they got a museum built, they they inducted
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: the people they cared about. Now the gene pool needs
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: to really be enlarged, you know. And and there's a
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: lot that that that museum can do. And it's a
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: And my tour this year started in Cleveland. I booked
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: it in Cleveland. I went right to the museum and
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: went over and went through the whole museum and looked
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: at it all and looked at what they were doing.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: And you know, they need a lot of help at
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: that museum. They have an incredible building and they're trying.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: You know, they've got some new kids in who are
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: trying to run it right now, but they don't have
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: any money. Their displays are terribly you know, executed. The
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: light leaks in the black tunnels. It's cheap, it's dumb.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: You you go in there, and they have all this
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: great stuff, but you know you can't see it. You can't.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a it's a museum design problem, you know.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: And they, I mean, they're they're in conflict with what
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: the building is. The building is all light, it's all glass,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: and they've liked built these dark tunnels. Look so look,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: I mean it starts right at the bottom, and it
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: starts at the top, and it filters down and and
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: and right now, like these guys need to retire. They
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: need to be given a little badge and a little
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: party and a pad in the back, and let's give
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: him a big round of applause. And they need to
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: be put out to pasture. And this needs to be
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: taken away from Jon Winner who uses it as a tabloid.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: You know, he uses it to drive tabloid sales. That's
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: what he does. That's his trick. Hey, the black Keys
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: don't like you, Let's print their article in your response.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: What do you say, Steve? You know, and you just
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: go Yon, I'm not helping you sell anything, you know,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: So that aside, you know, he needs to be removed Grubman.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Those contracts, the stuff they give the inductees, that needs
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: to be completely thrown out and made simple and clear
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: and honest and transparent. Their business is cloudy, deliberately murky.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: They don't want any input, they don't want to have
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: to waste any time with you sticky artists. They're worse
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: than any record company I ever ever worked with. Really,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: absolutely that that's amazing. I'm Barry rich Halts. You're listening
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: today is Steve Miller of the Steve Miller Band. And
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: let's jump right into our conversation about the future of music.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: We know recording isn't the money maker it once was,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: so so how do musicians make a living these days? Well,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: the first thing is, you gotta write yourself out of
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: this ghetto. You know. We just had this, uh discussion
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: about legal problems that people have and uh, the Grubbin's
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: of the world, in the corporations of the world that
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: use the Grubman's of the world to develop these these contracts,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: and so we're in a situation now where very few
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: people can actually make a living writing music or performing it.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: And we're you know, we're kind of in a Sia circle,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: you know. I mean right now, if you're not an
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: actor and a dancer and a video star and all
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: of these things and groomed by maybe Disney from the
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: time you're four years old, you know, you're kinda gonna
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: have a hard time. It's always been kind of like that.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: There's always been those kind of entertainers. But the real
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: the only way to get out is uh. I mean,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: the tech companies are so far ahead of the government
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: and regulation and law, and they've stolen so much just
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: because it's so easy, and I can't audit anything. I
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: have a half a billion streams a year and I
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: get paid something like, you know, thirty seven thousand dollars
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: for it, and I'm always in the wrong program. It's
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: like the old as cap game, Like, oh g, you're
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: in the wrong songwriter's program. If you'd been in this one,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: you would have we would have paid you the same
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: as Frank Sinatra. But you're not. You know, it's always
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: a shell game for musicians, and it's always the artists
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: are always the last to wake up and understand what's
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: going on. So, you know, the guys who were running
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: all of these streaming companies, they're screwing people like me.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: You know, they're stealing from me. They're using my work
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: and making billions of dollars and developing their future because
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: they can, because nobody can catch up to them. They're
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: so far ahead. So if you're an artist and you
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: can't do what I did was like make a record
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: and take it to a radio station and go give
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: me a shot. Come on, man, play this, see if
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: anybody likes it. My artist's name is Elvis. Put this on,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: you know, do the Sam Phillips things. You know, that's
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: all gone and and you know, to to promote a
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: new album costs about five or six million dollars to
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: do the justin Timberlake, where you spend forty million dollars
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: and you sell nine hundred thousand records, but then you
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: make six million dollars a night touring. That's a really
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: that's that one tenth of one percent, and then everybody
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: else is down here. I mean, Justin is a great artist.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: I really I like his work and I like his writing,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I love his dancing, I love his bands, I love
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: his arranging and all that stuff. But he's in the
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: world like like in five days. He can make what
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: I make doing seventy cities with twenty five people in
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: a year. So that's that's the dichotomy. And I'm considered
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: like a real successful band because I go out now
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: and six thousand people come to see me play or
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: ten thousand people you know where it used to be
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: the football stadiums and stuff like that. But that's what
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: I do. I go out and I love performing. So
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I'm doing seventy shows a year. I have to travel
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the seventy cities and buses and trucks and planes and
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: with people in all that gear. You know, and that's
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: a lean and mean machine. So let's talk about the technology.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about this previously. But you have the
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: streaming companies like Spotify and Pandora on the one hand.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: Then you have the all you can eat deals from
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Amazon and Apple, and then you have the iTunes you
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: can buy an album in its digital form. Are any
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: of these lucrative for artists anymore? None? Not, even if
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: someone is. So if I go to buy an album
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: off of iTunes or or Amazon and it's ten bucks,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: it's like the old days, ninety cents goes to the
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: artist or something like that. Yeah. If and when you
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: go to Apple and say, okay, everybody put their hands up,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: we're gonna do an audit, there's no audit. There's no audit,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: there's no there's no a, there's no regulation, there's no
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: group there, there's nothing you can do. You know, if
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: you call up Apple and say hey, I don't like
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: what you're doing, they go, we don't like what you're doing,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: and you know what, we're gonna sue you for interfering
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: with our right to do business. And what our business
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: is cutting up your work and selling it anyway. We
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: want to so shut up or get sued. That's what
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Apple said to me. And I called him up and said, hey,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: I don't want you to download Fly Like an Eagle
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: as an album because I just downloaded it and paid
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: for it and it came out in the wrong order.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: This is a book. It's a chapter. You know, you
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: don't you don't print a book starting with chapter seven
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: and then go to chapter one and then chapter nine.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: And that's what you guys are doing. You're just cutting
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: up my music. Oh you can't handle segways. You don't
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: know how to do something that folds over something else.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: You're just gonna cut it in the middle wherever you think.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Then don't even touch my music, okay. And they said,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: we're going to sue you for interfering with our right business.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: That's what it's like. Wow, that's that's crazy. So let's know.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: And so if I took your income and I knocked
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: it down by and said, hey, what are you complaining about.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: You can do seven radio shows a week. You're only
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: doing one a week. You're lazy. Get back in here
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: and go to work. You know, you guys, it's really great.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: You would look at that and just kind of go
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: are you kidding me to say the least. So, so
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: let's shift gears a little bit and talk about music,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: because really that's let's let's take this one step far.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: So in the nineties, when I was touring and doing
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: seventy cities a year, I was selling a million and
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: a half records a year without any advertising from Capitol Records,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: to my fans, to the people who came to see
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: me play. I had maybe of the songs, and those
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: records were mine that I wrote, I owned the publishing,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: and all of that in come augmented what I did,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: what I could pay my band, the size of production
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: I could do, and the kind of money I could
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: spend on producing new records. All of that income is
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: gone gone. It's just went from like three or four
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: million dollars a year to me at the just ninety
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: cents of record out of the fifteen dollars they're selling
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: it for, you know, the dollar plus the performance, right, Yeah,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: you know, all of that is gone. That that money
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: is just gone. That money is now what's made Spotify
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: people billionaires and Doora. Go down the list that you
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: just go down the list, man and there's there's four
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: or five guys that are sitting here going, oh, I
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: can't believe we got away with this. No, no, no,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean that's what they did. And every
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: artist you've ever talked to has said the same thing.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: And so you're tell music like, yeah, but now you
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: can go out and tour. Well, who's gonna like be
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: able to build a career now that you can't even
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: it's impossible to get a career unless you've got five
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: six million dollars to start it. You could go out
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: and tour, but an up and coming band doesn't happen.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Been touring for fifty years. So I have a built
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: in audience, and I have this deal with my audience.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: You come to my show, we're gonna really give it
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: up for real. You're gonna have a joyously good, great time.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: And this is real music. We're not singing to sample
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: tapes and a fake drum machine and music, live band,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: live music, live sound, live, p a, live everything. I've
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: seen you several times. I saw you at Westberry Music
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Fair in the rounds. So the best part about that
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: place is I get to watch like thirty seven guitars.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: It's been right, like you have a different guitar for
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: every song, let's talk about guitarist and less about so
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: let's let's talk about you. Very famously said at a
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Christie's auction where Richard gears guitar collection went up, and
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: you know you said that quote. I felt bad because
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: it sounded like I wasn't impressed with his collection, which
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: was a great collection, and there were some really wonderful
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: instruments and that collection. And I have friends with Martin
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Guitar who were the guys on the phone buying their
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: guitars back. He had some great Martins in there. So
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: someone said to you, you're not bidding and what was
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: your response? Well, I just didn't see anything that you know,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: I needed in the in that that group. And I
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: have an amazing collection guitars. I have about four hundred
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: and fifty instruments, and I invest in guitars like you invest,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: you know about you know, I went, I called up
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: a friend of mine and said, if I buy these guitarists,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: do you think what do you think this stuff will
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: be worth later? And they said, oh, you can probably
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: make fifteen on your money, Steve, and I kind of went, oh,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: and I get to play with them, and you mean
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: it's I have to go buy guitars nuts. People want
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: to find your music you're writing, they go to where
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: the where's the best place for well, you know the website,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: you know, Steve Miller band dot com. I mean that's
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: all the music and all the news and are complete
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: catalog is listed there, the type everything else. Yeah, And
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: whenever we work on new projects and stuff, we talk
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: about those, and um, you know there's lots of stuff
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: going on that that Now it's just kind of just
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: stuff for fun, you know. You know. So I started
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: and then I started building guitars. I started collecting guitars,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: and I started going around. Here's what it's like. Two
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: weeks ago, I was in Paso Rovos, California, and a
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: friend of mine said, Steve, my father in law as
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: a musician all his life. He's eighty years old, and
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: he has a couple of guitars. Would you take a
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: look these? Sure, there's a nineteen fifty five strat in
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five gifts in uh E S three fifty t.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: These are all worth a lot of money, aren't they
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Just unbelievable? You know. So there are guitars out there
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: all the time, and these are are really great, great instruments,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna help them sell them for for for that,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: for their father in law needs the dough. Now, I've
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: seen some old less Poles the nineteen fifties. Let's pull
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: that tore so yeah, and so that's what you know,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: I think, Richard. I can't remember what what was exactly
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: at that show, but there was a Less poll or
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: two and some stuff, and they weren't particularly the greatest ones.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: And I had all these people egging me on, saying,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: why don't let's make a film about you searching for
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: this number one guitar? And I got there, said it's
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: not the one I'd like to make the move of me,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: but you know not now. And um, what I do
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: is I take like the latest and greatest guitarist that
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Gibson makes the just you know, I think in my
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: estimation to Billy Gibbons Pearly Gates reissue fifty nine, and
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: I got that guitar. I bought eight of them, and
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I went all over the world found him and bought
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: eight of him and brought him back. And then I
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: had another friend who had been spent his lifetime collecting
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: real nineteen fifty nine p a f pickups and instead
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: of paying three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: guitar like that, I took the fifty nine pickups, put
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: in the Billy Gibbons guitar. Went Okay, let's call us
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: at number one. That's on the road with me now.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: So I love guitars. It's it's it's an unending uh game.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: And I just put sixty of my guitars. I'm seventy three,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: I'll be seventy three and a couple of weeks and
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: so now it's time to like share this collection. It's
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: time to move it, call it down to just the
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean I've spent years and years and
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: years collecting it. And they're all out, they're all they're
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: in three different locations and they all hang on the
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: walls and you can walk into room and yell at
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: them and all the strings vibrate. You know, it's like
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: it's really so they're not in cases in the dark room,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: SCE and it's just time to sell them. And we
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: put sixty of them up for sale and sold like
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: I think thirty thirty two or three of them in
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: the first forty eight hours. So there's a serious group
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: of collectors who pursue these There's people all over the world, musicians, collectors,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: both collectors. We've been speaking with Steve Miller, rock and
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: roll songwriter, singer, guitarist. If you enjoy this conversation, be
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: sure and sticking around for the podcast after his will
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: we keep the digital tape rolling developed by LS Paul
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: and continue talking about all things rock and roll. If
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: you would like to check out my daily column, you
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: can go to Bloomberg View dot com or follow me
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: on Twitter at rid Halts. I'm Barry Rid Halts. You've
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: to the podcast, Steve. Thank you so much for for
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: doing this. Barry, it's a pleasure talking to you. I've
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: been I've been a fan of yours for a long time,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: and I first met you going to Lawrence Juber Show,
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: someone else who I've been a fan of for a
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: long time. Not only did you sing happy birthday to
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: his wife, but you were absolutely gracious afterwards. You remember
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: the show I'm referring to, You're absolutely gracious afterwards when
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: I interrupted you to to say to l J, who
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: was actually pretty hilarious. L j come talk to me
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: on the radio about being music, about what's the name
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: of the show masters in business? He goes, what am
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I gonna tell you what stocks to pick? No, you're
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about all the stuff that you've talked about today.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: So it's been really, really interesting, fascinating stuff. There's so
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: much I didn't get to that I want to jump into.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: Um wet So we'll talk about books. I have to
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: talk to you. Hold on, Hold on books for a second.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: There are two things I must ask you about. One
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: is the Metropoleum Museum and the other is The Joker
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: following the car accident, and I suspect these are both
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: interesting stories. So I'm a big fan of of blues
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: as well as jazz and rock and roll. You mentioned Chicago.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: I've been to Kingston Mines. I've been to all these
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: places there. And you really began as a blues guitarist.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: That seems to be your biggest influence. You have a
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: car accident, you break your neck, it takes a long
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: time to recuperate, and then you come out of that
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: and there's this radical change in the songwriting and playing,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: and the first album, The Joker just blows up So
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: what took place during that convalescence that had you shift
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: so much? I think you're kind of like, um, this
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: is all after the fact. Yeah, I mean, you know, basically,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: like I had I started out, the game was to
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: make hit records. Les. Paul made twenty five hit records.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: You know, the Beatles had hit singles. Hit singles was
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: was the important game when you made records coming out
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: of San Francisco, the groovy you know, long play, all
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: that stuff. Children in the Future, all those things were
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: still trying to make hit singles, and we're learning, you know,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: and we were untouched by a M radio. We were
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: like unclean to them. We were underground progressive rock, psychedelic
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: dungeon hippies, you know. You know, we got stigmatized immediately,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: and we couldn't get any airplay. And Capitol Records to
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: kind of went like, we can't get in the airplay.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: We don't understand what the underground FM radio. It's nobody
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: cares about that anyway, you guys are finished. So we
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: were selling a lot of albums, but we were not
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: selling singles. And so I was, you know, selling two
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand copies of Children in the Future and three
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand copies of Brave New World and three thousand
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: copies of whatever. The next one was in two or
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: three hundred thousand copies number five and and and we
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: were working like two hundred and fifty nights a year,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: and we were broke. Were like two guys to a
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: holiday in eating Handburgs and riding around in a step
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: van with one roadie, you know, doing gig after gig
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: after gig after gig, and then going to Europe and
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: making the records and then coming back and going to
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Europe and tour and not being paid at all for that,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: and you know, we were really struggling and um. On
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: the way to hear Up, I was in a car
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: wreck in New York. We were going to the airport,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: and I had a new guy who was driving, and
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: we were in tandem. You know, there were three of
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: us in a convoy. And I said, listen, Convoy driving
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: is different. You can't go through a yellow light. You're
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: leading the convoy or the guy in the back. You know,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: you you everything. You gotta slow down and you gotta
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: get everybody through. We can't lose the third car, got it? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: just right into it. You know, and screwing up and
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: he's going through the singing, and I was really concern
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: and I would turn like this, and we got rear
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: ended it about thirty five and I got a hairline
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: fracture in my neck. You felt it when it happened.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: Oh man, you know, you know how everybody used to
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: laugh at people that had suffered with flash. I felt
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: like every joint in my body had crushed glass in
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: it for six months. I'm mean, if I didn't keep
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: moving all the time, if I went to sleep, I'd
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: wake up and got to go like, I don't want
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: to move my wrist. It really was. So it didn't
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: work for a year or so. And during that, you know,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: I started thinking, Wow, you know, I'm kind of like
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: it me at the end of my deal. Here, I'm like,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: this is the seventh album is coming up, and nobody's
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: calling me from Capitol Records. Hey, you know we you know,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: you and your lawyer need to come in here. We
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: need to talk about where going forward. Nothing And I
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: had so a lot of albums, but they just were
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: I was just off their radar. I was fighting with
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: them all the time. And this kid came to my
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: house and he delivered some wood and Mr Miller, would
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: you listen to my cassette? And yeah, sure, I put
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: it on. I went, God, I'm sitting here arguing with
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: fifty year old men who don't like me, don't understand me,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: and this kid writes better songs, and I do it.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Least I've got a contract. He's delivering wood to my house.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna go down and make a record. So
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: I went to make The Joker. I got the band
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: in for two days. I cut a bunch of R
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: and B tunes. Quickly, I thought I was at the
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: end of my career. I wasn't some oh boy, this
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: is the Joker's a hit single, that's a pop too old,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: that something, you know, And I figured, man, I'm done,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: you know, twenty three to thirty something, and and I um,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I go in and it's I got rid of all
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: my producers. Is the first record that I produced myself,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: was the Last Chance, my last record. And I finished
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: the album in seventeen days. I had a very brief
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: meeting with you know, some people of Capitol Records finished it.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: And then that afternoon, you know, we we snuck into
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: like the executive room and like found out their speakers
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: were out of phase and fixed all that a back
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: stuff so that when we actually played it for them,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: they could hear it properly. I mean, it was amazing
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: how incompetent that they were there and played it. And
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: this one kid goes, I think the Joker sounds like
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: a hit single to me. Kid in the room, and
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: I hand him a piece of paper and I said, look,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: here's a list of sixty cities I'm going to play in.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: And these are sixty cities. You need to have the
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: albums and records stories when I get there. You guys
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: am not paying any attention to where I play. And
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: you need when I go to you know, Gross Point
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: in Michigan to play at ann Arbor, you know, for
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: the University of Michigan, you need to have five thousand
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: records in town because I'm gonna go play to thousands
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: of people there, and you know, and they were just
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: that's the argument left town and the Joker came out
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: and it went viral. What we call going viral right now,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Capital records and spending money, and they didn't promote it.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: They just you know, printed some copies and sent him out.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Off it went and when I got back three months
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: later after doing the sixty Cities, I was I was
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: driving to the theater, the Fox Theater in Oakland to
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: go play another small little gig and The Joker was
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: on four radio stations at the same time, and I
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: was angry because it was not all five major radio
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: stations since Everrances. They were only five then, and I
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, it's here, who it's there? It was there.
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: They were playing it twice an hour, twenty four hours
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: a day for a year on every AM radio station
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: in the United States. And so I went from this
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: underground guy who couldn't even talk to a DJ. I
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: couldn't get arrested before that, but no television, no nothing,
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: and and um, you know, to king of AM radio.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: So it's time for new contract then. So when you
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: were writing The Joker, did you have any sense that, oh,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: this is the one. I mean, the guitar lick is
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: kind of unique and kind of really different. So I
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: was really slow. It's really it's got a great groove, right,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: it's laid back, but it's so different than anything you did.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: Did you you had no sense and you know, this
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: something really something happening. Yeah, I'd stop thinking about singles. Really, Yeah,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: so you do the new contracts and then the next
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: two albums are just monstrosity. Yeah. So I come back
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: from that tour and is so good right back in
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: the studio, come on, make another one. I'm call it
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: my agent, Milt Leave. I said, Milt, I'm taking a
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: year off work. Last night anyway, what you know, And
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: I said, I'm taking a year off man, I'm exhausted.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: I'm so burned out, you know. It took the band
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: into the studio. We're there for two days, and I
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: just went, let's get figured they were just wasting money.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: And uh then I went back to California and and
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: there was a check for three five thousand dollars in
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: my mailbox with the junk mail for for what for
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: the joker? Oh that was all the radio. Really, Hey,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: I think I'll maybe a house. Maybe we'll go back
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: into the Let's get an eight track tape recorder and
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: put it in the house. And so I put it in.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: I bought a house. I bought a new house. Where
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: was that in Nevato, California, Just the past Mill Valley,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: a little bit north of the city. And and I,
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: uh put an eight track tape recorder in there, Dick
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: sweating him the guy had met in UH nine seven
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: at the Olympic Studios built me my own little board,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: the first one that where you could have stereo panning
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: and eight separate tracks for a headphone set, and did
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: some technology things like that, and I started work on
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Fly Like an Eagle and Book of Dreams, and I
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: did them both at the same time, just like with
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: the Beatles when they were ahead went I'm gonna get
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: ahead of this. I'm gonna have thirty songs. So you
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: were you were paying attention and learning from from your experience.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: When I turned in Fly Like an Eagle, Book at
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: James was done and that did you let them know
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: that or you held that back? No, I didn't tell
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: him anything. So before we get to the books, because
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: there is stuff that I want to talk about. Um,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: there's some really interesting electronic effects in both of those
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: and what otherwise could have been an intro to a
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: song is separated as a separate cut, and I read
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: somewhere that that was done on purpose. Well, I was
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: very interested in electronic music way before this all started.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: I was into stock housing in the early sixties and
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: that was all electronic music. And I met Stockhausing. I
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: went to Germany and met him and watched him do
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: recording sessions and stuff, and and those seg ways were
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: pieces of music. Now Capitol Records just want to go, oh,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: that's just nothing to but the segways and Fly like
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: an Eagle. That album was designed so you couldn't take
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: it off the turntable. And and those in those interstitials
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: are so musically interesting and transition from song to songs.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: So when they were longer than a certain amount of time,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: I I copy wrote them. I mean I had them
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: copy written as compositions song as they are. And you know,
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: I remember taking a scuba diving course one time in
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Hawaii and kind of went in for the class and hey, hey,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: and they had stolen my music and used it in
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: their diving films. People used that stuff all over the world. Man,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: that that was like hot sauce to people. Jet Jetliner
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: and all all those you know, the segue into Fly
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: like an Eagle, all that off is used and it's
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: licensed and they are compositions. Well that turns out to
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: be very um pressing and fortuitous to go to my thesaurus,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: because those two albums sold exceedingly well, and pretty much
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: the greatest hits is the bulk of those um as
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: well as a couple of other um other covers. Uh
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: you sent me if I'm remembering that, that was a
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: beautiful version of that song. Like you don't, you don't
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: do a lot of covers. You don't do a lot
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: of other people's No, you know, I, um, actually I have.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just the stuff I've written over shadows
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: that I've done lots of covers. That's not true. I've
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: done lots of Jimmy Read tunes and lots of blue stuff,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: done lots of you know, let your Hair Down and
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: Bingo were all covers, and so I've done. If you
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: guess you take the the full body of work and
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: you say how many covers, you know, maybe it's like
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: sevent original twenty five percent other people's material. I was.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: I was listening to Bengo this morning. I like it
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: a lot. I'm surprised. Um, well, back to the roots,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: back to the blues. It's really Yeah, those were great
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: tunes that and that sounded like you're having fun doing it,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: which leads me to a question we skipped before, So
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: what sort of stuff. Do you really enjoy playing? And
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: then we'll jump right into the books. Well, I you know,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: this is sounds pretty stocked, But I really loved playing
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: my music with my band. I mean, I'm tomorrow, I'm
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: flying to Chicago and I'm playing tomorrow night and I
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: can't wait. Really, yeah, you said you're coming up on
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: fifty years. You still love to hit the stage? Is
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: still love performing? I love the interaction between a live
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: audience and a live band. And all my songs are
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: sort of just signed where there's some spontaneity. I learned
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: from jazz and blues. That's what I really the people
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: I learned from. And you know, when I was watching
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: les Pa, i was five years old. He was soloing
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: like a bandit and it was all spontaneous and it
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: wasn't the same note note every night. It was always different.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: And I learned that. So it's like you don't know
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: exactly what's gonna happen. I compared to like playing basketball
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: in the playoff level. It's the playoffs. Okay, you've just
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: done you know, played you know, ninety games or whatever
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: it is, and now it's in the new six week
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: season to get to the final, and you gotta take
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: it up a notch. You gotta be really good every night.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: You don't want to be so good you're flat the
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: next night. You don't want to ever be flat ever
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: you wanted. At this high professional level, everybody's dialed in,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: everybody's paying attention. Everything set up and it's like basketball.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: The ball bounces on the floor and then the game
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: starts and it's a different way around the court for
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: each song. And so that's what I really I love that,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: And I mean I love playing blues. I like playing
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: eclectic blues tunes like Louisiana Blues, forty four blues that
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: I have these odd rhythm signatures and they're kind of
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: Delta Appalachian, kind of early American things, you know that
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: got pulled out of Memphis and up to Chicago. That
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: stuff is fascinating to me. So so we've talked about
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: your music, We've talked about your guitar collection. How did
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: you get involved with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: a couple of shows that you've you've done with them.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: What I've decided to move to New York four years ago.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: I always wanted to live here just because of the culture,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: and um Rudy Penza who has a music store of Rudy's.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: I've been working for the longest time to get the
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: Metropolito Aton to do uh a guitar show. And it
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: was called Guitar Heroes, Legendary Craftsman from Italy to New York.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: It was about arch top jazz guitars like Bucky Plays.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: You know John's dad and John you know those are
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: arch top guitars. Well, that guitar comes straight from Strata
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: By It's just started in fourteen ninety nine or whatever
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: it was. And they've been making those instruments, right, And
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: there were some Italian guys in New York, di Equisto
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: being you know, one of them in Diangelico being one
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: in monteleone, right, So they decided they were going to
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: do a show at the met on these guitars. Oh,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: Steve Miller, you have seven di aquesto guitars. Jimmy was
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: a really good friend of mine. He made my instruments.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: They were the best instruments in the world. Those are
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: the ones I wanted to play. And um, can we
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: use three of your instruments at the Metropolitan Museum. And
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: I was gonna go well, you know, hey, you know,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know. And I'm talking to him from Sun Valley, Idaho,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: where I live and at my studio. Right they said,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: it an air condition humidified air ride druck from New
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: York to Sun Valley to pick up the three guitars
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: and take them back to the met Very impressive. So
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: I said, all right, all right. So they said, well, look,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: we know you're going to be in New York. Why
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: don't you come by and say hi and we'll do
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: a little video interview. I said, I'd love to. So
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: I go in and I meet all the people in
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: music instrument department, and I meet Jason Dabney and I
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: meet Sally Brown, and there's like I'm in a room
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: and there's like forty t Angelico guitars or something good.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: You want to play this one? You want to try
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: that one? And and I'm looking at him and I said,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: you guys are going to have a concert, right, you
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: got a theater here, And they said a concert? How
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: would we do that? And I said, well, let me
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: put a concert together for you. I mean, you should
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: do that. So I really liked them, They really liked me.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: I helped him put a concert together. They said, we
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: want you to join the board of the musical instrument
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: department at the met So I said, I'll do it.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: So now that after that, then we did the Martin
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: Show and we're now we're redesigning the gallery. So I
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: just slid into town and took over the Metropolitan Museum. No,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: I mean I was invited, you know, I'm just by luck.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: And and you know, the same thing happened at Jazz
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: at Lincoln Center. I went to see went and play,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: and he said, I want you to help me put
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: the blues pedagogy together for Jazz at Lincoln Center. We
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: we don't know what the hell we're doing, and we
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: need to teach this and we need to design these programs.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: And the next thing I know, I ended up on
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: that board. And and so you've become real cultural as
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: part of new really have jumped right into the heart
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: of it, and have found that so many people receptive
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: of my ideas. And maybe I'm giving Alan Grubman a
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: hard time. He deserves a hard time. You know. Uh,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of great culture here and there's so
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: many great people working. I mean, I've met so many
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: interesting people in the projects I'm working on now a
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: ton of energy in the are really wonderful projects in
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: the circles of support around all of it is amazing,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: and the educational reach of it is all great. That's
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: why I can look at the Rock and Roll Hall
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: of Fame and just smack those guys around and say
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: you need to wake up. They're telling me we have
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: to wrap you have places to go. Okay, I got
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: lots of other questions. We have to we have to
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: bring you back. And I want to get your readers
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: some books. Yeah, okay, can we do a quick book
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: run really quick? Okay, so you know your readers, your listeners, listeners.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: Here's a list of great books for you to read. Okay.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: In other Words by Anthony da Curtis, really interesting articles
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: about musicians. These are all music books. Alta Blues by
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: Ted Joya last trained to Memphis, Peter very Famous, Sam Phillips,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: A Man who vented rock and Roll by Peter Girl
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: nick Um, How Music Got Free by Stephen With That
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: is literally sitting on my night table, the red red
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: cover right. The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: which is, yeah, that's do you have to read that
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: his New York Magazine stories have propelled of course. And
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: and I'm Your Man by Sylvie Simmons Simmons, which is
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: a book about Leonard Cohen that's fascinating. So you want
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: to read some musical biographies. And then the last one,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: I recommend to everyone if you really want to laugh,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: get the Eddie Fisher bio. It's it's unbelievably, it's hilarious. Um.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: I saw k D. Lange do a version of Leonard
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: Cohen's Hallelujah that makes the hair on my name unbelieve.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: She did a version of the joke her no kidding, Yeah,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: and she did, she did. She was the only person
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: that's covered the joker and nailed it. We're gonna have
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: to have you back. I have so many more questions
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: for you. Next time. I want you to bring the guitar.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: We'll we'll play a couple of songs. You know I
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: can do that next time you're in town. Um, we've
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: been speaking to the one and only Steve Miller. Um
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: um le defense. That's right, Uh A rack contour in
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: a difference in addition to being a UH singer, songwriter, guitarist.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: That that's that's exactly right. UM. If you enjoy this conversation,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: be sure and look up an Inch or down an
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: Inch on iTunes, where the other hundred and nine of
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: these are available for free download. That's how much I
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: make from iTunes. Is exactly this, UM. I would be
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: remiss if I did not think Charlie Volmer, my recording engineer,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: Taylor Riggs, my booker. UM, you've been listening to Masters
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio two