The Steve Miller Band is an American rock band formed in 1966 in San Francisco, California. The band is managed by Steve Miller on guitar and lead vocals, and is best known today for a string of (mainly) mid-1970’s hit singles that are staples of classic rock radio, as well as several earlier acid rock albums. Steve Miller left his first band to move to San Francisco and form the Steve Miller Blues Band. Shortly after Harvey Kornspan negotiated the band’s landmark contract with Capitol Records in 1967, the band shortened its name to ‘Steve Miller Band’. The Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits 1974-1978, released in 1978, sold over 13 million copies. (More from Wikipedia)
One of my most memorable musical moments in college was when a friend introduced a roomful of us to Sailor (1968), the second album by Steve Miller Band. The opening track, “Song for Our Ancestors” is a lingering psychedelic rock instrumental that features frequent blasts from a foghorn, a sound that has fascinated me since I was a little boy. I acquired several of their albums over the years, including their first album, Children of the Future. I had no idea what the weird blobs on the cover were until I saw a small black and white photo of the gatefold album cover and realized that they blocked off the edges of letters spelling out the album name, “Children of the Future”.
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With their album The Joker (1974), Steve Miller Band showed a major shift in the music – though they had kept trying new things all along – but this also gained them Top Ten singles and strong album sales that had eluded them with their earlier work. Perhaps to acquaint his new listeners with their earlier work, the opening verse of the title song “The Joker” – “Some people call me the space cowboy / Yeah! Some call me the gangster of love / Some people call me Maurice / ’Cause I speak of the pompatus of love” – cited songs and lyrics from their previous albums; “Gangster of Love” for instance is on the Sailor album. Steve Miller Band is continuing to release albums – about a dozen since this one.
Many of their earlier fans grumbled at the reoriented sound of Steve Miller Band; but the fact of the matter is, music is a musician’s job – sure, some evidently don’t seem to mind singing for spare change on street corners, but most don’t want to sacrifice completely for their art. What sells is what keeps a roof over their head, and if “selling out” means that they don’t have to worry about putting food on the table, so be it. It is easy for their fans to gripe, since they all have regular jobs.
