Steve Miller
b. 5 October 1943, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. The young Miller was set on his musical path by having Les Paul as a family friend, and a father who openly encouraged music in the home. His first band, the Marksmen, was with school friend Boz Scaggs; also with Scaggs, he formed the college band, the Ardells, and at university they became the Fabulous Night Trains. He moved to Chicago in 1964, and became involved in the local blues scene with Barry Goldberg, resulting in the Goldberg Miller Blues Band. Miller eventually moved to San Francisco in 1966, after hearing about the growing hippie music scene, and formed the Miller Blues Band. Within a year he had built a considerable reputation and as the Steve Miller Band, he signed with Capitol Records for a then unprecedented $50,000, following his appearance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. The band at that time included Boz Scaggs, Lonnie Turner, Jim Peterman and Tim Davis, and it was this line-up that was flown to London to record the Glyn Johns-produced CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE. The album was a critical success although sales were moderate, but it was SAILOR later that same year which became his pièce de résistance. The clear production and memorable songs have lasted well and it remains a critics’ favourite. Miller's silky-smooth voice and masterful guitar gave the album a touch of class that many of the other San Francisco rock albums lacked. The atmospheric instrumental Song For Our Ancestors and well-crafted love songs like Dear Mary and Quicksilver Girl were just three of the many outstanding tracks. Scaggs and Peterman departed after this album, and Miller added the talented Nicky Hopkins on keyboards for BRAVE NEW WORLD, which completed a trio of albums recorded in London with Johns. The blistering My Dark Hour featured Paul McCartney (as Paul Ramon) on bass, while the epic Cow Cow showed off Hopkins’ sensitive piano. 
The excellent YOUR SAVING GRACE maintained the quality of previous albums and repeated the success. Lonnie Turner and Hopkins left at the end of 1969, and Miller replaced Turner with Bobby Winkleman from local band Frumious Bandersnatch. NUMBER 5 completed a cycle of excellent albums which hovered around similar chart positions, indicating that while Miller was highly popular, he was not expanding his audience. He decided to change the format for ROCK LOVE, by having half of the album live. Unfortunately, he chose to record a live set with arguably his weakest band; both Ros Valory and Jack King left within a year and the album sold poorly. Following a European tour, and in an attempt to reverse the trend of his last album, he released RECALL THE BEGINNING…A JOURNEY FROM EDEN, a perplexing album which showed Miller in a melancholic and lethargic mood; once again, Miller's fortunes declined further with poor sales. 
After a gap of 18 months, Miller returned with the US chart-topping single The Joker, an easily contrived song over a simple riff in which Miller mentioned all references to his various self-titled aliases used in songs over the past years: ‘Some people call me the Space Cowboy ( BRAVE NEW WORLD), some call me the Gangster Of Love (SAILOR), some call me Maurice (RECALL THE BEGINNING)…’. The accompanying album was a similar success, stalling at number 2. His future had never looked brighter, but Miller chose to buy a farm and build a recording studio and he effectively vanished. 
When he re-appeared on record three years later, only his loyal fans rated his commercial chances; however, the stunning FLY LIKE AN EAGLE became his best-selling album of all time and was a major breakthrough in the UK. This record, with its then state-of-the-art recording, won him many new fans, and finally put him in the major league as one of America's biggest acts. Almost as successful was the sister album BOOK OF DREAMS (1977); they both gave him a number of major singles including the simplistic Rock ‘N’ Me and the uplifting Jet Airliner. Miller had now mastered and targeted his audience, with exactly the kind of songs he knew they wanted. Once again, he disappeared from the scene and a new album was not released for almost four years. The return this time was less spectacular. Although CIRCLE OF LOVE contained one side of typical Miller—short, sharp, punchy melodic rock songs—side two was an over-long and self-indulgent epic, Macho City. He once again corrected the fault by responding only six months later, with another US number 1, the catchy Abracadabra. This gave him his second major hit in the UK, almost reaching the coveted top spot in 1982. In the USA, the album climbed near to the top and Miller was left with another million-plus sale. The momentum was lost over the following years, as a live album and ITALIAN X RAYS were comparative failures. LIVING IN THE 20TH CENTURY contained a segment consisting of a tribute to Jimmy Reed, with whom Steve had played as a teenager. He opted out of the commercial market with the excellent BORN 2 B BLUE in 1989. Together with his old colleague Ben Sidran, Miller paid homage to jazz and blues stand ards with some exquisite arrangements from Sidran. Songs like Billie Holiday's God Bless The Child and Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, were given lazy treatments with Miller's effortless voice. The record was only a moderate success. 
In the autumn of 1990, while Miller bided his time with the luxury of deciding what to do next, over in Britain Levi's jeans had used The Joker for one of their television advertisements. Capitol quickly released it, and astonishingly, Maurice, the space cowboy, the gangster of love, found himself with his first UK number 1.