Miller Time!

If you ever run into one of the Del Fuegos or Long Ryders in a bar, don't even joke about offering to buy them a Miller Beer. These ads screamed "Sell Out!" back in the mid-80's and neither band survived the backlash.





The Ryders's Sid Griffin told journalist Diane Roka in her oral history of the L-A Paisley Underground scene "People felt, when all is said and done, that, how can this band, the Long Ryders, be these hip, cutting edge guys, rebellious, and have songs that are anti-war and questioning this and that and sign up to a big American corporation? And that's a really good question to ask. And the answer is: we needed the money."




The criticism is probably unfair when you consider the bands who sang about Coke in the 60's: The Who, The Moody Blues, The Box Tops and The Bee Gees ("Sittin in the Meadow/Frolic in the grass..) (mp3)








Even for the 80's--a decade not averse to the money grab by the way-- these ads could have been more subtle. Fewer Miller Beer images, maybe less ironic talk about "integrity" and , for God's sake, let the bands play one of their own tunes.


I'll give the last word on the subject to The Young Fresh Fellows.

Interview ( and jam) with Steve Miller

Steve Miller, wearing a blue blazer with jeans, looks a lot like Bill Murray these days. Rumpled. Cool. Mellow. That good time vibe you hear in all those songs? That's the vibe you get from Steve.
    1001Songs met him disembarking from his yacht, the ABRACADABRA, on a pier leading to his estate on one of the San Juan Islands.

   Steve showed me around the yacht. He and some friends has gone out into deeper waters the night before to jam. As I was about to learn, Steve Miller --the man who provided the soundtrack to my 70's--will jam with just about anyone.
  But first, we broke the ice by talking about how he wound up in the San Juans shortly after "Abracadabra" hit #1.

I took a break from 82 to 88 and went boating .That's exactly what brought me here. The idea that you could get on a boat and go to Alaska. Wow! So I started doing it and I never stopped.


To meet Steve Miller is to shake hands with the history of rock and roll. Steve learned his first guitar chords from the inventor of the electric guitar: Les Paul, a family friend.

I got the whole future of how music was going to be produced from the guy who invented the tools and it was an absolutely amazing thing.


Steve's father--a doctor--was an amateur recording engineer. All kinds of musical guests came by the house.
Among them, blues legend T Bone Walker.

When I was 9 he taught me how to play lead guitar behind my back and do the splits. So  I was surrounded by talented people as a young kid.



The blues have always been a  part of the Steve Miller sound. He moved to Chicago and jammed with Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Then in the late 60's, he left for San Francisco where he hooked up with his old high school buddy Boz Scaggs and formed The Steve Miller Blues Band. Together they recorded a series of critically lauded acid blues albums.
  The 1969 lp Brave New World featured  "My Dark Hour", a song recorded with Paul McCartney during a break in The Beatles Let It Be sessions.

I thought "Boy, I've got a hit now"
We just put it out in the States and it was just like dropping something down the mail chute of the Empire State building. It just disappeared, you know.




When I pointed out that he resurrected the guitar licks for "Fly Like An Eagle" seven years late, he didn't seem too keen on that observation.
    But back to 1969: it was not his best year. Under pressure to create a hit song, Steve was on the verge of quitting the music business. He'd seen, first-hand, the toll the rock scene had taken on friends like Jimi Hendrix.

The last show I played with Jimi Hendrix he had a bunch of mafia guys around him when he arrived.

and  Jimi was so drugged out, he was full of heroin, full of speed, he just looked like he was going to die that day.


In 1972, Steve broke his neck in a car accident.

I fractured a vertebrae. I'm dealing with it right now. I got like three numb little fingers here and kind of a bad arm over here.

Steve spent the next year house-bound and living with his parents. He had a lot of time to himself and eventually wrote a three chord song looking back over his career. He called it "The Joker".

All of a sudden ...finally...last chance... got a big huge number one hit!





"The Joker" hit #2 in 1974. I got the feeling I wasn't the first person to ask him about the meaning of the mysterious "pompatus of love" lyrics.

"The Pompatus of Love" is just you know I can't tell you Man. If I told you I'd...I just can't do it.

Steve took three years to follow up The Joker with Fly Like an Eagle. Inspired by Pink Floyd, Steve and engineer Jim Gaines spent 14 to 20 hour days at Kaye Smith Studios in Seattle experimenting with synthesizers, vocal effects and transitions. His band had recorded enough songs for a double album but held tthe rest of the tunes for  for the 1977 lp, Book of Dreams . Both sold four million copies. The Steve Miller Band was one of the biggest rock n roll acts in the world.

In a very short amount of time we went from doing nothing to doing laser sculptures over football stadiums.

They played 200 cities a year. A grind that became unbearable.

We were so tired we couldn't see straight.





1982's "Abracadabra" would be Steve's last big hit. When synthesizers and hair bands took over radio, Steve Miller took off... for The San Juans.

But it hasn't been a quiet retirement. His classic rock albums still sell a million copies a year and thanks to advent of the "Classic Rock" radio format, Steve is in demand to play a bunch of "sheds"-- as he calls amphitheaters-- every year.

Steve Miller never has to pick up a guitar again but he loves playing so much he'll jam with almost anyone. Even me. He pointed to a guitar I could strap on and, I have to admit, I got so nervous I couldn't even tune the damn thing. So there stood Steve Miller tuning my guitar for me.

"OK you go ahead." He said. "Let me hear how you're going to play it."

"I was going to play it like this." I said. I had this blues riff in a minor key that I'd been fiddling with recently at home.

Steve probably thought that was a little strange but he starting solo-ing over the chords I played. He sounded great. Then he nodded at me to take a solo. I shook my head. He nodded again and I shook my head again.

Forget what you've heard about rock stars. Even those who've sold millions of records can still act as humble as they were at the beginning.
Steve sums it all up...laughing.

It's amazing how far you can go with three chords
E, A and D

#35 Ananda Shankar "Jumpin' Jack Flash" 1970

The idea of a sitar soaked cover of the Rolling Stones "Jumpin' Jack Flash" probably sounds like it would be, at best, a curiosity. Something the more cynical of us could have predicted after George Harrison's "Norwegian Wood" noodlings became the talk of Rubber Soul.
But then you listen to this and HOLY CRAP!...as the critics say.

Ananda Shankar--nephew of the more famous Ravi Shankar--visited San Francisco in 1968 and jammed with Jimi Hendrix. That eye--and ear--opening experience led to experimentations with more instruments: the moog synthesizer, guitar, bass and drums. For his self titled 1970 album--now a cult classic-- Ananda covered "Jumpin Jack Flash" as well as The Doors' "Light My Fire". The entire album is a great groovy mood enhancing gem.

Shankar returned to India in the mid-70's and recorded more classics as well as soundtracks. According to Alan James's liner notes for a much later album, Ananda used to say: "My dream is to break barriers, any kind of barrier - through music, love, affection and compassion. I have this dream of musicians from all over the world playing for an audience all over the world. When we are all here we are one, and when we go out I am sure we will all be one."

#34 Nick Lowe "I Love My Label" 1977

The lead off track to the 1977 Stiff Records compilation A Bunch of Stiff Records, Nick Lowe's " I Love My Label" is getting a lot of  attention more than 30 years later because Wilco has chosen to cover the song as the B side to their new single "I Might".

   Among the lines in the song:

 They always ask for lots of songs/Of no more than 2:50 long/So I wrote 'em some
They never talk behind my back/And they're always playing my new tracks/When I come along








  It's probably safe to assume the lyrics shouldn't be taken at face value. On the other hand, Lowe helped establish Stiff Records ( and the careers of The Damned, Wreckless Eric and Elvis Costello) . On the other other hand he left Stiff the first chance he got. On the other other other hand, he never found great success as a recording star. But on the fifth other hand, after Curtis Stigers recorded his Brinsley Schwarz era tune "What' So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding" Lowe may have fallen in love with business all over again.

  He made a remarkable trip to the mailbox, opened a letter, read the numbers on a check and discovered he was a millionaire. The Stigers version appears on the soundtrack to The Bodyguard which sold between 15 and 17 million copies.

  Of course Wilco has had its share of label problems. In 2001 Reprise rejected Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The album would go on to win the Village Voice Pazz and Jop critics poll for best album of 2002. They seemed to have a decent relationship with Nonsuch since then, but this year Wilco will release an album on their own label: DBpm Records.

Interview with Lee Oskar of War

Lee Oskar, a founding member of the 70's pop-funk-jam band War, grew up in Denmark where he was given his first harmonica on his sixth birthday.

Lee:
I remember the first time I breathed on it it would literally play me.
It would sound just like a symphony
I got hooked and that's where it all started

At 17, virtually pennyless, Lee moved to the US where his virtuosity on the harmonica and his easy-going nature eventually led to his friendship with Eric Burdon. Burdon had recently left The Animals and wanted to find a new band.

They drove around LA until they found a funk band in a dive bar. Together they would all form War. A strange name in the age of peace signs and flower power.






Lee:
Everybody walks around saying "Peace!" and I always said "Peace? Nobody is at peace within themselves. The war within ourselves is what makes us be creative" and somebody pulled that out of my conversation and said "Hey let's call it WAR!" and that's how I remember it coming about.

From the very beginning War discovered the songs that worked best were the ones that came out of long improvisational jams. That suited Burdon just fine.

Lee:
We would get on stage and we would basically improvise.
Eric might even set up a scenario "Ok guys, we're gonna go on a rocket ship and we're gonna fly to the moon and you're gonna be the captain"

In 1970, One of those jams landed at #3 on the U-S pop charts. It was called "Spill the Wine" and its chorus is one of those classics nobody knows the real words to.



Lee:
You spill the wine and you take the pearl.
Not girl.
Pearl. --which was acid back in those days so he was talking about spill the wine.Take the pearl.


After Burdon left, the band played on. War scored more Top Ten hits. Among them, "Why Can't We Be Friends?", "Low Rider",The Cisco Kid, and "Slippin' Into Darkness". All of them emerging from jam sessions.






Lee:
We were never successful when we tried to tell anybody what to play.
There would be an argument or fight or something.

The music stayed fresh even as the question the press asked Lee grew stale.He couldn't avoid being asked what was it like being the only white guy in a band of brothers.

Lee:
I didn't have a hang up about stuff that I noticed a lot of people had
I remember one time somebody yelled "Hey Brother!" like that and then comes up close to look at me and asks "Are you a brother?"
So there were all these clichés between white and black and all that and I hated that frankly.I thought it was pretty arrogant or whatever.



That wasn't his only frustration.
Lee had trouble finding good harmonicas.

Lee:
I would literally take every dime I had and buy every harmonica.
Hopefully I would find one out of ten that was good or something.
That was my passion: to be surrounded by my tools.

So Lee teamed up with a Japanese company to make Lee Oskar harmonicas.
How good are they?
Bluesman Junior Wells was buried with a tray of Oskar harmonicas.
Magic Dick of J Geils Band says "I just think, as a musical tool, they're a great musical tool so I can't think of a better endorsement to give them than that."

To listen to Lee play today is quite astonishing if you've never heard a harmonica played as a jazz instrument. He has, in his lifetime, expanded the possibilities of what conventional harmonicas can do.




But Lee isn't all business. He's always looking for a chance to play. Especially with other War veterans, who for legal reasons have to call themselves The Low Rider Band.

Lee:
The integrity of the music and the jam band that we've always been
That's still there
That's the real deal
That's what The Low Rider Band is.
Nothing homogenized.

Lee can even be found jamming around Seattle these days.
That six year old who got a magical harmonica for his birthday still needs to find a way...to play.

Lee:
I get grouchy if I don't eat.
I get grouchy if I don't play music.

#33 The Jam "Tales From The Riverbank" [Fan Club Version] 1981

In the year between Sound Affects (1980) and The Gift (1982), The Jam teased its legion of fans with singles and b-sides that revealed a band exploring new sounds.
"Funeral Pyre" had the power to rock stadiums. "Absolute Beginners" sounded like brassy R&B celebration unless you listened closely to the lyrics: Come see the tyrants panic see their crumbling empires fall/
Then tell 'em we don't fight for fools, 'cos love is in our hearts!

I'm assuming anyone who has stumbled on this site has at least a greatest hits album by The Jam. ( They put out a new one every six months). So Song #33 is the fan club version of the B-Side to "Absolute Beginners".( Yes, 1001Songs can get nerdy about its Jam).
"Tales From the Riverbank" is a nostalgic look back at more innocent times, accompanied by a menacing bass line. Rather than fade in as the original B side does, this funkier version kicks off with drums and features horns. It's much closer to the live version above and was only made available in 2002 on CD 5 of the box set Direction Reaction Creation.



Exciting news. I've contributed my second guest post to the popular music blog,  Star Maker Machine

#32 Flamin' Groovies Yesterday's Numbers 1971

In 1971, The Rolling Stones hit the UK Charts with three great Stonesy hits "Brown Sugar", "Wild Horses" and a re-issue of "Street Fighting Man".
The album Sticky Fingers featured more great riffs in "Bitch" and the epic "Can't You Hear Me Knocking". And yet, it could be argued, the tune with the greatest Stonesy feel of 1971 didn't come from The Rolling Stones at all.
Rock critic Greg Shaw recalls the sessions for The third Flamin' Groovies album Teenage Head as a non stop party. Not one of the San Francisco-based Groovies ever truly mastered their instrument. Not one of them could sing. They were raw garage rockers who, in the right moment, were capable of recording classics like this, and years later, "Shake Some Action".

When Teenage Head failed to get them ahead, co founder/singer Roy Loney left the band. Guitarist Cyril Jordan moved the Groovies to England where Shake Some Action (1976) is said to have inspired the burgeoning punk movement. Listen for yourself:







By the way, "Yesterday's Numbers" closes with the line "All's well that end's well", the name of a Shakespeare play that heralded a string of great works. It was followed in order by Othello, Hamlet and Twelth Night.