Who buys music from the Steve Miller Band? Who goes to the concerts? Why is he still on the radio after all these years? Does he still enjoy playing Jungle Love and Take the Money and Run after all these years?

Miller himself ponders these questions all the time. Starting as a blues guitarist in his college town of Madison, Wis., Miller took a ride that intersected with everyone from Paul McCartney to Boz Skaggs. From his home in Ketchum, Idaho, the guitarist taught to play by his godfather, Les Paul, talked with Rocky pop music writer Mark Brown about all these questions and more.

When you started out, what was the music scene like in Madison?

Miller: It was bad dance bands. There were no rock 'n' roll bands in 1961. I had probably the first rock band on the campus. That's the way it was. I started playing in 1956 and there were no rock 'n' roll bands in town. So when I got to Madison there weren't any bands. It was just Fat City for me. I started working at every fraternity and sorority on the campus. By the time I left there were maybe three or four bands.

Your run from '68 to '78 was amazing, going from blues clubs to stadiums.

Miller: In 1965 the Grateful Dead said, 'Let's stop playing this (expletive) folk music, and I'm gonna get some Beatles boots and electric guitar.' That's what all those San Francisco bands were. I got out there after playing blues in Chicago. You had all these people who wanted to play electric music who were just learning how to do it. From '65 to '75 things started moving fast. When we went out and did all the football stadiums with the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and Peter Frampton, all the technology was being developed at the same time. The first record we made in London was on a four-track tape recorder. Everything was having to be invented and improved and built up.

I know Paul McCartney played on your early song My Dark Hour, but how did you end up playing on his Flaming Pie album in 1997?

Miller: Linda (McCartney) called up one day from Bermuda or someplace and said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'Just sitting here reading a book. How you been, I haven't talked to you in a while.' She said, 'Paul's working on this album, and we'd really like you to sing harmony on it.' I said, 'Come on over; I've got a studio.' They showed up and spent a couple of weeks here. Then I flew over to his studio for 10 days and played some guitar. When we played together in 1969 we really did some pretty interesting work. I don't think Paul had played with very many people. I don't think he had a very broad range of people he felt comfortable working with. And we were really comfortable. We were just kicking out the jams. He was playing drums; I was playing guitar. That's the way we start our stuff. On his stuff he had some basic tracks and wanted harmony.

You worked together in '69 during the filming of Let It Be - so are those the Beatles guitars, drums, we hear on that song?

Miller: Yeah. It was an amazing time. I was sitting in the studio watching them do the vocal overdubs. They had all the gear set up, and Ringo and John didn't show up. We just started screwing around. Paul was there. George came out and jammed a little bit but he wasn't much of a jammer, really, but Paul was.

Rod Stewart says he doesn't write songs anymore because no one wants to hear them. Do you feel the same way?

Miller: Yeah. If I go to one of my concerts and say, 'Here's five new songs,' 5,000 people are gonna get up and buy a beer and get a hot dog and wait till I play Fly Like an Eagle to come back. That's just the way it is. So I don't tell people that I'm going to play this stuff and when I'm going to play it. There are 14 songs we have to do. We play 22, 23 songs a night. There are nine songs up for grabs, and we just weave them in. The guys who don't do that just haven't thought about it very much. That's what keeps touring (fun). I love to tour.

Do you have much live classic material in the vault? Some of your early music is up on Wolfgang's Vault.

Miller: Those were all recorded without our knowledge. There's gonna be a lawsuit that'll never stop over that. They need to give me those tapes. They're not theirs. Bill Graham was a thief and a liar. He was a lot of things, but he was also those things. He was illegally recording everybody who came. Then Clear Channel, being the kind of company they are, sold it. Said, '(Screw) you guys; you sort it out. See ya!' That's annoying. But there are a lot of live tapes, and I have a bunch of 'em. When the King Biscuit Flower Hour did that stuff we couldn't afford to record ourselves. I had to do it with them, and those guys turned out to be kind of squirrelly, too. But I was glad when that '73-to-'76 stuff came out. They caught the band at a really good time.

Why do we hear your music so much on the radio?

Miller: My airplay is endless and broad. I have seven songs instead of two. They're going to play The Joker, they're going to play Jungle Love, Jet Airliner, Fly Like an Eagle, Rockin' Me, Take the Money and Run. What have I left out? They play endlessly because they've done research that they can't sell beer, cigarettes or candy unless they play my music. I'm the recipient of some psychological research that radio has done. Every year I turn to my wife and say, 'This has got to stop someday,' and then airplay just goes up and up and up.

How do you keep interested? The Eagles say they have a high tolerance for repetition.

Miller: I have a tremendous tolerance for that, too, and I enjoy playing those songs. It's a kick to play The Joker every night. Our concerts are joyfests anyway. Everybody sings along. Our audiences are a lot younger than their audience, and our concerts are a lot higher energy. Their concerts are a bunch of old people buying $800 Eagles leather jackets. Which is great; they sound great, no doubt about that. My concert is a bunch of 14-year-old kids, and it's the first album they've bought because it's cheap. Basically what my concert is those songs, which set up the concert great. From the first notes the audience is gasping. It's great fun. We give them two or three of those, then, hey, we're slipping in some jazz and blues! Look what happened! Look, we're back to the hits! Hey! People don't understand how young the audience is. You probably think it's your age and older. It's not. The majority of my audience is between the ages of 10 and 20, and it's that way all over the country, and thank God.

Do you have control over your studio work?

Miller: I have everything. But it's so hard. We did a DVD project and gave it to Capitol, and they printed 120,000 of them out of sync, and they had to be destroyed. It's just mindless. Six months ago I called the president of Capitol Records and they said, 'Oh, didn't you hear? They were fired yesterday.' It's very strange. Now EMI has been bought by a holding company that owns waste-management companies in England and hotels in Germany and gas stations in France. I've given up. We're in an odd position; we're actually selling CDs. That's kinda strange. The writing's on the wall on all that stuff. They've been so poorly run. Everybody sold out and nobody held on. Nobody owns a record company anymore. The thing that breaks my heart is these great recording studios – 'Yeah, we just tore this one down. We're putting in a Frosty Freeze.'

Steve Miller Band

When and where: 7 p.m. Thursday, Red Rocks

Cost: $49.50 and $64.50

Information: 303-830-8497 or www.ticketmaster.com

Mark Brown is the popular music critic. Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2674

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