I love San Francisco.
— Steve Miller
I love performing, and connecting with an audience never gets old for me, but it does get old for me when my audience is just only interested in something they've already heard.
I have my own studio. I'm in it all the time.
For guitar players especially, blues is the foundation of rock and roll. You take country music and rock and roll and jazz and you mix it together, and that's my basic makeup.
Rock 'n' roll guitar came from blues guitar. It was the blues guys who first turned the amp up and started whacking on the Stratocaster and a Les Paul. It wasn't the country guys and it wasn't the white guys; it was the Blues guys. That's where the real fire is in all of this rock and roll music.
I play for the audience's pleasure. What I expect from them is not important; it's what they expect from me.
From a small child to right now - I mean, when I was five years old, Red Norville, Tal Farlow, Charles Mingus, Les Paul, Mary Ford, people like that were coming over to my house. So I was around professional adult mature musicians who had had big careers.
I love performing, and connecting with an audience never gets old for me.
From the minute I became aware of Jimmie Vaughan and his playing, he was one of my very favorites. So I made it my business to meet him and become friends with him - to work with him and record some of his material.
From the time I was 12 until I was 21, Chuck Berry was my favorite artist.
Les Paul was my godfather.
My advice to new artists is to forget about all of this and take acting and dancing lessons and become a video star.
When 'Joker' came out in '73, I finally got a viral hit. Every DJ who heard it played it.
Hip-hop belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It's one of the most radical, revolutionary and reactionary music there is.
What the hell is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and what does it do besides talk about itself and sell postcards?
I never set out to be a rock star, I set out to be a working musician.
Basically, as everybody that has had a taste of the record business knows, they are gangsters and crooks.
You better believe I'm not a pop star.
We'll go out and we'll be playing in front of 15,000 people and say, 'Hey, we're going to do three new songs from something we just recorded' and 5,000 people get up and go get a hot dog and a beer and they don't come back until they hear the opening strings of 'The Joker' or 'Fly Like an Eagle.'
I've known Chicago for 50 years; we used to play shows at the Avalon Ballroom.
I want to entertain my audience. I know when then come and see me play, if I don't do 'Swing Town,' 'Jet Airliner,' 'Take the Money and Run,' 'True Fine Love,' 'Fly Like an Eagle,' 'The Joker,' blah blah blah - if I don't do all those songs, they'll be extremely disappointed. I love to do them.
Just trying to make my music as good as possible and to keep performing and just keep moving.
That's what I wanted to do was play music.
I'm sort of standing on T-Bone Walker's shoulders, Les Paul's shoulders, Lightnin' Hopkins' shoulders, Muddy Waters' shoulders, you know? And if I've inspired other people, I'm pleased. That pleases me greatly.
As soon as I understood what was going on in San Francisco, which was in 1965 and '66, I immediately left Chicago where I was working in a nightclub that was being shaken down by the mafia and the police for payments. I mean, it was a real thug world.
In 1956, I began playing in a band with Boz Scaggs.
Growing up in Dallas, my first influences on the guitar were T-Bone Walker and Les Paul. T-Bone taught me how to play lead guitar behind my head and do the splits in 1951 when I was nine.
My dad was kind of a hipster, and a doctor.
It's not always about huge giant commercial success. It's about art.
I was born into a household where my aunt, grandmother and mother lived their music. They all sang harmony, and by the time I was 2, I could sing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' in three-part harmony.
If there were 3,000 people in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the musical education would be so much better than this little elite thing.
The truth of the matter is, things that feel spontaneous have a much longer life than things that have got a lot of burnt brain tissue to make them perfect.
Actually, I have my moments, but I don't consider myself a grumpy guy.
I've always considered myself a serious guitar player, but I haven't been really worried about whether the public thought I was. That never was part of my record sales strategy.
I can walk into Tower Records, go get my box set, take out my Steve Miller credit card, and the clerk will look at me and go, 'Thanks, next.'
Giving a record company an album is like giving a gangster your baby or something.
It'd be really great to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame mature. It's a good facility there in Cleveland. I like the museum a lot.
Blues has always been a huge part of my life.
What I always expect to deliver to my audience is a very entertaining evening of singing and playing.
You know, songs like 'Rock'n Me' were actually written to be played in large... for a hundred thousand people kind of gatherings. And a lot of what came out on 'Fly Like an Eagle' and 'Book of Dreams' was music that was put together to be played in big, big venues with big light shows.
There aren't very many clubs. There's no place for people to develop and play.
When I was a kid, I never thought I would ever be able to make records and never really thought seriously about a musical career because a musical career was being Fabian or Frankie Avalon or something. It didn't make any sense. There wasn't any possibility to get into that world.
When Chuck Berry came along, what he did was more rock & roll than it was blues. It was more exciting. He was like the next step. I thought his first single, 'Maybellene,' was the greatest song in the world.
I'm very proud of my dad.
The Joker,' I made the album in 17 days and it was my last shot.
I met Les Paul when I was about 5. I was taken to see him perform and the place was sold out, just packed and full of really great musicians.
The way it worked was my mom came from a musical family, and my dad didn't - he was a pathologist.
Should the Moody Blues be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? That's absurd. Of course they should be.
All jazz comes from blues. Blues first.
I've demanded respect for myself and my band and my peers, I've demanded full artistic control for my music, I advocate for artists and music education wherever I can. And I'm a nice guy.
