A Conversation with Steve Miller and Journey's Neal Schon &

[tater1977]

A Conversation with Steve Miller and Journey's Neal Schon & Jonathan Cain

Posted: 05/12/2014
Mike Ragogna - Music Biz Vet

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-rago ... 07476.html


Mike Ragogna: Journey and the Steve Miller Band recorded a few of the most popular albums ever made, especially Escape and Greatest Hits 1974-1978. And soon, you'll be touring together with Tower Of Power. What is it about your bands that resonated with pop culture?

Steve Miller: I think Journey and Tower Of Power and the Steve Miller Band, we're all part of the core of original groups in the San Francisco music scene. This is a social phenomenon as well as a musical phenomenon. These bands are an integral part of music and art and production of a whole new approach to music. Once you start changing the way people attend concerts, what happens to concerts, then you're in an unusual creative environment that San Francisco was in for three decades--really, the sixties, the seventies, and the eighties. There's really just an amazing amount of creativity that came out of there. I think that's what shaped bands like Journey and us. We made a lot of records. If you look at Journey, "Don't Stop Believing" and all the albums that they put out in a row--Infinity and then Evolution, Departure, Escape, Frontiers--that was like in five years. I think we put out five albums in the first eighteen months that we started recording. Five albums in eighteen months is pretty amazing. The creativity was fast and the response from the audiences was instant.

At the same time we're doing this, we were building brand new stages, brand new sound systems, brand new light shows. All that really added, I think, to what made the music mean more than just a string of hits. Tower Of Power is in there too. This is a phenomenal band. When you look at the music that came out of it, it makes sense that it's become so classic. Journey proves it, Tower Of Power proves it, people are still listening to these songs, they're still buying these songs and they're still coming out and they want to hear and see the bands perform. So that's a different thing from just producing hit music and writing hit singles. There's a lot more to it than just that music.

Neal Schon: I think the reason Journey is still prominent and out there is because we basically work our asses off and tour every year and continually play the music and have new audiences coming all the time, maintaining younger fans. Also I think we just got it right. We wrote a lot of really great songs, the three of us--myself, Steve Perry, and Jonathan Cain. We just got some things right, and I think that's why it's etched in stone.

Jonathan Cain: I'd say the thing is that time period that [we all] had our success, people were hungry for the combination. American music is blues, it's pop, it's soul, and it's the combination that makes it unique. I think all of us have that in common. We grew up loving soul and the blues and great melodies. I think the melodies were contagious, they were in the air, people wanted to be able to sing along with stuff, people wanted to party. We had Bill Graham, one of the greatest promoters of all time. He really invented the rock concert. He was a local guy who brought the Bay area together. We had the Bammies--the Bay Area Music Awards--a brotherhood celebration, if you will, of artists who shared the passion in the Bay area. It was a time and place when the Forty-Niners were close to the town and they would show up with Bill Graham at concerts.

I think we in the seventies and eighties enjoyed some of the greatest moments with our fans because the ticket prices weren't crazy, they were out there buying our albums--two hundred and fifty thousand a week. It's unheard of, that amount of participation with our fans, sharing this thing, and we happened to [be on] one of the greatest record companies in the business, Columbia. There were a lot of shiest-y ones that didn't pay you. But I have to say, Columbia always took care of us. Their army of soldiers helped sell these phenomenal records, well over a hundred million, which is hard to believe. We would not be the brand without all of those wonderful people who helped us in those years.

It took a village to make a hit record, to make brands like Journey and the Steve Miller Band last. We had the good fortune of having all of those people, the distributors, the handlers, the ones that got the records out to the stores before Best Buy and all these other people took over, that was amazing. You go to met these folks; they were grassroots people. We were very blessed to have that kind of backing. I think that contributes to a lot of our success today, while we were still out there doing it. Without the radio people--the DJs, the personalities, the Kid Leos of the world who promoted bands and had you on the radio that wanted to know how you were and had you on an interview; those kind of things where you actually went on a radio station and talked to the city and checked in with those people. "How are you doing?" That was an amazing time, where artists really got a look at the fans they were looking at, taking phone calls on the air, and really, really knowing your audience, looking them in the eye, saying, "Yeah!" Me joining Journey with Steve Perry was a crapshoot. They picked me out of The Babys and little did I know how much Steve and Neal and I would have in common musically. Together, we wrote some pretty cool songs. I'm very proud of that.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

NS: My son is an aspiring guitarist and he's amazing, I'm always looking for ways to help him out and get him out there--with the demise of record stores and pretty much the whole record industry I tell him, "You've got to go out and you have to play and you have to be seen." It's very difficult, I realize it is, for young artists to be seen because it's so backwards. It's A-S-S-backwards! You have to pay to play a lot of times in these clubs, a lot of Mom & Pop clubs are closing down, so it's very difficult. But I just say, "Jam with whomever you can, who's got a decent name and a decent band and be seen as much as you can in a live sense."

JC: My advice to new artists is to be true to what you believe you're best at, and not to try to chase the trend. If you're a hip-hop guy, stay a hip-hop guy. If you're a rock guy, be the best rock guy you can be. Go with your strengths and try to get your music and your brand out there on the internet. It's really the best place, with social media and all these sites that you can go on and put your music out there. Just try not to give it away. That's the one problem...people are giving out their music for free.

MR: Steve, what is your advice for new artists?

SM: My advice for new artists is to forget about all of this and take acting and dancing lessons and become a video star.

MR: [laughs] But what if they'd prefer to play music?

SM: I'll tell you the truth. When I started playing, the only hope there was, was to work in night clubs. This was before San Francisco. When San Francisco opened up, I left Chicago where I played with Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf and James Cotton and Junior Wells and Buddy Guy and immediately went to San Francisco because it was a chance to play in a ballroom to twelve hundred people instead of a bunch of drunks in a nightclub. It's sort of like the same world for new artists. It seemed impossible when I was a kid. I never thought that I would be able to make any kind of records and never 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.

It's kind of like that for kids now. I just had an eighteen year-old kid opening for me in Canada a couple weeks ago, Matthew Curry. Wonderful guitar player, great songwriter, in the Stevie Ray Vaughan area of virtuosity and originality. He's really great. I'm looking at this kid and he's driving in a van so he can open for us. I brought him up on stage to play with us and I'm sitting there trying to figure out, "How is this kid going to actually make it in this world where it takes five million dollars and a corporate sponsorship from Pepsicola to have a hit record nowadays?" It takes thirty million dollars to sell two million albums; it's crazy.

I don't really have any instant advice for these kinds of kids except to be true to yourself. Suffer for your art and hang on and maybe something will change where you actually have a chance. Right now, I don't think they have much of a chance. I think all this "Get it on the internet!" stuff is BS and nonsense. You have to really connect with people. There aren't very many clubs, there's no place for people to develop and play. It's a bad time right now for young artists. It's not always about huge, giant commercial success; it's about art, it's about creativity, it's about virtuosity. I worry about that, because it doesn't look really good, but when I was a kid, it didn't look good either. Big time success then was to be on a bus with seven other bands doing a gig where you did ninety shows in eighty days. I wasn't kidding when I said, "Take acting lessons and work on your video," because without that...

JC: Steve, we can look at a guy like Joe Bonamassa. I wrote a couple of songs on his album and Joe has forged a career out of basically using internet and his live playing and staying current with his fans and has made a career.

SM: Joe's like me! He's a guy who won't be denied. Joe Bonamassa's been grinding now for twenty years. He plays club by club, small gig by small gig, going to Europe and working and working and working and working and working and people love him and he's a great guitar player. He should be forty times the size of the artist he is.

JC: Sure, but he's still surviving in this business. My hat goes off to him.

SM: Oh, me too. My point is he's tougher than five thousand other guitar players for all those reasons. That's how hard it is to actually make it. He's a perfect example of somebody who's really, really strong and works really hard. He knows who he is and what he's doing; he's not some talented little kid with a manager who's going to make his career. That's rare...that's really, really rare. There are a lot of great guitar players that you never get to hear. It's been that way all my life. You finish doing a gig in front of twenty thousand people and go back to the hotel to The Boom-Boom Room at the top of The Sheraton and there'll be some guy in there who will blow you away that nobody will ever hear of because they're not tough enough to win in this gangster world of music, you know?

Transcribed By Galen Hawthorne

[FamilyMan]

"the three of us--myself, Steve Perry, and Jonathan Cain. We just got some things right, and I think that's why it's etched in stone".

In some other thread, there was some question about Neal's lack of enthusiasm for new material. This quote about sums it up. He doesn't think that chemistry exists today.

[steveo777]

"the three of us--myself, Steve Perry, and Jonathan Cain. We just got some things right, and I think that's why it's etched in stone".

In some other thread, there was some question about Neal's lack of enthusiasm for new material. This quote about sums it up. He doesn't think that chemistry exists today.

Yup, they really are just gonna milk every last dollar out of the past success. Can't really blame them if the market remains there. Journey is a touring cash cow. Their retirements are secure, whenever that happens. Maybe not as much for Neal because he prefers those high maintenance kind of gals, so he'll probably have to work for as long as his heart beats and he can still create guitar notes.

[The_Noble_Cause]

"the three of us--myself, Steve Perry, and Jonathan Cain. We just got some things right, and I think that's why it's etched in stone".

In some other thread, there was some question about Neal's lack of enthusiasm for new material. This quote about sums it up. He doesn't think that chemistry exists today.

I don't think Schon is the one against creating new material. It has always been Neal that is pushing the band to do new material.

[Journey/Survivor]

I don't think Neal lacks any desire to write and record new music.

But Jonathan's comment about don't give away your music for free, shows once again that he is focusing too much on money, and not art. Not creativity.