Top 70 Steve Miller Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Steve Miller Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

My father had a phenomenal knowledge of music; my mom's

My father had a phenomenal knowledge of music; my mom’s family were all musicians.
Steve Miller
Les Paul was my godfather.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
My dad loved Les Paul, and I wanted to be just like that.
Steve Miller
I play for the audience’s pleasure. What I expect from them is not important; it’s what they expect from me.
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.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
Hip-hop belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It’s one of the most radical, revolutionary and reactionary music there is.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
We are living in a country that has taken the short view on everything. We have sold our future.
Steve Miller
I think the audiences abroad are older and come from a more mature society. They have a different understanding of whats happening as art.
Steve Miller
I love the sound of vinyl best. My sweetheart and I love to put on a vinyl record, it feels and sounds so much better.
Steve Miller
I never considered myself like a pop musician or rock star, because that didn’t really exist when I started.
Steve Miller
You have to know what your value is. I started learning my value when I was 12 years old.
Steve Miller
I was living and working with adult men who were playing a real art form. And I had been playing blues all my life. As soon as I formed my first band, we played Jimmy Reed stuff. So it wasn’t like I was a white kid who was learning the blues from B.B. King records.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
Giving a record company an album is like giving a gangster your baby or something.
Steve Miller
Looking at Capitol’s performance over a 22-year period, I figure they were focused three years out of the 22 I worked for them.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
The record business has been so unpleasant and so bad for so long.
Steve Miller
Just trying to make my music as good as possible and to keep performing and just keep moving.
Steve Miller
I love San Francisco.
Steve Miller
I was born to be a musician.
Steve Miller
From the time I was 12 until I was 21, Chuck Berry was my favorite artist.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
Vinyl’s like a really juicy steak compared to like a kind of tough steak or something. It’s really good. And once you listen to vinyl and get a chance to hear it, I think anyone will enjoy it more than they will digital.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
The digital world is so convenient and nice, but just playing back a vinyl record is a much warmer, hotter, more present feeling.
Steve Miller
I kind of enjoyed having people complain that I wasn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame more than I think I’ll like being in it.
Steve Miller
You better believe I’m not a pop star.
Steve Miller
Should the Moody Blues be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? That’s absurd. Of course they should be.
Steve Miller
Ooh Poo Pah Doo' was a monster song.

Ooh Poo Pah Doo’ was a monster song.
Steve Miller
Blues has always been a huge part of my life.
Steve Miller
I’ve known Chicago for 50 years; we used to play shows at the Avalon Ballroom.
Steve Miller
If folks really want music in their community they can do it very cheaply. It doesn’t have to be a $50 million program. All we need is just a little real estate.
Steve Miller
I’m very proud of my dad.
Steve Miller
I wake up every day excited to play.
Steve Miller
My advice to new artists is to forget about all of this and take acting and dancing lessons and become a video star.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
In some states, the population is pretty low and if 5,000 kids vote, they could completely change the political atmosphere.
Steve Miller
Blues is one of the most important art forms. It’s an amazing music, and we don’t want to lose it.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
It’s not always about huge giant commercial success. It’s about art.
Steve Miller
Basically, as everybody that has had a taste of the record business knows, they are gangsters and crooks.
Steve Miller
I have my own studio. I’m in it all the time.
Steve Miller
My dad was kind of a hipster, and a doctor.
Steve Miller
When I was a kid this is what I was listening to on my car radio – Lowell Fulsom singing ‘Tramp.’
Steve Miller
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.’
Steve Miller
Being talented was a hard way to make it. But I made it on my talent and songs.
Steve Miller
What I always expect to deliver to my audience is a very entertaining evening of singing and playing.
Steve Miller
I like hooks and choruses, things people can sing to.
Steve Miller
I’ve been blessed to work with so many wonderful musicians and engineers and friends over the years.
Steve Miller
I really enjoy working with luthiers, and have a couple of really old Les Pauls and one of my original Strats that I still carry on the road.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
Is there one blues guy who was the most sophisticated and influential, like Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong in jazz? Was it Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Lightnin’ Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Robert Johnson, or all of them? I think you have to pick all of them.
Steve Miller
That’s what I wanted to do was play music.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
I was exposed to jazz and blues and gospel and country music and rock, and I was the only kid I knew who knew about that stuff.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
I never set out to be a rock star, I set out to be a working musician.
Steve Miller
Very rarely can you bring someone new into a band and have them just fit perfectly, right away.
Steve Miller
Our real business is the people who come to see us play

Our real business is the people who come to see us play and want to hear us play, so I have a very active career.
Steve Miller
Right before I moved out to San Francisco, I played in Buddy Guy’s band.
Steve Miller
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.
Steve Miller
The Joker,’ I made the album in 17 days and it was my last shot.
Steve Miller
My plan is to keep playing until I fall over.
Steve Miller
When ‘Joker’ came out in ’73, I finally got a viral hit. Every DJ who heard it played it.
Steve Miller
I like most bands.
Steve Miller
Dealing with Jazz at Lincoln Center and its board of directors, who are so great, and then seeing how these Rock Hall guys operate, it’s like: ‘Really?’ It seems like they’re total amateurs when it comes to doing shows and contracts.
Steve Miller