With a titular monitor that’s acknowledged at first riff, Fly Like An Eagle stands the check of time because the epitome of 70s traditional rock. After its launch in Might 1976, the album blazed its approach to the Billboard chart’s No. 2 slot and launched Steve Miller Band’s particular model of synth-driven spacey blues-rock that will spawn a string of hits and dominate the FM radio dial.
Hearken to Fly Like An Eagle now.
Whereas 1968’s Sailor is taken into account to be their breakthrough album, the band got here shut many occasions to mainstream success, each with 1969’s Courageous New World, which simply missed the Prime 20 and 1973’s platinum-selling The Joker. It took the band eight years and 9 albums earlier than they lastly hit the large leagues and reached an entire new degree of fame.
Steve Miller had experimented with completely different genres all through his profession, but it surely wasn’t till he drew upon all of his previous influences that his sound would coalesce into one thing better. Steeped within the blues from his Chicago days, Steve Miller Band was at all times a blues band at coronary heart that experimented with hippy psychedelia.
As a mainstay of the San Francisco music scene within the late Sixties, the band had discovered early success after a powerful efficiency on the legendary Monterey Pop Competition and caught the attention of Capitol Information. The band then secured a five-album deal in 1967 with a $50,000 advance — essentially the most profitable deal ever supplied to an unknown band at the moment.
From then on, the group churned out an album a yr, however to middling outcomes. It wasn’t till the band determined to maneuver away from their psychedelic blues fashion, changing extended blues jams with extra conventional pop melodies, that they reworked into a success manufacturing facility three years after The Joker.
After an prolonged break, the band regrouped, modified their line-up with solely Lonnie Turner retained from the earlier album, and started working on greater than two-dozen tracks in San Francisco in 1975. By early the following yr, they divvied up the songs; half went to Fly Like An Eagle whereas a lot of the remaining tracks ended up on their follow-up album, 1977’s E-book of Desires.
At the moment the band included drummer Gary Mallaber and Turner on bass, however the albums additionally featured contributions by harmonica participant James Cotton, session guitarist Les Dudek, and the Doobie Brothers’ John McFee.
Beforehand the band had adhered to the album-oriented rock sound that was prevalent on the time, however Eagle as a substitute was singles-centric. Composed of a seemingly limitless sequence of hit singles of differing kinds, the album is a musical anthology of types, representing all the music Steve Miller had ever identified. From the blues to hippie-rock, nation and R&B — it may virtually cross for a best hits album.
From the spaced-out synths on the album’s instrumental opener, it was clear there was radical shift to the music of those fruitful periods. Miller clearly had a penchant for trippy album openers which are finest appreciated on an opulent textile of some types. Simply as “Song for Our Ancestors” set the tone for Sailor, “Space Intro” carried out the identical perform on Fly Like An Eagle, asserting the arrival of the brand new funkified model of the titular monitor. Revamping the previous 12-minute jam and stripping of its overt political overtones, the tune soared to No.2 on the Billboard Scorching 100 chart through the week of March 12, 1977, and have become the band’s defining hit.
However with regards to infectious melodies and radio-ready singles, “Take the Money and Run” and the slick guitar boogie of “Rock ‘n’ Me” take the cake. With its cinematic storyline and everybody’s favourite rhythmic machine, energetic handclaps, “Take the Money and Run” stored the album on the charts for practically two years.
Regardless that the Steve Miller Blues Band had dropped the “Blues” from their moniker, it didn’t imply they totally left it behind. Among the songs that skate near the band’s blues roots are “Sweet Maree,” due to harmonica stylings of Muddy Waters participant James Cotton and “Mercury” which traverses its means across the blues scale.
From sluggish dance numbers just like the Sam Cooke cowl, “Send Me” to sitars on “Wild Mountain Honey,” the album is something however predictable and even dabbles in bluegrass on “Dance, Dance, Dance.” Usually overshadowed by the opposite hits on the album, “Serenade” is a fan favourite and actually is the underdog of the album. With its driving beat and dynamic key shifts, it’s a wake-up name to motion.
Whereas it sparked so many singles, the album is extra than simply the sum of its elements. Eclectic and modern with its new-fangled synthesized sounds and musical medleys, it’s nonetheless remarkably cohesive and its quadruple-platinum gross sales have been solely bested in Miller’s physique of labor by his 1978 best hits compilation.
Fly Like An Eagle may be purchased right here.
