[Dixielandjazz] Taking Care of Business

[TCASHWIGG at aol.com]

In a message dated 5/23/05 6:17:56 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
barbonestreet at earthlink.net writes:

> Singer/Rock Musician Steve Miller (Take The Money &Run", "Fly Like an
> Eagle") recently was among a number of speakers at a conference of 400
> business Executives in Atlanta GA. The presentations included topics such as
> "Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage".
> 
> Said Miller attired in a gray business suit: "I love playing but you can't
> get to the good stuff unless you keep an eye on the business."
> 
> "Miller's speech underlies a truth that's become more obvious recently. Rock
> &Roll is big business and hard-living stereotypes aside, the rockers who
> succeed over the long run are the ones paying attention to business." . . .
> 

Geeze  I wonder where Mr. Miller got that line from?  :))

I took on his booking and management in 1972  when he was earning $3,500.00 a 
concert and three years later he was up to $60,000.00 a concert against 60% 
of the gross ticket sales, plus 75% of his record and merchandise sales.

He looked at me on morning at an 8:00 a.m. radio interview through his 
bloodshot Jack Daniels eyes from the night before and asked me how much money he 
paid me, and I told him not enough for the work I did and also the baby-sitting 
of him when he went on his binges.

He used to call me "SLICK" because he never played a date booked by me that 
he did not get paid in full for no matter what the out come of the ticket sales 
were.  He could never figure out why the accounting was always correct, 
because most of his other rock buddies were getting ripped off pretty well in those 
days, by their record labels and some shyster rock promoters of the day.

I made 10% in those days and he told me he wanted me to cut to 5% now since 
he was a Big Star and he thought he was paying me too much money.

I told him to put it where the sun don't shine and walked out of the studio 
and flew home without leaving him a copy of the remainder of the itinerary.  

This is the same MR. Businessman that decided to take a year off at the 
height of his success and told me to fire all the employees that worked for us 
running his BUSINESS.

Now he wears Grey Business Suits and is a guest speaker, ha ha ha ha,  I 
remember him in Italian Jump suits being arrested in the park at 2:00 a.m. with no 
ID in the company ladies younger than he should have been in private with.

Oh yeah, he did however do something that most rockers rarely ever do, He did 
pay attention to what I had done and set up to run his career and help him 
keep most of the money he actually earned.   

This from a guy who got kicked out of the University in Wisconsin, and moved 
to San Francisco to be a hippie musician with Curly Cook and Boz Scaggs.

Mr. Scaggs as he now likes to be called left Miller too and has done very 
well for himself, no doubt two of the smarter rockers I worked with from that 
era, but then again they did a taste of Booze but neither were ever hard druggers 
which probably is what saved them.

Oh well.

Cheers,

Tom Wiggins