Fly Like an Eagle: 30th Anniversary

This is the album that, in one eagle-sized swoop, propelled Steve Miller from a well-regarded but hardly widely known psychedelic San Francisco-based bluesman to a chart-topping, hit-single-generating pop star. Capitol Records, who helped sire that transition by keeping him on the label through years of lackluster sales, celebrates the 30th anniversary of the event with this classy expanded edition. Those with surround sound systems will enjoy a stunning 5.1 mix highlighting the space-rock tendencies that so effectively offset Fly Like an Eagle's crunchier singles. Also included in the CD/DVD set is a worthy and informative half-hour interview/documentary with Miller about the making of the project and his blues background, as well as a riveting two-hour live show from October 2005 that includes most (but not all) of the songs on the album. The concert allows Miller to explore his blues, jazz, and even world music tendencies with fiddler/harpist Carlos Reyes adding gypsy/Cajun overtones to "Dance, Dance, Dance" and "Abracadabra." George Thorogood brings his gruff presence to "Your Cast Ain't Nothing but Trash," and a relatively restrained but intense Joe Satriani joins on the last third, which includes a 20-minute version of the title track. Despite its dated synths and somewhat antiquated production, the album holds up remarkably well, primarily due to its excursions into Delta blues ("Sweet Maree"), folk-pop ("Wild Mountain Honey"), and soul (a lovely cover of Sam Cooke's "You Send Me"). Three nascent versions of songs such as "Take the Money and Run" (retrofitted to the chord changes of "The Joker") appear as bonus cuts. They show how the perfectionist Miller's tinkering helped craft them into radio-friendly hits that sound as catchy today as they did in 1976. --Hal Horowitz

More from Steve Miller

30th Anniversary Special Limited Edition CD/DVD of The Steve Miller Band's landmark album. The CD is digitally remastered and includes 3 bonus tracks. The DVD features a terrific concert performance at San Francisco's Shoreline Amphitheater in 2005 with over two hours of music in 5.1 Surround Sound. Guest musicians include George Thorogood and Joe Satriani. The DVD also features a lengthy interview with Steve Miller, archive footage, never-before-seen photographs, and early demo recordings revealing the genesis of rock classics like Take the Money And Run, Rock 'n Me, and Fly Like an Eagle. In one special segment Steve Miller plugs in his Stratocaster to demonstrate how licks learned directly from the likes of T-Bone Walker, Les Paul and Chuck Berry influenced his own music and became some of modern rock's most recognizable riffs.

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