40 Year Itch: Really Love Your Peaches Wanna Shake Your Tree

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The story of The Joker, the album that finally broke the Steve Miller Band, begins a year earlier, in 1972, when Steve Miller broke his neck in a car accident on the way to the airport, where he was heading on yet another big tour to support a moderately selling album.

 He told me: 

 I fractured a vertebrae.I'm dealing with it right now. I got like three numb little fingers right here and kind of a bad arm over here. 

 Steve spent the next year house bound in Dallas, living with his parents. He had a lot of time to himself and eventually wrote a three chord song looking back over his career. The song refers to the Brave New World track "Space Cowboy" , "Gangster of Love from Sailor and "Enter Maurice..." from Recall the Beginning...A Journey to Eden.

He called the tune "The Joker". 

 All of a sudden, finally, ...last chance: got a big huge number one hit.

The song topped the Billboard charts in early 1974. I got the feeling I wasn't the first person to ask him the meaning of "The Pompatus of Love":

"The Pompatus of Love" is just, you know. I can't tell you man. If I told you I'd ..I just can't do it.

Riding on the success of the #1 single, The Joker peaked at #2 on the charts despite mixed reviews including this one from Rolling Stone's Bud Scoppa:

The Joker, is a lazy slide back into the empty posturing that has marked the second half of Miller's career.



Here's the rest of my Steve Miller interview