One rented white station wagon, a backseat load of trunks and cases, two golf pros lured off the greens of the Mill Valley Country Club to be roadies, Steve Miller in blood red handtooled honest injun cowboy boots, and myself are on our way to the beautiful Buckeye State. Why? Steve Miller is due to play the Cleveland Arena at nine that night. At five Steve and girl reporter (me) are due at his kissin" cousins for an impromptu family reunion. No, I'm not family. In fact up until a few months ago I was foe. Miller and myself had some not-so-fond memories of each other. This all started not less than five years ago:

Me, as an oh-so-cool Coca Cola girl at a local ballroom. Steve, a snotty upstart (I thought) guitarist. The place, backstage at the ballroom. Guitarist insists that Coca Cola girl guards the dressing room door. Coca Cola girl indignantly refuses, and settles back into her crushed velvet haze. Cocky guitarist then demands Coca Cola girl exits. "Not on all your steel guitar strings," she sneers. "You get out, I work here." Guitarist and Coca Cola girl vehemently glare at each other across the room.

Five years later the guitarist has made eight albums and has recently earned an RIAA platinum certified record for The Joker. The Coca Cola girl is roving reporter for yours and my favorite mag, CREEM, and the two of us are sitting not a foot apart in the backseat of the station wagon playing gin rummy on Steve's battered briefcase (we would have played Dominos but the Ohio Turnpike is too turbulent for such fun). "What did Eli Whitney invent?" Steve playfully inquires. "The cotton gin," I gullibly answer. "Gotcha!" chortles Steve. 105 to 38.

Besides being a good gin player, he's a good guitarist. Great guitarist. His promo man keeps trying to convince me that, Miller is also the greatest singer in rock and roll. Promo men are ajways trying to convince you about something, but this time he may be right.

Miller has been at this business a long time. Eighteen years to be exact. In fact some say THE Les Paul gave him his first guitar at the age of five and taught him how to play. Nice credentials for a kindergartener. When most of us were being outfitted with braces, Steve was cutting his musical teeth at the age of 12 in his very own band, The Marksmen Combo (along with Boz Scaggs). Changes came whirring by, and Steve left the Armadillos and the Alamo for the Chicago bluesturf. Steve was one of the few whiteys playing the South Side — with such bluesmeisters as Jr. Wells, Howlin" Wolf and Buddy Guy. While looking out of the wrong side of a , wine bottle, these masters shared their own brand of the blues. Along with Barry Goldberg, Steve formed the Miller Goldberg Blues Band. Then a migration to San Francisco and suddenly it was just the Steve Miller Blues Band and local notoriety. They backed Chuck Berry on his live Filmore album and also made some notable noise at the Monterey Pop Festival, which is where he first encountered a whole different approach to the blues. "Jimi Hendrix really blew my mind," he remembers. "When I first saw him I thought it was Eartha Kitt with a guitar!"

When the times were lean, Steve slept on Cousin Carol's floor in Chicago, but Miller never got discouraged. Carol, whQ now resides in rich and affluent Shaker 'Heights, proudly reveals to me that Steve used to autograph her grocery lists and demand that she save them because he was going to be famous. She didn't save the lists, but now scattered among her interior decorater's dream house are Steve Miller posters, clippings, all his albums, and a little namesake. Five-yearold cousin Steve keeps pestering "Uncle Steve" to pretty please play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" for him. He settles for "The Joker."

"Susie Howe Says Hello To The Gangster" is scrawled in scarlet crayon on the dingy dressing room wall. Two not-so-lovely Lolitas crowd around Steve, rapturously hanging onto his every word. Lusty teenagers hoping, just hoping they might be the ONE for tonight.

Lester, Steve s snazzy, natty road manager introduces the band with the funky finese of an announcer at the Apollo. The band slips on the stage and immediately slides into their first number, "Fly Like An Eagle" complete with pseudo-psychedelic lighting. The crowd is at slow simmer; a couple more tunes, and they're at full boil. Miller props up his collar, adopts an appropriate leer and he's the Gangster of Love. After the regular set ("Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a unique surprise for you"), Steve is joined on stage by the gold and gap-toothed Famous; James (Cotton, that is,) and his boyhood buddy, Boz Scaggs. Look out Liberace, it's goodbye Brooklyn, or should I say Buckeyes. Steve, Boz and James" blues recital was almost reverent. These guys were having an even better time than the audience with their wrangling musical dialog. And let me clue you, Bubba, the audience was not sitting on their hands.

As fast and frantic as it began, the party is over. Hangers-on reluctantly amble away. Roadies and ushers are the only ones left in the empty music hall. Upstairs Miller is holding court with a bevy of fans, promoters, and promo men. Suddenly as if on cue all the band members assemble on folding chairs arid Steve strongly "suggests" out of the side of his mouth that everyone else take a powder. Then, like a coach admonishing and advising his team, he alternately lectures and praises his boys. This is serious stuff. Unlike Rod and Alice, Steve isn't merely a showman, but a working musician as well. "Probably always will be," he admits. But he loves it... "Touring is good because I get alot of feedback from all over the country and it helps me keep on top of things. I know what the road does to me. The last few years have been really shitty. Hepatitis and I broke my neck at the same time." The show must go on — but really, a 19 concert stretch with hepatitis and a hairline fracture to his vertebrae. ..

Road dues have given him some insight into the audience he plays for, and he has little sympathy for the teenage wasteland. "I think Detroit has a real problem; a heavy wasteland scene. But I hope my concert cut through that, and generated some positive energy. The audience finally seemed to wake up to something besides three morons ripped on speed with 27 stacks of amplifiers trying to relive the Cream."

Do you know why kids go to rock concerts?" he asks me. Before I have a chance to answer, he tells me. "Some come to listen, but a whole lot of rock and roll is a social trip. You go to get stoned, to see who is wearing what, to pick up somebody, to get laid, to see your friends, sell some dope, score some dope... it's the only big jam kids have nowadays. You don't want to go to the school dance, and what else is there to do? They identify so heavily with the scene that rock and rollers are now idols and gods. And most of them are illequipped to handle it for sure." Hmm_ Alice Cooper as Godhead? Mick Jagger as Maharaj Ji?

Well, how do I size up this rock star. How is the weather up on a pedestal — or is Steve Norman Normal with a job to do?

Doesn't look much like a star. Suburban almost. His face is tanned and well-fed. His smile cherubic, not at all formidable. His attire is early Arizona Saddlery meets Late Country Club. He proudly sports an eight day moustache, his hair is muddy brown and carelessly pushed off his face by a black rimmed pair of Foster Grants. The man behind this particular pair of F.G."s doesn't much resemble the macho music machine you might anticipate. Steve has been called everything from the Mark Spitz of Show Biz to Igor the Invisible. As many have hailed him "whizz kid" as have dubbed him "has-been." The success of The Joker took matters out of the hands of a few devoted cultist, and now the band packs concert halls wall to wall. Steve never even has to throw the I Ching before a gig to predict the outcome (he used to). Now they are all smashes. In some sections, Steve is being raved as the new sensation.

Sensation — but new? He doesn't mind. "As long as they listen, let "em think what they will." Like Tony Bennett, Steve's heart may be in San Francisco, his home in Mill Valley, but not his ambition. His image is low profile, but his music if full throttle. As Steve says, "it's definitely time to cruise in I overdrive." ^