Jimmy Miller: Remembered

Did you ever hear The Rolling Stones’ version of Under The Boardwalk? It is listenable in an awful kinda way. Such a goofy throwaway should be easily forgotten if it did not also represent a crossroads of sorts for the band.

With that one, the Stones showed that they had reached the limits of translating the American musical vernacular at least so far as the Blues and R & B went. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the band’s brain trust — Mick, Keith and manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham- knew they had to step up their original output. And so they did — in short order — as The Last Time and Satisfaction were just over the Boardwalk’s horizon.

This transition to mostly original material for the Stones took place at almost the exact same time that the British Rock scene was shifting away from reinterpretations of American Roots music to something more unique and with more homegrown musical dimensions.

The Stones followed suit with stunning but short lived originality. However, it was also during that period that they shed Oldham and tried their hand at self production.

That first self production effort was the fascinating but slightly under-baked Satanic Majesty’s Request. And just after Majesty’s somewhat muted reception, the London scene started shifting yet again.

This would be thanks, in part, to the Stones musical rivals — The Beatles — and their tireless exploration of personal and musical boundaries, not to mention an extended stay in India which included Mick.

It is impossible for me to say what exactly was the creative atmosphere within the band at that time. Objectively speaking, there were drug busts and trials to deal with.

Additionally, founding guitarist Brian Jones was sadly imploding and the mixed reaction to Majesty were probably weighing on Mick and Keith at least as regards their decision to self produce. Overall, this era in Rock history really was fascinating and the Stones were in the middle of it all.

Anyway, whatever the exact reasons were at the time, Mick mentioned to stalwart engineer, Glyn Johns, that the band intended to hire an American producer for their next album. Glyn panicked thinking for some unexplained reason that the boys would somehow hire a disagreeable nut case. So he suggested Jimmy Miller who — apparently — was affable and suited Glyn’s temperament.

That Jimmy was somehow a great producer and a perfect fit for the band was either not considered or secondary. Glyn — as I recall from his autobiography — never really commented on Miller’s talent but that might have been a bit of jealousy on his part.

Jimmy, as it would turn out, was not only the right producer for the Stones at the right time but he was perhaps the greatest Rock record producer of all time or — at least- second only to George Martin. That he is known or remembered at all, it seems, is only in relation to his association with the Stones and that is nothing short of Rock music’s greatest historical miscarriage of justice.

In a just world, the mere fact that Miller produced the Stones four greatest albums ought to be enough to earn him a spot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and, moreover, that would only be the tip of his musical iceberg. So why does he remain outside of that rigged temple? More importantly, why is he not better known and held in the same reverence as Martin?

Well, for one thing, Miller has been dead for 25 years this month. For another, the Stones — unlike the Beatles — are notoriously miserly with credit.

Take Daryl Jones, for example, he has been playing bass for the band since 1993. That is only four years less than founding bassist Bill Wyman, as of this date, and Daryl is not even considered — or even officially pictured — as a member of the band.

Martin, on the other hand, was routinely praised by the surviving Beatles and they never attempted to dismiss talk of his “5th Beatle” status. And let’s face it, would the Beatles sound like the Beatles if Martin hadn’t been at the boards?

The answer to that question is obvious. But the same can be said of Miller. Unlike the Beatles, however, you can prove it since the Fab Four never really worked with anyone else as a unit. Take a listen to, say, Dirty Work and compare it to, say, Let It Bleed.

Which of those two albums sounds richer, fuller, warmer and more repeatedly interesting? Of course, you have to set aside the second tier song quality on Dirty Work but, even accounting for that, there is no comparison. Miller was the difference.

To be sure, anybody — or nobody for that matter — can produce a great song. The power of a first tier composition and/or the arrangement will cut through any haphazard recording. Just listen to low quality demos and live takes of great songs to see what I mean. But it is that extra special something that turns a great song into musical canon. And for Rock music anyway — that extra something is often the producer.

To understand what I mean, consider every live take of Honky Tonk Woman the Stones ever released since they originally cut that track. There is no audible cowbell in those takes. But you do “hear” it just the same. You hear it in its absence because it is an indelible part of that song and your mind just fills it in.

Jimmy played that cowbell and he also clapped behind Charlie Watts to help him keep time on innovative arrangements when he needed that help — like the samba beat on Sympathy For The Devil.

Even better, after everybody else had gone home in frustration, it was Jimmy and Keith that recorded Happy in the dead of night in a fetid French basement. That is just some of what you hear in the greatest Rock music ever recorded.

Moreover, what other American could have filled the role the Stones needed in 1968? To put it another way, Mick and Keith wanted to get back to American roots music via original songs not the covers they had reimagined in the first phase of their careers. But how do you do that without a dusty old 78 as a guide?

Jimmy showed them. Within a band determined to record American Rock & Roll, he was the only American in the room.

So who exactly was Jimmy Miller? For all his Soul and Soulfulness, he was a Jewish kid from Brooklyn. That he understood Soul music and the Blues as if had been born over a Southern Juke Joint probably had a lot to do with his father.

Said father, Bill Miller, was a notable — and perhaps the most notable — promoter in the world of popular music at a critical time. He took Elvis seriously and was not averse to his musical genre. More importantly, he was more open minded in his bookings than would have been usual for the era. No doubt Jimmy absorbed some of the variety he was exposed to through his father.

More critically, however, Jimmy was a drummer as an instrumentalist. By definition in Rock, a drummer is either Soulful or he might as well be the guy seated behind the rest of the band holding two sticks in his hands. So he understood and embodied American vernacular music as few could, especially to members of his own generation. In short, he was the right man for the job.

And job one with the Stones, incidentally, was Jumpin Jack Flash which speaks volumes about what Jimmy must have brought to the table when you consider that their previous single was She’s A Rainbow.

But again, it is easy to dismiss things like production when the song you are talking about is Jumpin Jack Flash. So did Jimmy Miller have a distinctive sound that he brought to his projects?

Well since the Stones were not his first production rodeo, there is ample evidence that Flash and everything that followed was no fluke. Which, in turn means that not everything was owed solely to the genius of Mick and Keith alone. Indeed, what caught Glyn Johns attention initially was Miller’s production work with the Spencer Davis Group.

In particular, that would be the songs Gimme Some Lovin and I’m A Man, the latter of which he co-wrote. So before he turned the Stones into an original “American” Roots Rocking band, he pulled the same alchemy with a barely 18 year old British kid named Steve Winwood.

Think about that for a moment. To this point we have only mentioned six songs — Gimme Some Lovin, I’m A Man, Honky Tonk Woman, Sympathy For The Devil, Happy and Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Just on those six, can you explain to me again how this guy is not in the Hall of Fame? But, of course, there is more.

When Steve Winwood decided to assert his own creativity in a context more serious than Spencer Davis, he formed Traffic. And in December of 1967 — a full four months before he produced Jumpin’ Jack Flash — Miller helmed Traffic’s debut. That record — Mr. Fantasy- is a stunner. It is every bit as rich and complex as Beggar’s Banquet. Just consider the title song alone, an out of worldly pastiche that somehow still evokes something rustic. That something being Miller’s signature sound.

From there came his work with the Stones but somehow Jimmy found the time to simultaneously produce several other bands including Spooky Tooth, Sky and Delaney & Bonnie. Any one of these other projects would have been the highlight of another producers career but for Jimmy is was just a gig to keep him busy between Stones projects.

Unfortunately, the non-musical universe surrounding the Stones of that era could be toxic, even for the band members themselves. Brian of course drowned and represented the most direct casualty of Rock & Roll excess but by the end of the arduous process that was Exile On Main Street and its subsequent tour, almost the entire extended band was in sad shape. Drugs, alcohol, motels, planes and creative exhaustion had taken their tool.

To summarize, Bobby Keys was on the verge of banishment, Mick Taylor was struggling with substance abuse and artistic confidence and would soon quit the band, Keith was slipping deeper into his drug habit and Jimmy was awash in booze and his own drug addiction.

It was a wonder they could even hold it together at all to record Goat’s Head Soup and it was there that Jimmy Miller’s reputation ran aground. To fit the metaphor of running aground just perfectly, Goat was recorded on the island of Jamaica if you didn’t know that already.

Now, to be clear, it wasn’t the recording or release of Goat that sank Jimmy’s fortunes but, rather, the next record It’s Only Rock & Roll. And it also wasn’t because of his work on that one but because of his publicly known absence from it.

To explain in full, Goat came out on the heels of an incredible artistic string of AOR masterpieces beginning with Beggars and ending with Exile. Mick and Keith, under the best of circumstances, would have been creatively exhausted by that level of output but they pressed on despite all the creative and non-creative forces that would have permanently stuck down more fragile souls.

The forced result was a poorly received album that shook the band’s confidence and scapegoats (yet another ironic twist) had to be offered up. Jimmy was the expendable Goat. This was incredibly unfair and unfortunate. Unfair because the record sounds great. It’s weakness is not in the production but in the vague, derivative and over-baked songs like Winter, Silver Train and Dancing With Mr. D.

On the other hand, listen to the arrangements and production on songs like Heartbreaker, Star Star, Hide Your Love and Coming Down Again. These are live wire. Hide Your Love in particular is — minus the weak lyrics — exactly the kind of Gospel arrangement they hired Jimmy to deliver and — he delivered.

But the aftermath — or blame — for Goat’s failings were pinned on Jimmy who was the one person who did everything he was hired to do. To be clear neither Mick or Keith said as much directly but it was at least implied by not inviting him back for the next album and talking regularly — at the time — about the need for a fresh start.

So where did that leave Jimmy? At 31 he was creatively scapegoated, jobless and struggling with a serious addiction problem. To be sure some of this was clearly of his own making, especially the substance abuse part, but not all of it. Moreover, the musical scene was rapidly changing. He was, in short, about to become a very old 31.

Given all this, it is no surprise to learn that Jimmy struggled to find work in what was left of the 1970’s. That he even tried is a wonder in itself but he did and slowly but surely he found clients in the new musical landscape.

By the 1990’s I would say Jimmy could have been on the verge of a full artistic comeback. His final work simultaneously recaptured his signature sound of warm roots Rock mixed with the hard edge stylings of early Alternative. The only thing that prevented a bigger breakout was his death at 52 of liver failure. Death will do that to the best of intentions.

So his musical legacy, especially as colored by the mixed bag of his last 20 years, was probably dealt a permanent blow resulting in semi obscurity despite the early glories. That is, again, both unfair and unfortunate.

Unfair, because nothing can diminish or undo the great work he completed. Moreover, what went wrong with the Stones, I would argue, was not his fault. And most importantly, his final work with lesser know artists proved that none of it was a fluke.

Unfortunate because he died in what was essentially the pre-Internet era. Imagine how much rehabilitation he could have done with a musical podcast. Moreover, he should get extra credit for being a loyal soldier. Even in the pre-Internet world of 1994, he could have dished on Mick and made some serious coin but he didn’t

Jimmy played it straight so far as the whole Rock star thing goes and I would like to think he did so because he loved the music and Rock music in particular. In the end and in spite of what probably killed him, it wasn’t about the drugs and the groupies and the booze and the plush planes. It was about sweet Soulful music. And you could literally live a full musical lifetime just listening to the music he produced.

So 25 years on I say remember Jimmy Miller’s passing and pay tribute to the man by cueing up some of tracks suggested below. Do that and also send about a hundred postcards with his name on it to the Hall of Fame Induction Committee.

I’m A Man — Spencer Davis Group: You need a seatbelt to listen to this one and Gimme Some Lovin. Especially if you are trying to avoid an embarrassing fit of poorly timed dancing. Just listen in awe to all the percussion layered into Man. Then remember the fact that Jimmy was a drummer and co wrote this one.

Medicated Goo — Traffic: A Blue Eyed Soul masterpiece. Steve just sings the shit out of this one. Jimmy co-wrote it and he stacks the track with beautiful instrumental flourishes such as using the piano as well as the drums to drive the beat. Damn how I wish he had produced the Rascals!

You Can’t Always Get What You Want — The Rolling Stones: So how good a drummer was Jimmy? Well, here is the song that answers that question. As the story goes, Charlie Watts couldn’t figure out the intended pattern.

Gospel/Soul was somewhat new to the Stones’ repertoire and Charlie was struggling — or maybe he was just miffed. Who knows but check out The Rock & Roll Circus to see him overplay his entry on the live version of this one.

Not so for Jimmy who understood what was needed from the moment the song hits his cue. The track is stacked with a cornucopia of first rate instrumentation and it is hard to know where to focus your attention but Jimmy’s “steady as she goes” beat is the line on which everything else hangs.

Note especially the snare pattern just before the final verse. Jimmy segues from that to a simple tom roll. Mind you, nothing over the top unless you consider perfection excessive. Rather it kicks the finale into a different gear and the song ends on a higher note than it began. In other words, the reverse of a fade and you just want it all to never end. Now that is how you play the drums in a Rock song.

Bonus point: Mick incorporates the song’s origins into the lyrics including his demonstrating it for Jimmy at a drug store. Apparently, that is a true story and conveniently pads the song out with what — out of the full context — is kind of a dull story. Go figure the creative mind…

Only You Know and I Know — Delaney & Bonnie: This stellar Blue Eyed Soul band was so good that a virtual who’s who of the British and American Rock scene wanted to be in on their action. Also, intentionally or not, they were the American version of Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen Band. I could go on but I am digressing from the matter at hand which is Jimmy’s production of their most famous album: On Tour.

Anyway, for reasons unknown to me, the Stones did not engage Jimmy to produce Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!, their live document of the 1969 American tour which ended in the tragedy at Altamont Speedway. Rather, that task fell to Glyn Johns. The result was an edgy, sludgy mess, full of darkness and foreboding.

Mind you, that description is not to Glyn’s discredit. Quite the opposite. He accurately captured the tenor of the times and the tour. The 1960’s were rapidly coming to a close and dark clouds were on the horizon of the new decade. Also, winter was literally in the air when the tour ended that December day.

Of course, there was another side to the 1960’s, one that was full of hope and optimism. Only a few months earlier — August to be precise — the Woodstock Festival radiated the type of good vibes that almost lasted 50 years.

Give On Tour a full listen, it is sweet and soulful and as gentle as a flower bed. You can almost sense all the principals smiling as they performed and, naturally, Jimmy gives it all a warm audio glow.

Even the song selection on the expanded set reeks of nothing but positivity: Where There Is a Will There Is A Way, Everybody Loves A Winner and Things Get Better. And for a closer? A Little Richard Melody. Talk about Happy Happy Joy Joy.

So there You have it, the competing musical visions of the decade. But note which side of that contrast Jimmy happens to be on this time despite all of his dark work with the Stones. It is a startling change of gears and one that shows off his production talents as he sets a different mood and gives a live recording a little extra personality.

Bonus Trivia: Incredibly, the record company — Atco — claimed they could not find a quality picture from the tour to use as a cover. That has to be some sort of bullshit excuse as Delaney & Bonnie were a very handsome couple and it is hard to believe there was not a single worthwhile photo available. But anyway, that is Bob Dylan’s feet you see on the cover instead.

Sunshine Help Me — Spooky Tooth: As you have heard me lament before, the IRR is a fully unfunded labor of love. So I have no idea why Steve Winwood stopped working with Jimmy Miller. What I do know is that Miller loved the type of Blue Eyed Soul Steve excelled at.

So when Steve became unavailable for whatever the reason, Jimmy found these boys and turned them into Traffic 2.0. This one builds to a powerhouse Soul chorus and you’ll want to grab on to something when it passes over you.

This was a great band that deserved a much greater fate. Also, Jimmy produced the hell out of them.

Bonus Trivia: That is Dreamweaver Gary Wright on keyboards and second vocals. And, so long as we are on the subject of trivia, I feel obligated to mention that Jimmy’s half sister is Judith Miller of the New York Times Iraq War controversy.

It is hard to fully appreciate sometimes how fate works when it comes to notoriety both sought and unsought, intended and unintended. Despite Jimmy’s great creative work and, arguably, her — at the very least — controversial work, Judith might be the more widely known of the siblings. Go figure fate.

Sea of Joy — Blind Faith: For three of the four eventual band members concerned, I think the idea for this band came from one — or more — of them asking “So what do we do next?” After all, this was still an era of bands not solo artists. And the fit isn’t as odd as many subsequent detractors would have it. Eric had already played with Ginger and he could get along well with Steve Winwood. A few decades later, he and Steve would do a fantastic set of shows together.

What was missing was a sound. I would like to think it was the sound needed that Jimmy brought to the project. And as much as I might wish this was Light Cream, it is actually Heavy Traffic and is there really anything wrong with that?

Like Mr. Fantasy, this one is dreamy with a ripple of Country Soul mixed in. It is hard not to get a little lost here and overall the album delivers. At least enough to make you wonder what a sequel would have sounded like.

Side note: Ginger Baker passed while I was writing this piece. He had lived 80 hard years, hard, meaning on his own terms with minimal Rock Star frills. While I wish we could all live till 100, 80 seems like Ginger got the better of the old Reaper. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from Mr. Baker and I hope he is raising a ruckus wherever his soul is.

Hello LA, Bye Bye Birmingham- Bobby Whitlock: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, as things turned out, was a one off masterpiece. If a follow up was ever intended, it never happened and Rock history is the poorer for it.

For my money, Cream and Derek & The Dominos were the best fits for Eric Clapton’s talents. It is a bit understandable as to why Cream fell apart. Titanic personalities playing high volume music that was not to their exact tastes was a recipe for tension and tensions abounded according to the historical record. The failure of Derek was a bit more of a mystery.

I could blame the instability of Jim Gordon but he probably hadn’t completely lost control just yet. Sadly, the most likely reason was Eric’s deeper decedent into drug addiction. On the other hand, Duane Altman probably would have been absent from any follow up — even if he had not died — and that may have made for a less compelling sophomore effort. So we will never know…except that maybe we do.

Bobby Whitlock was a critical component to Derek’s Bluesy majesty. Yeah he plays good keys but on Derek, they were essentially drowned out by the two guitar attack. Nothing, however, could completely drown out his Soulful vocals and without them, Eric never could have pulled off Layla, Keep On Growing, Any Day and Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad.

On this solo Whitlock number, Eric, Gordon and Carl Randle provide the stellar backup and it is easy to see what Derek could have been after Layla. Jimmy Miller fills in for Tom Dowd and not a beat is skipped or missed or however you want to put it …but damn why didn’t they all give it another go?

Don’t Ask Me How I Know — Trapeze: Decent Hard Rock that was a bit out of time given the era it was recorded in. Note the great drum pattern that hangs well with the sharp slide guitar. Around the same time Jimmy produced Motörhead showing off the diversity of his work.

Goodie Two Shoes — Sky: After the band filled in as an opening act for Traffic, a mutual friend turned Jimmy on to Sky and, his interest peeked, he mentored and recorded them. Mind you these were a bunch of complete unknowns who were barely 18 at the time. Try and imagine that happening today.

Hell, try and imagine it happening then: the producer of the second biggest Rock & Roll band in the the world mentoring and recording a bunch of High Schoolers. Oh, and they opened for Traffic before anybody knew who they were, least alone Jimmy Miller. The mind boggles at the good fortune here.

That bandleader Doug Fieger was immensely talented, would be borne out on a massive scale when he recorded My Sharona with his LA band The Knack in the late 1970’s. But what of Sky?

Actually, they were quite good. Very Stones like, especially this number which Jimmy contributes his Honky Tonk Woman cowbell too. These guys had a Roots Rocking feel sort of like The Knack goes Country.

Doug, for all his talent, never had sustained success and, on his behalf, I regret that. Who knows, maybe him and Jimmy are laying down tracks at Pearly Gate Studios as I write.

Limb From Limb — Motörhead: The Stones were an established band when he joined forces with them. And as I have implied, it is was their stature that somewhat obscured Jimmy’s important contribution to them.

Miller’s work with Motörhead, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Lem may have been known around the music scene of the time but more in the “what might he do next” sense.

Moreover, the eventual debut album was weak. A bit of that weakness was several underdeveloped songs but the overwhelmingly weakness was in the compressed production. Sort of a boxed tornado effect.

Jimmy righted that wrong on their sophomore effort: Overkill. There, the band unleashes its full fury as bass and drums hammer out the beat. Every blow is framed just right and this is a Speed Metal triumph and milestone on just their second effort.

Obviously, the Motor boys deserve the lion’s share of the credit here but it is hard to deny Miller’s clear contribution when you compare the sound here to the debut. Also, the sequencing and overall pace are critical and noticeable.

This is clearly an album in an era when that still mattered. Once again, it is hard not to see Jimmy’s hand in that.

When you reflect back on his work with the Stones you can see each project as a distinct album and not just a collection of songs. The Overkill framework he helped create then carried over to their subsequent releases Bomber and Ace of Spades.

Boing — The Wedding Present: With few exceptions, the bulk of Jimmy’s work was geared toward original Roots Rock and Country Soul. Unfortunately for him, the latter half of the 1970’s and the entirety of the 1980’s and into the 1990’s would see Rock music retreat from that sort of sound.

So what was a poor boy to do? Obviously, Jimmy struggled to find projects in that era but that probably had more to do with his substance abuse problems than with an inability to work with contemporaneous artists and alternative genre arrangements.

But here we get an insight with what Jimmy could do with what has to be called an Alternative sound. His limited work with The Wedding Present is terrific: bouncy and alive. It pointed the way to future possibilities that sadly never came to be.

Moving On Up — Primal Scream: There is a sense of coming full circle here for both band and producer. Building up to their seminal album, Primal, it would seem, wanted one more rootsy Garage Rocker and Jimmy produced a knock out. Eons better than anything on Voodoo Lounge and proving, that he could still deliver the Rock goods while his old employers were treading water at best. Sort of a last laugh in that the Stones haven’t released a song as good as this in the 25 ensuing years.

And for Jimmy’s next trick…he died. If his work with Scream was just dumb luck, a one off or the beginning of a real comeback, we will never know. All we can do is live with his legacy…but what a legacy.

The musical revolution of the 1960’s came about because so many talented British musicians literally burned to deliver the authentic and electric sounds they heard on those imported American 45’s and 78’s they obsessively collected.

In the beginning, those British kids relied on tricksters and fraudsters and well intentioned fellow country men to deliver the sound they heard in their heads and those 45’s with varying degrees of success. But there was only one expat American around at the time who innately understood what they were trying to do and he gave them the elusive sound they were looking for.

Somehow along the way the man was subsumed by the music. It sounded so effortless that it took little effort to forget that he was behind it all. That is tragic and most undeserved and a bit ungrateful.

Jimmy Miller was the Lend-Lease of the Rock era. The arsenal of Rock democracy. His legacy is not recognized by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame but so fucking what. It’s better than that. It kicks its way out of your speakers full blown every time Jack Flashes. Much, much better than a stupid plaque. Continue to Rest In Peace Jimmy.

Thanks for reading. Send me some claps so I know how you feel! Just use that little hand to the bottom left. Your good vibes are much appreciated…till next time…