Some people call Steve Miller the Space Cowboy, as you might know from his big hit song “The Joker.” But did you know the reason they call him that is because he had recorded a pretty popular song of the same name a few years before “The Joker” arrived? “Space Cowboy” was an early highlight for the Steve Miller Band, a musically inventive and lyrically intriguing track from the band’s 1969 record, Brave New World.
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“Space Cowboy” has been a staple of Miller’s live repertoire pretty much since the song was released, and still spices up classic rock radio to this day. But how was the song created? What is it about? And why did Miller have reservations about it once it was in the can? Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about this late ‘60s classic.
Brave Without Boz
Steve Miller Band began their existence as the Steve Miller Blues Band circa 1967, eventually dropping the “Blues” from their name, even as that style continued to be a large part of their musical identity in their early years. Before they even had a record contract, they enjoyed exposure with their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, which was held near the group’s home base of San Francisco.
While their debut album didn’t get much traction, Sailor from the following year started to carve out a commercial following for the band, thanks in part to the minor hit “Living in the U.S.A.” (That album includes the song “Gangster of Love,” a title that would also find its way into the lyrics of “The Joker.”) One of the key contributors to that album was a young Boz Scaggs on guitar and vocals. But Scaggs clashed with Miller on the direction of the group and left after that album.
That left a lineup of Miller, bassist Lonnie Turner, drummer Tim Davis, and keyboardist Ben Sidran to put together the band’s third album, Brave New World (1969). And oh yes: there was also help offered by a guy named Paul McCartney. The Beatles were label mates of Miller and company, and McCartney, stewing from an argument with the rest of his band, hung around Olympic Studios in London one night to help Miller create the album’s closing track, “My Dark Hour.”
[RELATED: 50 Years Later, the Meaning Behind “The Joker” by Steve Miller Band]
The most memorable song on the album turned out to be a nearly five-minute rave-up that burnished the group’s reputation as stalwarts of psychedelic blues. Oddly enough, it was a song made up on the spot, and became a recording lamented by the artist.
The Making of “Space Cowboy”
“’Space Cowboy’ is a funny song because I was staying at the Chateau Marmont when I was working on it and I was stuck for lyrics,” Miller remembered to People magazine. “Ben Sidran was in the studio and he and I put the words together in about 15 minutes. I didn’t think very much of it! When I heard the final mix I was going to take it off the album—I didn’t think I wanted to release that version. And here I am 50 years later playing ‘Space Cowboy!’”
Miller has bemoaned the mix of “Space Cowboy” in several other interviews. Maybe it’s the perfectionist in him. Most other listeners have found it to be a dynamic recording, with the churning rhythm section of Turner and Davis setting a funky foundation, Sidran adding some appropriately otherworldly effects on keyboards, and Miller absolutely tearing it up with his solos.
What Is “Space Cowboy” About?
“Space Cowboy” tells the story of a character who has had it with Earth and has decided he’d rather take off into the nether regions of the universe. That’s the literal interpretation, anyway. The best way to look at it could be to view it as a metaphor for how Sidran and Miller skeptically viewed promises of societal change when weighed against the evidence they were seeing all around them.
After an opening couplet that shows that Miller was self-referential even at that early stage in his career (I told you ‘bout living in the U.S. of A / Don’t you know that I’m a gangster of love?), the song launches into all the reasons why the “Space Cowboy” has left us earthlings behind. And I’m tired of all this talk about love / And the same old story with a new set of words, Miller complains. He also suggests that religion and big business are equal offenders in the degradation of the planet: All the prayers and surveyors / Keep the whole place uptight / While it keeps on gettin’ darker outside.
In the final verse, our interplanetary hero continues to rage against the “back room schemers” and “small-trip dreamers.” The story ends with a warning of comeuppance for all these nefarious forces: And you got some heavy dues to pay. With “Space Cowboy,” Steve Miller Band delivered a stone-cold classic that gazes at our world from the stars and doesn’t like what it sees one bit. As the song says, Bet you weren’t ready for that.
Photo by Colin Fuller/Redferns
