Fly Like An Eagle
	Produced by Steve Miller
	Released on May 1976
	US CHART POSITION #3 . . . 4x PLATINUM RECORD . . . UK CHART POSITON #11
	Find it at GEMM
SN-16339 cover [high resolution scan]

S ome people called him a space cowboy, but I bet even they weren’t ready for this. Fly Like An Eagle was out-of-this-world country blues but mostly rock; as close to a space western shoot-out as 1976 had seen (not counting the Star Wars trailer). Steve Miller’s synthesizer intros may not have been the living end of electronic music, but they had just enough technical mystique to give the music a cool, futuristic edge. Eagle had a dreamy, eastern, electronic aura like the music of Al Stewart, Gary Wright and Fleetwood Mac. Except that Steve Miller really rocked. The guitar riffs behind “Take The Money And Run,” “Rock ‘N Me” and “Serenade” have all the grit of a great trail rider. They represent part of the quintessential American songbook: Bonnie and Clyde criminality, Native American spirituality, square dance informality. A few songs sound like the earlier Joker (“Mercury Blues,” “Dance, Dance, Dance”), but for the most part Eagle is a spaced-out adventure of a different order. The title track transcends in its hepness, “Dance, Dance, Dance” in its unhepness and “Rock ‘N Me” because it never fails to. Fly Like An Eagle was some of the slickest stoner music to come out of the Seventies (the other slick stoner music coming, maybe obviously, from the Eagles themselves). Suddenly, the promise of Steve Miller seemed fulfilled. Instead of one or two standout tracks, it all came together: the blues, the country, the rock and the stoned. The complexity of the music and the simplicity of its execution is enigmatic even today, thirty years on. Four million Americans alone have flown with the eagle so far, and they’ll keep doing it so long as there are stars on the flag.

SN-16339 back cover

TRACK LISTING

1. SPACE INTRO    (Steve Miller)    1:15
2. FLY LIKE AN EAGLE    (Steve Miller)    4:42
3. WILD MOUNTAIN HONEY    (Steve McCarty)    4:50
4. SERENADE    (Steve Miller/Chris McCarty)    3:10
5. DANCE, DANCE, DANCE
6. MERCURY BLUES    (K.C. Douglas)    3:43
7. TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN    (Steve Miller)    2:48
8. ROCK 'N ME    (Steve Miller)    3:05
9. YOU SEND ME
10. BLUE ODYSSEY    (Steve Miller)    1:00
11. SWEET MAREE    (Steve Miller)    4:16
12. THE WINDOW    (Steve Miller/Jason Cooper)    4:19
    
    CD reissue bonus tracks
    
13. FLY LIKE AN EAGLE '73
14. TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (ACOUSTIC)
15. ROCK 'N ME ('76 SLOW)

CREDITS

GARY MALLABER -- drums and percussion
STEVE MILLER -- vocals, guitar, Roland, sitar guitar
LONNIE TURNER -- bass
Charles Calamise -- bass (10)
Curley Cooke -- rhythm guitar (10)
James Cotton -- harmonica (3,4)
Les Dudek -- slide guitar (10)
Kenny Johnson -- drums (10)
John McFee -- dobro on "Dance, Dance, Dance" (which was actually left off the album, though it did appear as the B side to the "Serenade" single)
Joachim Young -- B-3 organ (2,10)
Mike Fusaro -- track engineer
Jim Gains -- master mix
John Paladino -- executive producer
Susan McCardle -- front cover photography
David Stahl -- back cover photography
Casarini/Van Hamersveld -- art

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