As Miller told Guitar Player<\/a> in a 2024 interview, he realized he wanted to play the blues when he was attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His father wasn’t particularly thrilled about Miller’s aspirations, unfortunately.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d never seen my parents in college, but somebody they knew got married in Chicago and they came up to Madison and asked what I was going to do,” Miller recalled.<\/p>\n “I said, \u2018I want to go to Chicago and play blues,\u2019 which is what every parent wants to hear,” he quipped. “My father heard, \u2018I want to go work in a nightclub with gangsters and drug dealers and hookers. It\u2019ll be great!\u2019 My old man would have hit me with a two-by-four if he had one, but my mother said, \u2018That\u2019s a great idea. Here\u2019s 100 bucks. You\u2019re really young, you don\u2019t have any responsibilities now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Steve MillerPhoto by Rob Verhorst on Getty Images<\/p>\n Eventually, Miller explained, his father came around to the idea of having a musician for a son…once he became successful.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was rough,” Miller admitted. “He loved music<\/a>, but not for his own kid as a career. My father was an alcoholic and a cynic. He was always sarcastic<\/a> about it, like, \u2018You only know three chords. I can\u2019t believe this works.\u2019 But at the same time, I\u2019d be coming to town to play a big gig and would get a phone call from a secretary saying, \u2018Your dad wants to see you on the way in and we\u2019ve got a guest list.\u00a0We\u2019d like some tickets and T-shirts for them.\u2019 And the guest list would be 350 people! \u2018$42,000 worth of tickets, Dad? Really?\u2019”<\/p>\n Thankfully, Miller’s scheduled fall performances will likely go on as planned, considering they’re indoors and during November (his 2025 summer tour was canceled over extreme heat, flooding and other weather concerns).<\/p>\n Related: 1976 No. 1 Classic Rock Hit Was Written to ‘Kick Pink Floyd in the Butt’<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by Parade<\/a> on Jun 17, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment<\/a> section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fans were devastated when Steve Miller suddenly canceled his highly anticipated summer tour in 2025, but it seems…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49259,26222,9,56,63,65,64,104358,104357],"class_list":["post-270440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-instagram-post","tag-lincoln-center","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-russell-hall","tag-steve-miller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Steve](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/cb4f8799609e11748ebdbf3ea8c96acf.jpeg\"\/)
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