Within four days of his arrival, Miller had formed a band and was playing at the Avalon Ballroom, combining, as Gene Santoro wrote in Guitar World, 'polished ballads with polished blues with polished psychedilic musical clouds of sound.' He soon summoned Scaggs to return from Sweden (where the singer had become somewhat of a star in his own right) and the Steve Miller Band became headliners. In 1966 Miller went back to Texas with the intention of finishing school, but, after hearing so much about the California music explosion, he decided to go west. When we were in Chicago, we knew we were playing better music than anybody on either coast.' 'You had to be good,' Miller said in Guitar Player, 'it was a very competitive situation, and you either had it or you didn't. Along with Barry Goldberg he formed the Goldberg-Miller Blues Band and began performing amongst the seasoned veterans of the Windy City.

During summer break, he went to Chicago to check out the clubs and ended up staying for two years. It was like what we were doing, but nobody ever thought we would make records.' Miller took a year off to go to Europe to absorb a different musical culture before heading back to Wisconsin. Miller told Dan Forte in Guitar Player that 'the Beatles came out, and it just blew my mind that they could get a record contract and people thought they were so different. Scaggs came up from Texas to join Miller and their collaboration lasted three years. He played with four or five bands before settling with the Ardells, who played during the school term, and the Fabulous Knight Trains, his summertime band. Miller enrolled at the University of Wisconsin aiming for a degree in English. Together they played fraternity dances and parties throughout their high school days until it was time to start college. Schoolmate Boz Scaggs joined the group after Miller taught the ninth-grader some basics on the guitar. With such a remarkable foundation to start with, Miller formed his first band, the Marksmen, at just twelve years of age. Les Paul and Mary Ford, T-Bone Walker, Tal Farlow, Charles Mingus, and Red Norvo frequented their household and Miller's father often recorded the artists in various nightclub settings. Miller's first lessons came from friends and patients of his father, a proctologist. Born and raised in Milwaukee til age five, he began playing guitar just one year before the family moved to Dallas. Miller found his fame and fortune in the Bay Area by way of Chicago via Texas and Wisconsin.

'Miller has ascended with the confidence that comes from thinking that you've always belonged there,' wrote John Milward in the Rolling Stone Record Guide.

Steve Miller, along with the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane/Starship, is one of the few artists whose career skyrocketed out of the music scene in San Francisco during the 1960s. Education: Attended University of Wisconsin during early 1960s.

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