Miles Davis Opens for Neil Young and “That Sorry-Ass Cat” Steve Miller at The Fillmore East (1970)

The sto­ry, the many sto­ries, of Miles Davis as an open­ing act for sev­er­al rock bands in the 1970s make for fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing. Before he blew the Grate­ful Dead’s minds as their open­ing act at the Fill­more West in April 1970 (hear both bands’ sets here), Davis and his all-star Quintet—billed as an “Extra Added Attraction”—did a cou­ple nights at the Fill­more East, open­ing for Neil Young and Crazy Horse and The Steve Miller Band in March of 1970. The com­bi­na­tion of Young and Davis actu­al­ly seems to have been rather unre­mark­able, but there is a lot to say about where the two artists were indi­vid­u­al­ly.

Nate Chi­nen in at Length describes their meet­ing as a “min­i­mum orbit inter­sec­tion distance”—the “clos­est point of con­tact between the paths of two orbit­ing sys­tems.” Both artists were “in the thrall of rein­ven­tion,” Young mov­ing away from the smooth­ness of CSNY and into free-form anti-vir­tu­os­i­ty with Crazy Horse; Davis toward vir­tu­os­i­ty turned back into the blues. Miles, sug­gest­ed jazz writer Greg Tate, was “bored fid­dling with quan­tum mechan­ics and just want­ed to play the blues again.” The sto­ry of Davis and Young at the Fill­more East is best told by lis­ten­ing to the music both were mak­ing at the time. Hear “Cin­na­mon Girl” below and the rest of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s incred­i­ble set here. The band had just released their beau­ti­ful­ly ragged Every­body Knows this is Nowhere.

When it comes to the meet­ing of Davis and Steve Miller, the sto­ry gets juici­er, and much more Miles: the dif­fi­cult per­former, not the impos­si­bly cool musi­cian. (It some­times seems like the word “dif­fi­cult” was invent­ed to describe Miles Davis.) The trum­peter’s well-earned ego­tism lends his lega­cy a kind of rak­ish charm, but I don’t rel­ish the posi­tions of those record com­pa­ny exec­u­tives and pro­mot­ers who had to wran­gle him, though many of them were less than charm­ing indi­vid­u­als them­selves. Colum­bia Records’ Clive Davis, who does not have a rep­u­ta­tion as a pushover, sounds alarmed in his rec­ol­lec­tion of Miles’ reac­tion after he forced the trum­peter to play the Fill­more dates to mar­ket psy­che­del­ic jazz-funk mas­ter­piece Bitch­es Brew to white audi­ences.

Accord­ing to John Glatt, Davis remem­bers that Miles “went nuts. He told me he had no inter­est in play­ing for ‘those fu*king long-haired kids.’” Par­tic­u­lar­ly offend­ed by The Steve Miller Band, Davis refused to arrive on time to open for an artist he deemed “a sor­ry-ass cat,” forc­ing Miller to go on before him. “Steve Miller didn’t have his shit going for him,” remem­bers Davis in his exple­tive-filled auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “so I’m pissed because I got to open for this non-play­ing motherfu*ker just because he had one or two sor­ry-ass records out. So I would come late and he would have to go on first and then when we got there, we smoked the motherfu*king place, and every­body dug it.” There is no doubt Davis and Quin­tet smoked. Hear them do “Direc­tions” above from an Ear­ly Show on March 6, 1970.

“Direc­tions,” from unre­leased tapes, is as raw as they come, “the inten­si­ty,” writes music blog Willard’s Worm­holes, “of a band that sounds like they were play­ing at the The Fill­more to prove some­thing to some­body… and did.” The next night’s per­for­mances were released in 2001 as It’s About That Time. Hear the title track above from March 7th. As for The Steve Miller Blues Band? We have audio of their per­for­mance from that night as well. Hear it below. It’s inher­ent­ly an unfair com­par­i­son between the two bands, not least because of the vast dif­fer­ence in audio qual­i­ty. But as for whether or not they sound like “sor­ry-ass cats”… well, you decide.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

Miles Davis’ Entire Discog­ra­phy Pre­sent­ed in a Styl­ish Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion

Bill Graham’s Con­cert Vault: From Miles Davis to Bob Mar­ley

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness