Nikki Sixx and Steve Miller Band Member Kenny Lee Lewis Support Miller’s Rock Hall Comments
Steve Miller's derogatory remarks about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame have been the talk of the music industry for the past week, so it isn't surprising that record business pundit Bob Lefsetz weighed in with a recent newsletter — or that it prompted further commentary from a list of insiders that includes Nikki Sixx and Steve Miller Band multi-instrumentalist Kenny Lee Lewis.
Lewis weighed in most heavily, calling Lefsetz "a prince of the pen among thieves and the disingenuous" and thanking him for supporting Miller. "F--- the whining Black Keys," Lewis scoffed, waving off the complaints of Miller's Hall inductors. "They will be day-old bread by next decade. But 'The Joker' will be playing in space stations into the next millennia like in [sic] Guardians of the Galaxies!"
Those sentiments were expounded upon in a separate email from Lewis, in which he addressed Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach's observation that, in spite of Miller taking issue with the low number of women in the Rock Hall, there has never been a woman in Miller's band.
"Steve asked my very talented wife Diane Steinberg Lewis to join the band back in 1983 to play keyboards and sing, but she had prior commitments," he wrote. "We also auditioned a female singer songwriter to join us in 2008 after our beloved Norton Buffalo succumbed to lung cancer to help with our harmony stack and play guitar, but we went in another direction. Also many world-class female rhythm section players have only started surfacing in the last 10 or 15 years, and we have had the same core band now for over 25 years. But who knows what might happen in the near future?"
Firing back at Auerbach's claim that Miller was rude and dismissive to the Black Keys before they inducted him at the ceremony, Lewis claimed that Miller had his own "very big rock star" picked out for the honor, but he was refused by the Hall. "So," he continued, "Steve honestly did not know who the Black Keys were and frankly didn't care, and was extremely disappointed before he even showed up."
Addressing any outside observer who'd dare to suggest that perhaps Miller might have chosen a better moment to voice his concerns, Lewis argued that only a rock star can really criticize a rock star. "As for Mr Miller being called an a--hole and boorish for his bully pulpit moment, you spineless non artists who said it, you are disqualified from being able to make such a statement," he concluded. "You've never stood inside a rock star's shoes nor have an inkling to what it like to be abused and exploited."
Miller has support from at least one fellow rock star. Sixx, writing in response to Lefsetz's original commentary, thanked him for his words and reiterated his long-standing antipathy toward the Rock Hall. "Thank you, Bob," said Sixx. "The sooner this travesty is dismantled (in the name of rock 'n' roll) the better."
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