“ROCK’N ME” (1976)

The guitar riff in one of Steve Miller’s most rousing hits bears an uncanny resemblance to the one in another stadium rock classic: “All Right Now” by Free. “It’s a kind of parallel discovery,” Miller said. “If you listen to the two riffs together, they’re sort of alike but quite different too.”

The inspiration for Miller’s song came by necessity. The giant Knebworth music festival in England, headlined by Pink Floyd in 1975, wanted Miller to play on the bill. “I had been off the road for months and didn’t have a band together, so I told them I couldn’t do it,” the songwriter said. “Then, my manager came back and said, ‘They really want you.’ So, I said, ‘Just tell them I want a gazillion dollars, so they’ll go away.’ Instead, they said, ‘Okay!’ So, I got a band together fast and we rehearsed. I knew that the festival was going to put me on at dusk and I wouldn’t have any lights, so I wanted to have something really good to play. I had already been working on ‘Rock’n Me,’ so I finished it right then. The very first time we played it was in front of 100,000 people at Knebworth. They put me in a situation where I really had to deliver, and that song definitely did.”