"
Jet Airliner" is a song composed by
Paul Pena and popularized by the
Steve Miller Band.
Pena wrote and recorded the song in
1973 for his
New Train album.
However, due to conflicts between Pena and his label,
New Train sat unreleased until
2000.
Miller decided to record "Jet Airliner" for his band's
Book of Dreams album in
1977 after hearing the unreleased album via
Ben Sidran, who produced it, and who was also formerly in Miller's band. It was concurrently released as a single, and reached #8 on the
Billboard chart.
On
classic rock radio, "Jet Airliner" is typically played in tandem with "Threshold", the instrumental piece that precedes it on both
Book of Dreams and
Greatest Hits.
The song's main guitar riff as played by Miller is reminiscent of (but not identical to) one used by
Eric Clapton in
Cream's version of
Robert Johnson's song "
Cross Road Blues" (from Cream's 1968 album
Wheels of Fire). Miller's performance of the main riff is in turn slightly different from Pena's original, which has a more funky edge to it.
Single edit
The single edit of Miller's recording features a truncated version of the guitar intro. In addition, one line of the song's lyric was altered for radio play: instead of "'Cause I don't want to get...
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