No. 40: ‘Song for Our Ancestors’

Night and fog, San Francisco harbor. A lonely sailor returns to the city of his dreams. We hear the foghorns of the ferry boats, the bay’s blackness brimming with hopes and inky peril.

So begins “Sailor,” the second album from San Francisco’s the Steve Miller Band. This being 1968, the work was conceived as a concept album — about a man of the sea’s homecoming. Miller even toyed with changing the name of his red-hot group to Sailor.

The album, often cited as Miller’s finest, offers a jumble of psychedelic white-boy blues, rock and balladry — most of it terrific — but the seafaring concept seems lost in the creative rush.

So consider the 6-minute instrumental “Song for Our Ancestors” the soundtrack to this particular Miller’s tale.

Glyn Johns — a British engineer doing only his third album as a producer — apparently came up with the album’s concept. He recorded real-world foghorns in the San Francisco Bay. This bit of audio verite anchors the Miller band, rock-and-blues hellcats who perform the track with poise and restraint. There’s a decided groove in “Ancestors,” but it’s gentle, a sonic massage for stoners and dreamers. Cinematic and widely stereophonic.

This was unchartered territory in San Francisco rock, but listen for the echoes of cool jazz, Sun Ra and B-movie soundtracks. Guitar ace Miller slips into a Wes Montgomery space for a while. Hammond B-3 man Jim Peterman dispenses the Jimmy Smith-style chill. And drummer Tim Davis brings his timpani sticks to the effort, adding drama and texture.

The 5 minutes and 57 seconds of “Ancestors” fly by … although not much happens. Like many great ambient tracks to come, it offers narcotic satisfactions and an ephemeral sense of loss at conclusion. Miller capitalizes on the melancholy as the track segues into his McCartney-esque ballad “Dear Mary.”

No doubt Miller and Johns were well acquainted with the groundbreaking work of Pink Floyd, who had already released “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” — a kindred instrumental track with timpani and sci-fi trappings. (The first Miller band album was recorded in psychedelic-era London.)

Conversely, it’s hard to miss the strong similarities to the Miller composition “Ancestors” in Pink Floyd’s “Echoes,” which would follow on the “Meddle” album almost three years later.

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The atmospheric “Song for Our Ancestors” remains unique in Miller’s long and uneven recording career. The guitarist eventually would tire of psychedelia and artistic pretensions, leaving both behind after 1970’s “Number 5.” (The native of Texas and Wisconsin thought there was “never much magic” in being a San Francisco band, anyway.)

Miller, of course, would build his solo career with classic-rock earworms such as “Abracadabra.” Sideman Boz Scaggs and keyboardist Peterman would exit the band after the “Sailor” LP. (Scaggs, a boyhood friend of Miller’s, went on to smooth pop mega-stardom.) Drummer Davis would remain with the band until Miller went radio-friendly. Producer Johns (the Rolling Stones, the Who) teamed with Miller on several more ambitious albums of the underground era.

Liner notes: Many of Miller’s current-day fans would find his early psychedelic-tinged work a surprise, if not a revelation. Miller’s longtime label Capitol addressed the relative obscurity of his underground years with the May 2018 release of “Complete Albums: Volume 1,” which includes all of the key late 1960s work such as “Children of the Future,” “Brave New World” and “Your Saving Grace.” … “Sailor,” which remained in print throughout the CD era, was remastered for the 2018 box set (and a separate release), but seemingly with little effort put into the sonics. … The final indignity to the album’s original “Sailor” concept came in the ’70s, when Capitol rereleased the album as “Living in the U.S.A.,” trading on the enduring popularity of the Miller rocker that ends side 1. … Hat tip to reader reader J. Johnson, who nominated “Ancestors” for the list of top psychedelic songs. He found the opening track on “Sailor” album works well “for the head as well as the ears”