Steve Miller background story of Eminem sampling “Abracadabra” on “Houdini”

Legendary Steve Miller has recently done an interview on The San Diego Union Tribune where he talked about how his collaboration with Eminem come about.

Rock & Roll Hall of Famer didn’t have to think twice about collaborating with Detroit icon and fellow Rock Hall inductee Eminem, whose recent chart-topping song, “Houdini,” heavily interpolates Miller’s 1982 hit, “Abracadabra,” and was streamed more than 355 million times on Spotify to date. Check out the conversation below.

Interviewer: When you play “Abracadabra,” do you tell the audience about Eminem sampling it for his song, “Houdini?”
Steve Miller: Yeah. I tell a little story about putting the song together, we vamp a bit and then go into it. I feel really great that Eminem used “Abracadabra.” It’s a good use of it!

Interviewer: How did that come about?
Steve Miller: He called that he’d like to use “Abracadabra.” He said: “I’ve written a bunch of verses and we’ve done a track. I’ll send it to you.” I listened to it, called him back, and said: Yeah, that’s fine, man. It’s great! And if you want, I’ll send you the stems (individual audio files).” So, I sent him my actual recorded stems for “Abracadabra” so he could work with them.

Then, I got a lesson about what social media has done to the record business. When I put out “Abracadabra” in 1982, it became the No. 1 record in the world and that took about 12 months. With Eminem, two days after we signed our agreement, he released “Houdini” at 12:01 a.m. on a Friday. Within 30 minutes, 60,000 people had watched the video on YouTube. By 10 a.m. it was 3 million. Nearly 50 million people streamed it, worldwide, in just the first week.

I’d never seen anything like that. It was crazy, just instantly. So, that was a real lesson. And Eminem was very cool. I put out a little release (saying) I appreciated that it was legit. It feels good that a whole other group of people are listening to my music (through Eminem) and digging it.

For the full interview, visit SDUT here.

Eminem Steve Miller