The Steve Miller Band started out as a blues band in the 60ies and evolved into a solid rock troupe by the 70ies. But when the 80ies came along with Punk and New Wave they started to feel like dinosaurs and as fewer and fewer fans turned up to their concerts they stopped touring altogether – at least until 1988, by which time they had transitioned into “Classic Rock” and were able to draw solid crowds again. But they did have one last big hit in 1982, even though their label, Capitol, did not believe in it and only came round when it was a number one hit all over the world: “Abracadabra” was a great piece of music with hideous lyrics.
Now, as we established, in the 80ies MTV had become a force and in order to sell records you needed to have a video to go along with your songs. Which was kind of a problem for one of the lowest-profile frontmen in rock. They had never done a video before and he just wasn’t going to be a video-star, so director Peter Conn did a little slight-of-hand of his own and made the video all about magic, with Miller – who was off touring Europe anyway – only appearing in photographs, incognito behind huge sunglasses and black bars.