Photo by Paul Cox

He is one of the most respected accompanying guitarists to stand on the craggy acropolis of music industry immortality. But this summer, Dominic Miller plays solo, opening for Annie Lennox and - his boss, friend and long-time collaborator - Sting.

In fact, Miller will pull double duty Thursday at Tampa's Ford Amphitheatre: Miller the solo act will open the concert and, later, tag in with Sting and his band to close the show.

Miller will perform work from last year's Shapes, a disc built around his original arrangements of Bach partitas and sonatas, as well as collaborations with Sting, Placido Domingo, Alejandro Lerner and Chris Botti.

"A lot of people who do pop music need to know where this stuff came from," Miller said of the importance of older composers. "Modern harmony as we know it came from this European classical music."

Assembling a CD laced with such diversity was an easy task for the Argentinian-born guitarist.

A Jimi Hendrix fan with classical training, Miller's sound is clean and elegant, with as many bevels and grooves as a rich man's dining room table. On Shapes, Miller's guitar lends an air of delicacy and even lightness to a 12-track set that includes Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Bach's Mass in B Minor and Shape of My Heart, a song Sting wrote around one of Miller's riffs.

A former student at London's Guildhall School of Music and Boston's Berklee College of Music, Miller has been Sting's musical confrere since 1989. Before that, he had worked with Phil Collins, whose producer recommended him to Sting.

"I walked into his studio and realized he was all about pushing styles musically," he recalled. "He threw classical ideas at me, and he threw some Brazilian styles at me, thinking, 'I wonder if you can handle this.' And, of course, I can handle this, because I grew up with it."

Up until that point, Miller - a self-described "multi-stylist" - had struggled to find his place in the industry.

"Who I've become in the last 10 or 15 years is largely the result of working with Sting, who I love and hate at the same time," said the musician who is never afraid to challenge Sting. (See the 2001 DVD All This Time as evidence.)

The two often spar like brothers, and when asked to list something the public does not know about Sting, Miller - in standard issue British deadpan - answered: "I'd love to say something dangerous about the yoga and the tantric sex (Sting's much-sensationalized hobbies). But instead, I'll say that, just because he's got bigger houses, cars, bank accounts and success, doesn't mean that everything he has is bigger."

This testoste-ribbing is part of their work ethic. One day, while preparing for a world tour, Sting tossed Miller a book of Bach partitas and sonatas, reportedly commenting, "That should keep you occupied."

"Sting is a literary guy," Miller said. "I think he thought it would be quirky to give me a book that didn't have any words. I didn't know how to take it - as a gift or a challenge, so I took it as a bit of both."

According to the Universal Classics press release, "While the rest of the band partied in true rock 'n' roll fashion, Miller shut himself away in his hotel room, working out how to play the great man's violin partitas on guitar." The release, it should be noted, did not define "rock 'n' roll fashion"; though Miller reports Sting is a passionate chess player.

Yet Miller did, indeed, spend his hours playing, arriving at each venue "intellectually and musically warmed up" for the show. Shapes is the result of those efforts.

On this summer's tour, however, Miller is the warm-up for two musical icons. Eleven-time Grammy-winner Sting is touring behind his successful 2003 CD Sacred Love (the CD's duet with Mary J. Blige, Whenever I Say Your Name, won a Grammy). Two-time Grammy-winner Lennox will perform her hits alongside tracks from her most recent gold-certified album, 2003's Bare, which earned a Grammy nomination.

"What an act," Miller said of Lennox. "She puts her soul on a chopping board every time she sings her lyrics. She's telling people her story. She's wounded, you know, she's been through it. I've watched her act every single night and never got bored of it."

Miller anchors his opening set with an electric guitar rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner that's been known to stop wayward seat-finders in the aisles.

Though Hendrix's version of the anthem became the bailiwick of anti-war America, Miller said the song is open to interpretation.

"What it actually meant, what it still means, is what you want it to mean," said Miller, who now lives in England. "I like America and Americans. I lived in Wisconsin for a while and went to high school there, so I know Americana as much as an Englishman can know it. The song is really me just saying that I dig your place and dig you. It has nothing to do with politics."

Miller's version is at once a nod to Hendrix but also a declaration of his own musicianship. "As a guitarist, it's my responsibility to do a 'Star-Spangled Banner,' he said. "If you're worth your salt, you try it."

Grafting his rock-inspired roots onto music of convention is a habit he employs with just about anything passed his way. For example, there's Miller's take on Sting's beloved yoga: "I'm the Keith Richards of yoga," he said, "because I smoke cigarettes while I do it." 

© The Ocala Star-Banner | September 2004

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