Jet Airliner (song)

"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, having heard a bootleg recording of the album, decided to record "Jet Airliner" for his band's Book of Dreams album in 1977. 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 is reminiscent of (but not identical to) one used by Eric Clapton in Cream's version of Robert Johnson's song "Crossroads" (from Cream's 1968 album Wheels of Fire).

A cover of this song is featured as a playable track in the music video game Guitar Hero: On Tour, where the words "shit" and "hell" are censored. When the song is played on the radio, "shit" is usually replaced with "kicks".

Single Edit versus Album Version

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 caught up in any of that funky shit goin' down in the city", it was changed to "funky kicks goin' down in the city". (This version was included on the original release of Miller's Greatest Hits (1974–1978) compilation, although the full album version has been used for later reissues of the title.)

The single edit also had much better produced Steve Miller vocals. On the album version, one can often hear Miller breathing into the microphone as he begins singing a line. His breathing was mixed out of the single release.