After he was inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame in 2016, Steve Miller famously ranted against the Rock Hall, citing its lack of female inclusion (no women were inducted that year) and what Miller claimed was a disrespect for the artists the institution was meant to honour.

When the 78-year-old rock legend called the Georgia Straight earlier this month we brought up the subject of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by focusing on one of the main complaints about it: the scores of deserving rock and roll artists it's managed to ignore over the years. We asked him if he could even believe that neither Link Wray, Rory Gallagher—or even his fellow Texan Johnny Winter—had been inducted yet.

"Yeah, it's a very, very, very closed kinda boys' club," said Milller, "that was basically run for years by Jann Wenner, the guy who publishes Rolling Stone. And he was like Louella Parsons or something—he'd dislike some artists, he wouldn't let people in. He controlled everything, and all the time claiming he didn't. But the group that was nominating and picking people were a little elitist I think, and they had different kind of induction ceremonies for different artists. They treated different people completely differently.

"I mean there are a lot of people they don't have in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I can't tell you why, I just know that, after dealing with them... I dealt with them from the very beginning, when they were designing the Hall of Fame. They showed me the architectural plans for the building and talked about a lot of stuff they wanted to do, and it all sounded really great.

"But in reality it became pretty closed and was really unpleasant when I was inducted. They didn't even introduce the bands that were being inducted. There was nothing, you know. We didn't see each other; we didn't have a dinner. We didn't do anything. They'd just tell us to hurry up, get up there and do our soundcheck, 'cause they were making a television show and they just sold the show for I think eleven-million dollars to ESPN or whoever bought it—HBO I guess. And that's all it was. We were just being used. So I just didn't like it."

Steve Miller plays the PNE Amphitheatre tonight (August 30) at 8:30 pm as part of the PNE Summer Night Concerts series. You can read the full Georgia Straight interview here.