The year was 1978. Tony Stein, long before he'd added the "Miller" to his name, was a frustrated songwriter who fantasized about getting his "big break" a little more each day. By the time he met up with Joel Gibson in 1980, he had close to 200 songs written - and desire for them to be heard more intense than ever. "The early songs weren't that great," Tony recalls, in retrospect. "They weren't terrible, they just weren't very...good. Most of them were written to vent my little artistic frustration, so they were angry and bitter and depressing. One of them, I kid you not, was called, 'Suicide Would Be Better than This.'" He pauses, laughing. "I had some serious issues back then, obviously."

In 1980, Tony met up with Joel Gibson, a banker with equally big dreams about the music industry - only, his were on the executive level. Mr. Gibson, impressed with Tony's lyrical and vocal abilities, helped him put together a demo that they subsequently submitted to every label they could think of. They got nothing in response. "Nothing," Tony reiterates. "Not even a form letter that said, 'Well, thanks for the tape, but you really stink and we're not interested.' That totally bummed me out, because we'd put a lot into that whole thing. And funny thing is, Joel was over there saying, 'Well, what do they know? Don't worry about them!' I told him, 'Look, it's done. It's over. We tried, it didn't happen, nobody wants me.'"

As it turned out, someone did want Tony - none other than Mr. Gibson himself, who proposed starting his own independent label, to get Tony's name out there and hopefully get him signed by one of the "bigger guys." Initially, Tony resisted. "This is a terrible thing to admit, but I really didn't think he could pull it off. I never thought it would actually happen." However, time proved that Mr. Gibson had been very serious, pulling together funds and again approaching his flagship artist. It didn't take long for Tony to jump on the JLN bandwagon. "The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. When I saw just how serious he was about the whole thing, it was amazing, because I tell you, he was one of the only people who actually believed in me. His excitement about the whole thing and his insistence that it would work out was what drew me in. I knew that even if it didn't look like it was going to work, Joel was going to make it work. There's definitely something to be said for persistence like that. I can't think of what, but there's definitely something to be said about it."

Within fourteen months, JLN Records arrived in the industry, making its mark on audiences everywhere with the first album it ever released, fittingly, Tony's debut. Through a deal with more established label Faraday Records, the JLN artists found themselves actually on the radio, something Tony says was "amazing. I heard 'Blame' for the first time and I could have just dropped dead right there. I was in public, which was a bad place to be, just grabbing people and saying, 'Hey, listen! That's me! That's me!' It was a great moment." Instantly, the former door-to-door salesman with a mouthful of a stage name had won over listeners all across the country, with his melodic rock and impressive vocals. Simply Tony, the debut album, went gold in a matter of months.

Even more success followed, with a subsequent album and even a few Grammy nods, but it was in the latter part of 1984 that the quirky crooner legions of fans had come to know as "Tony M" totally arrived. "'Notice,'" Tony recalls. "'Notice' was huge." The heartfelt ballad, about the less fortunate around us, scored big on the radio and catapulted Tony into even more stardom, something he says was both a blessing and a curse. "This was what I'd wanted my whole life. I mean, all my life. I had all these really stupid fantasies, about living in this huge house, with all these servants and having all this money and being so happy...and I don't think I'd ever been unhappier in my whole life."

With a booming career and incredibly loyal fanbase (known as the "M-mongers"), it seemed that Tony had the world at his feet. And then, in late 1985, he did the unthinkable. He walked away. At the time, he said of his decision to retire his mismatched shoes and brightly colored sport coats, "You never wanna wear out your welcome. You always have to leave them wanting more." Today, he's much more candid. "Too many things, too little time. That's what it came down to. I was never home and when I was, well, I didn't wanna be. It was a bad time for me, but the ironic thing is I was just naive enough to believe that if I walked away from the business, everything would get better. I thought I'd walk out of JLN for the final time and everything would be back to normal again and it just didn't happen that way. If anything, things got even worse after I quit because I didn't have anything else to focus on. It was bad."

For two years, the M-mongers mourned the retirement of their king, while the label repeatedly tried to woo him back. "The pitches got better every week. One time, I was talking to someone and we were talking about what we'd done that day and I just kind of off-handedly informed, 'And I got yet another contract thrust in my face today.' And they were like, 'Are they going to have to eat glass to get you to sign the damn thing?'"

Tony insists that his decision in 1988 to give the biz another go had nothing to do with clever label coaxing. "I had gotten my whole life back in order, piece by piece, but there was something that was still missing - the music." As I Was Saying..., Tony's dynamic comeback album, released in March of 1989, to a flurry of praise. Critics called it a "masterpiece" and a "perfect way for old listeners to connect with an icon and for new listeners to discover one." Tony, however, insists that the reviews aren't what has him smiling about his latest record. "I'm just happy to be back where I belong," he admits. "It was a long, crazy journey, but you know what? It ain't over yet. That, my friends, is more killer than my meager vocabulary could ever express."