Reelin' In The Years


First published 1994
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Reelin' In The Years

Steely Dan's thirty-five year career has been the proverbial rollercoaster
ride. When Walter Becker and Donald Fagen assembled their band in
1972, they were young, idealistic and ambitious. In their wildest dreams,
they could not possibly have expected to have been so successful so
quickly, but the sheen of their success was rapidly tarnished by constant
touring and by frequent awful sound quality. Becker and Fagen disbanded
their creation after their third album and moved into a second phase,
whereby they began hiring crack sessions players to executive their
devilishly tricky tunes in the studio. This was the Steely Dan which its
auteurs loved most of all, but not necessarily the one their fans loved most
of all.
Then in 1977 came Aja -- a classic recording if ever there was one.
By the late seventies, they had everything: health, wealth, the envy and
admiration of their peers and critics alike and a rosy future. But by 1981,
a mere nine years after they had begun, it was all over; the dip in their
fortunes this time down to some of the most obvious pitfalls of the
rock'n'roll lifestyle, fast-living, drugs and creative burnout. Becker and
Fagen had achieved so much throughout the seventies, it was inevitable
that the party would end. And end it did with a vengeance: the eighties
brought a litany of problems - writer's block, depression, failed relationships,
a lurid court case and even death. However, Becker and Fagen
survived relatively intact and eventually came back to prominence with
the resurrection first of a touring Steely Dan and then as a recording band
again.
The third phase: during interviews for Two Against Nature seven years
ago, Donald Fagen stated bluntly that 'he had plenty of juice left' and sure
enough he has been true to his word. In 2003 Steely Dan issued their
ninth studio album, Everything Must Go, and Fagen has since released his
third solo album, Morph The Cat and toured the US to promote it. It's all
been happening and continues to happen in that Steely Dan nether
world. Becker and Fagen now finally have a settled touring band and are
currently in the early stages of a 68-date world tour which began in May,
will terminate in September 2007 and will encompass Australia and New
Zealand for the very first time. Donald Fagen's Nightfly trilogy box set is
due out very soon (although as usual containing no rare or previously
unreleased material); a 'Millenium Collection' (yet another greatest hits
compilation) is also due out imminently and Walter Becker has his second
solo album in the can, although it has been delayed until later this year
when his touring commitments have been completed.
They may be approaching 60, they may not be quite the workaholics
of old and they certainly are not the most attractive looking middle-aged
guys on the planet, but Walter Becker and Donald Fagen can still write a
mighty good tune, and by God, isn't that something?
Brian Sweet, June 2001

Acknowledgements



I would like to thank everyone who agreed to be interviewed for this
book: Gary Katz, Roger Nichols, Denny Dias, Kenny Vance, Chuck
Rainey, Michael Omartian, Daniel Lazerus, Elliot Scheiner, Keith
Thomas, Jimmy Vivino, Bernard Purdie, Terence Boylan, Warren Wallace,
Steve Barri, Royce Jones, Paul Griffin, Peter Locke, Ed Caraeff, Ed
Lambert, Lonnie Yongue, Richie Lifschutz, Peter Aaron, Jane Aaron,
Elliott Randall, Mary Kupersmith, Sandy Yaguda, Wayne Robins, Randy
California and Mrs Elinor Fagen.
Unfortunately Walter Becker and Donald Fagen declined to be interviewed
for the project but Becker did advise me during one very late
night telephone conversation 'to carry on as if Donald and I were dead.'
There were others I was keen on speaking to but was unable to locate,
including Joel Cohen, Gloria "Porky" Granola and Jenny "Bucky" Soule.
If any of these people read this, I would still be interested to hear from
them.
My thanks also to the following people: Dave Edney, Trevor Johnson,
Martin Stone, James Harris, John Sakamoto, Robert Colledge, Steve
Coram, Katie Bayliss, Sue Cox, Pete Fogel, Shari Kamburoff and Joe "The
Big Man" Schmitz in Cincinnati. For information on Metal Leg, the
Steely Dan fanzine, please write to Metal Leg, PO Box 244, Bridgwater,
Somerset TA6 3ZE, England or visit www.metalleg.com
My Old School



The Steely Dan story opens on January 10, 1948, when Donald Jay
Fagen, its senior partner, was born in Passaic, a town of around
55,000 inhabitants in north eastern New Jersey on America's East Coast.
Donald was the first child and only son of Joseph "Jerry" Fagen, a Jewish
accountant, and his wife, Elinor. Six years later they had a daughter called
Susan.
If Donald Fagen inherited any of his musical talent, it probably came
from his mother who, between the ages of 12 and 17, sang with a band
at a small hotel in Parksville in what was popularly known as the Borscht
Belt, a predominantly Jewish resort area among the Catskill Mountains in
upstate New York. Elinor loved singing and, each summer, performed
popular songs of the era with a small group of musicians until increasingly
serious attacks of stage fright forced her to discontinue. "I have a bit of
that myself," her son would later admit.
A lover of all types of music, particularly Broadway musicals, Elinor
Fagen sang almost constantly around the house while Donald was growing
up and he attributes his own peculiar vocal phrasing to his mother's
influence. She had a large record collection and would sing along to songs
by singers who were popular in the early Fifties, among them Tommy
Dorsey, Helen O'Connell and Sylvia Sims. "I can't ever remember
when there was silence around the house," Donald has recalled. "She
was either playing records or singing. She was an excellent phraser and I
think just listening to her sing all my life gave me a natural swing type of
feel."
When Donald was 10 and in sixth grade, the family moved from
Passaic to Fair Lawn, New Jersey, and soon afterwards moved again to a
ranch-style home in Kendall Park, also in New Jersey, which was close to
Princeton University. Donald disliked the neighbourhood; it was true
suburbia. Writing about this period of his life in The Nightfly he described
it as..."One of the worst suburbs I've ever seen. It was a brand new development
with houses that were all exactly identical, mounds of dirt instead
of lawns and those little twigs instead of trees. It was very desolate and
totally stultifying. To me it was like a prison. I was very upset about it. I
think after that I had a different attitude towards my parents. I think I lost
faith in their judgement. What I mainly realised was their judgement wasn't
the same as mine, their view of life was different. In fact, it was probably
the first time I realised I had my own view of life."
From a very young age, Donald would fall asleep listening to music.
His first love was rock'n'roll, especially Chuck Berry, whose 'Reelin'And
Rockin" was the first record he bought. He liked the lyrics and "that
nasty strident sound", as he would later describe it. But rock'n'roll was
rapidly superseded by a precocious preference for jazz. "It was very fashionable
at the time for kids to go to the Newport Jazz Festival," Fagen has
said. "For some it was probably for the social thing - probably for the
majority. My cousin told me what radio station to listen to, I heard some
of their records and was knocked out. My sister started taking piano lessons
and I started learning to play off those records. I became a real jazz
snob. I lost interest in rock'n'roll and started developing an antisocial
personality."
By the time Donald was 11 he was listening to Symphony Sid's jazz
radio show from Manhattan and he can recall finding a record in a shop
-- pianist Red Garland's Jazz Junction -- that he had heard played on
Symphony Sid's show. "I went down to E.J. Korvette's and there it was
right in this bin, along with a lot of other albums with unfamiliar names.
I bought it and ever since I've tried to imitate his style in the privacy of
my own home."
With jazz now his preferred choice of music, Donald developed a
strong prejudice against rock'n'roll. Part of the reason was the dearth of
authentic rock'n'roll that swept America after the first wave of rockers
disappeared in the late Fifties. Elvis was in the army, Chuck Berry was in
jail, Jerry Lee Lewis was ostracised for marrying his 13-year-old cousin
and Buddy Holly was dead. Others, by dint of circumstance or action by
conservative forces, had been temporarily silenced. "In the early Sixties
you started having a lot of cover records, white copies, white rock'n'roll
records and Frankie Avalon, and they stopped playing a lot of black music
for a couple of years there, and I lost interest in it," Donald explained. His
prejudice against rock'n'roll would last until 1966 after America had been
invaded by British groups, spearheaded by The Beatles and The Rolling
Stones.
When he was 12 years old, his parents bought Donald a piano and it
was evident from his early efforts that he had a talent for the instrument.

The first song he played was 'Exodus', the theme from the Otto
Preminger film that was a hit for Ferrante cVTeicher in 1960. Although it
was Donald's younger sister, Susan, who studied piano first, the Fagens
took Donald to the Princeton New School of Music, where they
assumed he would probably want to take lessons in order to make the
most of his talent. Donald played 'Exodus' for the teacher, who noted that
he played good chords, but said that she couldn't teach him unless he was
prepared to learn to sight read. On the way home in the car Donald told
his parents that he had no interest in learning to sight read, he just wanted
to play. In the end he continued with his constant practise but took no
formal lessons. As soon as he arrived home from school each day, he
would sit down at the piano and play his favourite songs for hours on
end. He also started composing his own material: "Little songs about
mythological subjects and stuff we learned in school."
The only real tuition he received came from a family friend who visited
the Fagen home and showed Donald some jazz chords. Later, when
Donald was 15, his father drove him into Princeton to attend a music theory
course run by a New York Times music critic named Wilson. Donald
loved it, although he didn't fully appreciate all the theory. Most of his
tuition came from listening to jazz records and emulating the chords he
heard.
When a couple of jazz-loving elder cousins befriended Donald, he
became something of a jazz elitist and, in the "cool" fashion of the times,
took to wearing black turtleneck sweaters. More importantly, he spent so
much time playing the piano, he didn't have many neighbourhood or
school friends. Most weekends, he and his cousins took the bus into
Manhattan to visit jazz clubs and watch performers like Sonny Rollins,
Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Charlie Mingus. Donald has recalled
how on one occasion at a Charlie Mingus gig at the Village Vanguard, a
club in Greenwich Village, he sat in the "kiddies' section"- the banquettes
along the wall right next to the drum kit - and the power of Dannie
Richmond's drumming caused his glass of Coke to keep sliding towards
the edge of the table. He had to continually push it back to the centre of
his table to stop it falling onto the floor. Donald was most impressed. A
measure of his dedication to attending these gigs can be gleaned from the
fact that if he missed his last bus home he was stranded. On one occasion
he did miss the last bus home and was forced to spend the night in the
Port Authority bus terminal sleeping on a bench. His parents were blissfully
unaware of this but midtown Manhattan was a considerably safer
place in those days.
Donald attended South Brunswick High School in New Jersey,
where he shunned most of his fellow students in a typical display of
cultural superiority. However, he did participate in some of the school
activities, playing a baritone horn in the school marching band. In his
High School Yearbook he is described as a "jazz enthusiast (he formed a
jazz trio there), an individualist and a thinker". He harboured journalistic
ambitions and contributed to the school magazine, and there is evidence
to suggest that his cynical, acerbic personality was already past the
development stage. It -was the custom at South Brunswick for each
pupil to make a "will" on leaving and, in his, Fagen left "seven barrels of
steaming, fetid boredom". One of the few sporting interests he developed
was a fondness for table tennis -- a pastime that has continued to
this day.
When the Fagens acquired a black-and-white cabinet TV in the late
Fifties, Donald enjoyed detective shows, particularly Peter Gunn, and grew
to love Henry Mancini's jazz-based theme music. He even bought a number
of Peter Gunn soundtrack albums and Mancini records, and often
mentioned "TV-style arrangements" when discussing Steely Dan's music
in later years. He would write about his love for Henry Mancini in an
article in Premiere magazine in 1987.
A fan of the Beat Poets, Jack Kerouac in particular, Donald went to Bard College in 1965 to study English Literature. His first room-mate was
an art student named Lonnie Yongue, who had already been at Bard for
two years when Fagen arrived, so he took on the responsibility of showing
the newcomer around. Like Donald,Yongue was trying to teach himself
to play the saxophone but, unlike Donald, he kept unusual hours,
staying up all night painting and sleeping during the day. He was also a
heavy drinker who experimented with a variety of drugs and, in his own
words, "blacked out almost every night". Yongue and Donald lived like
Cox and Box, with Yongue getting up as Donald prepared for bed and going to bed when Donald was getting up.When their paths occasionally
crossed, Yongue would say, "Good morning, Fagen", and Donald would
respond with, "Jesus, Lonnie, you've turned it all around".
Some students, including Donald, made sandwiches to sell in the dormitories
after ten o'clock to make a little much-needed extra money.
Yongue's studio was adjacent to their kitchen and Fagen listened while
his room-mate read aloud passages from William S. Burroughs' Naked
Lunch as the sandwiches were being prepared.Tuna salad was their biggest
seller andYongue positively hated tuna. Cleaning up after the caterers was
not one of Yongue's most treasured Bard memories.
Yongue soon recognised Donald's true vocation and questioned why
he was studying English Literature and not music. Eventually he helped
persuade Fagen to switch to music but "he was miserable", Yongue has
said. Despite this, in the summer of 1966 Donald went to Berklee College
of Music in Boston for the summer, but his heart wasn't really in it and
he admitted later that he spent most of his time "goofing around on the
street" and smoking pot with his friends.
While he was at Berklee his music teacher apparently landed a job he
couldn't possibly afford to pass up, so he gave Donald three months' worth
of tuition in one lesson. Fittingly, Donald lived on Symphony Road and
remembers, "It was a foul summer. I had almost no money and was eating
a lot of brown rice. But I picked up a lot of good stuff from the
Berklee course. I remember the practice rooms were always being used at
Berklee, so I'd take the bus up to MIT and use their practice rooms.
Amazingly, MIT had these great practice rooms with little pianos in
them.You'd go to this huge vault-like door and open it up and go in. I'm
sure I could have survived a nuclear holocaust in one of those rooms. But
it was great; the pianos were tuned up really nicely and I'd just play scales
all day. And eat brown rice. But I never had the patience to be a professional
musician. There are great gaps in my musical knowledge. I'm
mostly self taught."
Disillusioned with the teaching methods and lacking the discipline
needed for a serious music course, Fagen returned to Bard after his summer
at Berklee and resumed his English Literature course. They were no
longer room-mates but, when Lonnie Yongue bought Traffic's 1967
album Mr. Fantasy Fagen borrowed a copy and hung on to it for a long time;
he was heavily influenced by the album. When Yongue did a painting of
Fagen and himself, with Fagen on one side of a big room andYongue on
the other,Yongue's art teacher told him it was a classic study in alienation.
Both parties fit the bill. Unfortunately, the painting was destroyed in a fire
in 1967. In his final year, Donald wrote an extensive Senior Class Project
on the novels of Hermann Hesse, including Siddhartha, Narziss und
Goldmund and Peter Camenzind. He eventually graduated in 1969.
During his time at Bard, Donald did take some formal music lessons:
"I learned music theory and harmony at college, but didn't get as far as
harsh discipline in music," he has recalled. "I studied some orchestration
and composition and definitely knew I was going for a career in music of
some kind, even though I ended up with a degree in literature." He often
speculated that if he hadn't made it in the music business, he would have
probably ended up as an English teacher.

But the real turning point in Fagen's life occurred two years before
graduation, on an autumn day in 1967 when he was walking past the college
music club at Bard. Most days he would have bypassed the building
without so much as a second thought, but the music flowing from the
room that day stopped him in his tracks. He went inside to investigate and
found a baby-faced, bespectacled blond kid sitting on the stage, cradling
a red Epiphone guitar and playing what sounded to Donald like very
authentic blues licks.
Fagen would remember the encounter clearly years later. "(He had) a
little amplifier turned up all the way, bending notes and getting sustain.
He'd been listening to all these Howlin'Wolf and B. B. King records. Well,
I'd never really heard anything like that."
So he approached the guitarist and introduced himself. The guitar
player was called Walter Becker.

The other half of the duo who would become Steely Dan was a couple
of years younger than Donald Fagen. Walter Becker was born on Monday,
February 20, 1950, in the Forest Hills area of Queens in New York. Like
Donald, he has one sister, Wendy, who is three years his junior.
The first music Walter Becker remembers hearing was Fifties pop
music. "Rosemary Clooney comes to mind," he recalls. "I remember
(hearing her) in the back of my father's car driving down the West Side
Highway in New York City." Like Fagen, Becker developed a similarly
precocious love of jazz, but failed to learn the saxophone and in 1966
took up the guitar instead. "I was a self-taught player. I learned mostly
from other players," he says.
Walter's ambition to become a saxophone player was inspired by
Charlie Parker, but as a budding guitarist, he'd taken some guitar lessons
from a young neighbourhood kid who called himself Randy California,
who'd moved to New York from his native Los Angeles in 1966 to do session
work. California shared the same birthday as Becker except he was
a year younger, and he taught Becker some blues guitar tricks and techniques.
California himself had been taught to play by his drum-playing
step-father, Ed Cassidy. Originally called Randy Wolfe, he changed his
name to California and later went on to form Spirit with Cassidy and two
ex-members of the Red Roosters.
Becker and California lived close to each other in Forest Hills and
Becker owned a Gibson Les Paul guitar, which he kept at California's
apartment and tried to sell to him for $50. California, who was still
only 15, thought the instrument was too heavy and resisted the deal.
Becker played bass when he and California played with some other local
musicians.
California lived a penurious existence in a rough neighbourhood with
his mother, three sisters and Ed Cassidy in a basement flat. His mother
taught him his first chords when he was eight years old, so he was able to
give the eternally keen Becker some basic instruction. But Walter's initial
attraction to the guitar was frustrated by his inability to get beyond the
technique he had devised for himself so he switched to bass guitar, which
he found easier. "I was attracted to the idea of only four strings," he said.
"This would simplify matters considerably."
Becker attended Stuyvesant High School in New York and started at
Bard College in 1967. He enjoyed hanging out there, but neglected his
studies and later admitted..."I wasn't very impressed with the programme.
They were asking me to read stupid books and get up early in the morning.
I couldn't relate to that at all. I did meet some interesting people
there. It was basically a good scene for my disasters." Becker only stayed
for three semesters, studying languages, before flunking out.
Becker was 17 years old and had only been at Bard for one semester
when Donald Fagen chanced on his playing in the college music club. In
fact, he had already approached Fagen once about joining one of his
groups on guitar, but at that point Fagen already had three occasional
guitar players, although none of them were particularly skilled on the
instrument. Now Donald had good reason to reassess Becker's worth.
"He had a three-man guitar section," Walter has said. "One guy who
played badly and offensively, one guy who played very crudely and one
guy who just wore the guitar in an interesting way." At the time, Donald
was trying to incorporate jazz ideas into the band against considerable
resistance from the other members.
The band went under the name of The Leather Canary but at various
other times Donald would change the personnel -- and name - to suit the
gig. The Bad Rock Group might play the Hallowe'en party, while The
Don Fagen Trio might play wherever a gig was available or at charity
benefits such as NAACP nights. Bard College wasn't blessed with too
many competent musicians, but Fagen was the piano-playing jack of all
trades who could at short notice assemble whichever type of group was
needed for whatever kind of dance or party.
Now, by a stroke of good fortune, Donald had heard what Walter
Becker could play. That he was considerably more talented than any of the
other guitarists in Donald's groups was obvious, but equally important
was their discovery that they both listened to the same jazz radio stations
and disc jockeys that broadcast from Manhattan, liked the same genre of
Beat writers --William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso,Jack Kerouac, Allen
Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti - and, perhaps more significant in
the long term, shared a similar dry sense of humour. They had so much
in common that an immediate and lasting friendship was formed.
"We were writing songs together within a day of meeting each other,"
Donald said. "We had both been jazz fans since we were nine or 10 years
old, listened to the same jazz shows and radio and we both got into soul
and pop in the mid-Sixties." The songs they began to write reflected
their caustic sense of humour, their depth of academic knowledge and
their taste in arcane lyrics.
The rapidly established bond between Becker and Fagen convinced
the latter to find a place for his younger partner in one of his groups.
Donald was excited by the encounter and reckoned that he had made a
significant breakthrough in his long-running quest for a partner who
shared his own idealistic musical aspirations.
"We were jazz fans," he said. "We were writing tunes where some of
the chords weren't triads and you couldn't use your capo that much. It
was very bizarre. The bands that we came up with sounded like The
Kingsmen performing Frank Zappa material."
"Donald was the dean of the pick-up band syndrome at Bard," said
Walter. "At the beginning of every term someone would reopen the club
and they'd need a band for two nights.There were about eight musicians
on the whole campus, and most of them were poor. Most of our bands
were made up of guys who hadn't mastered your basic Dave Van Ronk
techniques. They had a limited exposure to the things that we were trying
to emulate. There were never enough people to put together a band
where everybody was a strong player."
Although they started working together, they had no real plan as to how
to proceed, other than that they wanted to form a band good enough to
warrant a recording contract. Their main problem was finding singers.
Donald had never sung before. "Walter had done a few gigs at the Night
Owl in the Village before he got to college so I was sort of hoping he
would sing, but neither of us wanted to do it," he said. Additionally, Becker
had aspirations towards becoming a bass player but nobody seemed to need
one, so he reverted to the guitar for the time being and, in a poker game
at Bard, won a huge JBL Malibu speaker with 1,000 lb of sand in the bottom.
Walter liked nothing better than cranking up his Telecaster through
the JBL and blasting Jimi Hendrix solos all over Ward Manor.
Donald Fagen was as meticulous then as he became later in his life
when it came to auditioning musicians. Several of his friends tried out for
his band at Bard but he wouldn't lower his standards, not even for close
pals. Almost all of them were given the thumbs down. Some of them
understood; others didn't. "In the early days we were going to put
together a band that was modelled on The Velvet Underground," said
Donald. "We auditioned a few girls to have the Nico role." At the time,
of course, the Velvets had yet to acquire the Bohemian chic they would
attain long after their demise, and as another Bard student commented,
"auditioning" girls was a full-time occupation anyway.
In fact, rehearsal space at Bard was difficult to find until one entrepreneurial
student hit on the idea of using an abandoned chicken coop. He
stuck egg crates to the walls to act as soundproofing and various Bard
bands used the room. There were several drawbacks: in the summer the
overpowering heat often led to the hippest characters on campus being
reduced to stripping down to their underpants in order to survive conditions,
and then there was a very low ceiling that bruised many a skull
when players stood upright without due care.
A requirement of the music department at Bard was the equivalent of
an oral examination, which took the form of a performance. The student
had to select a piece and then perform it in front of the lecturers and
any guests invited by the student. Most of the students chose a classical
piece, but Fagen got a very large band of musicians together and performed
a nine-minute reading of Dylan's 'Like A Rolling Stone'. The
band consisted of two acoustic pianos, an electric piano, bass, drums,
three guitars, percussion and organ and sounded like Phil Spector's Wall
of Sound. The examiners had never before heard anything like it and
were aghast.
A fellow student of Becker and Fagen's at Bard College was Terence
Boy Ian, affectionately known as "Boona", one time member of The
Appletree Theatre and writer on the Buffalo Broadside. Through their
mutual interest in music, Boylan had got to know Becker and Fagen well
and had struck up a friendship with them. They played occasional gigs
together and a particularly memorable one was at a dance in Blithewood
where their set featured The Temptations' 'Ain't Too Proud To Beg',
Martha and The Vandellas"Dancin' In The Streets', Chuck Berry's 'Route
66', several Dylan tunes including Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues' and
'Outlaw Blues', and Little Richard's 'Lucille'.They had only managed two
rehearsals and were therefore reduced to repeating the set and jamming
to fill in time. They even played Becker and Fagen's own composition

'Who Got The Credit?', and Walter Becker later admitted that they played
'Route 66' no less than five times.
Terence Boylan maintains that Becker and Fagen's personalities were
already well developed at Bard; while most other students were at emotional
and intellectual sixes and sevens, Becker and Fagen were already in
the process of cultivating the acute sense of irony that would become the
basis of Steely Dan. They seemed to know exactly what they wanted in
any given situation.
On one occasion they sat Boylan down to explain to him their version
of the history of the world. First came the formation of the planet, the
cooling of the earth, the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, then
Charlie Parker and "it's been downhill ever since". Becker and Fagen
firmly believed that all musical innovation ceased after "Bird"; all who
followed had merely found ways to blow his riffs in slower or slightly different
forms.
Boylan was very much influenced by Van Morrison,The Band and early
Bob Dylan. When he secured a recording deal with MGM, he enlisted
Becker and Fagen's assistance with the album and they helped him arrange
all his own compositions before they went into the studio. The album was
recorded at the Hit Factory (owned by songwriter/producer Jerry Ragavoy)
and this was the first time that Becker and Fagen had been into a real
recording studio. Walter Becker especially was impressed by the potential
of multitrack recording and the array of studio gimmickry, and kept
asking questions; Fagen, on the other hand, was much more concerned
with getting the parts right. Both were amazed that they were getting paid
for doing something that they loved doing and had been doing for free
anyway at Bard. They were also impressed by the timing of session drummers
Herb Lovelle, Jimmy Johnson and Darius Davenport.
Jerry Ragavoy suggested that Boylan might like to hire session bass player
Chuck Rainey for a couple of the songs; he did play on one but it didn't
make the final cut. Boylan had written all the songs himself- including
his own arrangement of Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues',
which he retitled 'Pillow' - and produced the album himself. Boylan
attempted a Becker and Fagen composition called 'Stone Piano' but it was
in Fagen's key and he dropped the song -- a decision he later regretted.
Boylan admitted steering Fagen into playing piano parts that he wanted to
hear, though Fagen could probably have come up with something better.
Becker overdubbed the guitar parts and the album was recorded in less
than two weeks, and that included some marathon 10--12 hour sessions. Alias Boona was recorded and mixed for $21,000, which was slightly over
budget. Boylan moved to another studio to mix the record and admitted
that with all the technical problems, he blew it. "The only interesting
thing about that record was the fact that it was our first real experience
of a modern recording studio," said Fagen later.
Boylan had met photographer Elliott Landy at Bob Dylan's house in
Woodstock when he called to show Dylan some photos he had taken for Nashville Skyline. Boylan hired him to take the cover photo of Alias Boona, which showed him with his parents' Old English Sheepdog.
Boylan and his elder brother John were staff writers/producers, and
Boylan took Becker and Fagen to see his publishers, Koppelman and
Rubin, who had been responsible for signing Tim Hardin and The Lovin'
Spoonful. They had recently signed Petula Clark and were looking for
material for her, and Becker and Fagen played them two songs,'Who Got
The Credit?' and 'Bus Driver Is A Fruitcake'. Not surprisingly,
Koppleman and Rubin scratched their heads and had no idea what the
songs were about... they certainly weren't suitable for Petula Clark.
After the release of Alias Boona, Boylan and his band, including Becker,
Fagen and Herb Lovelle, rehearsed for a 12-date tour to promote it. In
the end, because they had to go back to college, they managed to squeeze
in only one solitary gig to a crowd of undergraduates at the Alexander
Hall in Princeton, New Jersey. Boylan said they were more organised in
regard to the transport and equipment than the actual set and had only
rehearsed a couple of times, but at each rehearsal they ran through some
Becker and Fagen tunes with Boylan singing lead and Becker and Fagen
joining in on harmony vocals. Becker and Fagen asked him to write out
the set list and the keys of the songs before the gig and, although on many
of the numbers they were figuring it out as they went along, they were
very cool about the whole thing. The band was well received but it was
to be Becker and Fagen's first and last gig with Terence Boylan.
Bard had been subjected to regular drug busts throughout the Sixties
and, on May 8, 1969 at 4.45am, at least two dozen cars belonging to state
troopers descended on the college. At the same time, Sachs Annexe was
ransacked by the Dutchess County Sheriff's (Lawrence Quinlan) men.
Quinlan, in tandem with the state troopers and a number of informants,
searched two dormitories, several off-campus houses and arrested 44 people,
among them Donald Fagen, Walter Becker and Fagen's girlfriend,
Dorothy White. Walter had already officially left Bard by this time but
liked hanging out there and was sleeping on another student's floor.
Consequently the sheriff had warrants for everyone except him.
Ironically, Gordon Liddy of subsequent Watergate fame was the assistant

district attorney that year, and they typed a warrant up for Walter anyway
for fourth-degree possession of marijuana. Walter called Liddy "The Wild
Bill Hickok of the Judiciary".
Fagen was dragged off to Poughkeepsie jail with the others, and the
most traumatic part of the ordeal was having his treasured long hair
shorn. Sitting in the cell in his standard issue prisoner's uniform with
cropped hair, Fagen looked very sorry for himself.
Bob Dylan had earlier made his comment on the predictability of the
Bard drugs raids ("Must bust in early May/Orders from the DA") in his
song 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'. In the same song the couplet, "The
pump don't work/Cos the vandals took the handles" also purportedly
refers to an incident at Bard.
The college freed the 36 students (eight were non-students) arrested by
providing bail bonds totalling $141,000. Their legal fees alone came to
some $1,800, but the bail bonds and legal fees would eventually be billed
to the students.
At a hastily convened meeting of those arrested, lawyers advised everyone
to keep their experiences confidential.They pointed out that an officer
is supposed to announce his purpose and state that he has a warrant
for that purpose; if the suspect requests to see the warrant, the officer
must show it. But even if the suspect doesn't request to see the warrant,
it does not validate the lawfulness of the arrest. Also, physical force could
be used to enter a room if there is the possibility that evidence could be
destroyed between the time of the knock and the answer. The President
of the college, Reamer Kline, assured the students that the college would
stand behind them.
Force had indeed been used on several of the doors in Ward Manor and
students were ordered to do different things: some to stay in bed, others
to get out of bed so that it could be searched, while others were
body-searched.The officers' biggest mistake proved to be in not identifying
themselves to the students.
According to the students, officers were hooting and laughing as they
searched rooms and they even played a Beatles' album in one of them.
Posters were ripped down, beds were torn apart, curtains were pulled
down and fireplaces inspected. Almost all the rooms were left in total
chaos and, as quickly as the police had descended, a crowd of students
gathered and began chanting "Pigs!" One wag began playing 'Gee, Officer
Krupke' from West Side Story very loudly on his record deck.
"Every spring they used to have a bust on campus," Becker said some
years later. "You know,just to raise a little hell in town and a little revenue
for the local lawyers." But after all the fuss, all charges were later dropped.
One month later, in June, Donald graduated and moved back to New
York with his girlfriend.
Having graduated, Donald Fagen could now devote all his concentration
to what had by now become his obsession - writing songs with
Walter Becker. They had even settled on a suitable adjective to describe
their material: "Cheesy".
Chapter II

Shuffling Up Your Downs



Towards the end of 1969 Donald Fagen was holed up in a house on
President Street in Brooklyn with his girlfriend, Dorothy White, and
a medical student called Richard Ransohoff. Walter Becker lived out in
Queens with his sister and grandmother. Together, they began trying to
sell these "cheesy" compositions to publishing companies in New York.
Little did they realise how frustrating and arduous this would be.
Fresh out of college, Becker and Fagen knew next to nothing about
the way the music business worked. Naively they decided to hawk material
around music publishing offices in Manhattan without realising that
this was antiquated and, indeed, legally unwise. But with the flush of
youth and an optimism of which Mister Micawber would have been
proud, they set out with their black-and-white songbook under their
arms intent on impressing their worth upon some unsuspecting music
publisher.
They didn't even have a tape of their songs. They couldn't afford the
studio time to record even remotely proficient demos and even if they
had been able to afford it, they lacked the necessary expertise to know
how to approach a studio recording session. Without a demo tape -- perhaps
the single most essential ingredient needed to sell popular songs -- they boldly opted for an old-fashioned personal performance.
More often than not they would be turned away at the door, but if the
scrawny composers succeeded in bluffing their way past a succession of
receptionists and secretaries, Fagen would take a seat at the omnipresent
piano, Becker would stand alongside, they'd open their exercise book of
lyrics and proceed to actually sing a selection of their songs for the startled
publisher.
The limitations of the manner in which they imposed themselves upon
world-weary publishers were soon evident. After only a couple of songs
they would be told with ominous regularity and in no uncertain terms
to leave forthwith, the words "no commercial potential!" resounding
loudly in their ears. On other occasions, a telephone would ring during
their performance or other trivial interruptions would break the listener's
concentration and their continuity. Even when they did manage to complete
a song, the obscurity of their lyrics and the unusual structure of their
melodies generally presaged an end to their hopes of a breakthrough for
yet another day. "When you're stepped on there, you're done for good,"
Walter Becker would reflect on the finality of their frustration and
depression in New York.
This depression was compounded because they had no escape from
failure. Obsessed as they were with their quest, they had hardly any social
life to speak of and what there was had to involve little cash outlay.
Occasionally they visited the home of a neighbourhood friend in
Brooklyn called Richie Lifschutz and played chess for hours on end, and
when the weather permitted they rode their bikes in Prospect Park. Most
of the time, though, they were at each others' houses writing songs or
brooding over their misfortune. Fagen would later recall that his mother
used to tell him that "misfortune builds character". Sometimes just for a
change of scenery they would head downtown to Lonnie Yongue's loft
apartment in Washington Market and compose on a piano in the loft
below Yongue's. It was commonly known as the cheese factory, but
Yongue didn't see much of them and was apprehensive about interrupting
their songwriting sessions.
Richie Lifschutz had his own artistic ambitions and he was so knocked
out by Becker and Fagen's material that he wrote a play based around
their work, calling it Ego, The Making Of A Musical. Its plot followed the
making of a rock musical (The Who's Tommy had only just been premiered)
and included Becker-Fagen songs with titles like 'Let George Do
It', 'Mock Turtle Song', 'Soul Ram', 'Brooklyn', 'Stone Piano' and 'Brain
Tap Shuffle', all of them sounding not that far removed from the kind of
titles that would later appear on Steely Dan albums. Lifschutz also created
a character called "Charlie Freak" after their song and featured a group
called "Parker's Band". Although he was a few years younger than
Lifschutz, Walter Becker gave him tips on how to write songs and suggested
he listen closely to Bob Dylan. Lifschutz took piano lessons and
spent hours every day practising his scales, and even co-wrote a song
(with Kenny Vance of The Americans) that was recorded by Jay and The
Americans. Becker and Fagen professed indifference to Lifschutz's play,
but whenever they approached a publisher they would make sure they
mentioned that someone was writing a play based on their material.
Somewhat inevitably, Lifschutz never succeeded in getting his play performed.
Becker and Fagen trudged on regardless.
Their luck changed - ironically enough - on a day when most of the
Brill Building publishers and music copyists were away at a weekend convention.
As usual they had taken the elevator to the top floor and were
circling their way down the stairs, calling at each occupied office as they
descended. They had already endured their usual quota of rejections and
accompanying humiliation when they reached the fourth floor and
knocked on the door of JATA Enterprises.
JATA was the acronym for Jay and The Americans, a vocal group from
Brooklyn who had been signed by top-flight songwriters Leiber and
Stoller in the early Sixties. Originally known as Binky Jones and The
Americans, they became Jay and The Americans on the suggestion of lead
singer John "Jay"Traynor, butTraynor left in 1962 after their first hit'She
Cried' and was replaced by David Blatt, who used the stage name Jay
Black. It was customary in those days for singers to change their ethnic
names to exotic-sounding stage names and the other members of the
band followed suit. Becker subsequently claimed that the group used to
refer to themselves as Jay and The Jews and, when challenged about it,
happily admitted that he "fit right in along there".
With Jay Black out front, Jay and The Americans enjoyed no small
measure of success during the Sixties. After 'She Cried', they had several
other Top 20 hits, including 'Come A Little Bit Closer' (No 3), 'Cara
Mia' (No 4) and a cover of The Drifters' hit 'This Magic Moment' (No
6), and their hit 'Sunday And Me' (No 18) provided Neil Diamond with
his first big success as a songwriter at the tail end of 1965.They lost their
momentum during 1966, scoring just one minor hit that year, and during
1967 and 1968 their career took a dive with the onset of the summer
of love and psychedelic music. As a direct consequence of this dry
spell, Jay and The Americans formed a publishing and production company,
which was located in the Brill Building on 49th Street and
Broadway.
What Becker and Fagen didn't know about JATA that fateful afternoon
was that it had been financed largely by Mafia money. Often
described as a "very forceful" character, Jay Black had plenty of supporters
and friends in the world of organised crime. He was a compulsive
gambler, and over the years had frittered away a large proportion of both
his and the group's earnings. Much as the other members wanted to put
a stop to the squandering of the group's profits, they were dissuaded from
impetuous action by the "muscle" behind Black. On the other hand, there
was a positive angle to the relationship -- Black's shadowy supporters had
financed the setting up of their Brill Building operation.
JATA's office manager, Eddie Chorane, answered Becker and Fagen's
knock. He was confronted by two scruffy, long-haired "derelicts" who
gave him their practised sales patter. He went back inside and spoke to
another employee, who in turn referred him to someone else before
Chorane confronted one of the actual band with Fagen and Becker's
request.
"There's two guys outside," Chorane told Kenny Vance. "They say
they're songwriters, do you feel like listening to them?" Vance was grateful
for a chance to interrupt his own workaday routine. Wearing an outfit
he had purchased on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles -- polka dot
shirt, brown thick-ribbed corduroy pants and a giant, thick hippie belt he
invited them inside. He was unprepared for the sight that greeted him.
These two weren't typical of the song-peddlers who usually came calling;
in their trenchcoats and scarves these two pallid would-be songwriters
looked dishevelled and wasted, as if they had spent the last month living
on the street. "They looked like insects, with no vibe coming from them,"
Vance said later. In fact, they were so introverted that he really didn't have
a frame of reference at all. "Librarians on acid," was another term he used
to describe them from this first encounter.
Becker and Fagen stepped inside the cramped inner office, as ever
bemoaning the fact that no one would listen to their songs.There was an
upright piano against one wall. Fagen opened their songbook and, singing
together, they performed a series of songs: 'Shuffling Up Your Downs',
'The Caves Of Altamira','Tell It To The Fat Man','The Roaring Of The
Lamb' and 'Charlie Freak'.
Vance was impressed. He thought that 'Charlie Freak' stood out among
the material and asked what they intended doing with these songs. They
told him that they wanted to form a group of their own. Vance asked
them to return on an appointed day and suggested that they go upstairs
to a company called Peer Southern, which rented the entire seventh floor.
There was a two-track studio up there (which had occasionally been used
by Lionel Hampton), and if Vance slipped Charlie Mack, the engineer, a
few dollars, he would let him use the facilities. At long last Fagen and
Becker had cause for a little optimism.
Vance had never heard anything like these songs and didn't even pretend
to understand them, but some sixth sense told him that there was
something about the pair that was worth following up.When Becker and
Fagen returned to the Brill Building a few days later,Vance proposed that
he should manage them and produce some piano/voice demos in the studio
upstairs. JATA's production company funded the operation and over
23




a period of time about 12 songs were cut, including'The Roaring Of the
Lamb', 'Oh Wow, It's You Again', 'Android Warehouse', 'Take It Out
On Me', 'Parker's Band', 'A Little With Sugar', 'More To Come' and
'Charlie Freak'. Talking about these demos some years later, Becker dismissed
them completely. "We were wiseass college kids writing bizarre,
somewhat grotesque things and gradually we moved away from that," he
said;
With the demo tape complete, Vance was presented with the same
problem that Becker and Fagen had faced: to find a record company that
didn't reject the material out-of-hand because their songs were far
removed from the teen romance style of most, if not all, Top 40 hits.
Becker and Fagen's delight at having at last made some progress
towards their goal was hardly unqualified.They were well aware of Jay and
The Americans' reputation in the music business, but with no other offers
forthcoming they had little alternative but to place all their faith in Vance
and hope for the best. Even with Vance's knowledge of the internal workings
of the music business and all his contacts, Becker and Fagen were
amused by the incongruity of the tall American trying to market their
weird compositions.
In 1969, Jay and The Americans were pretty much regarded with derision.
Their act, complete with cute choreographed dance steps, was pure
showbiz and they had been reduced to playing at progressively smaller
and considerably less prestigious venues. But any lingering doubt in
Becker and Fagen's minds was finally dispelled one night when Donald
was visiting his parents in Cleveland. (They had moved there in 1968
when Jerry Fagen went into partnership with his brother.) They were
watching TV when Jay and The Americans appeared on The Tonight Show. Fagen's parents were sufficiently impressed by their son's link with a
member of this famous and once successful group to advise him and his
partner to actively pursue their relationship with Kenny Vance. Back in
Brooklyn, Fagen discussed it with Becker and they decided that there
really was no alternative.They were under contract and had to stick it out.
It might also have occurred to them that, if they had broken the contract,
unpleasant men with bulging shoulders and concealed weapons
might have come looking for them sooner rather than later.

*

Becker and Fagen's intention had always been to form a band based
exclusively around their songs, and they were always on the lookout for
alternative outlets for their material. In the summer of 1970 they noticed
an ad in the Village Voice that read: "Bass and keyboard player required,
must have jazz chops. No assholes need apply." The phone number listed
belonged to a guitar player called Dennis Dias who lived out in Hicksville
on Long Island.
Walter Becker called Dias at his home. During their conversation, Dias
told Becker that the group weren't sure if they really wanted a piano
player after all. Becker told Dias that he would bring along his partner
anvway. "When you hear the piano player, you'll change your mind,"
Becker assured him.
Denny Dias was born in Philadelphia in December 1946. His parents
moved to Brooklyn when he was still a baby and moved on again to Hicksville when he was eight. His parents were both music fans, invariably
tuning in to the Colgate Palmolive Hour to watch Louis Armstrong
and other popular artists of the day. Denny got his first guitar, a $5 model
with only three strings, when he was 12, but he wasn't interested in it and
the guitar stood in a corner until one day a cousin started studying guitar
and this inspired Dias to start teaching himself to play. Once he had
attained a certain level of proficiency, he sought professional tuition and
went through several tutors until he found Billy Bauer, the Metronome
Poll winner of 1946, who not only taught the guitar but music theory as
well, and eventually Dias majored in music at college. He was uncertain
as to which course to take and changed to engineering, switched again to
maths and, when he graduated junior college, attended downstate medical
school, studying computer science as related to medicine. But by now,
music had become his chief interest and he only lasted one term at college
before deciding to take a year off from studying academically to "see
what happened". He figured that the opportunity to study would still be
there next year and he desperately wanted to try his hand as a full-time
musician.
Dias played in the Hicksville High School dance band, but his first real
group was called The Saints -- whose theme tune was rather unimaginatively
'When The Saints Go Marching In' - and he had been in various
groups throughout the years, including one called The Grapevine. By
1969 he was the guitar player in Demian, a band named after a Hermann
Hesse novel. Demian's Italian-bred bass player, Jimmy Signorelli, had quit
the group to return to college, which is why Dias placed the ad in the Village Voice. Before Signorelli's departure, Demian had been gigging as a
four-piece at nightclubs in and around Long Island, playing Top 40
covers, some older songs and material that really interested the band - soul
tunes such as James Brown's'Cold Sweat',The FourTops"Reach Out, I'll
Be There', Sam & Dave's 'Hold On, I'm Coming' and, inevitably, a couple
of Otis Redding numbers.
Demian's lead vocalist was an ex-lifeguard and cab driver called Keith
Thomas, who had been friends with Dias since their grade school days.
"We were bored to shit,"Thomas said of their enforced live chart covers.
Dias and Thomas were both writing their own songs but audiences generally
wouldn't allow them to play their own material during their shows.
They were itching to do something more creative and fulfilling, and
hoped that recruiting a keyboard player would add another dimension to
the band.
Neither Fagen nor Becker could afford a car, so the first problem to
overcome was how to hook up with the guys on Long Island. With
Fagen toting his Fender Rhodes piano and Becker his Dan Armstrong
Plexiglass bass, they took the Long Island railroad out to Hicksville station
where Dias and Thomas were waiting to pick them up. Then they
drove to Dias's house, where the audition took place in a rather cramped
kitchen.
Just as Kenny Vance had been shocked by his first meeting with Fagen
and Becker, the experience stayed with Keith Thomas for a long time,
too. "Fagen looked like Jean-Paul Belmondo on acid," he said. "He had
shoulder-length hair, he was real skinny and he had these Michelin-tyre
lips, with his head jammed into his shoulders; he had a real hipster persona. Walter Becker, with his long blond hair and sunglasses, looked like
a Nazi youth camp!"
Dias didn't really have room for a band to rehearse so it became the
norm for them to repair twice a week to Thomas's basement at 43
Ellwood Avenue in Hicksville. At that time, Thomas was working in the
physiotherapy department of the local hospital, but working long hours
at the hospital and rehearsing and gigging with Demian was taking its toll
on him, both mentally and physically. He was dropping pills to maintain
the pace.
By the time Becker and Fagen auditioned, Dias and Thomas had tried
out about a dozen different bass players. "Each one was worse than the
last," said Thomas. "Although the ad had warned that no assholes need
apply, just about every asshole applied. Guys would show up and play variations
on Question Mark and The Mystenans"96 Tears' for about an hour
and a half." Becker and Fagen plugged their instruments in. "I remember
thinking either these guys are gonna suck horribly or they are gonna be
fuckin' geniuses," said Thomas. "And they proceeded to play 20 of the
most original songs I'd ever heard in my life."

As ever, the songs were taken from their black-and-white exercise
book, the same list of demos they had already recorded with Kenny
Vance:'Android Warehouse','Finah Mynah From China' (later to become
'Yellow Peril'),'Parker's Band','Soul Ram','I Can't Function'and a song
sometimes referred to as 'Stand By The Seawall', which would much later
be adapted to become the middle section of'Aja'. Even at this early stage
of their career, they had the chord structures and some of the lyrics to
what would eventually become one of their best-known compositions.
The longer the performance went on, the more Keith Thomas was
impressed. "I was looking at Denny and my fuckin' eyes were rolling in
my head. Where the hell did these guys come from? And it wasn't like
they were playing variations on three chords; this was dense, interesting
stuff, particularly at that time." Once Fagen and Becker had finished running
through their own compositions, they jammed with Demian for two
or three hours.
Despite their apparent aloofness and introspection, Becker and Fagen
were invited to join the band for their sensational songwriting skills. They
had a discussion with Dias and Thomas as to what should be their battle
plan.The pair may have had outstanding musical talent, but they were still
surprisingly naive about the machinations of the music business and had
no idea what to do with the songs, only that they wanted a recording
contract. Certainly, Becker and Fagen were desperate for a break, but not
desperate enough to consider playing live.They wanted absolutely no part
of it; the thought hadn't even occurred to them and if it had, it would
have horrified them. Becker admitted this naivete quite openly in an
interview years later. "They (Demian) worked in clubs and stuff, which
was something we'd never heard of."
The reasons for Becker and Fagen's reluctance were firstly because they
were unfamiliar with, and dismissive of, the chart hits of the day, secondly
because they were looking for an outlet for their own compositions, and
thirdly because the prospect of playing in bars and clubs where there were
regular outbreaks of violence intimidated them no end. They believed
their strength lay in the songs that they had so painstakingly composed.
They bluntly told Dias and Thomas: "What do you want to play nightclubs
for? If you need money, get a job. Otherwise you're just wasting
your talent and you'll never get to do what you really want to do."
Dias and Thomas were frustrated for an entirely different reason.
Whereas before they weren't able to play their own material live, now
they had what they considered great and innovative songs at their disposal
but the composers wouldn't play ball.
Dias and Thomas didn't need much persuading to learn to play and
sing Becker and Fagen's tunes. In fact, another result of Becker and Fagen
joining the band was that Dias and Thomas completely abandoned their
own attempts at songwriting. Denny Dias had only been writing for a
year or so and, although he had no trouble with writing music, he was
dissatisfied with his lyrics and neither had he had much faith in any of his
erstwhile songwriting partners' lyrical abilities.
While they had a full band to play their songs, they also had personnel
problems. The other member of Demian, drummer Mark Leon, took an
instant dislike to Becker and Fagen and made no secret of it. Becker and
Fagen preferred a simple, straightforward rock'n'roll backbeat that did not
detract from the subtleties of their compositions; a player who was "neat"
-- heavy with his left hand and right foot. Leon's drumming was too busy
for them.
Denny Dias was a bebop-influenced guitarist, which Fagen and Becker
loved and could accommodate, and Keith Thomas had noticed how Mark
Leon's jazz leanings had been frowned upon during Demian's live
performances. "Sometimes, during our version of'Cold Sweat', he would
announce,'In the middle of the fatback drum solo I'm gonna do Buddy
Rich from West Side Story', and he'd go into that with all kinds of fuckin'
drum sounds and clear the room."
Soon after joining Demian but before they actually recorded their
demos with the band, Fagen and Becker demanded that Dias and Thomas
fire Mark Leon. They were never ones to do their own dirty work if they
could get someone else to do it for them. When Leon was confronted
with their decision he, in Thomas's words, "went bananas, berserko". He
caused quite a scene, but Dias and Thomas had half-expected it, since sudden
rages formed a normal part of Leon's personality anyway. Eventually
Leon's rage subsided and he left peacefully.
A few years later, Fagen recalled the general dismemberment of
Demian somewhat differently. "We used to chastise and abuse them, so
they all quit. And so there was Denny and we'd ruined his band. So he
had no place else to go."
Becker and Fagen already had a drummer in mind to replace Mark
Leon -- John Discepolo, whom they had already encountered as Jay and
The Americans' road drummer, and they introduced him to Dias and
Thomas. Fagen and Becker felt some sort of kinship with Discepolo,
which Becker later confirmed. "When we joined Jay and The Americans
we had access once more to a drummer who didn't find us totally repugnant,"
he said. For his part, Discepolo also knew how to handle Becker
and Fagen. But regular commuting on the Long Island Railroad to
Hicksville for rehearsals soon eroded Becker and Fagen's enthusiasm. It
was a busy commuter railroad, uncomfortable and expensive for such
cash-starved individuals, so they persuaded Denny Dias to pick them up
in New York. The usual arrangement was for either Fagen to make his
way to Becker's house in Queens, or for Becker to get himself over to
Brooklyn, from where Dias would chauffeur them to and from their
rehearsal room at Ellwood Avenue. Many less tractable individuals would
not have undertaken such extensive and constant running around, but the
generous, mild-mannered and quietly spoken Dias was delighted to
oblige them. He certainly didn't want to hand his two songwriting
buddies the opportunity to bail out over the issue.
Initially, rehearsals took the form of Becker and Fagen teaching the
others their compositions, perfecting them and then, for some fun at the
end, jamming around with various soul and pop standards. With the former,
Donald Fagen would normally sing the melody line, which Keith
Thomas then tried to recreate with plenty of coaching from Fagen. Fagen
disliked the sound of his own voice and was a very reluctant singer, but
was very keen on Thomas's first tenor. "Boy, that voice has a lot of personality,"
Fagen told him.
But, according to Keith Thomas, Fagen's ideal voice at that time would
have incorporated a mixture of Van Morrison, Steve Winwood and
Marvin Gaye. "I think he used to fantasise about having that kind of
voice," said Thomas. "They wanted a soulful voice with a lot of blues feeling
and with a lot of personality, too - they wanted a fuckin' impossible
voice!"
Although Becker and Fagen had joined Demian, it quickly became
their group, with them calling all the shots.They wrote the music and the
lyrics, they worked out the arrangements, they decided on the production
and they flatly refused to play live. Keith Thomas remembers Fagen
being terrified of live performances. His excuse was that his voice wasn't
strong enough to withstand the constant pounding.
In consultation with Vance, the quartet decided their next step should
be to cut some masters. They booked time in Vinme Odo's Manhattan
Studio, which would later become the site for the infamous Seventies
nightclub, Studio 54. It was an eight-track studio and Odo engineered the
sessions himself.
Prior to their association with Demian, Becker and Fagen's demos had
been simple piano and voice arrangements. But now Denny Dias, Keith
nomas and John Discepolo were familiar enough with the material to
assist on the recording of the demos and, with the benefit of a band,
Becker and Fagen were able to record much fuller arrangements. Among
the songs they recorded during those sessions were 'Brain Tap Shuffle',
'Mock Turtle Song','Old Regime' and 'Let George Do It'.
Walter Becker co-sang on a number of the demos and Denny Dias
really liked his co-vocal interpretation of'Mock Turtle Song', the Lewis
Carroll poem from Alice Through the Looking Glass that Becker and
Fagen had adapted to music. Dias admitted he was looking forward to
hearing Becker sing more frequently. Obviously Becker didn't feel the
same way.
Vance took the demo tape to all his contacts in the business, but he was
met with the same negative reaction; people were shocked or bemused by
the nature of the material and it was a struggle to get even a modicum of
interest, let alone some kind of deal. "I remember when we made those
four demos," Walter Becker said. "People would get to the song 'Let
George Do It' and they would get visibly discomfited. Jeff Barry was discomfited.
This was the kind of person who seemed to be having the first
bad thought of his life. That was bad for us. People thought of us as a
non-commercial thing.
"Our big thing was going into the studio 'on spec,' you know, which
means that not only are you not getting paid, but you have no hope of
ever getting paid, and not only that, but no record company has shown
the least interest in the project you're about to embark on.That's what 'on
spec' meant to me."
While they were recording 'Brain Tap Shuffle', which was based on or
written while under the influence of- an LSD trip, Becker and Fagen
toyed with the idea of trying to incorporate an example of their arcane
sense of humour into the background lyric of the song. It went:

Piz wah piz wah
Do the brain tap
Watch your mind snap
Mash your kneecap
Rock and roll crap

Fagen obviously spoke from experience when he remarked to Keith
Thomas: "LSD's a lot of hard work." They eventually thought better of
the idea and omitted the extra lyrics. Keith Thomas has said that much of
their studio work at this time was pure experimentation around the structure
of the tune. "Becker and Fagen wanted what they heard and heard
what they wanted," he said.
In fact, in their mounting frustration and quest for some encouragement,
Becker and Fagen wrote and recorded at least one unashamed
attempt at commerciality, entitled 'Undecided'. Still as yet unreleased,
'Undecided' was a sub-three-minute acoustic pop ditty about as far
removed from 'Android Warehouse' as it was possible to get. It featured
Keith Thomas on lead vocals, but even with a repetitive singalong chorus
it still failed to inspire anybody to sign them.
Becker and Fagen often discussed with the others why they had so far
failed to get anywhere. Keith Thomas felt the reason why they had failed
to sell their songs was that they lacked the ability to schmooze with
record company executives. They were too shy to make good salesmen,
even when they were selling their own material. It was a vicious circle:
the more they were rejected, the more they retreated into themselves,
becoming even more sullen and uncommunicative than usual. Thomas
said: "They were sort of in a dark period at this point and I think that was
as a result of not being able to sell the material." Becker and Fagen
weren't in the habit of going out for a beer with the rest of the group
either.
After spending a considerable amount of time recording the Vance
demos without success and without any worthwhile income, Vance
realised that they needed some regular work and invited Becker and
Fagen out on the road with Jay and The Americans as backing musicians.
If nothing else, it would also help take their minds off their other difficulties.
Becker
and Fagen discussed the offer and, loath as they were, decided
to accept. By now the golden days of Jay and The Americans playing to
large, packed arenas had long since passed, and they were relegated to
playing small nightclubs and bars, mainly on the east coast, for peanuts.
Becker and Fagen were usually only called upon two or three weekends
a month.
Although the prospect daunted them, once they got into it, the gigs
became great fun, with all manner of antics taking place to stave off boredom.
Becker played bass and Fagen played an RMI electronic piano. The
contrast between the monkey-suited and flower-shirted Americans and
the shabbily dressed backing musicians could hardly have been more pronounced.
"It was like being part of The Four Tops," Becker said.
In between their stints backing Jay and The Americans they continued
to write songs relentlessly, although they still had no outlet for them and
Jay himself certainly wasn't interested. "He thought we were amusing,"
Becker said. The feeling was mutual.
On one occasion, Becker and Fagen made a trip south to Fort Lauderdale
in Florida with the Americans for a gig at a club called The Bachelors
Three. A number of Jay Black's "fans" also went along, ostensibly as security
on the trip. All the hoods were immaculate dressers and one of them
in particular took exceptional care over his appearance, always wearing a
very expensive suit, tie and studded cufflinks. Unfortunately for Walter
Becker, his suitcase was exactly the same model as this hood's and their
cases somehow got mixed up. When the mobster arrived at their hotel and
opened his case, a week's worth of sweaty, dirty laundry rolled into a ragged
ball fell out onto his lap. Becker escaped any physical retribution.
On stage, Jay and The Americans would run through their repertoire
of past hits complete with formation dancing, and all the while Becker
and Fagen would sit behind them furtively mocking the band, the songs
and their ridiculous dance routines. Various members of the group were
also regularly subjected to Becker and Fagen's cynical, caustic humour,
though generally not to their faces. With their security guys in tow, discretion
was the better part of valour. Walter Becker used to refer to the
Americans' guitarist, Marty Kupersmith, as a guitar owner; a few years later
in a radio interview Becker simply said he was "very bad", then apologised
for his bluntness. They regularly shared private jokes, which did nothing
for the band members' self-consciousness, since each one would be 'wondering
whether he was the current target for ridicule.
Occasionally, when they became bored with playing 'Cara Mia' and
'Only In America' night after night, Becker and Fagen would deliberately
modulate the songs up a half tone to make them more fun to play and
watch bemused as the other musicians failed to notice. Becker has said
they even began writing "little Motown bridges" for some of the songs.
"Our bridge for 'Cara Mia' took off like a 747," he told one interviewer
years later.
In time, Becker and Fagen would look back nostalgically and admit to
enjoying backing "four guys in suits". It provided them with a constant
source of amusing material for Steely Dan interviews, but even this
depended on their mood. On another occasion Walter Becker might
describe darker, painful memories. "It was a long, horrible period, more
or less images of toilets interspersed with arenas," was how he occasionally
recalled his Jay and The Americans experience. "We played some
awful places. Jay's basically a right-winger, but he has left-wing attitudes
towards some things like long hair and drugs."
The Jay and The Americans gigs invariably provided Becker and Fagen
with some respite from their very serious and demanding quest, and
offered them an opportunity for some laughs. "We ended up backing Jay
and The Americans in one of their later phases - playing community gardens
in Queens, that kind of scene," said Fagen. "I wish we had a recording
of those gigs. It was fun. We'd change chords to the songs, wonder if
he was gonna make that long note on 'Cara Mia' ..."
Marty Kupersmith had a Gretsch Country Gentleman guitar, which
Becker and Fagen hated because it kept going out of tune in the middle
of gigs- On. one occasion, Kupersmith was given some particularly nasty looks by Jay Black when his guitar was playing up, but what Jay didn't
realise was that Becker and Fagen had modulated 'Let's Lock The Door'
and 'Come A Little Bit Closer' up half a tone and Kupersmith's guitar
hadn't in fact gone flat at all. Eventually, after much persuasion from
Becker and Fagen, Kupersmith traded in his Gretsch for a classic 1961
Fender Stratocaster.
After one Jay and The Americans gig in New Jersey, Kupersmith was
driving a brand new rented car back to New York with Becker and Fagen
in the rear.The car kept overheating and, after several stops at gas stations
to top up the radiator, Kupersmith's patience ran out and he rammed the
accelerator pedal to the floor. Becker and Fagen found it hard to suppress
their laughter when a piston blew straight up through the bonnet.
In January of 1969, Jay and The Americans scored another hit with a
cover of the Doc Pomus/Mort Schuman song 'This Magic Moment',
which had originally been a hit forThe Drifters in 1960.That Top 10 hit
put them back in business and enabled them to play much larger halls
again. They also began playing oldies shows, which were often lucrative
engagements, including one at the 20,000-seater Madison Square Garden
with The Four Seasons. Other groups with whom they shared bills
included The Angels and The Shirelles.
When Becker and Fagen backed The Americans at Madison Square
Garden, Vance hoped the experience of playing in front of thousands of
people would prove invaluable to them later on. But Becker and Fagen
could hardly have cared less; they were only interested in getting through
the current run of gigs. They sought studio experience, not performing
expertise.
Jay and The Americans' last-ever released single was another remake of
a Drifters' hit, 'There Goes My Baby'. Becker and Fagen arranged and
played on both the "A" side and the "B" side, another Neil Diamond 
song, 'Solitary Man'. They also worked on a version of Martha and The
Vandellas' 'Heatwave' with The Americans, but the record was never
released.
By now Jay Black's gambling habits had spun out of control. He was so
compulsive he would gamble on anything, and when his losses became
too severe his "bookmakers" would look in the newspaper to find where
Jay and The Americans were playing and try to collect the debt by putting
a lien on the show's takings. Hence the band would sometimes play
a show and then not be paid, or would collect only a small portion of the
agreed sum at the end of the evening.
Black was subpoenaed several times backstage at Jay and The
Americans gigs. Fagen remembered one such incident in Queens with
customary humour and candour: "Yeah, the guy with the gun and everything.
We don't want to get into that if you wanna know the truth, 'cause
we could wake up with a horse's head in our bed." His reluctance to go
into detail can be put down to an occasion when members of the
Gambino family were in the next room to the band at a Jay and The
Americans' gig. For a while that night, Becker and Fagen's jokes and wisecracks
dried up; they were scared shitless.
With Jay and The Americans facing imminent bankruptcy, a promoter
called Ken Roberts, at that time also the manager of Sly Stone (no
stranger to financial imprudence himself), devised a strategy whereby they
would play a set number of "Solid Gold" shows a year. Each member of
the group could draw a modest set salary for a certain period of time, thus
allowing the band to pay off their debts and hopefully move towards a
more viable position. The rest of the band were securely under Jay Black's
thumb and no one, it seemed, dared to tell him to curtail his gambling.
Another condition of Roberts' strategy was that the backing musicians
should take a 50 per cent cut in wages. Becker and Fagen were earning
$100 a show then, so their wages dropped to $50 a show, or $200 a weekend,
whichever was more. They told one interviewer that the offending
individual - "Whom I fear to defame publicly," Becker said - was jokingly
known as "gimme a receipt". This only hardened their resolve to
escape from the embarrassment of playing with the struggling Americans.
To compensate for their reduction in road earnings, Becker and Fagen
started composing songs for JATA's publishing company, making up titles
and receiving cheques in exchange. "We got $50 for every song," Becker
said. "We'd make up the titles and get the cheques. And that was what we
lived on."

As time passed and the remotest glimmer of progress eluded them, the
atmosphere between Becker and Fagen and Kenny Vance became very
tense. Often Keith Thomas dropped pills to get himself together, which
annoyed Becker and Fagen, as did Kenny Vance wanting to sing and play
on some of the songs. The atmosphere degenerated into one of awkward
tension and barely concealed hostility. It was obvious to everyone that
Becker and Fagen's frustration could boil over at any moment.
Vance feared the deterioration in their relationship would lead to
Fagen and Becker rescinding their contracts, and was desperately trying
to keep them interested. He asked them to do some horn and string
arrangements on Jay and The Americans' 1969 album Sands OfTime. They
confessed they didn't know how to go about voicing chords for horns
and strings - and weren't inclined to find out. Vance told them to get off
their asses and go and find out how to do it, so they went to a library,
read some music theory books and taught themselves the basics. When
the album came out, though, they weren't actually credited - the album
notes cited horn and string arrangements as: "You know who you are...
thanks."
This was probably due to Jay Black's reluctance to give any credit
whatsoever to the two cocky young upstarts whom he would later
dub "the Manson and Starkweather of rock". Using their new-found
knowledge, Fagen took the book into one of their own sessions and sat
with it on his lap while writing a string arrangement for 'Shuffling Up
Your Downs'. They then experimented with different versions of
the song, Walter Becker singing it alone, then Kenny Vance trying it
himself.
Vance continued hawking the demos around New York. Some of those
he saw included Jerry Leiber, Richard Perry and Aaron Schroeder. Leiber
and Stoller's office was on the 10th floor of the Brill Building, and Leiber
was already semi-retired by then. Mike Stoller wasn't present when Vance,
Becker and Fagen went in and, with Becker acting as front man, performed
'Number One','Parker's Band' and 'Charlie Freak'. By now Vance
had manipulated himself into a position where he assisted in singing the
tunes, and he stayed behind afterwards to hear the verdict: "It's too
Germanic," Leiber said. Fagen later recalled that Leiber did show some
interest in their material, comparing it to German art songs in the style
of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. But, more significantly, Leiber also said
that he wouldn't know what to do with it anyway.
In 1983 Kenny Vance would release ten of the more complete demos
on Aero Records as Becker And Fagen - The EarlyYears. It included 'I Can't
Function', 'Yellow Peril', 'Soul Ram' and 'Come Back Baby'. Other
intriguingly titled demos that didn't make the album or subsequent demo
35





releases included'Take A Dip With Dinah','Footprints On The Moon',
'Surreal', 'Mr Lyle', 'Any Way You Want It' and 'One Ticket to LA'.
Personal differences between Kenny Vance on the one hand and
Becker and Fagen on the other seemed to extend into everything they
did. Vance admitted he was intimidated by their knowledge of literature
and jazz and, swallowing his pride, asked them to recommend any records
'that he should listen to or books to read. They mentioned a particular
Charlie Parker album called Swedish Schnapps and musicians such as
Charles Mingus, Bill Evans and Art Blakey. The reading matter would
probably have included Nabokov, Corso, Snyder, some science-fiction
writers and Samuel Beckett. Vance has said that Becker and Fagen could
evaluate a person's vocabulary in no time at all and then rib them mercilessly
about their linguistic failings or any characteristic faults. Becker
once accused Vance of having the "soul of a kreplach" (a fish popular with
Jewish families and rich in nitrates).
Kenny Vance was then also working to fulfil a production deal with
United Artists for a group called The Kings County Carnival. This was
actually The Americans minus Jay Black under a different name, and they
recorded several of the same Becker and Fagen tunes that formed the
basis of their own demos. The Kings County Carnival went into a studio
with Fagen and Becker and recorded 18 rhythm tracks in one day. Among
them were 'Shuffling Up Your Downs', 'Tell It To The Fat Man' and
'Number One'. Becker and Fagen also played on all the songs.
For some unknown reason all these rhythm tracks seem to have disappeared,
probably much to Becker and Fagen's relief. United Artists had
actually agreed to buy the publishing rights to the Becker and Fagen
tunes, and by sending UA the work in progress, the indigent composers
were more able to afford their rent each month.
Vance's next project for his two proteges was to score a movie on which
a close friend, David Finfer, was an associate producer and editor.The film
was written, produced and directed by a young film-maker called Peter
Locke (whom Vance occasionally and jokingly referred to as Federico
Loche). Locke and Vance had known each other since they were 12 years
old, having grown up together in a small community called Bell Harbour
in Rockaway Beach in Queens.The movie was entitled You've Gotta Walk
It Like You Talk It Or You'll Lose That Beat and featured Richard Pryor in
one of his earliest roles, Robert Downey Sr, Liz Torres, and Zalman King,
fresh from his role in TV's The Young Lawyers. The project was a real family
affair: Locke's own mother and grandmother appeared on screen playing
cameo roles (his grandmother played Daisy, who gets "mooned" at by
a pervert in the park), and Locke eventually wound up marrying
Liz Torres. Torres was at the time playing clubs in New York, and
Billy Cunningham and a piano player by the name of Barry Manilow
often accompanied her in shows at the predominantly gay Continental
Baths.
Peter Locke was first introduced to Becker and Fagen in the editing
room he rented from Norman Mailer on West 45th St. He recalls they
were quiet, shy and obviously talented and they told him that they wanted
to be jazz musicians. Locke was impressed by Kenny Vance's enthusiasm
and Fagen and Becker's lack of it; it was manifestly obvious that they were
being dragged into doing something in which they had no interest.
Fagen, Becker and Vance watched the film together while the director
outlined the scenes where he needed music, gave them guidance as to the
length and effect of each piece and handed them his own lyrics for the
title song. All the other songs in the film and on the subsequent soundtrack
album reflected Becker and Fagen's own ideas and taste.
Locke had attended the only film course at Syracuse University, where
he made a three-minute movie, before moving on to San Francisco State
to study English Literature. It was there that he shot his second and third
student films. He began shooting You've Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It ... in 1968 and continued into 1969 on a $50,000 budget, but had been
unable to find a distributor so the film had temporarily been put on hold.
He later admitted that in hindsight he really didn't know what he was
aiming for with the movie. It ended up as a social, satirical comedy.
In 1970/71 Locke's persistence paid off when he secured another
$17,000 from Jerry Balsam of JER Releasing - who saw some merit in
the film - to reshoot it. Locke went on to add scenes with Pryor, Steve
Landesberg, Liz Torres, Billy Cunningham and others. Although his script
was complete, Locke allowed a considerable amount of ad-libbing in the
reshoots, and extra scenes for the film were shot at a Brooklyn hotel and
in Prospect Park.
The film opens with the main character, Carter Fields, despondent and
suicidal - as the film's narrator puts it, "he doesn't know his ass from a
hole in the ground." He bungles a few attempts at suicide, jacks in his job
on Wall Street and goes off in search of a meaningful existence; along the
way he gets his girlfriend pregnant, gets mixed up with a group of revolutionaries,
marries his girlfriend and finds a job in advertising. He photographs
the birth in close-up for a commercial, but Carter is such a bighme
loser that it's only a matter of time before he is fired for
incompetence, deserted by his wife and left to bring up his child alone.
Fagen, Becker andVance leased Peer-Southern's recording studio in the
Brill Building to record the material. They dubbed themselves The
Original Soundtrack for the project and enlisted the help of Denny Dias
and John Discepolo, while Vance was credited as producer. The engineer
there at the time was a guy called Mallory Earl and he went crazy when
he accidentally ripped the tape on 'If It Rains'.
Becker and Fagen's compositions included some throwaway instrumentals
and, astonishingly for someone as shy and introverted as Donald
Fagen, he was coerced into appearing in a scene playing an angry young
man by the name of Fellestrio (presumably a pun on fellatio), who is the
son of a character played by the late Stan Gottlieb. In a scene shot near a
New York City pier, Fagen wore a hat with a long-haired wig cascading
down beneath it and, when he took off the hat, all his hair fell out. Fagen
and Becker later ridiculed the scene in a radio re-enactment of it while
appearing as guests of KPFK in Los Angeles. Becker did the voice-over
and Fagen acted out the part to complete silence from the three interviewers.
Fagen asked pointedly, "Was it funny? Did you laugh?" No one
did and Becker said that was why the scene was cut from the film, adding
acidly, "It was the best scene in the film, of course." Fagen heaved a sigh
of relief when his acting debut ended up on the cutting room floor. The
music was credited to Becker, Fagen and Billy Cunningham. The latter
was a lounge piano player who composed some incidental piano music
for the film and who also made a brief appearance in it as the fat lady!
On the soundtrack album the title song is sung by an uncredited Marty
Kupersmith and features some jaunty piano from Fagen; when the piano
solo comes in Kupersmith urges Fagen on with the unlikely words, "Rip
it on me, Donald". Peter Locke was given a co-writing credit on the title
song because he had supplied the words, and Fagen's girlfriend, Dorothy
White, was given a co-writing credit on the best song on the album,'Roll
Back The Meaning', because she also assisted with the lyrics. Kenny Vance
sings the solo lead vocal and the lyrics hint at Becker and Fagen's musical
predicament, but at least they found cause to mix some optimism with
their dissatisfaction.
As ever, Fagen was reluctant to sing these songs alone and so Kenny Vance was lumbered with doing the vocal on 'Dog Eat Dog'. He tried it
a few times, but it was obvious his voice was much better suited to slower,
melodic material. Vance told Fagen that if anybody should sing 'Dog Eat
Dog', he should. Bearing in mind the attitude and energy of the song and
the fact that he was its co-writer, Fagen eventually agreed to sing it, and
having heard his fine rendition it's difficult to imagine anyone else doing
it better. As the song fades, Fagen injects some whoops and Apache war cries its lyrics feature a reference to Red Hook, a town near Bard College
where Becker and Fagen spent some of their leisure time while at Bard.
Several examples of lyrics used in early Fagen/Becker demos would
eventually be reprised in later Steely Dan songs. The lyrical colour contrast
between "Red Hook" and "black book" can be heard in 'Black
Friday' with "Gonna strike all the big red words/From my little black
book". The "hooters and the hats" from 'Ida Lee' appear rearranged in
'Josie' and "drinking dinner from a paper sack" cropped up again in
'Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More'.
Of the instrumentals - which are largely filler material -'Flotsam And
Jetsam' sounds as if it was composed around a studio jam with lashings of
echo, and resembles Robbie Robertson's 'Chest Fever' from The Band's
debut album, Music From Big Pink. 'War And Peace' comprises a brief
drum solo with random, dissonant piano chords from Fagen. Vance was
again given a co-writing credit on the album's longest song, 'Red
Giant/White Dwarf,' with Denny Dias's guitar meandering through the
tune like a Sunday afternoon stroller. The soundtrack album closes with
a ballad called 'If It Rains', the introduction of which contains a snippet
from the film, a desperate plea from Carter Fields' doting mother. Vance
again sings, accompanied only by Fagen's piano.
The record hardly sold at all until seven years later when Visa Records
released it to capitalise on Becker and Fagen's success as Steely Dan.There
was some wrangling over the fine print, which explained that it was not
an official Steely Dan album. It's worth mentioning, too, that the album
ran to just over 30 minutes, which was hardly value for money. Doubtless
Fagen and Becker would have been much happier if the material had
remained buried along with the film. Fagen later commented: "It's amazing how many people have managed to come across that horror. It's nothing
to be proud of."
You've Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It OrYou'll Lose That Beat came at one
of the lowest points in Becker and Fagen's career. They were only marginally
closer to reaching their goal than when they started.The music on
this album comes across as the sort of thing they could have turned out
in their sleep -- even at this early stage in their career. Nevertheless it was
a must for Steely Dan collectors. The sleeve took the same form as the
poster for the movie, designed by a cartoonist friend of Peter Locke's
named Peter Bramley. It showed a caricature of Zalman King as the protagonist
Carter Fields hanging by the neck from a rope. Surrounding the
main picture were various other cartoon scenes from the film.
39





Years later, Walter Becker told KPFK's listeners that the film was so
under-budgeted that some of the exposures didn't match so that the new
scenes could be distinguished from the original ones. Asked how they
became involved in the creative process, Becker said: "I wouldn't call it a
creative process. We became embroiled in it when the suggestion was
made that if we went into a recording studio and recorded however many
.minutes' worth of dog meat is on this album, we would each get a cheque
for $250, or some similar amount to that." Becker freely admitted that
they did it only for the money and, when he was challenged about their
lack of artistic integrity, he refused to take the bait.
The film, which ran for about 85 minutes, was premiered in
August/September 1971 at the Cinema Malibu and Cinema Village in
New York and received savage reviews. One female critic wrote that the
film was "low budget, sometimes technically amateurish, almost always
crude" but was "sometimes viciously funny. Young women only seem to
exist as alternatives to masturbation... old women are grotesque jokes."
The Daily News critic was almost as cruel: "Masquerading as satire, this
comedy is sophomoric and absolutely dull.The dialogue is scattered 'with
vulgarisms and the action is spiced up with quick pornographic shots.
Not even the acting is inspired."
Other critics picked up on Locke's influences -- Brian De Palma's Hi,
Mom! and Robert Downey's Putney Swope -- and the latter made a cameo
appearance in the film as the head of an ad agency. Variety suggested that
the film suffered from "a weak storyline, comic situations that are overdone
and tasteless, sloppy editing and colour and camerawork that is often
blurred and shaky." Despite its slim chance of box office success, the New
York Post thought that it "may have some appeal for New Yorkers, youth
audiences and devout followers of Robert Downey."
On a brighter note, Richard Pryor garnered some praise for his role as
a gibbering lush in a men's room. And one critic did spot some "refreshingly
hilarious scenes" in the film. One of the editors of the movie was
Wes Craven, who later went on to create Freddy Krueger and the Nightmare On Elm Street series of splatter movies.
The movie debacle was just about the last straw as far as Becker and
Fagen were concerned. They may have been saddled with contracts they
no longer wanted to be a part of, but their patience, which had held surprisingly
firm for a few years, had now run out. With another unsatisfactory
project behind them, the relationship between Vance and Becker and
Fagen became virtually untenable. As the weeks passed they accused him
of not understanding them or their songs, trying to persuade them to sell
out and go commercial (which Vance denied) and of not knowing how
to go about selling the songs. At one point, they told Vance they wanted
to call Frank Zappa, who they believed would "get" the material and, they
believed, have the clout to provide them with a deal.
Vance defended his position and argued that with their latest group of
demos, including'! Can't Function','Don't Let Me In' and 'Come Back
Babv', a commercial for Trans Texas Airlines and the film score for You've
Gotta Walk It ..., he was nearing the point where he would finally be able
to crack it and get a deal. Meanwhile, John Discepolo had left both Jay
and The Americans and Becker and Fagen's employ and had been
replaced in both positions by another Eastsider,John Mazzi.

Fagen and Becker had, through Kenny Vance, become friendly with an
independent producer called Gary Kannon, who lived near Fagen in
Brooklyn. He'd been an insurance salesman, worked as Becker and
Fagen's driver but, more crucially, been a partner with Richard Perry in
a venture called Cloud Nine Productions, which was set up in 1966 and
funded by a $2,000 donation from each of their respective parents.
Together they produced some singles for the Kama Sutra label before the
money ran out and the venture folded.
Kannon was also very friendly with Jay and The Americans and in particular
Kenny Vance. When Leiber and Stoller produced Jay and The
Americans, Kannon was allowed access to the studio to observe the
recording process at first hand. An ex-physical education major and
all-round sports fan, Kannon enjoyed "getting his feet wet" producing
occasional projects and, when Cloud Nine Productions folded in 1968,
he got a job working for Bobby Darin's publishing company,TM Music.
After running songs for Darin, Kannon was invited to go into production
when Darin wanted to expand his operation into a production company.
Kannon eventually got a job at Avco Embassy records, which was
owned by movie producer Joseph Levine and run by Hugo Peretti and
Luigi Creatore, the producers responsible for most of Sam Cooke's
records. The job involved a certain amount of A&R activity and in 1968
one of Kannon's first signings was a Boston-based progressive rock band
called The Bead Game, another band named after a Hermann Hesse
novel, in this case The Glass Bead Game. The album that Kannon produced
was called Welcome and the drummer and lead singer of the band, Jimmy Hodder, would figure prominently in the early wears of Steely
Dan.

At the time Kannon was also trying to carve a niche for himself in
the music business, and was writing songs and playing a little acoustic
guitar. He had written a song entitled 'Long Way Down', which appeared
on an Eric Mercury album called Electric Black Man (another Kannon
signing), which he produced in 1969. Kannon preferred to cite Mercury's
album as the first production job for which he would like to be remembered.
Meanwhile,Vance
had persuaded Kannon's ex-partner, Richard Perry,
that a Becker and Fagen song called 'I Mean To Shine' was suitable for
none other than Barbra Streisand, who was still red hot from the film Funny Girl. This was quite a scoop for Vance; his charges were keeping
exalted company - other songs on the album were written by John
Lennon, Carole King and Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
This produced an abrupt and rather comical contrast in Donald Fagen's
lifestyle: the night before the Streisand session, he was part of the backing
band at a Jay and The Americans gig "in some Mafia toilet on Staten
Island", and within hours he was ensconced in Columbia Studios, teaching
the song to Streisand and playing organ on the session, too. When
asked about the session later, Becker claimed that Richard Perry destroyed
the song: "He changed the lyrics and the melody and left out the bridge."
Fagen simply said that it was "not a very good song", but still added that
it was "altered beyond the point where we would have to take responsibility
for it."
The next project that came Kannon's way was recording an album
with a young singer/songwriter called Linda Hoover. Kannon was spending
increasing amounts of time with Becker and Fagen and asked them if
they had any suitable songs, and eventually most of the songs for the
record were Becker and Fagen compositions. They also played on the
album, along with John Discepolo, offering her 'The Roaring Of The
Lamb', Jones' (a song based on jazz terminology for a drug habit and
written by Walter Becker alone), 'Turn My Friend Away' and 'I Mean To
Shine'. Vance wrote a song called 'City Mug', and Denny Dias contributed
an instrumental arrangement of The Band's 'In A Station' featuring
a five-piece woodwind section. Linda Hoover herself had written a
few songs, but all agreed they were less than inspired. "She had three songs
that she'd written in her whole life; one about her mother, one about her
boyfriend and one about fall," Becker said later.
There was a considerable amount of expectation behind the record,
but Denny Dias remembers being disappointed when they came to
record Hoover's vocals -- she wasn't the singer most people thought she
was. "Before we had Steely Dan we wrote what we felt were very
respectable pop tunes that your average B-flat female vocalist might be
honoured to do," said Becker. "But we could never find any average Bflat
female vocalist who felt that way about them. And it was obvious
because there was always some element of this fatalistic mentality that
crept into the lyrics of the tune."
In 1975 Fagen elaborated on their songwriting efforts on Hoover's
behalf. "I think there were two songs that were more or less in the present
style, which sounded very strange by the way, with a very naive female
vocalist singing them who didn't have the faintest idea what she was
singing about."
Morris Levy, the owner of Roulette Records, loved Hoover's album
and was keen to release it, but he had allegedly been promised half the
publishing rights by someone who was in no position to offer them.
Kannon suggested that Levy should call Vance, who did own the publishing
- but they were unable to agree on a deal and so Levy declined to
release the record. Levy told Kannon that he appreciated the hard work
he'd put in on the record and paid for him to go to Florida for a two
week vacation.
During the recording of the Linda Hoover album in New York,
Kannon had introduced Becker and Fagen to a guitarist he had first
encountered in Boston while working on The Bead Game's album. Jeff Baxter had once been a member of The Fugs, The Holy Modal
Rounders and Ultimate Spinach, though he didn't remember the latter
with any fondness whatsoever: "We were a horrible band, but we had a
great following." He was grateful when the opportunity arose to quit that
band and graduate to session work. He had then moved up to Boston,
working mainly with folk artists such as Eric Erkson and Paul McNeil.
Baxter, widely known as "Skunk" due to an adolescent indiscretion,
impressed Becker and Fagen with his versatility and technique, and he in
turn was impressed by the sophistication and challenging nature of their
compositions. "Their music was the only stuff I'd heard in the past 10
years that made any sense to me and didn't make me nauseous," he said
later. Baxter and Becker and Fagen became good buddies and made a pact
to call each other if either party succeeded in obtaining a recording contract
and forming a band.
Becker and Fagen then gave Jay Black notice that they were quitting.
At the same time, Denny Dias and Keith Thomas' band Demian dissolved into a situation where the rehearsals grew fewer and fewer until they
ceased completely.
There was consolation for Denny Dias in that he was still included in
Fagen and Becker's future plans, but Keith Thomas wasn't. Neither was
Kenny Vance. A few weeks later he telephoned Donald Fagen in Brooklyn
on a Sunday morning, only to be told by his former room-mate Richard
Ransohoff that he and Becker had that very day left for a job at ABC
Dunhill Records in California.


Chapter III

Proud To Be Your Slave


One Monday night in November 1971, Gary Kannon lay in bed
watching a football game on TV and simultaneously writing a letter
to a prospective employer. Kannon's long-time friend and associate
Eddie Lambert had been working in Los Angeles for almost a year with
ABC Dunhill's music publishing division and had already been lobbying
heavily on his behalf. Lambert and Kannon had worked together running
songs at Bobby Darin's publishing company in the late Sixties, and thanks
to Lambert, Jay Lasker, president of ABC, and his head of A&R, Steve
Barri, were already aware of Kannon's production credits and experience.
During the half-time interval, Kannon finished drafting his letter to
Lasker. He mailed it the following day and promptly forgot about it. A
couple of days later Kannon received a call inviting him to fly out to
California to meet the ABC president.
Under the stewardship of its owner, producer Lou Adler, the Dunhill
label had of late enjoyed no little success with a number of Top 40 acts
including The Mamas and The Papas, Three Dog Night, Tommy Roe and
The Grass Roots. Jay Lasker had been in charge at the label 'when Dunhill
was bought by ABC and was installed as president of the merged corporation.
By late 1971 they were looking to expand their limited horizons away
from the Top 40 into the burgeoning underground album music market.
Eddie Lambert felt that his old Brooklyn buddy Gary Kannon would
be ideal for the role of underground A&R man-cum-staff producer.
Lambert realised that the existing A&R staff- himself included - didn't
have the right sensibility to work with underground acts and, as Kannon
was "a little musically to the left of all of us", it was very likely he would
be invited to come to Los Angeles as ABC's "house freak". Reflecting on
Kannon's appointment in 1975, Walter Becker was typically facetious:
ABC wanted someone with a Fu Manchu moustache to produce
underground records."
Kannon flew out, met with Lasker and Steve Barri and was promptly
hired. During the course of his meetings he told Barn about two unique
songwriters with whom he'd been working in New York, and gave him
a copy of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's demo tape. Barri was
impressed, and Kannon actually staked his reputation -- and his new job
- on the line by demanding that Becker and Fagen be hired in some
capacity at ABC. Kannon told Barri bluntly that if this didn't happen he
would quit.
Ironically enough, after all the rejection and humiliation Becker and
Fagen had endured in New York, Barri thought the material was "really
exceptional and different from anything else I'd heard in a long time". He
discussed it with Lasker and told Kannon that ABC "definitely wanted
him and definitely wanted them, too" -- Kannon as a staff producer and
Becker and Fagen as staff writers.
Arriving in Los Angeles, Kannon, his wife and two kids stayed with
Eddie Lambert for about six weeks until they got settled and found somewhere
of their own to live. Kannon soon called Becker and Fagen to ask
them if they fancied a job as staff writers for ABC; needless to say they
did, and within a month they had joined him in Los Angeles.
But before Becker and Fagen could sign, they had to extricate themselves
from their contract with Kenny Vance. They had already gone a
long way towards this by vilifying and belittling him at every opportunity.
Vance could see what was coming and very nobly told them,"If you don't
wanna be with me any more, I'll tear up the papers".True to his word,
Vance did rip up the contract on the condition that Becker and Fagen
gave him half the publishing of their first album by way of compensation.
Red Giant Music, Vance's publishing company, shared the royalties with
Wingate Music.
Nevertheless,Vance was unhappy that Becker and Fagen treated him in
this manner. Becker and Fagen's sudden departure to LA seemed premeditated
and a certain bitterness remained etched on his memory for a
long time. That Kannon, one of his closest and most trusted friends,
seemed implicated in the conspiracy and now held the key to Becker and
Fagan's future only made matters worse.
Vance wasn't the only one to lose contact with Becker and Fagen.
Their contact with Denny Dias had dwindled and even he was unaware
they had left for California. When Becker did finally reach Dias, he
expressed frustration at being bound by a contract to Kenny Vance in
New York when ABC had offered them a far more promising opportunity
in Los Angeles.
"He (Kannon) said he'd got us a job as staff songwriters and we should
come at once," Fagen explained. "We went. We found places to live in
Encino, this oasis of nothing in the desert, and every morning we'd hitch
a ride to West Hollywood where we had an office and a piano. ABC was
involved in commercial AM singles. They had The Grass Roots, Tommy
Roe, stuff like that. But they wanted to get into the underground and sell
albums too. So they hired Gary, who could certainly pass any criteria for
being underground at that time. He neglected to tell them that with
underground music you don't need staff writers."
Walter Becker had never been to California before, but he and Fagen
had no qualms about flying out to LA to take up this exciting new challenge.Working
as staff writers wasn't exactly what they were looking for:
staff writing would be a difficult task to adapt to, but at least it was steady
employment ($125 a week), and they were confident it was the first step
towards maneuvering ABC into a position that allowed them to get their
own band together and release their own records on the label. On top of
that, Los Angeles - and Hollywood in particular - was now the hub of
the US rock industry, a sprawling, sun-kissed web of boulevards and
canyons where laid-back rock stars nested in ranch-like homes during the
day, and worked and played in studios and clubs at night. Going west was
the right direction for any would-be US rock musician in 1971. Becker
and Fagen said the move made no difference to them either artistically or
personally. "If you never cross the threshold of your domicile, it doesn't
matter where you live, now does it?" remarked Fagen. However, within a
few years that perception had changed considerably.
The artist roster at ABC Dunhill at that time included many acts that
did not write their own material, so there was a need for a constant flow
of songs. Becker and Fagen had been writing steadily for a number of
years and, although they had a backlog of material, they knew full well
that they were going to have to start from scratch as far as coming up with
anything remotely suitable for ABC's traditional Top 40 acts.
Once they established themselves in their office, it soon became apparent
- if it wasn't beforehand- that they weren't cut out to be staff writers.
It they'd had an ounce of staff-writer muscle in their bodies they
would surely have cracked it in New York. The main problem was their
lyrics, as Becker recalled later. "We weren't too successful, because the
lyrics always turned left in the middle of the song. It didn't take us too
long to find out that it wasn't gonna work, because the 'hits' we were
coming up with were really too weird or too cheesy for anyone to record.
We really had to go out of our way to write a song for The Grass Roots.
We did it. I mean, we wrote some of the cheesiest songs you ever heard,
out, uh, they were so cheesy they were laughable."
Becker and Fagen did, in fact, write a song called 'Tell Me A Lie' for
The Grass Roots but it was never recorded. "You could always tell we
were laughing down our sleeves at the band," said Becker. "We were The
Grateful Dead of Beverly Boulevard."
But after the hard times in New York, Los Angeles was a picnic. With
a steady income and an easy-going California lifestyle, Walter Becker
gained 20 pounds in his first year there, though Fagen stayed as thin and
weedy as he always had been. Becker later admitted that the whole staff
writer period was one big dodge. "We had the idea in mind that we
would organise a band as quickly as possible when we came out here,
because most of what we wrote was pretty unusual material and most acts
that were looking for songs weren't going to be interested. So we had this
notion in the back of our minds and we started to bring people out even while we were supposed to be staff writers at ABC. We announced that
we were forming a band shortly after we signed our contracts."
Becker and Fagen were there under false pretences, and the sooner
they could form their own band and get their teeth into recording their
own compositions the better. The songwriting job didn't provide either
an aesthetic or an intellectual challenge. "A staff writer is supposed to be
a researcher of radio as well as a creative person," Fagen said. "It's essentially
imitating what you hear on the radio and putting it out eight or 10
months later.We weren't doing so good 'cause we're sort of funny. When
you're writing for other artists, it's difficult to get them to do songs if the
lyrics aren't absolutely banal."
Despite their own lack of interest and that of the ABC artists, they
continued trying to write simple pop songs, all the while renting
equipment for themselves at ABC's expense that would be used by
their intended group. Becker and Fagen later maintained that all the
members of the band were already selected in their own minds -well before they went to California. Initially, ABC were unaware that their
funds were being appropriated to hire and buy equipment for Becker
and Fagen's band. When some senior staff got an inkling of what was
going on, Kannon admitted the truth to Steve Barri. Eventually Barri
apprised Jay Lasker of the situation and they agreed to officially fund
the would-be group.
At least one Becker-Fagen song impressed the top management at
ABC. They thought 'Dirty Work' would be ideal for either The Grass
Roots or Three Dog Night, and that it would make a certain hit single
for Becker and Fagen's own band itself once it had been formed. Another
title Becker and Fagen composed that did not fit their "cheesy" criteria
was a tune called 'Proud To BeYour Slave', which, according to Fagen,
had "a Carole King-type feel". Publisher Eddie Lambert was also
impressed. "It was probably the best song that they ever wrote that was
not recorded by Steely Dan," he said. Lambert's concerted efforts to place
the song with a major artist met with no success, however, and he was
annoyed that he could not persuade anyone to record it. 'Proud To Be
Your Slave' was eventually consigned to the same fate as all their other
attempts, and to this day remains unrecorded.
Six months passed and none of their songs was recorded successfully. It
was time for Becker and Fagen to abandon their staff-writer pretence and
assemble their own group. They needed no encouragement to call their
cohorts back east and, as Baxter, Hodder and Dias assembled in Los
Angeles one by one, Becker and Fagen took them upstairs to Jay Lasker's
office and introduced them to him and other ABC staff. They would say:
"We just found this fantastic guy and you've gotta sign him for our band.
After a while they stopped asking 'What band?'"
First to get the call was Denny Dias, their old pal from Hicksville, who
they had promised would be first on their list. Dias had been waiting
all this time for precisely such a call and in the meantime he'd been
taking any job -- including washing cars -- to support himself Dias's
gamble of quitting school proved to be worthwhile after all; his immense
faith in Becker and Fagen and their songs looked like being rewarded,
although his resolve had wilted many times since the duo left for the
Golden State. He was very close to giving up on the notion when their
call came.
As ever, Dias was short of funds and couldn't afford the flight to
California, so he undertook the long drive across country from Hicksville
to the West Coast. Arriving in Los Angeles, his first stop was Walter
Becker's house, and when Becker played him the demos of 'Midnite
Cruiser' and 'Change Of The Guard', Dias was stunned. This was very
different from the type of material that had first floored him two years
ago back in Hicksville. "What's happened to the songs?" he asked. "Well,
now that we're finally gonna get our shot, we wanna make sure that it
sells," replied Becker.
It was understandable that Becker and Fagen should compromise their
material somewhat, especially after all their years of frustration. In fact,
Fagen tried to explain this compromise by admitting that... "We've simplified.
The early material, aside from being more complex and sophisticated,
was also a little more pretentious." He rather cryptically referred to
their older songs as "classical and jazzical Third Stream".

Steve Barri and his ABC colleagues had by now admitted defeat on the
staff writer front, and allowed Becker and Fagen free rein to interpret the
material as they saw fit. It was so unique that the only solution was for
them to record the songs themselves, and ABC generously decided to put
all their resources behind them.
Despite their refusal - or inability - to lower themselves to what they
saw as the lyrical ineptitude of the Top 40, Becker and Fagen knew the
key to success lay in the melody that surrounded the lyrics. If a song had
a great hook and chorus they could get away with murder with the
words.They also knew that their recording contract would be terminated
if they didn't come up with the goods within a set period. They therefore
planned to break the audience in slowly, intermingling simple pop with
more and more complex material as time went by. On each successive
album they gradually introduced more jazz phrasing and increasingly
enigmatic lyrics, and Fagen wasn't afraid to discuss their philosophy publicly.
"I think it'll get better," he said even before Steely Dan was a
reality "I think we'll start working back towards more ambitious musical
things."
The contract that Becker and Fagen signed - negotiated by ABC attorney
Evan Medow -- was slanted heavily in ABC's favour, but the duo
"would have signed virtually anything for the opportunity to get their
songs on record and demonstrate their songwriting talents to the world.
"I got killed in there," Medow admitted candidly.
After recruiting Denny Dias, Becker and Fagen contacted moustachioed
guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and asked if he knew of a likely candidate
for the drumstool. Baxter recommended The Bead Game's Jim
Hodder, with whom Kannon was already familiar. Although the band
seemed to be falling nicely into place, Fagen later remembered things
quite differently. "We needed people who could negotiate the chord
changes and stuff and at the same time we needed guys who'd work for
nothing - and they're very difficult to find," he said. "I think we would've
preferred to have grown up on the same block with five or seven guys
who thought the same way we did and had a working unit all these years,
but it didn't work out that way. We were all strangers and they were very
nice about the whole thing, and more or less abdicated their own musical
conscience and listened to us."
One very serious drawback was Fagen's ongoing lack of confidence in
his own ability as a vocalist. Previously he'd always had Walter Becker's
vocals to fall back on. They now decided that Becker was a little flat,
which left Fagen exposed, and he didn't relish the prospect of singing,
.Šspecially live. Indeed, Fagen didn't believe he could sing a note. Even
Steve Barri and Eddie Lambert were drawn into the wrangle of trying to
persuade Fagen that his voice should form the basis of the group's sound. To them the demos they had heard with Fagen singing solo were indisputable
evidence that Donald should front the band.
While Becker and Fagen were involved with putting their band
together in the summer of 1972, Kannon was assigned by ABC to coproduce
an album by a group of long-haired, pot-bellied Texans called
Navasota. Although Navasota wrote their own material, Kannon asked
Becker and Fagen if they had a suitable song for the band and they came
up with a hard-rocking number called 'Canyon Ladies'. It was a simple
enough tune, but is probably the hardest-edged song they ever -wrote; it
would never have fitted into Steely Dan's oeuvre.The lyrics were mostly
indecipherable anyway and Kannon ensured they earned session fees by
playing on the album. Becker and Fagen once again put to good use their
experience arranging horns and strings for Jay and The Americans on five
songs on Navasota's Rootin' album. It was recorded at the Village Recorder
and Jeff Baxter played pedal steel guitar on a couple of tracks. Kannon
co-produced with Dennis Collins under the banner of 12th Street
Productions.
By chance, Becker and Fagen also ran into Mark Volman and Howard
Kaylan (aka Flo & Eddie), former vocal leads with The Turtles, at these
sessions, and this led to their singing backgrounds on Steely Dan's early
demos.
Rootin' was the first record Gary Kannon produced for ABC.
"[Navasota] were a really kick-ass rock'n'roll band from Houston," he
said. "They were much along the same lines, if not harder, than ZZ Top,
who were their rivals at the time." The five members of Navasota would
have given their right arms to have achieved half the success that ZZTop
went on to enjoy.
Not long after the sessions for the Navasota album, Gary Kannon
decided to revert to his original surname of Katz, which is how he would
be named on all the Steely Dan albums to come.

with their musical allies all settled in Los Angeles, Becker and Fagen
began rehearsing their group with no name outside normal office hours
in a room in ABC's building that was occupied by an accountant between
nine and five. They would arrive at six o'clock with sandwiches to sustain
them through the night, move all the office paraphernalia to one side

and rehearse until the early hours. Afterwards Fagen would always follow
Baxter home because he liked the way his 1968 Ford Torino looked from
the rear! During the day Jeff worked at repairing and customising guitars
for liquid wages.
Eventually someone in the accounts department at ABC complained
about their rehearsal routine and they were moved into more appropriate
space in a half-built recording studio ABC was constructing behind
its existing building. ABC even bought them a PA system with which to
rehearse.
The group's debut album was recorded at the Village Recorders in West
Los Angeles, which was to be the studio for the first three Steely Dan
albums and which laid the foundations of a lasting relationship between
Becker and Fagen and the general manager of the Village, Dick LaPalm.
He was to become as big a fan of their group as anyone they came into
contact with.
When it came to choosing a name for the band, Becker and Fagen didn't
know where to start. As avid fans of good literature they had a large
reservoir of ideas to delve into, and this may have made the decision even
more difficult. They didn't want to be too clever but the pressure was on
to come up with a name soon. They later claimed that if they had known
how long the band would last, and how successful it would be, they
would have taken more care over choosing a name.
Many suggestions were made, some patently less serious than others including
Big Nardo and The Eighth Grade - and they eventually settled
on Steely Dan, the name given to a rubber dildo used by Mary in William
S. Burroughs' controversial Swiftian novel Naked Lunch, which had been
a student favourite in the late Sixties when Becker and Fagen were at
Bard. "Steely Dan wasn't entirely serious, as it has something to do with
the fact that we use a steel guitar," said Becker. "Well, you could say that,
but you wouldn't be right.You could say that it comes from a chapter in Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. If you said that, you'd be right.We
were stuck for a name and we had used this particular name in a song that
we had written a long time before ('Soul Ram'), and now we had a steel
guitar player in the band. It seemed like a good name to us at the time.
In fact, it turned out the name had a certain zing to it and helped the
band become popular at the beginning, I think."
Years later, Fagen would admit he was actually deeply embarrassed by
the name. Indeed, Becker and Fagen would often regret having chosen
that moniker because critics and journalists were forever trying to find
parallels between Burroughs'book and Steely Dan. In the February 1977
issue of the New Times, Arthur Lubow cornered 63-year-old William S.
Burroughs in a hotel and played him Steely Dan's music. Although he
admitted to previously being unfamiliar with their music, Burroughs
decided that Steely Dan and their music were "... too fancy.They're too
sophisticated, they're doing too many things at once.To write a bestseller,
you can't have too much going on. You take The Godfather, the horse's
head. That's great, but you can't have a horse's head on every page. These
people tend to have too many horses' heads."
When he was shown the article, Walter Becker retorted:"I thought that
was an extremely verbose statement on the part of William Burroughs.
His comments are usually quite a bit briefer than that. The connection
(with Burroughs) has been overstretched almost to the limits of elasticity."
Becker would soon have the opportunity to take it up with
Burroughs personally anyway. "I plan to have Thanksgiving dinner with
William Burroughs; he's a friend of my girlfriend." Becker wound up his
tirade with a typical joke: "Naked Lunch is a fairly difficult work. Put it
this way, William Burroughs at one point claims that he doesn't remember
writing it. I don't see why I should remember having read parts of it."

In late August 1972, ABC president Jay Lasker hosted the company's
quarterly promotion and product meeting at the Sportsmen's Lodge in
North Hollywood and introduced the fall release schedule. Promotion
and salesmen from all over America were present for the occasion and a
new marketing campaign was launched. It was called, "The championship
season for the family of ABC/Dunhill Records", and among the artists
and albums to be given the special treatment were bluesman John Lee
Hooker and his LP Soledad On My Mind, former James Gang guitarist Joe
Walsh with his Barnstorm, Lucille-wielding B. B. King's Guess Who and the
debut album by Steely Dan, a group unfamiliar to most of those present.
Their LP Can't Buy A Thrill was supposed to be rush released in
September 1972, but in the event ABC decided to hold on to the album
until November.
In a press release issued the same month, Becker and Fagen said of their
lyrics: "We have certain recurring themes but we don't have any particular
fixations. Anything is grist for our mill. There's no real limitations to
it. We can write about anything. Our lyrics contain certain associations
which we hope will evoke in our listeners the sensation that they are
remembering something they forgot a long time ago. Perhaps thousands 01 years ago! Before they were even born!"
Somewhat curiously, in the same press release Jeff Baxter was quoted
as saying: "I truly think our forte is performing." Considering that the
band had not yet played live, this was an optimistic judgement, and an
early indication of the chasm that would open up between the studio
perfectionist songwriters on the one hand, and the live performers that made up the band on the other.
At around the same time, Becker and Fagen made the acquaintance of
recording engineer Roger Nichols, who would play a big role in the
Steely Dan saga. They met him one night when they were in the studio
laying down songwriting demos for other artists and, since no one else
wanted to stay for the session, Nichols was elected to do it. He was a
native of Oakland in northern California, but had lived all over the
United States because his father was in the Air Force flying B747s. One
of three children, Nichols was the sort of kid who could build his own
stereo system when he couldn't afford to buy one. "I just tore apart all
these old radios, which was great 'cause I learned a lot that way," he said.
A physics nut, with a degree in nuclear engineering from Oregon State
University, Nichols was employed at the San Onofre power station in
southern California during its construction between 1965 and 1968, and
on his days off he worked in recording studios. His interest in music
stemmed from an obsessional hatred of clicks, snaps and pops on records,
and his position in the studio meant that he could take home 15 inch
two-track tape copies for near-perfect sounding music. Nichols once
lived in the same neighbourhood as Frank Zappa and attended the same
high school, Cucamonga, and their friendship blossomed in the early
Sixties due to their mutual interest in music. Zappa would go over to
Nichols' house where they recorded Zappa's guitar, bouncing tracks
together and generally experimenting with overdubs.
It was
From there Nichols' interest in music had driven him towards building
his own studio with friends in a four-car garage in Torrance. They called
it Quantum. In their spare time they recorded high-school bands and
worked on advertisements for such clients as Angel Stadium and a clothing
store called Forman and Clark. The arrangements were done by
young guitarist called Larry Carlton, who would later make significa
contributions to Steely Dan albums. Also featured on some of the ads
a voung brother and sister team, Richard and Karen Carpenter. The studio
became a success and Nichols and his two partners built a larger studio
in an old post office, again in Torrance, and started making records.
They worked on an album with Kenny Rogers and The First Edition and
eventually expanded from 4 to 16 track.
Gradually they diversified from studio ownership to dealing in hi-fi
and audio equipment, and this led to another lucrative sideline - supplying
equipment to other studios. Nichols became so busy he had virtually
no time to sleep, but his dedication eventually paid off when he was asked
to supply all the equipment for ABC Dunhill's first studio. ABC recognised
Nichols' talent and offered him a job, which he accepted. Phil Kaye
was in charge of the studios at ABC and Nichols became a jack of all
trades, doing maintenance, making tape copies, engineering and frequently
sleeping at the studio. Among others, Nichols worked on records
by The Grass Roots and Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds.
Unknowingly, Fagen, Becker and Katz were on a collision course with
Roger Nichols.
Not only were they concerned that their songs were as good as they
could possibly make them, they were equally concerned that they should
sound as good on record as was technologically possible. Nichols turned
out to be the ideal man for the job. "I thought they were great because
they cared about what stuff sounded like and wanted to take time to get
things happening right," he said. "The other artists I was working with
never wanted to do that. They were both hi-fi nuts, especially Walter with
his quad electrostatic speakers at home and the latest cartridge and tone
arm."
Working at night with ex-Mamas and Papas singer Denny Doherty,
Nichols and Katz recorded demos of two Becker and Fagen songs, 'Sail
The Waterway' and 'Giles Of The River', which Doherty hoped might
secure a solo record deal for himself. He wasn't successful but 'Giles Of
The River' would later be recorded by ex-Steppenwolf vocalist John Kay
on his 1973 solo album My Sportin' Life. Fagen later dismissed the song,
saying: "You could tell there was something wrong with it just by the
title."
While Steely Dan were recording what was to become their first single,'Dallas',
drummer Jim Hodder was called on to sing an early vocal.
He did a fine job.'Dallas' was another old song from their New York days
that had originally been sung by Fagen and had originally been called
'Bye, Bye, Dallas'. A fine example of an early commercial Fagen/Becker
composition, it opens with Fagen's keyboards before expanding into a
melodic chorus sung in multi-part by the whole band. Jeff Baxter played
a lovely pedal steel accompaniment and the song climaxes with a bongos-based
instrumental section. Denny Dias had yet to arrive in
California when 'Dallas' was recorded, but it was released as a single
(backed by 'Sail The Waterway') in June of 1972. Steely Dan's contract
54

Steely Dan Reelin' in the Years Proud To BeYour Slave
Steely Dan Reelin' in the Years Proud To BeYour Slave
55






required them to release a single prior to the LP, but soon afterwards ABC
decided it wasn't truly representative of Steely Dan, that it was sending
out the wrong signals and, more to the point perhaps, wasn't getting any
positive reaction from radio stations, so it was quietly withdrawn.
Years later, Jeff Baxter claimed that the reason 'Dallas' had been so
hastily withdrawn was because they feared that with its pedal steel instrumental
break and almost country-rock feel, Steely Dan would be seen as
a country and western act. Nonetheless, Baxter still loved the song and
has often talked about recording a solo version.
'Dallas' was cut well before the rest of Can't Buy A Thrill and Probe
Records, ABC's European outlet, released the single in the UK. It was
"reviewed" in Melody Makerbut the paper neglected to mention anything
about the song, the band or its chances of success. When it was withdrawn,
those already slim chances receded to zero. 'Dallas' failed to make
any impact whatsoever in the charts on either side of the Atlantic.
This didn't stop Becker, Fagen and Katz from establishing a very
healthy rapport with Roger Nichols. They wanted him and no one else
to engineer their sessions, and they actually deferred the start of recording
what would become Can't Buy A Thrill until Nichols returned from
his summer vacation.
This postponement did nothing to appease Jay Lasker's waning
patience. When Lasker had been in charge at Dunhill, the label's rapid rise
to success meant that he had come to expect almost immediate results.
He regularly spoke with Steve Barri and asked when they could expect
to see some return on their investment in Steely Dan. By this time ABC
had advanced them a considerable sum of money but the group were not
yet even in the studio.
Fortunately for Becker and Fagen, Lasker had come to trust Barri's judgement
and, each time the subject came up, Barri was able to placate him by
stressing how special he thought Steely Dan were going to be."It's not gonna
be like Three Dog Night," Barri told Lasker, invoking the name of ABC's
then-most successful signing. He would reiterate the need for patience and
plead for them to be allowed - within reason - as much time as they needed.
Reluctantly Lasker conceded. Barri was certain that ABC were on to a winner,
and he didn't want to jeopardise the stability of the relationship by rushing
them. Once in the Village Recorders, Steely Dan took a great deal of
care over the album and, in a harbinger of things to come, pulled in outside
musicians to complement the band. They had a wealth of material to
pick from and were not averse to re-recording old songs like 'Brooklyn',
which had been part of their demo tape back in New York.
All the while, they were looking for a singer to take over from Fagen.
Some way into the project, with time running out, Fagen's discomfort
with his own vocals - despite the protestations of the other members as
well as producer Katz - led to them asking Jim Hodder if he knew of a
likely singer. Hodder's first suggestion was ex-Middle Class, Jake and The
Family Jewels vocalist David Palmer, and they promptly called him back
in New jersey to ask if he fancied joining them in California. Palmer was
an old acquaintance of Jim Hodder and had been alternating between
singing in bands and working in factories in Boston and New Jersey. His
musical career was going nowhere fast and Becker and Fagen hired him
sight unseen. Becker couldn't resist cracking a joke at Palmer's expense:
"We saw his teeth and then we knew. Anyone with six eye teeth is all
right with us." Palmer signed with Steely Dan and was immediately put
to use singing on a couple of the more straightforward pop tunes,'Dirty
Work' and 'Brooklyn'.
Garry Katz was convinced this was a retrograde step. Just as Kenny Vance
had done before him, he berated Fagen daily about not singing his own
compositions, but Fagen was resolute. "I think they had a conflict about
it on the one hand, because Walter and I wrote them, we knew what they
were about and understood best the attitude that was best to convey them
- they realised I could do that," he said. "On the other hand I had a very
small range and really hardly any experience, and they sort of looked at it
two ways - on the one hand they wanted somebody with a bigger voice,
a kind of thrilling rock'n'roll vocalist, but I think we knew we weren't
gonna find anybody who could convey the attitude, which was really the
most important thing, so they wanted me to do it."
Becker and Fagen later admitted that they had to narrow down the
melodies somewhat in order to bring the songs within Fagen's vocal
range. While writing songs for others, they had included some ambitious
musical ideas that weren't appropriate with Fagen at the helm.
Roger Nichols was quick to realise what he had let himself in for. "We
finished it in less than six months, which was quick for them. But even
then their acceptance level was way above everyone else's.They never had
the attitude of,'It's getting late, that's good enough', or 'No one else will
notice'. Everything had to be as near perfect as technically and humanly
possible."
Quite where they took the title of the album from is still a mystery.
Fagen once said it was because Becker called him and said,"You can't buy
a thrill in California". But a more logical explanation may be that they
took it from the first line of'It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To
Cry' from Bob Dylan's 1965 tour de force, Highway 61 Revisited, which
was a particular favourite of Fagen's. The song opens with the line "Well,
I ride on a mail train, baby/Can't buy a thrill."
Their original idea for the album cover was a photograph of a little girl
looking into the window of a porn shop while the proprietor leers at her
from inside. In fact, the shoot was completed and producer Gary Katz s
young daughter was used in the photograph, but eventually good taste
won through and the idea was dropped. Becker and Fagen then wanted
to use a photograph from Billy Wilder's 1963 film Irma La Douce but, due
to copyright problems, that wasn't feasible. Instead, ABC's art department
worked up a collage of other images, which included a photograph of
prostitutes awaiting clients.
When Steely Dan saw the cover art they took an instant dislike to it,
but by then it was too late and they were unable to exercise their option
to veto the cover. The liner notes were written in typical
tongue-in-cheek fashion, and the nature of the language testified to the
literary background of their author, Tristan Fabriam. Few people realised
it at the time but Fabriani was, in fact, a pseudonym for Becker and Fagen
themselves. They had occasionally used the name at Jay and The
Americans' gigs: asking Black to introduce them as Gus Mahler and
Tristan Fabriani was all part of their unceasing tomfoolery. They never
worried which one was Mahler and which Fabriani. Significantly, Becker
and Fagen failed to mention their stint with Jay and The Americans,
attributing the group's varied apprenticeships to "infamous groups from
past decades."
Another in-joke on the album was the assertion that'Do It Again' was
not a Becker/Fagen composition, but "traditional". When an interviewer
later mentioned this, Fagen laughed. "You should never believe anything
it says on a Steely Dan record," he said. "It's just a bunch of lies and bullshit
that we write to confuse the listener."
Due to the rigid AM radio format, which meant that records over three
minutes would rarely be played on the air, ABC requested Steely Dan to
edit the almost six-minute 'Do It Again' to a more radio-friendly length.
That was the only compromise that Becker and Fagen permitted - and
even then it was done grudgingly. "We were trying to widen the public's
appreciation of some more interesting rock'n'roll than they'd been hearing,"
Fagen said later." We couldn't get a bite until we did 'Do It Again',
which I think is very good, but we'd like to start working from there."
Privately Becker and Fagen were surprised not only by the modest
success that Can't Buy A Thrill achieved initially, but also that ABC had
released the album in the first place. "We had zero expectations," Becker
said. "In fact, we were amazed that ABC bought the album at all. It was
like a dream come true."The reason they were immediately successful on
arriving in California, they said, was because they were now writing for
themselves - their own band rather than for some unidentified person or
group. Life, it seemed, was wonderful.

Becker and Fagen gave their first major interview in October 1972 to
Chris Van Ness of the Los Angeles Free Press. Can't Buy A Thrill was still to
be released, but Van Ness had heard an advance tape of the LP and was
sufficiently impressed to venture out to a small club in Glendale called
Under The Ice House to witness Steely Dan's first-ever live performance.
The ABC press agent's casual hype also intrigued Van Ness: "Listen to it.
I don't know anything about the group, but I'm told they're pretty good,"
he said. Usually press agents described their clients with a great deal more
hyperbole than that.
The six-piece Steely Dan was already on stage when Van Ness arrived
at the club. He would later write that Steely Dan had..."More rock'n'roll
energy than the J. Geils Band and The Faces put together". He requested
an interview with "the group" and this, of course, turned out to be
Becker and Fagen.
Van Ness very astutely opened by asking why David Palmer sang only
two tunes on the album and yet sang all the songs live. Fagen must have
spluttered before replying: "Well, he would have sung more, 'cause he
sings better, but we got him late. But he'll be doing most of the singing."
Fagen maintained that very shortly Steely Dan would be better represented
in live performance. "I can see the way it's going and it's growing
very satisfactorily into what we'd like it to be."
Van Ness asked some pertinent and searching questions; indeed, he
asked Becker and Fagen if they thought they would be able to keep the
band together, particularly since they wrote all the material themselves.
"When we started out and when Donald was singing, it was our band,"
said Becker. "But as we play together more, it becomes more of a group
effort. I think it's a sure thing that these six people will stay together," he
added as an oblique afterthought.
But Fagen didn't make any bones about their monopoly on the songwriting.
"As far as material goes, yeah, I suppose it is our band, and we'll
always write the material. But as far as arranging goes, everyone makes a
contribution."
Steely Dan made their first appearance in New York at Max's Kansas
City in Union Square during November 1972.Their six-song, 43-minute
set previewed songs from the forthcoming album and Variety's reviewer
noticed their potential. Within a month of that gig, they were opening for
The Kinks on a much wider touring circuit.
ABC were right behind Steely Dan and their music, but expected a
tough 'time getting some of their more complex material played on radio
-- hence their insistence that they include a couple of straightforward cuts
on the record. Becker and Fagen didn't even want 'Dirty Work' on the
album, which may explain why Fagen didn't sing it. Ironically enough,
once radio programmers heard the album, they immediately latched on
to 'Do It Again', one of the songs that ABC felt would be among the most
difficult to secure airplay. One enthusiastic promotion man at ABC
insisted on sitting with disc jockeys until they played 'Do It Again' all the
way through, and eventually the public warmed to its minor key mysteries
and Fagen's nasal but interesting voice. Radio programmers clamoured
for the song to be a single, saying that it was a certain smash.
On the flip side of Steely Dan's second single, which had been selected
by the band themselves and then endorsed by ABC, was a very strange
old song called 'Fire In The Hole'.The title was taken from a phrase used
by American soldiers in Vietnam. When raiding a Vietcong village and
uncovering a hidden bunker, the camouflage matting would be lifted and
a grenade thrown down into the pit with the comment "Fire in the
hole". Fagen's angry, strident piano dominates proceedings and the song
also alludes to how so many students succeeded in dodging the draft back
in the late Sixties and early Seventies. (Becker and Fagen included.)
"Our first hit single wasn't a cheery thing," Becker ventured. "It's not
something you'd normally pick for a first single. No promotion man at
any record company would have picked 'Do It Again' as a single. They
don't relate to songs composed in minor keys." But it was Becker's
favourite song on the album at the time... "A good blend of commercial
potential without being silly."
By reaching number six in the US charts in early 1973, it succeeded
far beyond Steely Dan's wildest dreams. Even Katz admitted that they had
seriously underestimated the song's appeal. "We had no idea that was a
single," he said."That was the farthest thing from our mind - that a long
repeating phrase would be a hit song. It never entered our minds. The
only reason it was the first cut was because it sounded great. We wanted
to put something on that had a nice feel to it when they put the needle
down."
Fagen: "But we did write it ['Do It Again'] sort of like a ballad, and it
told a story."
'Do It Again', the opening song on side one of Can't Buy A Thrill and
still one of Steely Dan's best-known compositions, was recorded on the
second take and it was the first "professional record" on which Donald
Fagen sang solo lead vocals. But you would never know it. After the long
intro, Fagen's voice thrusts into the song with all the confidence of an
experienced singer. It featured Denny Dias's deft electric sitar solo and an
equally deft organ solo from Fagen. Becker and Fagen's original idea was
to have a drone in the background, but they couldn't locate an acoustic
sitar and while they were listening to the track, they decided to settle for
the electric sitar that was available. It represented a rare occasion when
they settled for something that didn't possess exactly all the right qualities
they were looking for in an instrument. Dias hadn't played an electric sitar
before and hasn't since.
It was long and rambling and told a story of murder, lynch mobs and
card sharps. The lyrics conjure up cinema-style images (as would many
Becker/Fagen compositions) of a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western, and
could easily be a synopsis to one of his films.
'Dirty Work', which David Palmer sang, was another example of
Becker and Fagen trying to be more commercial. And yet beneath the
sweet and almost sentimental music, there were hidden barbs in the song.
The narrator realises he is merely a sexual plaything at the beck and call
of his lover, but is so infatuated he's powerless to bring their lusty trysts
to an end. In the second verse Becker included a reference to the game
of chess ("Like the castle in its corner/In a medieval game"), which he
has always enjoyed. Guest musician Jerome Richardson contributed a
perfectly understated tenor sax solo.
'Kings', which Becker and Fagen described as a "vacuous historical
romance", features a sizzling guitar solo by Elliott Randall. Becker, Fagen
and Katz knew Randall from New York, having worked with him at a
few Jay and The Americans gigs and on one or two of their demos. He
was given free rein to interpret the solo as he wanted and due to some
disruptions in his personal life, came up with what he called a "deliberate
trip into schizophrenia land", a break that lurches from the very melodic
to extremely obtuse whole tones and back again.
But Randall's real claim to fame - the terrific solo on 'Reelin' In The
Years' -- was pure coincidence. He'd been invited to stop by the Village
Recorders by Jeff Baxter to say hi to "the guys". The others in the band
didn't even know Randall was in town and, as Baxter had been grappling
with the solo for some time without getting Becker and Fagen's nod of
approval, and knowing Randall's propensity for such interpretations, he
graciously suggested that Randall should try. After a couple of takes the
memorable solo was in the can without any punching in or editing. The
rest, as they say, is history. Jimmy Page once nominated it as his favourite
guitar solo of all time.
The day after Randall's masterful performances on 'Kings' and 'Reelin
In The Years', Becker and Fagen actually asked him to join Steely Dan,
but he declined their offer for two reasons: he didn't want to live in Los
Angeles and he knew that Becker and Fagen were rigidly controlling the
show. He foresaw a relatively short lifespan for the group as a six-piece.
In 1973, Becker and Fagen told Alison Steele on her Nightbird And
Company radio show that they got the musical idea first on 'Reelin' In
The Years' and added the lyrics later. If one song demonstrated Fagen's
singing ability then 'Reelin' In The Years' was it. Fagen executes its
rapid-fire lyrics and difficult verses with apparent ease, prompting Gary
Katz to exclaim: "I would dare anyone to sing a verse of'Reelin' In The
Years'."
'Midnite Cruiser' again features a fine vocal by Jim Hodder and bears
a first-line reference to one of Fagen's adolescent jazz idols, Thelonious
(thinly disguised as Felonius) Monk. Fagen's chorus drives the song along
with warmth and vitality. The Latin-influenced 'Only A Fool Would Say
That' features Jeff Baxter speaking the Spanish line at the end of the song.
In what was to be the first of many such requests, Walter Becker was
persuaded by a frustrated and puzzled journalist to elucidate on the
impenetrability of the lyrics of'Brooklyn', since he was having difficulty
in unravelling them. Becker explained that the "charmer under me" was
indeed the character mentioned in their cryptic sleeve notes: "President
Street Pete is the beneficiary here." He and his family had lived in the
apartment below Donald Fagen.
"The song is just a bunch of things that the guy and his wife had coming
to them, you know, for the indignities that they had suffered living in
Brooklyn, sitting on the stoop and just shooting the shit about the Mets
and that kind of thing for 20 years. So as you see the song does yield to
a valid interpretation."
"Change Of The Guard' is as bright and sunny a song as Becker and
Fagen would ever write, and it gave the Skunk a chance to shine on a
guitar solo that climaxes with a slide that flits wonderfully from speaker
to speaker. 'Turn That Heartbeat Over Again' closes the album with
Becker, Fagen and Palmer all sharing the vocals in a unified chorus.
"I guess I am a perfectionist, but Can't Buy A Thrill is the worst album
we'll ever make," Denny Dias said soon after its release. And looking back
on the album many years later, if anything, his opinion had hardened even
further. "I don't know what we were trying to do. The music was intricate
and we just weren't up to it."
Fagen eventually came to feel the same way, too. He said that the mistake
they had made with Can't Buy A Thrill was to try and correct things
that sounded weak after they had cut the basic track. As Denny Dias said,
the track had to sound good when it was put on tape. "Many times you
think you can fix things in the mix, but you can't. You have to start with
a solid drum track and a lot of those songs didn't have that; the time was
strange or the performance wasn't good or it didn't cook, you know?"
Dias commended Gary Katz for his restraint in not forcing his own
ideas on the record in the way many producers would have done. If
Becker and Fagen were convinced about what they wanted, Katz would
willingly submit to their wishes.
Generally the reviews for Can't Buy A Thrill were excellent. Naturally,
on the emergence of a new group, critics tried to draw a parallel with
existing bands and some of those rather stretched comparisons included
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Procol Harum, Spirit, Stephen Stills, Bread
and even David Bowie.
In the UK, Sounds' Penny Valentine loved it: "A really superb album
this, polished up like a diamond. More please." Rolling Stone ended its
review with the quote: "Can't Buy A Thrill is distinguished by three top
level cuts and scattered moments of inspiration, but there are those
instances of Steely Dan coming on like a limp dildo.Too bad - great title."
'Reelin' In The Years' became Steely Dan's second hit single from the
album. Coupled with 'Only A Fool Would Say That' and released in
March 1973, it marginally failed to hit the Top 10 in the US. Despite
some reverential reviews in the UK and extensive airplay, it failed to chart
until some six years later, when it was reissued. In the US, some confusion
arose over the name Steely Dan and England's long-established folk
group Steeleye Span, and in February 1973 Sounds reported that Steely
Dan was being forced to change its name for the American market! There
was no basis of fact in the report.
Soon after the album was released, Steely Dan snagged a job composing
an advertising jingle for Schlitz beer. Becker and Fagen used the
music from the Schlitz jingle as the basis for a commercial, but refused to
let the beer company hear it until it was finished. They spent six to eight
hours in a studio while a representative from Schlitz's ad agency waited
out in the lobby. The props they requested included a giant sombrero and
a tank of helium. (The photograph of Fagen and Denny Dias holding the
helium eventually appeared on the back cover of Katy Lied, but was taken
at the Schlitz session).
The ad involved a bilingual narration from Donald Fagen and Jeff
Baxter. Fagen muttered things like..."When I get home from a hard day's
work, I grab for all the gusto I can get, 'cause you only go around one
time". While he was narrating in English, Baxter translated into Spanish,
simultaneously breathing in the helium in order to give his voice a
high-pitched, cartoon-like quality. The ad was based around the slogan
"When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer", and according to Denny
Dias, Becker and Fagen wrote "the coolest beer commercial you're ever
likely to hear".
Although Schlitz paid for the session and everything connected with
it, it turned out that some of the English words had dubious meanings
when translated into Spanish and the ad was never transmitted. Walter
Becker was pleased about that. "The ad was done on a contingency basis
and never hit the airwaves, much to my joy," he said.
After four years of trying, Becker and Fagen were at last in business.
Their debut album was selling well and was about to go gold and they'd
had two hit singles. Can't Buy A Thrill eventually peaked at number 17 in
the US in February 1973. With no hit single to promote the album, it
made no show in the UK album chart.
Although Becker and Fagen were surprised by the speed of their success,
they weren't surprised to have achieved it. "We were very arrogant
teenagers -- well, we were in our twenties, but we were still basically
teenagers - and we always felt one of our things would hit," said Fagen.
"It was very exciting. I think we probably downplayed it among ourselves
in a way, because for one thing we figured it would be just a one-hit deal.
So we said,'Well, it's a hit, but a lot of people have these one-hit records
and so what?' It was also frightening about becoming known."
But if the success of'Do It Again' caught them by surprise, neither had
anticipated the downside: the pressure to repeat that success.Their delight
was short-lived. The real work was only just beginning.

Chapter IV

Thirty-Five Sweet
Goodbyes



The accepted wisdom of the music industry in 1972 was that to translate
success on the singles chart into album sales an act must tour
extensively. To this end ABC appointed Joel Cohen, a partner in a company
called Kudo III, to manage Steely Dan. Cohen's previous experience
was as tour manager for Three Dog Night, a band for whom the road was
their second home.
Although they were totally unprepared for the first tour, Walter Becker
and Donald Fagen felt obliged to bow to corporate demands since ABC
had given them their full support before and during the recording of Can't Buy A Thrill. Cohen promptly put the tour theory into practice
with a vengeance, managing to secure Steely Dan as opening act for some
very big names - and some very surprising names too. "The manager that
we had used to road manage Three Dog Night... that was basically his
concept of how things should be done. Constant touring... and singles,"
said Fagen. "We weren't well rehearsed at all. And the tours weren't well
organized. We were always shuttling back and forth from the west to the
east coast. He felt we owed it to our singles audience."
That singles audience had bought over a million copies of 'Do It
Again'. "We had a million-selling single, but an album -- that's where the
gold is," Denny Dias told one journalist. "All the members of this band
want to keep on making good records, do bigger tours and get that million-selling
album." Quite whether Becker and Fagen wanted to "do bigger
tours" is a matter of conjecture.
In December 1972, Steely Dan were booked to open for The Kinks.
They then went on to open for Elton John,The Beach Boys, Uriah Heep,
The James Gang, The Guess Who, Black Oak Arkansas, Focus and, most
surprisingly of all, British good-time glam-rockers Slade, who were
attempting to translate their UK success Stateside.
Fagen, never the most robust of physical specimens, later admitted that
opening for heavy metal acts was "very stressful" and that he was "very
frightened of the personnel". He had light-heartedly mentioned in a press
biography that he didn't talk to anyone over five feet eight inches tall that
throwaway comment now took on an altogether more ominous
meaning.
The point was vividly illustrated on March 30,1973, when Steely Dan
shared a bill with Black Oak Arkansas and Dutch instrumentalists Focus
at the Hollywood Palladium. Black Oak were a bunch of good-natured,
rowdy, beer-swilling Southerners whose biker-style audience consumed
vast quantities of alcohol and other stimulants while bouncers carried
unconscious bodies out of the gig by the truckload. The aesthete in
Donald Fagen was offended; the scene left him feeling distinctly uneasy.
An incident in South Dakota seemed to encapsulate the reasons why
Becker and Fagen loathed road life. Steely Dan were headlining a gig and
in the process of changing over the equipment between soundchecks,
when someone stole Jeff Baxter's guitar amplifier. They knew who the
thief was, but couldn't prove it. It caused much consternation in the
Steely Dan camp and Fagen could be seen behind the stage leaning
against a power pole with a look of sad resignation on his face.
On another occasion Steely Dan were due to open for The Eagles at
an open air concert in the midwest when a severe electrical storm hit the
area in the afternoon. The winds whipped beneath the stage with such
force that it buckled upwards with the equipment on top. One piano leg
actually pierced the flimsily constructed plywood stage. The storm passed
and Steely Dan's crew checked the weather forecast, only to be told more
storms were on the way. Most of the Steely Dan entourage - including
Becker and Fagen - thought it was far too risky to contemplate going
ahead with the show, but by the time the soundchecks were scheduled
the weather had turned clear and sunny.Tour manager Gary McPike was
furious, but Steely Dan refused to budge and didn't play.
Fagen once talked about a gig, where, on taking the stage, he somehow
managed to plunge a speaker screw about three inches into his head and
bled throughout the set. "It did give a Grand Guignol effect," he said.
The worst aspect of touring for Becker and Fagen was waking up in a
different hotel room each day, and in Becker's case a particular dislike of
being jostled awake much earlier than he preferred in order to travel to
their next destination. Fagen hated riding in rental cars, but by the same
token he would have nothing to do with the rock'n'roll image of riding
in long black Cadillac limousines. Becker and Fagen weren't seeking
money, groupies or adulation; they thought of themselves as working
musicians and songwriters, nothing more, nothing less. It was an attitude
that most of their hedonistic peers in the rock world did not share.
Steely Dan enjoyed an excellent relationship with their road crew, who
took a great deal of pride in their work. But Becker and Fagen couldn't
understand why roadies would willingly subject themselves to a gruelling
tour and then come back for more. One day Fagen asked Englishman
Jimmy Lewis why he did it. "Our job is to create an environment in
which you can create," he said.The reply stopped Fagen in his tracks and
instilled in him a respect for road crews that never wavered.
Steely Dan's live set at this point included certain songs - 'Megashine
City', 'Take My Money' and 'Hellhound Train' - that had been written
specifically as vehicles for David Palmer and which would never make it
onto a Steely Dan studio album. Becker, Fagen and Katz especially did
not want to be reminded of Palmer's brief and inapt contribution to the
band.
Becker and Fagen had also written a tasty live guitar segue from
'Megashine City' into 'Dirty Work'.These segues and bridges eventually
became the norm at Steely Dan concerts in order to give Fagen a break
from singing. "Our shows," he recalled in his normal deadpan fashion,
"were a constant din from beginning to end."
Steely Dan were great musicians but they were far from the most photogenic
band in the land. Fagen had a slight stoop, Becker's long straight
hair almost always looked in need of a trim and a vigorous shampoo, and
their dress sense - or lack of it - in what was anyway a bizarre period
fashionwise was risible. Critics were quick to lambast Steely Dan for their
lack of "visual style". After one of their early gigs at the Whisky A Go Go
in Los Angeles, one reviewer referred to them as "the ugliest band in the
world". Of course, Becker and Fagen couldn't care less: they were in
rock'n'roll for the music, not the showbiz; they sought to emulate their
jazz heroes, musicians who gave no thought whatsoever to what they
wore on stage. Image was unimportant in jazz. "We were used to seeing
a musician kicking over his bottle of beer," said Becker, who would have
been happy to turn his back to the audience for an entire set if he could
get away with it.
The spectacle and theatricality that had crept into big-time rock smoke
bombs, face masks, ostentatious light shows, outrageous glam-rock
clothes and platform shoes - revolted Steely Dan, although Jeff Baxter
was perpetually amused by the stage clothes worn by some bands. Denny
Dias once said that he was amazed that Elton John could play the piano
at all while wearing six-inch heels. Of far more immediate concern to
Fagen and Becker, and Gary Katz, was David Palmer's vocal interpretation
of their songs. Despite his reluctance to sing live, Fagen soon realised
that he was the best person to accurately convey the attitude of their
songs and that he would somehow have to overcome his fear of fronting
the band. He was going to have to learn to talk to an audience and even
crack a few jokes. "It was very difficult to convince me to get up in front
of people and sing," he told one interviewer. "But I finally got enough
courage to do it, and I've been getting into it slowly. Now it's come
together pretty well."
Another drawback with lead singer David Palmer was his propensity to
wear very tight trousers, and each time he bent over or stretched he ran
the risk of splitting them. At one gig at a small club in Philadelphia,
Palmer had met with friends before the show and drunk more liquor than
was wise. With Palmer in a stupor, Steely Dan took the stage, but the
singer was way beyond recall. Not only did he sing the entire set a halftone
flat, but he also split his tight pants right up the middle. The stage
was just three feet above the floor and those seated directly in front were
given a close-up view of Palmer's sweaty crotch. To make matters worse,
he wasn't wearing underwear. On another occasion at the Whisky in LA,
Palmer's split trousers were repaired with gaffer tape. The Philadelphia
incident didn't help David Palmer's cause. Neither did another disastrous
occasion when he missed his mouth and poured a can of beer over himself
at an important press reception.
Fagen was steeling himself to face the fact that he was going to have
to be the lead singer, but he was reluctant to over indulge in pre-show
intoxicants. David Palmer was a nice guy and everyone in the band liked
him, but artistic considerations outweighed social niceties. In April of
1973, Palmer's four-month reign as Steely Dan vocalist came to an end.
Fagen was backed into a corner; there was now no denying that his
voice was the sound of Steely Dan. Occasionally, only half seriously, they
would discuss getting someone else in to do the job. One voice that
Becker and Fagen liked was Elliot Lurie, the singer from Looking Glass,
who had a US number one hit with 'Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)' in
1972. Another vocalist Becker and Fagen thought would work well in
Steely Dan was Gerry Rafferty, singer on Stealers Wheel's 1973 hit/Stuck
In The Middle With You'.
But Gary Katz had no such doubts about Fagen's ability as a vocalist.
At an open air gig in the Balboa Stadium in San Diego, when Steely Dan
opened for Elton John before a crowd of 30,000, Katz stood alongside
Warren Wallace, who commented how he loved to hear Fagen sing.
"From the first time I heard Fagen sing, everything else in my life became
secondary," Katz told Wallace.
"If we had known about Dave [Palmer] earlier, we could have incorporated
him more fully into the Steely Dan sound," Fagen said, almost by
way of apology. "He was a good singer for us early on, but he didn't really
have the attitude to put the songs over. So I started doing it myself, much
to my chagrin. It seems to have worked out."

On January 30, 1973, Steely Dan interrupted their busy touring schedule
to tape the NBC rock show Midnight Special, which was aired on
February 9. They played 'Do It Again' and 'Reelin' In The Years'. During
the spring of 1973, they continued gigging extensively right across
America. It was an exhausting schedule, arranged so they could record
during the week and tour at weekends.The schedule took them from San
Francisco to Denver, from Albuquerque to El Paso and from Baltimore to
Seattle. Denny Dias remarked that at the weekends they needed time to
recover from their recording sessions but they had to travel and perform,
and during the week they needed time to recover from all the weekend's
touring but had to press on with recording.
Becker and Fagen also found their nonstop schedule was not conducive
to their songwriting routine, and often remarked on the effort that
went into their tunes and how their songs couldn't be composed in one
session at some Holiday Inn in the middle of nowhere. Becker and Fagen
couldn't -- or wouldn't -- write songs while on the road.
Steely Dan now had a successful album behind them as well as two
Top 20 singles, and they were adamant they were not going to be
rushed with their second album. They began to establish a system of
working that would continue to develop through the decade, right up
to the sessions for Aja and Gaucho. "We've spent many years developing
our writing style," Fagen told New York DJ Alison Steele in 1973, "but
as far as the sound, we had never played live when we went in to
record."
It was a double-edged sword because, although their record company
paid for them to fly from gig to gig (which in itself was unusual), they
were sending them to places like Fayetteville and Hammond, Louisiana,
deep south swamplands, which, to confirmed city dwellers like Becker
and Fagen, was like taking Eskimos to the Sahara.They didn't want to be
there, period. A year later, Becker and Fagen would immortalise their
touring experience in the ironic opening line of'Pretzel Logic': "I would love to tour the southland/In a travelling minstrel show."
"We may have been typecast from our first album but I don't think I
know, or anybody else knew, what kind of group that was," said Fagen.
"You know, it's funny how you put something together like an album and
people see some coherent strain running through it that was never
intended or conceived or that we really don't see that way. I've noticed
quite a few people don't know what to call it. It's certainly not too well
defined in my mind."
In between the gigs Steely Dan worked on the album that became Countdown To Ecstasy at the Village Recorders in West Los Angeles, maintaining
the same studio team of Roger ("The Immortal") Nichols, Gary
Katz and Dick LaPalm. Before he was fired, Palmer did record a couple
of brief sessions on Countdown as a background singer, along with Royce
Jones, who would later be drafted in to augment the touring band. Also
hired to sing on just one song on the album was Michael Fenelly whose
voice had a certain "high" quality that Fagen liked.
One night, during the mixing of'King Of The World' after Becker and
Fagen had long since given up and gone home, Denny Dias, Roger
Nichols and Gary Katz stayed behind to try and finish the song. They
worked non-stop until eventually Katz fell asleep on the floor. Nichols
said the mix they had sounded like sonic wallpaper; it was so perfect that
after the song had been played you couldn't recall hearing it. "It was very
complex and required a lot of level changes and manipulations on the
board - there was no computerised mixdown then - so everything had
to be done by hand," said Nichols. "Denny came up with a technique of
just doing a verse and then doing just the chorus and splicing the two
pieces of two-track tape together. This made it possible to do things that
no human could do in real time."
But they were working in an unfamiliar room -- Studio C instead of
Studio A - and the combination of that, together with their exhaustion,
meant that they ended up with a totally unsatisfactory mix. Dias and
Nichols were still in the studio at 10am the following morning when the
group who were booked in that day came knocking on the door.
Dias never stayed up all night mixing again. "You should be well
rested to mix," he said. He was a real audiophile and stereo buff and,
once inside a studio, he couldn't resist the temptation to get his hands on
the board. Dias knew his quest for perfection sometimes irritated the
others, but he just couldn't help himself. "I really wanted everything to
be in stereo perspective, perfectly balanced symmetry. I would 
occasionally annoy everybody, although some of the sounds that came out were
pretty good."
Indeed, Dias must have been spectacularly successful because 20 years
later Roger Nichols confirmed that Donald Fagen still carried around in
his wallet a piece of paper on which Denny had written the EQ points
necessary to brighten, clarify or warm up sounds.
Becker and Fagen considered it essential that every song they recorded
had a rock-steady drum track. On 'Show Biz Kids' there were problems
with the tempo, which Roger Nichols solved with more inspired technological
wizardry. "I remember we had a lot of problems trying to record a perfect, ultimately steady rhythm track. It was just one of those tunes
that was so very difficult to play exactly in tempo, with every instrument
in sync. What would happen was we'd get a great drum track and something
else wouldn't quite cut it, or everything else would be spot on
except for the snare. After a while, everyone got very frustrated, and they
started trying different drummers, and then different combinations of
players and still it never quite hung together properly.
"There were no drum machines in those days, so we made a 24 track,
eight-bar tape loop, which at 30 ips was a considerable length of tape,
trailed it out through the door into the studio, around a little idler that
was set up on a camera tripod, back into the studio and then copied that
to a second 24-track machine. Everything was on the tape except the lead
vocal and lead guitar. It worked like a dream."
Fagen admitted that some of the songs were completely his and some
were completely Becker's, "but in most there isn't any cut and dried version.'The
Boston Rag', for instance, has my chorus and verses by Walter,"
said Fagen, attempting to explain how the song came to feature the lyric,
"You were Lady Bayside". Bayside was a community in Queens where
Becker once lived and where he formed one of his first rock'n'roll bands.
He included it for no other reason than he liked the sound of it in the
song. Just as Fagen's vocal comes in, the song features some very crisp
'Stairway To Heaven'-esque acoustic guitar from Ben Benay.The lines in
the song,"Lonnie was the kingpin back in 1965" and,"Lonnie swallowed
up all he found. It was 48 hours till Lonnie came around" refer to Lonnie
Yongue, Fagen's room-mate at Bard. Strangely enough,Yongue had never
been to Boston, but Becker later commented: "The nice thing about 'The
Boston Rag' is that it took place in New York. I haven't seen Lonnie in a
long time. Hi, Lonnie!"
Jeff Baxter played the guitar solo in 'The Boston Rag'. He later
described his perspective of the process to achieve what Fagen and
Becker were looking for in a solo as "sort of a combination of exorcism,
displays of technique and all kinds of things. My frame of mind during
most of those solos was an extremely emotional emotionlessness. I was
very into the music, but to get too involved would have been dangerous,
because the idea was that nobody got that personally involved. Usually
Donald would say, 'Bend a lot of strings' and 'Go fast'."
Baxter added that sometimes Becker would push him to the point
where he wound up wondering if one solo was any different from the
next, but he still never had any complaints. He also said Gary Katz would
never buy a solo unless he was turning purple doing it. Baxter wasn't a
great lover of effects pedals, preferring to plug his guitar direct into the
board and crank his amp up to full volume. However, on 'King Of The
World' he used an Echoplex.
'King Of The World' was written after Becker and Fagen watched the
1962 film Panic In Year Zero!, starring and directed by Ray Milland.
"Typical devastation," said Becker. "Like, what you do at the end of the
world. The sense of doom is overwhelming." The film focused on a family
on a fishing trip in the mountains when Los Angeles is blasted by a
nuclear attack.'King Of The World' examines the behaviour and predicament
of a survivor after a nuclear attack and asks whether he would be
better off dead anyway.
Becker later lay beneath the drums in the far corner of the studio making
random comments that were mixed into the song's instrumental section.
His comments were heavily equalised and reverbed, and one of the
barely audible things he said was, "I think my face is on fire". This was
Becker and Fagen's cryptic comment that accompanied the song on the
lyric sheet of the Probe UK pressing of the album. Other comments
ranged from "Ooh La La" on 'Pearl Of the Quarter' and "Enervated after
an attack of unrelieved nostalgia, Jeff'Skunk' Baxter sheds his outer skin
and stands revealed as a Wild Boy" on 'The Boston Rag', to "Dias the
Bebopper meets Baxter the Skunk beneath the Bo tree in this altered
blues" on 'Bodhisattva'.
The impenetrability of'Your Gold Teeth', another song recorded during
these sessions, had every rock critic in America struggling to decode
its significance. None managed it. The obscurity of the line, "Even Cathy
Berberian knows there's one roulade she can't sing" demonstrated Fagen
and Becker's quest for anything and everything that was oblique. Many
fans and critics thought that Cathy Berberian was a figment of Fagen and
Becker's imagination, but she actually did exist. Born in New York of
Armenian immigrant parents, she studied at the Milan Conservatory and
adopted a singing style that required her to moan, snarl, snort, squeal and
scream in imitating electronic sounds. She later said she was "terribly flattered
by the tribute from Steely Dan", and bought several copies of Countdown To Ecstasy for her immediate family. Becker and Fagen were
never persuaded to reveal the song's meaning (if indeed it means anything)
but their lifting of a lyric from Count Basie and Joe Williams' version of a
song entitled'GoingTo Chicago Blues' --"There ain't nothing in Chicago
for a monkey woman to do"--was noticed and made public a few years later.
References to Bard College feature frequently in Becker and Fagen
songs, but 'My Old School' was the centrepiece. One wall of the Village
Recorder building in Santa Monica had been painted in various shades
of blue - depicting an earthquake with a hefty piece of freeway falling
into the Pacific - and Becker and Fagen used the mural as inspiration for
the line: "California tumbles into the sea."
There was a reference to the Wolverine, a train that ran up to Boston
(and through Annandale-on-the-Hudson) from New York, and Bard was
compared favourably with William And Mary, one of the oldest colleges
in America. But the song is best remembered for Jeff Baxter's blistering
guitar solo, played on an instrument that he had only just finished making.
"The guitar I played it on I built myself. I built it that afternoon; I
finished that Stratocaster. I cut it out of a beautiful piece of board maple,
cut the neck and fretted it, wound the pick-ups and stuck it all together
and brought it into the studio. That guitar was only finished three hours
before at the parking lot in Valley Sound."
'Bodhisattva' was written by Donald Fagen without Becker's input.
Denny Dias recalled picking Fagen up on the way to the studio and
Fagen telling him he'd only written the tune the previous night. "That's
sort of a parody of how Western people look at eastern religion -- sort of
oversimplify it," said Fagen. "We thought it was rather amusing -- most
people don't get it." Like Duke Ellington, Fagen was (and is) eternally fascinated
by the Orient, and he managed to incorporate both China and
Japan into the lyric of the song.
Jeff Baxter later claimed that at the time Countdown was recorded, he
had just learned how to play Bach's 'Toccata And Fugue' on the guitar. "It
is a beautiful piece of music... you hear it every time you see a monster
movie. And there was one particular chord pattern, I was so hung up on
it, I said to Donald we have to use this. The next thing I knew he came
in with 'The Boston Rag' and he said,'You're gonna like this', and he put
that actual chord change in it. It thrilled me to death, Donald listening to
my ideas."
"This was a perfect example of the rest of the band developing
arrangements," Becker said.'"Your Gold Teeth' was developed in a playing
kind of context. Denny had the spotlight and I think it worked out
rather well. By Countdown To Ecstasy we would come in with the basic
tune idea, play it down and develop the arrangement more with the band.
Jeff, in particular, was able to contribute a lot more in terms of integral
parts, of the songs rather than add-ons. Countdown To Ecstasy had kind of
a unique flavour because of that."
Donald Fagen's girlfriend, Dorothy 'Dotty of Hollywood'White, who
had been an aspiring artist for some time, designed the cover for Countdown. Her watercolour depicted three almost featureless aliens looking
blankly into the distance at some dazzling lights. When ABC boss Jay
Lasker saw the painting, he immediately took exception to it, complaining
that there were five members in the group and there were only three
figures in the painting. "Dotty" argued that it wasn't a painting of the
group, simply something that would look good on the cover. Lasker was
adamant. So White went away, studied her watercolour and managed to
incorporate two more vague shapes into the painting without altering its
impact.The apparently disembodied hand that appeared in the back cover
photograph of Steely Dan in ABC Studios' control room belonged to
Roger Nichols.
As for the actual title of the album, Jeff Baxter explained that... "Steely
Dan had been planning to write a whole mini-opera about a marine and
the last thing was how he goes on leave; we were gonna write a song
called 'Countdown To Ecstasy' because he finally got laid. We figured we'd
be in big trouble with the State department so we didn't do it."
Countdown To Ecstasy was released in July 1973, together with the
single 'Show Biz Kids', which had been selected by the group themselves.
It was Becker and Fagen's stinging denunciation of the Los Angeles
lifestyle and featured a superb slide guitar part from Rick Derringer, but
it was an abject failure, only reaching number 61 on the Billboard singles
chart. As with 'Do It Again', the five-minute plus song had to be edited,
which conveniently enabled a four-letter word to be excised too.
Strangely enough, critics and fans alike also had great difficulty figuring
out the incessant vocal vamp beneath the song. One ridiculous music
press suggestion was, "We're gonna love sweeties". In fact, the girls were
singing, "You go to Lost Wages", a Fagen/Becker pun on Las Vegas.
At least two of the voices comprising the closing hubbub were those
of road manager Warren Wallace and a member of the road crew, John
Famular. With David Palmer already on the way out and Fagen unwilling,
it's just possible to pick up Wallace asking a pertinent but facetious
question: "Hey, is this the band that's looking for a lead singer?"
Immediately after Wallace comes Famular who, by cupping his hands over
his mouth, does his best imitation of a commercial airline pilot clicking
on the microphone and saying: "This is your captain speaking!" When
Fagen came to write the sleeve notes he made sure "Grunt" Wallace and
"Pilot" Famular were credited for their respective contributions.
While recording 'Show Biz Kids', Becker and Fagen expressed mild
concern at using an expletive, but when they briefly tried an alternative
word it sounded silly and completely out of context, so their original
lyric was allowed to stand. Katz was amused as well as relieved: "We did
it with style and panache, I thought."
"We're sadder but wiser in relation to that" Becker said, "but it's always
comforting to know that you've got something potentially obscene on
AM radio."
ABC still allowed Steely Dan to pick their own singles and they naturally
chose whatever happened to be their favourite song, with little
regard for commercial potential. The choice of'Show Biz Kids' was their
first big mistake. Even though Steely Dan were still touring extensively,
they were unable to overcome the setback.
Katz was very disappointed. "We did think we had a hit single this
time, though. It had a great repeating chorus, nice Motown beat and
nothing happened. To this day, we can't figure out what's commercial."
Katz felt radio stations were partly to blame. "I don't think radio gave
the second album or third single (he excluded 'Dallas' from his calculations)
a chance. In one city where we were coming off the two Top 10 singles,
they told us we couldn't get play until Dallas played the record. So the
band went there, set for a 9,000-seat hall. They had to be moved to an
18,000-seat auditorium and they filled that. So we say,'Obviously the public
accepts the group, based on the last two records and the crowds. Why
can't you play the record?' I don't care if the group is Steely Dan or Dawn,
and I don't care if the guy at the radio station likes the record. If the public
accepts an act, then the station should play it. Where else will the public
hear a new group other than on the radio, and what kid will pay six
dollars for an album by a group he's never heard? This is my complaint."
Henceforth Becker, Fagen and Katz fought shy of choosing their own
singles. "We'll leave that to someone who thinks they know the right
thing to pick," said Katz.
In the UK, Probe Records adopted an aggressive point-of-sale campaign
for the album, running a series of 45-second ads on Radio
Luxembourg, taking full-page ads in the consumer music press and distributing
1,500 display cards to selected retailers. In a bizarre twist to the
campaign, Probe also sponsored a Steely Dan balloon race at a Radio
Luxembourg motor racing meeting at Brands Hatch in Kent.
English disc jockey John Peel reviewed the single in Sounds and liked
it. He admired Rick Derringer's slide guitar playing and Becker and
Fagen's "healthy cynicism with show biz and show biz groovers". Peel
also lamented the omission of the rude word... "That might have prodded
the more impressionable among you into raging, uncontrolled copulation
in the high street."
As ever, Fagen tried to play down his and Becker's roles in the creation
of the music. In interviews he stressed the importance of the other musicians
in the band: "My bass player and I write all the material, but the
solos and arrangements come from the group.Walter and I think it out in
advance and then we go into the studios and work on the tunes from
there. I think of them as compositions rather than songs. They are structured,
but there is room for improvisation."
In October 1973,'My Old School'/'Pearl Of the Quarter' became the
second single from the album to flop, reaching no higher than number 63
in Billboard, although it sounded great on the radio and to this day
remains a particular favourite among Steely Dan fans.
Steely Dan had blown their chance and they knew it. Having very
nearly had two Top 10 singles from Can't Buy A Thrill, they had now
released two miserable singles failures and Countdown To Ecstasy suffered
as a result. All the momentum they had gained from their debut album
had been lost at a stroke.
Nevertheless, reviews of the album were once again excellent. In the
UK, Melody Maker lamented the lack of success of Can't Buy A Thrill and
implored fans to go out and buy this album. "If they don't happen here
this time, there's something drastically wrong with this country's ears,"
bemoaned MM's critic.
Rolling Stone cited Steely Dan as the American dance band alternative
to Slade, a comparison that defies understanding. Stereo Review marvelled
at their "potent and persuasive mix of rock, jazz and pop" and said it was
"a really excellent album". Records and Recording rounded off its review by
claiming that Steely Dan, along with The Band and The Grateful Dead, "are American white rock at the moment".

* *

Soon after the release of Countdown To Ecstasy, jim Hodder was at a party
in Pasadena. In the early hours, seven or eight friends began singing old
Motown songs. One of them was Royce Jones, who was signed to
Motown with a group called Odyssey (not the band that eventually had
a hit with 'Native New Yorker'), and Hodder asked him if he was interested
in trying out for Steely Dan, who were about to embark on another
tour. Two weeks later, Jones passed an audition at Modern Music Studios
by singing 'Bodhisattva'. He was only a verse and a half into the song
when Donald Fagen stopped him and told him that he'd got the gig.
Royce Jones thus replaced David Palmer and made his debut with Steely
Dan at the Sopwith Camel Club in Glendale.
As a direct result of the flak that Steely Dan had received in the press
for their shabby looks, and also because of the departure of David Palmer,
Fagen and Becker hired two female backing singers, Gloria Granola and
Jenny Soule, affectionately nicknaming them Porky and Bucky, for the Countdown To Ecstasy tour. Porky and Bucky liked to dress up in fetching
go-go costumes, which Becker and Fagen loved, and they were equally as
enthusiastic to have been invited to join Steely Dan.
Fagen was asked if they had thought about going the whole hog putting
the two girls in a cage and suspending it above the band in true
Las Vegas style. "We thought about it," he said, "but you can only get people
to do so many things."
"Sooner or later they will do the routine with the live python," added
Becker.
Royce Jones soon realised that Fagen didn't especially want to sing live,
and he was asked if he wanted to shoulder some of the responsibility. He
did, and was given the opportunity to sing'Brooklyn','Dirty Work','Any
Major Dude' and 'The Boston Rag', as well as sharing vocals with Fagen
on 'Bodhisattva'.
At the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in September, Steely Dan
returned to the stage and surprised fans with an improvised encore of the
Angels' 1963 US hit 'My Boyfriend's Back', sung by Porky and Bucky.
The song hadn't been worked up in rehearsals and Royce Jones was
amazed when they suddenly began playing it. It never became a regular
feature of their live shows, but when they were in the right frame of mind
Becker and Fagen added it to their set list. When Becker and Fagen had
performed at oldies shows with Jay and The Americans, The Angels had
occasionally been on the bill, and it was Fagen's idea to include a
tongue-in-cheek version of the song for the girls to sing.
Although they had only recently increased the size of the band, Becker
and Fagen spoke publicly about adding further personnel to augment
their live show. "We want to eventually have an orchestra on stage," said
Fagen at one point. The buzz about Steely Dan's live show was really
gaining an intensity now and, after their stint as opening act, they were
popular enough to attract an audience on their name alone. It was around
this time (September 1973) that they played their first concert as headliners.
In between recording Steely Dan albums, Gary Katz and Roger
Nichols produced and engineered an album for Katz's friend Thomas
Jefferson Kaye. Kaye was descended from Indian blood and his self-titled
1973 album was virtually a who's who of Steely Dan musicians: Walter
Becker played bass on two tracks; Donald Fagen sang background vocals
with David Palmer on three tunes; Jeff Baxter guested on one track; and
other Dan session regulars included Rick Derringer, Victor Feldman,
Clydie King.Venetta Fields and Sherlie Matthews.
Becker and Fagen were now heavily in demand for interviews, but
they did themselves no favours by habitually describing their music as
"smart rock". If anything was guaranteed to turn critics against a band, it
was a couple of smart-ass college hipsters touting their own intelligence
and musical integrity (albeit tongue in cheek). One Steely Dan bio from
ABC describes a typical Becker/Fagen song as having "a penetrating
verse, a rousing chorus, an inspired bridge and, of course, a no-holds
barred instrumental of some sort."
"Pop songs with some kind of structure that's interesting and can be
developed," was how Fagen described Steely Dan's music. "We're pretty
traditional in that way, but the chords are usually more interesting than most rock'n'roll, I think."
Sure enough, some critics took exception to Becker and Fagen's conceit
and sneered at their obscure lyrics and intellectualising. Becker called
Steely Dan's music "planned diversity", andJeffBaxter agreed:"I'd rather
have people looking forward to a song they don't know anything about
than looking forward to a song they know is gonna be the same as the
last song."
But Becker and Fagen were confident that their particular brand of
songwriting would be a hit with the critics, if not with the public. They
admitted that they wrote and recorded solely to please themselves; if
other people liked it, that was a welcome bonus. But Becker and Fagen's
single-minded dedication and all-encompassing musical control was soon
to have its inevitable consequences.


Chapter V

Slow Hand Row



Once the novelty of space, warm weather and laid-back insouciance
had worn thin, Los Angeles was a grave disappointment to Walter
Becker and Donald Fagen. Neither was suited to the balmy southern
California lifestyle; they missed New York's artistic vitality and, in fact,
Becker said that once they got to California they soon began writing
about New York. 'Show Biz Kids' palpably demonstrated their feelings
about Hollywood and its inhabitants, and the east coast/west coast, New
York/Malibu dichotomy came up several times in interviews.
"I find it very difficult to relate to Angelinos," Becker told DJ Jim
Ladd,"even of my own age, who presumably have the same cultural backdrop
that I do, but of course, they don't. All they know about is what kind
of wax you put on your surfboard and what different kinds of neuf bars
you can get for your Chevy."
Ladd played Devil's advocate and claimed that New York was so violent
that he couldn't imagine anyone voluntarily subjecting themselves to
living there. Becker and Fagen sprang to its defence, comparing the Big
Apple's intellectual and artistic vitality with the bland artificiality and
intellectual emptiness of Los Angeles. Becker likened living in Los
Angeles to "living in a morgue". "LA is marked by excesses of every kind
and complete disregard for humanity, as if it were built for the automobile
and hamburger stand operators."
In late 1973 and early '74, Becker and Fagen were faced with the same
problem as with their previous album - trying to write songs between
concert dates. With only six or seven months between the release of Can't
Buy A Thrill and Countdown To Ecstasy, and the latter's fairly moderate
commercial showing, the pressure to come up with the goods was even
more intense than before.Their decision to resurrect and update three old
New York demos reflected the difficulty they had writing songs to meet
their exacting standards. 'Barrytown', 'Parker's Band' and 'Charlie Freak' as
well as the Duke Ellington cover, 'East St Louis Toodle-Oo', and the
throwaway 'Through With Buzz' -- were all dusted off for future use.
It never seemed to occur to Becker and Fagen that the others in the
band might be composers too. In a roundabout way, they did eventually
hear that the others were writing, but Becker said that they were never
shown the results. "For all we know they might take over," he said. One
press release from ABC stated that "every facet of the collaboration is
shared". No doubt if they had been asked, Baxter and Hodder would have
disagreed.
_ Further unwelcome touring was on the horizon once Steely Dan's
third album was out, and while Fagen and Becker were locked away for
months writing new material, Jeff Baxter and Jim Hodder, and to a lesser
extent Denny Dias, sat around twiddling their thumbs, adding to Becker
and Fagen's unease by actually pushing for more gigs and longer tours. It
was a kind of revenge: since Becker and Fagen had virtually frozen the
others out of the record-making process, Baxter and Hodder decided to
punish them by forcing them out on the road.
During interviews after the release of their third album, Pretzel Logic, Becker and Fagen dispensed totally with any further pretence of enjoying
life on the road. "I don't like the jock atmosphere of a travelling
rock'n'roll band," Fagen said. "It's corny, boring and silly."
Becker was behind his partner wholeheartedly: "Donald has to sing and
that's a tough thing to have to do. If you get a cold you still have to sing
every night; I've seen that happen to almost everybody that I've been on
the road with. It's like football players and their knees - it's just a matter
of time." Ever the joker, Becker went on to say, "We were gonna get
matchbooks and have a picture of Donald with the legend,'Can you sing
like this man?' so we could get another singer. He'd just have to play
piano."
While Becker and Fagen squirmed, Baxter and Hodder revelled in the
applause and partying. Baxter even thought Fagen was a natural front man
for the band: "I was actually enjoying myself, everybody in the rhythm
section was enjoying themselves. Donald and Walter hated touring, hated
it with a passion. [But] Donald turned out to be a great performer.There's
a streak in Donald that runs to be a great stage presence, I mean he'd literally
go nuts. He'd buy himself a plastic organ and go up there in a vest
and drive people nuts. They couldn't believe this guy, you know. So I
think somewhere deep down inside of Donald there's a -- if not a love -- a certain genetic understanding of live performing. No, they didn't like it,
but they hadda like some of it, 'cause it was pretty funny. And one thing
was really nuts, everybody really liked the band when we played. I guess
we had something for everybody, 'cause we used to pound it out. I mean,
everybody would sweat their brains out. Donald would work -- that guy
was out there working."
Fagen was also very cynical about the notion of a rock'n'roll band
being interviewed. When interviews were scheduled to include all or just
other members of the group, as opposed to just Becker and Fagen, he
would advise the others: "Say anything you want, just don't say anything
that's true." Needless to say, this was a tactic they used quite often, especially
when an interviewer asked dumb questions, knew nothing whatsoever
about Steely Dan or appeared to be merely going through the
motions.
Steely Dan's road crew was very small in comparison with the huge
tours that began to criss-cross the US during the Seventies. Their sound
engineer was a Lancashire-born Englishman named Stuart "Dinky"
Dawson, who went on to found Dawson Sound. Dawson first toured the
US in 1969/70 with Fleetwood Mac and eventually moved to the US
permanently to work with The Byrds, The Mahavishnu Orchestra and
Lou Reed. He devised the overhead vocal PA system that was separate
from the stereo PAs on each side of the stage and, with Marshall Goldberg
from Boston, designed the "snake cable" that joined stage equipment to a
mixing console amid the audience in the centre of the auditorium. He
claimed to be the first person ever to mix live sound from the audience,
a practice subsequently adopted by all touring acts.
As a support band, Steely Dan often experienced problems sound
checking. In late 1972, when they were opening for The Kinks, "Dinky"
Dawson always made sure that they got an uninterrupted soundcheck
and, when he mixed the band in stereo, Walter Becker and Denny Dias
were always very impressed.
Dawson was later struck down with pneumonia and had to come off
the road, but Steely Dan had been so taken with his ultra hi-fidehty sound
system that they eventually tracked him down and told their management
and record company that they wanted to use his production company on
every forthcoming tour. Employing Dawson's sound system actually
inspired them to play better than ever. For his part, Dawson still maintains
that Steely Dan played some of the finest live shows he's ever heard and
was frequently amazed at the audience reaction. He cites Seattle in April
1973 as one of the most outstanding. Dawson said there was so much
energy at a Steely Dan show that people jumped up during the first number
and went absolutely crazy for the band's music for the rest of the set.
Gary Katz was in full agreement. "I would see shows that I thought
were just incredible, some of the best rock'n'roll shows I ever saw. Then
I'd go backstage and Donald and Walter would be sitting there with their
heads in their hands complaining about how rotten they'd been."
"Everybody was high, but it didn't make any difference, they played
incredibly," said Dawson in his broad accent. In fact, when Steely Dan
quit touring, Dawson pretty much did likewise, because he knew that
those live shows would be virtually impossible to better either soundwise
or musically.
Jeif Baxter and Dawson became firm friends, and both got great
amusement from anything that was offbeat. "The guy who mixed our
monitors was interesting, too," said Baxter. "He would set up the monitors
so he could hear real well, and he'd get a nice sound that he liked and
take out his violin and play with us throughout the set. Everything was
really shaky." The violin-playing monitor mixer was named Jim Jacobs,
and he had a habit of incessantly playing a tape of Bob Dylan's 'Visions
Of Johanna' through Steely Dan's sound system before gigs, a custom
Becker and Fagen would refer to in 'Doctor Wu', one of the songs on Katy Lied. "All night long/We would sing that stupid song" referred to
Dylan's 'Visions Of Johanna'.
All touring bands in the Seventies found drugs and intoxicants in plentiful
supply, but Donald Fagen indulged only rarely. His one vice had a
constructive use: he liked to down a brandy and a Valium before taking
the stage to help him conquer his stage fright. Before the gig, Fagen
would gather up the band and lead them through an oldies singalong to
loosen everyone up, often with Hodder and newcomer Jeff Porcaro
drumming along on a wooden bench. Leiber & Stoller's 'Ruby Baby'
(which Fagen eventually covered for his Nightfly album) was a favourite
warm-up song.
While the band wended their tortuous way across America - and prepared
to head for England - ABC issued a press release that contained
typical examples of the PR hyperbole that dogged Steely Dan. It
described the group's members as "among the most literate in rock", and
stated that Steely Dan's (or to be precise Becker and Fagen's) influences
were existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, symphony conductor
Pierre Boulez, saxophonist John Coltrane and novelist William S.
Burroughs. ABC seemed to be encouraging Becker and Fagen to assert
their apparent intellectual superiority over their audience.
Asked about their influences, Becker and Fagen would begin with a
discussion about Heidegger's Being And Time. "Existentialist metaphysics
really offer a way of achieving authentic existence," Fagen was quoted as
saying, a comment unlikely to be uttered by, say, Ozzy Osbourne or Ted
Nugent. Of Burroughs' Naked Lunch Walter Becker said: "I'd like to send
a copy to every executive in the country." Discussing New Journalism,
they opined that Hunter S. Thompson, the drug-abusing proponent of
gonzo journalism whose hilarious Fear And Loathing reports often
appeared in Rolling Stone, was a much better writer than Tom Wolfe.
Often during interviews, discussions about literature and philosophy
actually preceded talk of musical influences, and at a press conference in
early 1974, Fagen was approached by a music journalist who compared
the lyrics of'Rikki Don't Lose That Number' to the poetry ofT. S. Eliot.
"Don't take them too seriously," retorted Fagen, accepting the unwelcome
compliment with an enigmatic smile.
ABC nevertheless took Steely Dan very seriously indeed and concluded
one of its many press releases with the rash claim: "To many people
they are the established spokespersons for the contemporary rock
audience."
Spokesman or not, Fagen still hated doing interviews.

The recording of Steely Dan's third album took them into another phase
of their career. The album was again recorded mainly at the Village
Recorders, with overdubs and mixing at Cherokee Sound in Chatsworth,
but this time Gary Katz - with the active encouragement of Becker and
Fagen - decided to adopt the "workshop situation", whereby outside session musicians, usually the best in the business, were brought in to perform
specific and varied parts. It was a method of working that Steely
Dan would eventually take to its absolute limit - by sometimes not even
playing on their own records.
Names like Chuck Rainey, Michael Omartian, Dean Parks, Jim
Gordon, Jeff Porcaro and the already established Dan sideman Victor
Feldman, all became regular contributors to Steely Dan albums. In fact,
very soon Steely Dan sessions became the talking point among LA studio
musicians.They were definitely among the better dates to be asked to
play on, not just because the chord changes and rhythms were invariably
more challenging but because the sessions were great fun, too. In amongst
all the hard work and intense pressure, Becker, Fagen and Katz sought to
extract - and demanded nothing less than - the absolute pinnacle of a
musician's performance. If he still didn't come up to scratch, Katz would
soon be on the phone to the next player in line. For an LA session musician,
to have some Steely Dan credits on his CV was the ultimate accolade.
During the early stages of recording, Becker and Fagen actively
encouraged the musicians to express themselves within the structure of
each tune. For solos, they usually began with a brief description of the
kind of thing they were looking for and would then resort to "virtually
anything, including jumping up and down and verbally abusing the guy",
according to Becker. Almost certainly this statement contained a good
deal of exaggeration, because Fagen and Becker -- who were both terribly
shy - later admitted that they could barely talk to the musicians about
non-musical matters, and to have treated professional players in this way
would have been tantamount to artistic suicide.
In fact, Becker and Fagen usually trod very carefully, seldom emerging
from the control room with "an attitude" towards a musician. If, as frequently
happened, a player was unable to execute the part to their satisfaction,
they would more than likely lay the blame squarely on themselves
by saying that they had stylistically mismatched the player to the part in
the first place.
Steely Dan's regular drummer and occasional vocalist Jim Hodder was
an early victim of this musicians-pool policy. Like David Palmer, he was
a popular guy much liked by everyone in the band, but he wasn't steady
enough to satisfy Becker and Fagen's desire for the perfect drum track.
He also had his fair share of problems, the most notable being an inability
to curb his alcohol intake. The final nail in Hodder's coffin was hammered
home during the recording of a song called 'Night By Night' at
Cherokee Sound in Chatsworth. Becker and Fagen wanted pinpoint
accuracy for the drum track, but Hodder was unable to provide it. When
the request went out for an alternative, Denny Dias suggested a prodigiously
talented teenage drummer of his acquaintance called Jeff Porcaro.
Porcaro was only 19, the son of percussionist Joe Porcaro, and had been
making substantial money on the road with Sonny & Cher. Dias called
Porcaro and within 45 minutes he was there. The personable, bespectacled
drummer and Steely Dan megafan walked into the studio, looked up at an ornamental rope and noose hanging from the rafters and, knowing
Steely Dan's reputation, said, "I know you guys have a rough reputation
on musicians, but this is ridiculous!"
One of Jeff Porcaro's many drumming idols was session drummer Jim
Gordon, who ironically enough ended up playing on the majority of the
tracks on Pretzel Logic. A session veteran, Gordon had already worked with
artists like John Lennon, Eric Clapton, George Harrison,Traffic and Carry
Simon. He was most famous, however, for writing the coda to Eric
Clapton's classic Derek And The Dominos' track 'Layla'. 'Parker's Band',
Becker and Fagen's tribute to Bird, featured the double drums of Jim
Gordon and Jeff Porcaro, and the latter was delighted to be playing with
the elder statesman. "Gordon was my idol," said Jeff. "Playing with him
was like going to school. [Jim] Keltner was the bandido in town. Gordon
was the heir to Hal Blaine."
Another studio player invited to contribute to a Steely Dan session for
the first time was bassist Chuck Rainey, who'd already worked with The
Supremes, Aretha Franklin,The Crusaders and Roberta Flack and Donny
Hathaway, and was now the session bass player in the US. Rainey and Katz
happened upon each other on a freeway in Los Angeles and, within a
week, Katz had called to invite him to play on Steely Dan's record. It
proved to be the launching pad for a long-term association between
Steely Dan and Walter Becker's all-time favourite bass player.
Having adopted the "workshop situation", Becker and Fagen themselves
were somewhat reticent about playing in front of the cream of LA's
studio musicians. In fact, Michael Omartian can never remember Walter
Becker playing guitar or bass while he was in the studio. Both songwriters
were modest about their respective techniques and consequently insecure
about sitting down and playing with hot session musicians. "I play
good enough for what we do, but I wouldn't like to get in a blowing contest
with Rick Wakeman," said Fagen.
Becker, Fagen and Katz kept a tight rein on the comings and goings of
musicians at sessions, with the outside players kept apart from Jeff Baxter,
Jim Hodder and even Denny Dias. Baxter was only called in to do solos
and overdubs and obviously resented the fact that he now had no say in
the arrangements of any tunes. Denny Dias was usually present and
encouraged to air his musical views, but henceforth he averaged only one
or two solos per album; although he was a very distinctive musician, he
could not play screaming rock guitar convincingly enough for Becker and
Fagen. Dias spent his time contentedly observing Becker, Fagen and Katz
at work in the studio, only to bring himself to the fore as soon as mixing
began. In fact, Pretzel Logic was the last album on which Dias had any
serious mixing involvement. Despite Roger Nichols' technical and scientific
gifts, Steely Dan soon began employing Elliot Scheiner to assist
Nichols with the mixing duties.
By employing session musicians -- in particular drummers - Becker and
Fagen were sometimes able to arrive at whatever they were looking for
much quicker than would have been possible with less accomplished
players. The drummers they used also widened Becker and Fagen's imagination,
and brought to their songs parts that they would never have 
conceived themselves. Yet it was still Fagen and Becker's names on the composition
at the end of the day. Only Bernard Purdie, the great New York
session drummer, ever dared to suggest that he should have been given a
co-writing credit on a Becker and Fagen song.
Becker, Fagen and Katz's perfectionism became legendary. And yet the
interesting thing was that when Becker and Fagen decided to shelve a
song, very seldom did the studio musicians feel that it was not "happening".The
problem invariably existed somewhere in the composers'heads.
Many of the musicians thought they had nailed it, and couldn't understand
why a track was being cut again and again. When Becker and Fagen
finally decided on a take, the players often thought an earlier one was
every bit as good.
What went on in those heads, no one dared to try and guess. Walter
Becker was extremely cynical and difficult to get a reading on; Donald
Fagen was introverted and even more difficult to understand and, until
they knew better, some players interpreted his aloofness as a sign of disapproval.
Becker and Fagen's interests never coincided with those of the
musicians they employed. Most of the musicians simply came to accept
and understand the tremendous peculiarities about the duo's personalities.
The sessions for Pretzel Logic weren't as experimental as the first two
albums. This time around, Becker and Fagen realised each song more fully
before entering the studio, and Katz helped them to hire the right musicians
to execute their ideas. "I felt that they had everything together
enough that they didn't need to experiment," said Michael Omartian.
The guitar solo on the title track is a prime example. It was played by
Becker, and as usual took a long time to piece together, often "an hour
per bar", according to Roger Nichols. But there seemed to be an element
of divine guidance in the way they worked. One night, Becker and Fagen
were working on one part of the solo and after he'd played it Fagen said,
"Yeah, I think that was all right." When they played the tape back and
Becker heard it, he was astounded. "Did I play that?" he asked incredulously.
Walter
Becker's obsession with hi-fi meant that he was often suggesting
new equipment and gadgets that Steely Dan might employ in the studio.
During the Pretzel Logic sessions he suggested using some giant,
imposing speakers called Magneplanas. Although they measured over five
feet tall, Steely Dan obtained a pair and recorded the whole album using
them in theVillage Recorders. Unfortunately, what sounded good on the
Magneplanas didn't always sound good on ordinary speakers; indeed,
Michael Omartian thought the Magneplanas themselves were "paper
thin" and sounded "just goofy". They did try using them again for Katy
Lied, but the Magneplanas didn't sound as good in ABC Recording
Studios and were discarded.
A particular favourite of Becker and Fagen's was Duke Ellington and
The Washingtonians' theme song 'East St Louis Toodle-Oo', which, on Pretzel Logic, became Steely Dan's first - and last - cover version. Wah-wah guitar sounded exactly like a muted trumpet and was also great
fun to play, so Becker and Fagen went out and obtained the three available
versions of Ellington's song, each one slightly different in detail and
arrangement, which they combined into one for their own version. Many
critics jumped to the conclusion that Steely Dan had covered it simply
because of its mention in Burroughs' Naked Lunch, but Fagen and Becker
steadfastly denied this was the case.
"Without having a missionary attitude about it, we still thought it
would be interesting for the audience to realise that that kind of expression
is not a new thing," said Fagen. "In 1926, a trumpet player was doing
with his lip what it takes a complicated set of electronics to do on an electric
guitar. Walter had been putzing around with that song for years. We
wanted to hear it with all the expertise of modern hi-fi."
According to Becker, the piano solo in Steely Dan's 'East St Louis
Toodle-oo' was a composite of "four bad clarinet solos with notes
changed only where absolutely necessary. Duke didn't have a good clarinet
player in that period; a few years later he hired Barney Bigard."
In addition to the substitution of Fagen's piano solo for Rudy Jackson's
clarinet and Becker's wah-wah guitar for Bubber Miley's trumpet, Steely
Dan's version also utilised Jeff Baxter's note-for-note
pedal-steel-guitar-through-a-Fuzz-tone rendition of Tricky Sam
Nanton's trombone and a sax/guitar duct for the horn ensemble. Donald
Fagen also played the alto sax - the one and only time he played his
beloved saxophone during Steely Dan's seven-album recording career.
'East St Louis Toodle-Oo' also provided Walter Becker with his first
appearance on a Steely Dan record, playing six-string guitar. Making up
the rest of the band were Jim Gordon on drums, Becker on bass and guitar,
Dean Parks on banjo and Roger Nichols banging the gong at the end.
Fagen, obviously very proud of Steely Dan's version, sent Duke
Ellington a copy of the record for his 75th birthday that April, saying "I
would have been very flattered if he heard it, but I don't know if he did."
Unfortunately, the great American jazz composer died within a month of
his birthday, so the chances are that he didn't get to hear Steely Dan's
tribute.





The one-and-a-half minute 'Through With Buzz' was Becker and
Fagen's shortest song, and also their worst. Laden with strings and a repetitive
lyric, it was, according to Fagen, about..."a more or less platonic relationship
between two people. There's nothing really sexual about it until
one of the young people realises he's being used and starts having paranoid
fantasies and breaks off the relationship. There's no symbolism or
anything, we never use puns. It's a very saccharine-sounding track with a
very cynical lyric. We often do that for an ironic purpose. That is, to juxtapose
a rather bitter lyric against rather sweet music."
Denny Dias and Jeff Baxter shared the guitar part on 'Any Major Dude
Will Tell You', a delicate song about madness and insecurity. The tune
contained a guitar line that repeated itself three times with variations, so
Dias - who strictly avoided the use of vibrato in his own playing - played
the first part, then handed the guitar to Baxter, who then played the last
five notes, which absolutely did require vibrato. Roger Nichols then
punched it in on the tape machine. The guitar solo was actually written
by Becker and Jeff Baxter together.
While recording'Any Major Dude', some of the musicians were wandering
around the studio furtively asking each other about the line, "Have
you ever seen a squonk's tears?""What the hell is a squonk?"they inquired.
Being unfamiliar with literature, they were all reluctant to ask Becker and
Fagen directly for fear of ridicule, but a squonk, they later learned, is a
mythical woods animal that has the ability to cry himself into a bag of tears.
As a result, or perhaps because - in their perverse way - they simply
wanted to annoy people, Becker and Fagen were seldom persuaded to
divulge what, if anything, any particular song was about. On one occasion,
however, Fagen was induced into explaining that the title song on Pretzel Logic was about time travel. "When it says, 'I stepped up on the
platform/The man gave me the news', we conceived the platform as a
teleportation device. And there are other key lines like, 'I have never met
Napoleon/But I plan to find the time'. What we're actually saying is that
I plan to find the time that he lived in," said Fagen. It was a logical explanation,
but then again Fagen could easily have been making it up as he
went along.
Explaining 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number', Fagen said: "That's a very
simple love song to a young lady. I always thought it was a rather erotic,
decadent sort of thing. Here you find a guy, a rather rich gentleman living
in a resort, and he somehow manages to capture this young lady."
One interviewer in America was convinced that the "number" referred
to in the single was a marijuana cigarette. Becker denied this was so, or
even that he and Fagen knew of this usage for the word number. "I think
that's San Francisco slang," he said, "but we didn't know that." Fagen
picked it up from there: "The fact is we were simply referring to a phone
number, so I think people should take the lyrics more literally and [it'll]
be on the safe side."
The reality was really quite simple: there had been a student at Bard
College called Rikki who had made quite an impression on Becker
and Fagen, and they decided to utilise her name for the opening song
of the album. Jeff Baxter again played the excellent guitar solo without
use of an amplifier - his instrument was plugged straight into the
board. And what a solo it was - funky, fluid and perfect in length and
execution. However, while recording the solo, Steely Dan had encountered
some very unusual technical problems. When they played the solo
back there would be a little blip underneath the guitar, so they
changed to another track and the same thing happened. They only had
three tracks empty and on the last track the dropout still occurred.
When Roger Nichols examined it closely he found some little lumps
on the tape, which he cut out and sent back to the manufacturers, 3M,
for analysis. Their response surprised everyone: it turned out to be
mustard from a workman's sandwich.
Michael Omartian played piano on the track and, on the night they
finished the song, there was good reason for an impromptu dual celebration.
Another track was successfully in the can, but even more significantly
Omartian was about to get married, so Steely Dan ordered in some
champagne and held a party in the studio. Omartian's fiancee picked him
up at around 11 o'clock that night, they drove to Las Vegas to plight their
troth and he was back in the studio again the next day. Despite the scepticism
surrounding Vegas marriages, Omartian was pleased to report that
it's still going strong today.
'Rikki', Steely Dan's first single from the album, was actually one of the
last tunes to be mixed. Fagen said, "If it comes out good enough, we'll
make it the first tune." With its flopanda (a marimba-type instrument)
introduction, it borrowed heavily from Horace Silver's jazz composition
'Song For My Father'. But Fagen defended the similarity to the intra of
the Silver composition. "It was supposed to be a Brazilian bassline and
when Jim Gordon saw the chart, he naturally started playing that type of
beat," he said.
The album was completed by 'Monkey In Your Soul' with its growling
backdrop and funky saxes,'Barrytown' (the name of a hamlet very close
to Bard College), which Becker and Fagen used as a target for 
denigrating small-town America, and 'With A Gun', a galloping depiction of a
man whose way of settling a business debt is to ambush his partner.
Many critics saw Pretzel Logic as being more accessible than Countdown
To Ecstasy, but Fagen denied it was ever a consideration. "We really
don't think about it. The record company was starting to get annoyed
with us because they couldn't get a single off Countdown To Ecstasy. The only thing we did was tighten up the arrangements. The songs
weren't quite so long. And 'Night By Night' was basically written for commercial
purposes." Obviously Becker and Fagen's idea of what was
commercial clashed with the record company's, since the cut was not
even released as a single.
It was Becker and Fagen's intention to use a title that would form a
sort of bawdy trilogy with Can't Buy A Thrill, and Countdown to Ecstasy. However, they were unable to come up with anything remotely appropriate
and so resorted to naming the album after one of its songs:'Pretzel
Logic'.
The idea for the cover came from Fagen and Gary Katz, who thought
it would be interesting to take a photograph of a pretzel vendor in New
York's Central Park. Los Angeles-based photographer Ed Caraeff was
assigned to take the cover shot, but on the appointed weekend (when
snow was on the ground) he was unable to spare the time to fly across the
country, and Raeanne Rubenstein, a New York photographer, was commissioned
to do the job instead. The weather at that time was particularly
bad, but ABC couldn't wait for it to improve and when the photo had
been taken (complete with misspelt sign), they asked the vendor in question
to sign a release form for the rights to use the photograph. When he
refused to do so, ABC did some snooping on Steely Dan's behalf and discovered
that he was operating without a licence anyway. It was therefore
unlikely that he would sue, so they decided to use the photograph regardless.
In the event there were no legal comebacks.
The inside cover photo of Steely Dan posing beneath a large carved
eagle known as the Eagle Throne was taken at photographer Ed Caraeff's
house-cum-studio in the hills of Coldwater Canyon. Instead of projecting
the photo onto a flat piece of paper, Caraeff, who did all his own
developing, manipulated the photo in his darkroom by tilting one end of
the photo paper to get the elongated effect. Although all five members
appeared in the picture, the reality was that Jim Hodder did not play
drums at all on the album, being confined to some background vocals on
'Parker's Band'. Jeff Porcaro had augmented the group live and even if
Hodder did foresee the inevitable, he was unable to prevent it.
On March 20, 1974, just before they embarked on another extensive
US tour, Steely Dan recorded a live radio broadcast from the Record
Plant for KMET, one of the most progressive stations in Los Angeles at
that time. The show was eventually bootlegged and it became, for those
that never saw them in concert, a rare chance to hear how the band
sounded live. The bootleg was called Rotoscope Down Pleasantly Retired (A
Peak Behind The Curtain) -- The 1973 American Tour on the Amazing
Kornyfone label. It contained ten songs and was a typical example of a
Steely Dan live show from that era. Opening with 'The Boston Rag', they
ran through extended versions of'Do It Again','Pretzel Logic' and 'King Of the World'. There were two as-yet unreleased songs,'Mobile Home'
and an 'Untitled Instrumental', which Becker and Fagen eventually modified
into 'Your Gold Teeth 11'.There was confusion over the actual title
of'Mobile Home', since the sleeve notes referred to it as 'Mobile Heart'.
Becker resolved the confusion by describing it as "a song about a trailer".
(In the early nineties, slight variations of this album appeared on bootleg
CDs from the EEC under different titles - Steely Dan Live, Reelin'Through
The Years and This All Too Mobile Home -- but each one features the same
show.)

Pretzel Logic was released in March to huge critical acclaim. In the UK the Melody Maker cited Steely Dan as "probably the best new band to emerge
in the last two years", while in the rival New Musical Express, Ian
MacDonald had even higher hopes for them.
"Steely Dan must surely break through to the wider audience soon,
and sometime in the future cut one of rock's definitive albums," he wrote.
In the US, Downbeat wrote that "there are probably no better rock
recording groups in America, and damn few worldwide." Richard
Cromelin in Creem ended his review with the statement: "Steely Dan are
the best band in America. Pretzel Logic is great. Connect." What few reservations
were expressed were very trivial ones: Bud Scoppa in Rolling Stone had been knocked out by Steely Dan's live show and maintained that their
records did not equal their live performance, at least not on a good night,
despite their lack of a visual identity. "As pop personalities they're practically
anonymous," he wrote, probably unaware that nothing pleased
Becker and Fagen more than anonymity. Stereo Review's writer had
admired Countdown To Ecstasy but thought that with Pretzel Logic Steely
Dan were treading water. He did add, however, that he would... "rather
hear Steely Dan treading water than most bands at full stroke."
Gary Katz dreaded reading praiseworthy comments about his production,
because any such remarks inevitably presaged two or three days of
good-natured abuse from Becker and Fagen. But however much their
reputation gathered pace and however much their live performances contributed
to that reputation, nothing could halt the internal power struggle
within Steely Dan. Now, as success loomed on a large scale, Becker
and Fagen lined up against Hodder and Baxter, with the touring schedule
as the principal bone of contention.
"It was unfair for us to spend eight months writing when Jeff Baxter
and the others wanted to tour," admitted Becker. "We weren't making
very much money and everybody wanted to be touring a lot. We didn't.
That was that."
By now, Baxter and Hodder had even discussed going out on the road
together, leaving Becker and Fagen behind. Dias was left with the casting
vote and he would always lend his weight to Becker and Fagen's cause. "I
could never do anything to hurt those guys," Dias told Baxter and
Hodder. "We don't want the band to become a circus," they said.
Fagen never missed an opportunity to carp on about his dislike of travelling
and one-nighters, and constantly described hopping around the
country on tour as "a nightmare". By now he and Becker had reached a
point where they could dictate exactly what they were going to do, and
putting an end to the "nightmare" was at the top of their list.
Inevitably, manager Joel Cohen backed Hodder and Baxter. His whole
philosophy of management was to maximise profits in every way possible,
so the idea of stopping touring was completely anathema to him. Indeed,
he knew of no other way to manage and failed completely to comprehend
Becker and Fagen's attitude or their musical integrity. But Cohen's
status as a manager was compromised by the manner in which he came
by the job in the first place. Had he grown up with Becker and Fagen in
New York, supporting or championing them when times were hard, then
things might have been different. As it was, Cohen had simply been
appointed to the job by his friends at ABC Records (which raised suspicions
about a conflict of interest anyway), and he never enjoyed the
respect that many rock performers had for trusted managers who combined
business acuity with a long-standing paternal sympathy for their
charges' artistic endeavours.
In some respects, the tension caused by the rift inspired some great performances
in the studio. Jeff Baxter played some truly great guitar solos
on Pretzel Logic, particularly on 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number', 'Any
Major Dude Will Tell You' and 'Night By Night'. It was almost as if his
supercharged playing was inspired by a desperation to maintain his position
in this most respected of contemporary rock groups.
Immediately after the release of Pretzel Logic, rumours about the imminent
dissolution of the band were rife, and Fagen did his best to scotch
them. "That's all ridiculous bull," he said. "We're more or less fairly stable
now as the five humanoids that started this thing."
Of course, by now there were far more than five musicians involved
and, as well as the nagging dispute between the studio heads and the
tourists, there was an instability within the band caused by a certain
top-heaviness. Becker and Fagen had auditioned various musicians in Los
Angeles with the intention of augmenting the band. They'd hired young
prodigy Jeff Porcaro as a second drummer as well as keyboardist/vocalist
Michael McDonald, the latter for his ability to blend vocally with Fagen
and handle the high parts. Becker, Fagen and Dias began referring to their
extended line-up as the Steely Dan Reserve Flotilla.
Despite his non-appearance on the album and the hiring of Jeff "The
Beat Goes On" Porcaro, Jim Hodder didn't seem the least bit concerned
about the threat to his position as Steely Dan's number one drummer. But
beneath his front, Hodder was worried. He told Melody Maker that Fagen
had wanted two drummers since the band was formed. "I was against it
at first, but what the hell, we had two guitarists and (now we've got) two
keyboard players, so why not two drummers? And one of my favourite
bands had two drummers -- Frank Zappa and The Mothers. It can work
like a locomotive, especially on tunes like 'Do It Again'. It gives us time
to relax in different parts and we can concentrate on the next fill.
"I like having the two of us drumming. It doesn't always work in
groups and you have to forget about your ego. With us it sounds like one
guy playing at times, but it makes for a better combination of sounds.
What we have to watch out for is when Donald conducts those long endings.
It's great material to play in this band and we only clash occasionally
-- not so anyone in the audience would notice."
The only way to effectively dispel the split rumours was for the band
to tour. In the spring of 1974, Becker and Fagen wearily packed their bags
for more US dates and Steely Dan's first and only visit to Europe. It was
to be their final tour together and it was marked by contrasting performances
that, as always, reflected the perverse nature of this most peculiar of
groups.
Things started disastrously in New York, where sound problems at the
prestigious Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center almost shattered their
collective confidence once and for all. Steely Dan were opening for The
Electric Light Orchestra at what was basically a hometown gig for them,
so Becker and Fagen were especially anxious to put on a good show.
Gary Katz flew in from Los Angeles expecting to see something special,
but Dawson Sound wasn't scheduled to start mixing the shows until
Steely Dan's next gig and, as they were soundchecking, Dawson and his
crew showed up anyway to witness the confusion. The band were
allowed no time at all in which to carry out their soundcheck and when
the sound crew brusquely whisked them off stage, Steely Dan refused to
perform.
By the time the dispute had been resolved, the show was an hour late
in starting and, when they saw the crowd eagerly awaiting them, Steely
Dan took to the stage and ran through a rollicking 45-minute set. But
their performance was marred throughout by the failure of a monitor and
constant feedback, which at one point became so bad that they were
forced to stop mid-song. The audience were sympathetic and brought the
Dan back for an obligatory encore, but it was a disastrous evening for
everyone concerned. The incident provided more grist to the mill as far
as Fagen's arguments against touring were concerned, but first there were
the UK dates to play and -- in contrast to the New York show - many
fans still feel that these were among the finest Steely Dan ever performed.
Steely Dan arrived in England in May on the back of an extensive run
of US concerts. During the tour they were scheduled to film an In Concert special for producer Stanley Dorfman and make an appearance on the
BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, introduced by "Whispering" Bob Harris.
However, fate intervened to prevent either appearance taking place.
There was confusion over the actual tour dates, which changed each
time they were published in the music press, but the mix-up over their
schedule did not harm attendances. The reason for the changes was that
each time promoter Howard Rose and manager Joel Cohen came up
with an itinerary, Dinky Dawson would dismiss it as impractical. Dawson
had by now taken on almost guru-like stature in Becker and Fagen's eyes,
and they listened very carefully to everything he said. Dawson and his
associates Keith Robertson and Jimmy Lewis had extensive knowledge of
the touring circuit in the UK, and they told Becker and Fagen in no
uncertain terms that... "These Yanks don't know what they're talking
about". Dawson advised Becker and Fagen to start their tour in
Manchester, avoid certain venues and play Leeds early on in the tour. The
increased participation of the audio engineers now became another
source of tension, particularly between road manager Gary McPike and
Joel Cohen, who generally saw eye to eye, and the rest of the crew, who
respected Dawson. When Dawson's judgement proved absolutely correct,
McPike and Cohen didn't stand a chance.
When the 12 dates were eventually finalised, the tour was set to open
at Manchester's Palace Theatre on May 17, and would then take the band
to Bristol, Leeds, Glasgow and Southampton, with two mid-tour dates at
the Rainbow Theatre in London. From there they had an option to play
key cities in Continental Europe.
Steely Dan's long-awaited arrival in the UK had been eagerly anticipated
by the all-important UK music press since their 1972 album debut. New Musical Express ran a full-page advertisement announcing the tour
dates with supporting group The Kiki Dee Band. The tour was called
'Steely Dan Slips Into The UK' and Becker and Fagen were tickled by the
logo, which depicted an astronaut sitting astride a penis-shaped spaceship.
And although their name may have given them a useful thrust at the start,
it failed to give 'Rikki, Don't Lose That Number' so much as a nudge and
the single flopped in the UK, unlike in the States where it cruised into
the Top 10, peaking at number four in May, and it was later nominated
for a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal. 'Rikki' was Steely Dan's last UK single
on the Probe label before they moved to the recently established Anchor
label, another subsidiary of ABC Records in Los Angeles.
Anchor arranged a rather sumptuous press reception at the Global
Village in London, but Steely Dan's schedule was so tight that when their
equipment was held up at the airport the entire affair was cancelled. The
problem of how to dispose of the food awaiting a horde of hungry journalists
was solved by donating it to the Salvation Army. Unfortunately, a
reporter from Record Mirror took exception to the cancellation and erroneously
reported that Steely Dan refused to perform. "We can tell ourselves
how good you are, you don't have to keep ramming it down our
throats," he added, echoing a similar stance taken by certain US critics.
Expectation was so high that when Steely Dan opened the tour in
Manchester, you could hear a pin drop while the audience waited for the
band to take the stage. When they did, the sound of their footfalls on the
boards was clearly audible. Jeff Baxter announced that... "We've never
been here before but we're gonna do the best concert of our lives," which
was greeted with roars, screeches and whistles of approval. Then, when the
noise had subsided, the silence was broken by the dual pounding of
Hodder and Porcaro's drums as they launched into 'Bodhisattva'.
In the 12 song, one-and-a-half hour set, Donald Fagen sang less than
half the solo lead vocals, joining Royce Jones for the choruses on
'Bodhisattva' and 'Show Biz Kids'. The show was a heady mixture of
inspired improvisational guitar work from Dias and Baxter, the rich vocal
blend between Fagen, Jones and McDonald, and some unusually long
intervals between songs.
Jeff Baxter alone injected some animation into Steely Dan's static
stage show with his exaggerated facial expressions and energetic bounding
around the stage. The versatile Baxter switched to a Gibson Les Paul
for the blues-based 'Pretzel Logic', played a steel guitar on 'Brooklyn'
and even played an extended conga break on 'Do It Again'. Fagen
introduced 'King Of The World' as "a very frightening little piece of
music", and by the time Hodder and Porcaro's drums kicked in, the
band had really warmed up and was flying. The only low point of the
evening was a rather lame version of 'Dirty Work', which was sandwiched
between spirited versions of'My Old School' and 'Reelin' In
The Years'. The band encored with 'Show Biz Kids', sung by the
white-suited McDonald, and the trailer song, 'Mobile Home', which
Fagen introduced by saying, "This is a new one you've never heard
before, but you're gonna dig it".
Chris Welch in the Melody Maker described it as a "sensational set" and
declared that "Steely Dan have made many English bands sound five years
out of date". The TIME critic was equally impressed: "There's so much to
hear at a Steely Dan concert it's necessary to go back for more."
'Mobile Home' concluded with Jeff Baxter's guitar solo, which was
based on 'Theme From A Summer Place', Percy Faith's 1960 number one
instrumental smash from the film of the same name. It was a gag Steely
Dan pulled many times on stage. As for the song itself, it provided a high
energy end to Steely Dan's live show, and Becker and Fagen admitted that
if the song had been at the stage it was now, they might not have failed
to record acceptable versions of it for both Countdown To Ecstasy and Pretzel Logic. SD's Manchester set was almost exactly the same as the one
they had been playing back in America.
The long musical interludes that had been designed to give Fagen a
break from singing weren't received too well, but he still took every
opportunity to avoid singing. "I didn't think most people wanted to hear
a Jew sing," he explained at one point. So Royce Jones took the lead vocal
for 'The Boston Rag', 'Brooklyn', and 'Dirty Work'. Jones now sang all
the songs that had previously featured David Palmer on lead vocal, but
'Megashine City' and 'Take My Money' had been dropped along with the
singer.
Despite the disagreements, Jeff Baxter's enthusiasm was unbounded
and he maintained his sense of humour. "Sometimes in the States the kids
just shout for'boogie'. We just wait for them to shut up and then we can
start to play. Boy, is that funny! I love that," said Baxter.
"It's true that we play more to ourselves than the audience sometimes,
but we have a lot of fun. After the show we scream at each other if we
have made any mistakes. But I've never been in a band that has played so
many different kinds of music before. I used to have to be in five different
bands at once to get this kind of experience."
Dias and Baxter were from opposite ends of the spectrum, both musically
and in terms of personality. "I play as if I were a jazz musician," said
Dias,"except I'm working in a rock context with its feel and excitement.
There are no problems, except I'd like to play more. Jeff can play all the
wide vibrato sounds and bend the strings, and he's really good. We only
met up through the band and we're on opposite ends of the stick, we're
so different. I play the jazz and Jeff is so much more experienced as a rock
player."
To end their '74 concerts in style, Steely Dan adopted the old idea of
having the band leave the stage in pairs. Towards the end of their second
encore, after 'Mobile Home' had become a jam, Royce Jones and Michael
McDonald would leave first, followed by Denny Dias and Jeff Baxter,
leaving Becker, Fagen, Porcaro and Hodder in the spotlight. Becker
would then walk off, Fagen would thank the crowd most sincerely for
coming to the gig and exit himself. Finally, to end on a high and send the
audience home buzzing, Porcaro and Hodder would play a lick-for-lick
five-minute drum duet, which was beefed up even further when Dinky
Dawson introduced an outboard tape effect.
After the undisciplined scenes at Steely Dan concerts in America, the
attentiveness of British audiences impressed them almost as much as the
band impressed the critics and fans. "UK audiences were exemplary," said
Denny Dias. "I've never played for a better audience than a British one.
If I was gonna pack up an audience and take them home with me it
would be a UK audience. Nobody spoke while the music was playing and
when the music stopped, they made more noise than you ever heard in
your life and then quietened down again for the next one."
He marvelled at how at one gig the first few rows stood up in their
excitement and Fagen had to ask them to sit down so the people behind
could see. When everyone complied, Fagen was astonished. Audiences in
the US were just not willing to acknowledge -- let alone obey -- requests
from the stage.
Dias: "I remember playing one town in America where a guy was
standing at the side of the stage with a beer in one hand, and he was
banging the stage in what he thought was in time to the music and the
whole stage was shaking. He was swinging the beer over his head and
dripping it on everyone around him and he was just typical of the whole
audience. They scream while you play, they scream while you don't play
and they try to tell you what to play. They're not polite about it at all."
No such problems occurred in the UK.
In London for two Rainbow dates Steely Dan were booked into The
Curzon Hotel. Dinky Dawson and his associates were familiar with the
hotel and didn't like the idea of staying there. They told Becker and Fagen
they knew a much better place - Blakes in Kensington, where most touring
American musicians stayed and where the action was considerably
faster. Blakes was fully booked at the time, but Dawson's smooth tongue
wangled Becker and Fagen into the hotel. Dawson and company soon
followed. Porcaro, Hodder, Jones, McPike and Cohen remained stranded
in The Curzon.
Denny Dias wasn't impressed with The Curzon either, and he too
managed to relocate to Blakes. "It was like staying in a brothel," he said.
"All the upholstery was pink and they had button couches in the rooms."
Jeff Baxter and Jim Hodder never got out of the Curzon, but when Jeff
Porcaro got wind of Fagen and Becker's secretive transfer, he packed his
own bags and arrived at Blakes Hotel at about 2.30am, asking, "Where's
the party?" The chopping and changing between hotels seemed to accurately
reflect the rifts between the various cliques within the Steely Dan
touring party.
In interviews conducted in the UK, Walter Becker gave unstinting
praise to Dawson's sound system, a factor much commented on by
reviewers. "Our sound system is designed for small halls like the Palace
Theatre in Manchester, and we'd rather work in those situations than sacrifice
the sound quality in a bigger venue," he said. "Dinky Dawson is our
sound designer and he's brilliant. He's worked with us from our first gigs
when we used to support The Kinks and The James Gang. That was terrible,
bands used to play tricks on us in those days like not letting us on
stage for a soundcheck or turning the lights off. When Dinky joined us,
I couldn't understand a word he said but I knew he was an intelligent,
professional guy."
A bizarre incident occurred in Leeds where Steely Dan stayed at the
Dragonara Hotel, close to the main railway station. Walter Becker's
mother, who at the time taught dance in London, somehow managed to
persuade Steely Dan's UK record company to ferry her to Leeds in a limousine
to see her son play. Accompanied by another young girl, Becker's
mother ran up an enormous bill at the Dragonara and an Anchor
employee was fired from his job as a result. Mrs Becker was an unwelcome
guest, by all accounts.
Michael McDonald later said that Steely Dan unanimously thought
that their Manchester concert was the best gig they had ever performed.
And in a rare show of enthusiasm, Becker and Fagen also declared that
the personnel on their UK tour, and the degree of musicianship they
showed, was the best of their various touring line-ups.
The praise they received from critics wasn't entirely unqualified. Steely
Dan's Rainbow gig was slagged on several counts by the TIME critic.
Under the headline 'Thumbs Down For The Dan', Ian MacDonald
expressed his disappointment with the unprofessionalism of a long and
tedious last-minute soundcheck. He criticised the sound, arguing that
there was far too much drums (Jeff Porcaro blasted Jim Hodder off the
stage for sheer volume), no bass at all and a complete lack of separation
between the guitars of Baxter and Dias. He said Baxter had a bad night
for solos with the exception of his second break on 'Reelin' In TheYears',
but enjoyed the second encore, 'Mobile Home', during which all the
musicians left the stage until only Hodder and Porcaro were left for their
closing five-minute drum duet.
In contrast, Peter Harvey of Record Mirror loved the Palace Theatre
show so much that he wanted to listen to them for hours. Harvey called
Steely Dan..."The most exciting and inventive American rock band since
The Mothers and Steve Miller and the best performers bar none."
Donald Fagen was an avid historian with a particular interest in
Napoleon, and he and Jeff Baxter visited Radio Luxembourg's studios,
which had been used as Gestapo headquarters during the last war. But
Fagen wasn't keen on going to Germany itself. The group and crew were
assembled in a hotel room one afternoon when Fagen said in mock horror
that he would not go to Germany; or that if he did go to Germany,
Gary Katz would have to go with him. And even then Fagen said he
would be afraid to go to sleep because he'd likely wake up with his teeth
as the rheostat in somebody's Porsche!
In the event, the tour never got beyond England. Steely Dan had
played only five dates of their British tour when Donald Fagen was taken
ill. He contracted a serious throat ailment and, although he went to see a
Harley Street doctor and waited a week for the illness to improve, he was
so sick that specialists advised him that he might do permanent damage
to his voice if he sang again on the tour. Initially, concerts in Glasgow,
Sheffield, Scarborough and Southampton were postponed, then the
following week the rest of the gigs were called off. Other members of the
band suggested Fagen might like to take a trip to the French Riviera to
get some sunshine and recuperate, but Fagen was so poorly he only
wanted to go home. The whole band headed back to Los Angeles and on
landing at LA International Fagen looked so pale, thin and gaunt that he
was strip-searched on suspicion of being a junkie.
The cancellation of Steely Dan's outstanding dates was a bitter blow to
their hopes of continuing the momentum of their visit and building on
the reputation they had established. Probe Records hinted that Steely
Dan might return to the UK in October after a series of US dates.
They weren't to know how close Steely Dan were to their last gig for
a very long time.

The Kiki Dee Band followed Steely Dan back to America and continued
to support them when they resumed their touring schedule on Fagen's
recovery. They had lost a small fortune by having to cancel the rest of
their UK dates and, as soon as Fagen was well enough, they embarked on
a series of Californian dates in Fresno, Santa Barbara, San Jose, San
Bernadino, San Diego and Long Beach. On the back of the success of
'Pretzel Logic' and 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number', demand for tickets
was high and this enabled them to recoup some of the funds lost during
the English tour.
On stage during Steely Dan's last weeks as a concert band, the line-up
usually consisted of Fagen's piano squarely in centre stage, from where he
could conduct the long endings to songs, with Walter Becker wearing
headphones and largely hidden behind Jeff Porcaro's drum podium.
Never before had any two rock musicians so disliked the attention and
adulation that goes with being in a famous group, nor had any two musicians
made this so evident by their lack of on-stage profile. When questioned
about his anonymity, Becker was surprised. "You've noticed that?
The reasons are it takes the heat offme and I don't have to make my presence
felt. As long as I can hear Jeff Porcaro's snare drum and hi-hat, I'm
happy. I moved up there about 10 gigs ago. I just want to hear the drums
and it's all cosy up there. I have a seat and it keeps me comfortable and
happy."
Steely Dan used to record every live show they played and the tapes of
all these shows were entrusted to Walter Becker for safe keeping.
However, for reasons known only to him, he either misplaced them or
perhaps intentionally destroyed them so that he and Fagen would never

be faced with the prospect of having to listen to their live performances
again. Since they later hated hearing some of their earlier studio recordings,
one can only begin to imagine their reaction to hearing live renditions
of those songs. The only official version was the token (and very
belated) Santa Monica Civic version of 'Bodhisattva', which would
emerge as the B-side of'Time Out OfMind' and 'Hey Nineteen' seven
years later.
On their 1974 US tour Steely Dan had hired a truck driver-cum-MC
called Jerome Aniton. He was a character quite unlike his employers, with
an unquenchable thirst for alcohol and a devil-may-care attitude that,
perversely, Becker and Fagen admired no end. His fondness for alcohol
did wonders for his introductions, and on more than one occasion he
crashed the equipment truck. At the prestigious Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts in Washington DC, where at that time Steely Dan were
the only "rock'n'roll" group permitted to play, Aniton did thousands of
dollars' worth of damage driving their equipment truck out of the building,
smashing a massive hole in one trailer that housed most of Dinky
Dawson's personal possessions. It Šwas raining torrents as Steely Dan's crew
drove on to their next gig in Boston, so someone had to crawl up onto
the top of the trailer and try to patch the hole over before the gear inside
was ruined.
On another occasion, Aniton drove from Baltimore to Washington at
night without headlights accompanied by two 15-year-old girls in the
front seat. He was accident prone and incessantly intoxicated, and ought
not to have been allowed to continue with such responsibility, but Becker
and Fagen had taken a shine to him and insisted he be retained in some
capacity.
So Aniton became the comedian of the party, sending the band into
paroxysms of laughter with unconventional behaviour he considered normal.
Aniton was given the responsibility of introducing the band on stage,
and his introductions were exaggerated interpretations of what an ME
might say at black soul reviews. Aniton was a truck driver doing his take
on a black ME while under the influence of alcohol and presenting a
white band... but it worked a treat. He gave some memorable and hilarious
introductions, and even became something of a favourite among fans,
who relished yet another unexpected quirk of Steely Dan. The first time
he introduced them, the band enjoyed it so much they played the opening
song better than ever before.
Part of the fun was that Aniton didn't even understand Steely Dan... he
actually thought Donald Fagen's name was Stevie Dan. On one occasion,
ever unsteady on his feet, Aniton stumbled into Fagen's grand piano on
stage and said to one of the other players, "I bumped into Stevie's piano."
His introductions varied nightly from "Stevie Dan" to "Mr Stevie Dan
and Whatever". The more Aniton drank, the more hilarious his introductions
became, so everyone encouraged him to partake as much as possible.
Aniton might go on and do a rambling two-minute-plus introduction
replete with expletives while the band members laughed aloud behind him, encouraging him with audible asides. At a gig in Cleveland,
Aniton's geography deserted him and he referred to the city as being on
the east coast.
If Aniton's wayward behaviour provided light relief on the road, then
sitting through interviews was a chore that Becker and Fagen could happily
have done without. The release of Pretzel Logic, in particular, seemed
to open the floodgates for critics to start unravelling Becker and Fagen's
lyrical "code". One Los Angeles critic, Richard Cromelin, "exclusively
revealed" that Pretzel Logic was about suicide. His reasoning was based on
a UCLA lecture on that subject by a Dr Paul Pretzel!
In an interview with TIME, Fagen and Becker were accused of deliberately
confusing their listeners with their obscure lyrics. "We don't necessarily
try to communicate any specific thing to the listener. It's more or
less us trying to communicate an impression, and the listener has the freedom
to interpret as he wants," Fagen explained patiently. "When you're
trying to cram a lot of information into what is basically a popular song
form, you have to leave some holes. It's impossible to add that many
details. We always have a story in mind and try to present it in the most
entertaining way we know how. Sometimes we leave a few holes, that's
all."
Most interviews wound up with them discussing their love of jazz and
listing their numerous jazz influences. In one 1974 interview these
included John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker and
Tubby Hayes. They rubbished most contemporary rock groups, took a
hefty swipe at Yes and said the popularity of groups like Black Oak
Arkansas, Uriah Heep and Slade amazed them. SD had opened shows for
all three, so their dislike was formed at close quarters. "How they (Slade)
ever managed to get enough money together to come here and tour is a
miracle," said Becker.
Most acts play their favourite music during soundchecks, and Steely
Dan's preference seemed to be a mixture of soul and non-Fagen lead
vocals. At a soundcheck in the Sopwith Camel club in Glendale, they ran
through 'The Boston Rag' and several other Dan tunes along with some
surprising choices of covers: a fast boogie version of Marvin Gaye's 'Ain't
That Peculiar', The Champs' instrumental hit 'Tequila', and Royce Jones
wound it up with an a capella version of the sentimental Chi-Lites' hit
soul ballad 'Have You Seen Her?'
After this gig Fagen told Zoo World magazine that..."As a rule we don't
like to play nightclubs, but we always play here. It's a good place to break
in new material, get comfortable with it before we take it on the road."
(Indeed, SD had played four successive nights at the Sopwith Camel in
early March to warm up for the current tour.)
Becker continued: "It's not like a jazz band where you just give the
guys a set of charts. Last time out we had two women singing with us.
This time we've got a new vocalist, a keyboard player and a second drummer.
They had a lot of things to assimilate, phrasing to learn, things like
that."
And Fagen was still bemoaning the fact that he had been elected the
lead singer of the group. "I'm just not a natural singer," he said. "There's
born singers and I had no training and the combination of things leads
me to think that I'm not that good."
Becker could see the funny side: "He still firmly believes that if the
good Lord had meant him to sing, he wouldn't have taught him how to
play the piano."

Becker and Fagen wanted to close the US tour - and their live career --
with shows at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on July 3 and 4, but
Independence Day was already booked so they had to settle for the 3rd
and 5th.
Since Becker and Fagen were drawing salaries from ABC, they envisaged
enormous difficulty in breaking the record company financial stranglehold
that required Steely Dan to exist in a repetitive cycle of recording
albums and touring to promote them. The only way out, they
decided, was to dismantle the band completely. With no group, logic dictated
that touring would not be possible.
Very soon after Steely Dan's last gig of the Pretzel Logic tour at Santa
Monica, it was announced that Jeff Baxter and Jim Hodder had left Steely
Dan. Baxter had already guested as a session player on a couple of Doobie
Brothers albums and had been playing gigs with Linda Ronstadt and The
Doobies between his Steely Dan commitments. On occasions when
Steely Dan supported The Doobies, the ever enthusiastic Baxter would
play all Steely Dan's set and then half The Doobies' set, too.
Fagen and Becker encouraged Baxter to play with other artists, claiming
that it made him a more interesting musician when he returned to
Steely Dan. More significantly, perhaps, it also got him off their backs for
a while, and Baxter was playing at the Knebworth Festival i#f England
with The Doobie Brothers when Fagen called him with the news that he
and Becker wanted to continue without him and Jim Hodder.
According to Denny Dias, Becker and Fagen had put off the decision
for as long as possible so that both Baxter and Hodder had the time to
develop a career away from Steely Dan. Though they often appeared
cynical and aloof, Becker and Fagen had no desire to hurt anyone.
When the announcements were made, Steely Dan manager Joel
Cohen described the split as "completely amicable". He went on:
"Eventually the members want to have an orchestra on stage -- they want
to get larger and larger." Baxter was expected to join The Doobie
Brothers, while Hodder was officially listed as "looking".
"We took the band apart in a decisive fashion," said Becker, "so that it
could not be put back together and we could not be sent out on the road.
What were they gonna send, me and Donald with banjos?"

Within a couple of months, it was reported that Steely Dan had six
tunes finished for their next album and that Becker and Fagen would be
continuing with Denny Dias and hiring outside musicians. Fagen and
Becker were now free in many senses of the word. Using the workshop
situation, the studio became just another instrument for them to experiment
with.
Fagen: "The situation just sort of evolved into having a band and making
records with them. Our producer, Gary Katz, was instrumental in putting
it together. But after a couple of records, we decided that the situation
was too limited for the kind of music that we were writing, so we
arranged to have other musicians brought in. And that finally evolved into
a situation where we could hire whomever we wanted to play individual
songs. It's probably more like the movies than popular music."
September 1974 saw the release of Steely Dan's second single from Pretzel Logic, the title track itself backed with 'Through With Buzz', which
charted at number 59 in America, but continued the dismal showing of
Dan singles in England. Steely Dan won numerous music press awards in
1974, figuring in almost everyone's Top 20 list. But Becker was as unimpressed
by the honours as he was by the majority of the competition.
"Awards don't impress me," he said. "It depends on who is choosing. All

I have to do is look at the name above and below us and the credibility
is gone."
Only two months after the announcement that the band had split, Rolling Stone reported that Steely Dan were now suing manager Joel
Cohen for $2 million for defamation, breach of fiduciary duty and libel,
and spreading false rumours that the group was breaking up, inferring
appearance drop-outs and damaging their relationship with ABC. Cohen
in turn blamed Steely Dan's business managers and attorney Michael
Shapiro for poisoning their minds and filed a $3 million slander suit
against them.
Denny Dias remembered it thus: "Joel Cohen wanted us to do whatever
would make the most money. Donald and Walter wanted to do
whatever would make the best music. Whenever Cohen could force the issue, he would. Walter said he was only interested in lining his own
pocket."
Becker and Fagen lost the case and it was eventually settled out of
court, with Steely Dan being forced to pay Cohen a substantial sum by
way of compensation for their being allowed to break their contract with
him. Having finally rid themselves of Cohen, Becker and Fagen elected
to manage themselves.
Without the pressure of touring and with Cohen out of the picture,
Becker and Fagen could now settle in their houses and write songs to
their hearts' content. They were in their element, and were determined
not just to expand their musical and lyrical vocabulary but to set themselves
even more ambitious goals.
Laughing At The Frozen Rain

There was a nine-month gap between Steely Dan's last gig at the Santa
Monica Civic and the release of Katy Lied in April 1975, but it was
never suggested that their decision not to tour was as final as it turned out
to be. (They wouldn't play live again for 19 years.) Their aversion to the
concert stage did encourage interviewers to delve deeply into the reason
for their absence. "We're not the least concerned about touring," said
Fagen, barely disguising the relief in his voice. "We've never been that
highly motivated about going out on the road. We enjoy performing, but
I'm not sure it's worth the inconvenience for a frail person such as me.
The tour problems can be overcome by routing and planning. We don't
write when we're on the road. We have a lot of things to do and say and
touring detracts from that.
"We try to avoid gymnasiums.You'll never see us at the LA Forum. We
don't make any money on tours. We play in places that accommodate a
limited number of people. Beyond that you can't be assured that the
sound is occurring. Our expenses are usually equal to the profits."
Becker felt that the high standards they had set for themselves would
almost certainly deteriorate if they continued on the gigging merrygo-round.
"I don't want to meet the audience.You have a more direct and
intimate relationship with someone who's sitting alone, listening to your
records. Playing live isn't that personal. When we played, it was as direct
as possible. No one was sitting more than three miles away. The trend for
rock'n'roll bands now is to play the biggest halls around. Also, I've noticed
that bands who stay on the road for an extended time, or for most of their
career, the quality of their show often suffers from the lack of new material.
Then the quality of the records is even worse."
As ever, Becker had no qualms about expressing his contempt for his
peers. "The quality of rock music presented is appalling. Neither Donald
nor I go to rock'n'roll shows. There's not much to see," he added.
Steely Dan had recorded their first three albums almost exclusively at
the Village Recorders, but when they were ready to begin recording their
fourth, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen accepted Roger Nichols' suggestion
to try a different studio and booked into ABC Recording Studios
in North Hollywood. They had no particular reason to be disgruntled
with the Village, and moving to ABC was a decision they would eventually
regret. Becker and Fagen ensconced themselves there during the latter
part of 1974 and early 1975, delighted and relieved to be free of the
pressure of going out on the road again in the immediate future.
Prior to the sessions, Becker and Fagen instructed keyboard player
Michael Omartian to buy them a new piano. Being avid listeners to all
kinds of music, they had noticed the superb sound quality of Bosendorfer
pianos on classical records and wanted to use them for their own music.
They specifically asked Omartian to get them a Bosendorfer and he
wasn't about to argue since he, too, was a tremendous fan of that sound.
The upmarket piano shop David Abell Music was located opposite the
studio, and Omartian played several pianos before settling for a very
expensive seven-foot-six Bosendorfer with an exquisite tone. The piano
was delivered to the studio that same afternoon. Becker and Fagen duly
informed the record company that they had bought a new $13,000 piano
for the studio and, erm, would they mind footing the bill? With Steely
Dan's albums selling like the proverbial hot cakes, ABC could hardly
refuse and they paid up without any fuss.
The Bosendorfer became the central instrument for the whole album.
Omartian played some beautiful Becker and Fagen melodies on that
piano during the Katy Lied sessions, and its rich tone provided the perfect
underpinning for Becker's guitar solo on 'Bad Sneakers' and Phil
Woods' alto sax solo on 'Doctor Wu'. Omartian was livid when he
returned to ABC Studios a year later to find the piano covered in cigarette
burns. "How anyone could treat such a beautiful instrument in such
a way was beyond me," he said.
As with its predecessor Katy Lied was Steely Dan's second album of short
pop songs. Every track except 'Your Gold Teeth II' was less than four minutes
long, which was most unusual for Becker and Fagen; their albums
almost always had a couple of tracks coming in at over five or six minutes.
The album's cover, again the work of Fagen's girlfriend Dorothy White,
was an extreme close-up of an abundant US grasshopper called a katydid.
When Fagen saw the blurred photograph (which came about because the
film froze), he liked it and realised a loose connection with their chosen
album title and the play on words it evoked.The photographs on the rear
of the sleeve were taken by photo enthusiasts Walter Becker and Roger
Nichols, and the album design was consciously based on the format
adopted by the Fifties West Coast jazz label Contemporary Records.
One of the most frequent observations of Becker and Fagen's music
was that they put jazz changes into pop song structures and wrote hooks.
But when he was asked about it, Becker played it down. "I think we used
to tell people something that ended up coming out like that. I think we
were just trying to suggest on a much smaller scale that we would occasionally
use a slightly different way of getting from key to key, and slightly
different chord qualities than -were heard in 90 per cent of the music on
rock'n'roll radio stations."
Becker and Fagen maintained that they never consciously set out to
write hits, but at the same time they were well aware that the classic structure
of their songs was ideal for radio and chart success. Walter Becker
couldn't resist a little gloating over their recent achievements by harking
back to their years of struggle: "We were given many reasons to believe
that our music would be vastly unpopular by people we approached over
the years."
"It was mainly the lyrical content that put people off," Fagen
explained, "and possibly at the time the kind of harmony. What we ended
up doing was writing the kind of lyric we like superimposed over a traditional
song structure, which made sense to people. Which made sense
to me. Traditional song structure is extremely serviceable."
Becker attributed their penchant for listening to jazz records and jazz
radio as being responsible for putting them both "on intimate terms with
how songs work. That's probably one of the reasons why we wrote so
many bridges in our songs."
Becker and Fagen were always at pains to stress that their songwriting
process was a 50-50 operation, but Fagen did admit there were occasional
exceptions. "Musically, we think very much the same, but otherwise he
has his life and I have mine. Usually I'll develop the germinal idea for a
song and take it over to Walter... We more or less put both our names on
all the songs, but I've written a few myself, I can't recall any except
'Barrytown' on the Pretzel Logic LP. I don't think it came off so great anyway,
so I don't know if it's a good idea to do stuff by myself. Ninety-five
per cent of our songs are collaborative."
Fagen praised Becker's creative strengths and expanded on their relationship
outside the working environment. "He's a good editor also. He'll
suggest improvements on my original idea, and then we'll work on lyrics together."
"We actually never discuss each other's life in any particular detail," said
Fagen."We have a sort ofpsychic... I hate to use that word... I don't know,
we both know the direction that we're going, and it doesn't matter that
we know the actual circumstances behind it. We just discuss it as what we
want to do with the narrative. We're friends but we're not the closest
friends in the world. We've known each other for a long time and we
understand each other's working habits and needs and limitations. But we aren't hanging out together that much."
Their songwriting method usually began with Fagen coming up with
a musical idea -- a fragment of lyric, a chord sequence, a possible chorus
- then getting together with Becker and kicking the ideas around, joking
about it, smoking Turkish cigarettes, laughing a lot and developing a story.
Fagen could start songs but often needed Becker to finish them; with
Becker it was vice versa.
Becker said that he liked "swatches of colour, images that don't necessarily
make much sense", and was less concerned with tying everything
together; Fagen, on the other hand, would argue endlessly to exclude or
replace something from a first draft if he thought it shouldn't be there.
Their rabid imagination and love of the obscure was all that informed
their lyrics. "Because of the lack of input, experience that's available in the
United States of America, or the world in general these days, we more or
less rely on pure imagination for song ideas," said Fagen. "And we like to
make them original, and we'll set up a framework, no matter how bizarre
it may be, and proceed to write a song on that basis.
"I'll come up with an idea and he'll come up with a scenario, and we'll decide what we think the song is about and which part of the exposition
is happening in each verse and get a title together, and no matter how
strange the idea may be we just go along and hope that we can finish the
song and that it actually emerges as something.
"When we go in the studio it's further refined by the studio musicians
who are playing on it. Both of us in concert write the music and the
words. You know, it's a lot of pacing around the living room. Whenever
Walter has some free time he'll drop over, show me what he's got, I'll
show him what I've got and kick it around a little bit. It's very informal.
"There's a lot of stuffpacked into the records musically.We try to make
it 'unboring' that's one of the main things we go for. If it's boring that's
the main indication that there's some failure."
A popular misconception within the music business was that Becker
and Fagen's exceptionally high songwriting standard was due to the fact
that they wrote at least one song every day. In fact, Becker said that their
songwriting sessions were confined to "a couple of hours, a couple of
times a week", usually in the evenings or nights. And when they were in
the studio their songwriting diminished even further, to the point where
they wrote only what was needed to finish an album.
In Downbeat, Fagen told Jim Bickhart: "One of us generally comes up
with the germinal idea, usually from the same type of inspirations other
writers draw upon. We usually work things out on the piano. It's easier to
develop harmonic interest that way, though you can sometimes find a
nice tune without it.
"I think of each piece as a composition, so the arrangements are integral
to the actual composition. It's a classical approach, not so much formal
as traditional. It's more traditional to western music than modal,
formless rock'n'roll. I'm fond of the pop structure and blues structure. It's
fun to adhere to certain rules about length and structure and still put
them through twists and grotesqueries. One of the most interesting things
in pop music certainly is to set limitations and then take occasional liberties.
Because of those liberties, people sometimes don't realise how
much blues we do; usually at least one per album."

Katy Lied contained at least one song - 'Your Gold Teeth II' - that the
musicians thought was particularly intricate and difficult, with bars of 3/8
and 6/8 thrown in, so Becker and Fagen started out with the idea of having
just JeffPorcaro, Chuck Rainey and Michael Omartian run it through
in the studio. They practised the tune over and over again without achieving
the take that Becker and Fagen had visualised. Eventually, late at night
after playing the song countless times, they decided it had been played to
death, abandoned it and agreed to return refreshed another day for a second
shot.
All too aware of the difficulty the musicians had been having with the
song, Fagen gave Jeff Porcaro a Charles Mingus record with Dannie
Richmond on drums that featured similar odd time signatures. Porcaro
listened to it several times and when the three players returned to the studio
they nailed it quite quickly. Porcaro later described 'Your Gold Teeth
IF as pure bebop.
Talking about his drumming on Katy Lied in Modern Drummer, Porcaro
rather modestly said: "All that went through my mind was Keltner and
Gordon. It was do or die for me. All my stuff was copying them. For
instance, on 'Chain Lightning' all I thought about was the song 'Pretzel
Logic', which was Gordon playing a slow shuffle.
"On 'Doctor Wu' I was thinking of John Guerin, especially those fills
going out between the bass drum and the toms. He'd do it in bebop style.
Guerin was on Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark', which was in that same
Steely style. On 'Black Friday' I was again thinking of Jim Gordon, my
shuffle champion. I got real frustrated trying to play this, and I just threw
a big tantrum. 'I'm the wrong guy! You should get Jim Gordon!' I told
Gary Katz. After walking around the block three times, cursing myself, I
came back in and cut it.
"The ride cymbal on Katy Lied is an old K Zildjian my dad gave me,"
Porcaro added. "Unfortunately, all the cymbals are clipped and phased
because the DBX didn't work. That was real heartbreaking for the guys."
In 'Bad Sneakers' the piano part and the vocals follow each other,
another cool Becker and Fagen touch. The song, which has an agonisingly
beautiful melody, seems to be about their longing for New York.
They had by now grown very tired of the Californian sunshine and had
serious difficulty relating to people from the Golden State. Walter Becker
in particular was emulating Charlie Parker, William S. Burroughs and
numerous other artists by experimenting with a variety of drugs and living
an increasingly nocturnal lifestyle. It took him a while to realise that
if he didn't curb his propensity for abusing his body, he would in all likelihood
wind up laid to rest in..."that ditch out in the valley/That they're
digging just for me".
Gary Katz told WLIR-FM Hugh that 'Bad Sneakers' proved a fairly
straightforward song to get on tape. Hugh McCracken locked it into a
great groove on rhythm guitar and Michael McDonald was drafted in for
his first appearance on a Dan album. His keyboard skills weren't utilized
however; Becker and Fagen wanted him solely for his distinctive vocals
and he added his voice to 'Bad Sneakers' and particularly 'Any World
(That I'm Welcome To)', yet another old song that had originally been
written with a female vocalist in mind (Walter Becker later mentioned
Dusty Springfield by name). It also provided drummer Hal Blaine with
his only credit on a Steely Dan album.
Denny Dias didn't spend nearly as much time in the studio with Steely
Dan as he used to, but he recalled an occasion when they needed an
instrumental melody for a song and Fagen confidently predicted he'd
have something ready by the next day. Becker joked that Fagen had been
writing fugues and, indeed, when they came into the studio he had written
a fugue,'Rose Darling', with counterpoint in the vocal parts.
Out-takes from the period include 'Mr Sam', another old song from
their pre-Steely Dan days, and a song intreaguingly entitled 'Gullywater'.
Speaking about Katy Lied in particular, Fagen said: "Each song is seen
from a different viewpoint. Some, I imagine, have an idealistic tone to
them, while others are someone who's obviously suicidal. Obviously the
narrator, if you will, is really in the deep stages of severe depression. And,
of course, I probably was when I was performing them. Everybody's personality
is just a symptom of the times. I always seem to see both sides of
things simultaneously, for which reason I never have an opinion about
anything."
In 1975, Fagen was 27 and Becker 25, and throughout their twenties certainly
for the last few years - they had spent almost all their waking
hours in quiet rooms writing songs or in darkened studios recording
those compositions. Fagen was clearly a workaholic and though he didn't
admit to it at the time, all the indications were there. Asked what kind
of life he lived, Fagen replied: "I rarely step over the portals of my door
to the outside world... I watch TV, I listen to old records and play the
piano a lot.
"I'm a jazz fan," he added. "I listen to my local jazz station (KBCA) but
I haven't heard anything really new at all since about 1965. I still like to
listen to my old Blue Note and Prestige albums; the best records are the
Fantasy re-releases of old stuff. You might say that both Walter and I have
a rather narrow spectrum of taste when it comes to that sort of thing. I
like Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane up to the point where he selfdestructed
jazz. He got a little too smart and ventured into realms where man
should never tread. I also dig Mingus, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker,
Eric Dolphy, sax players in general and great rhythm sections. Also Miles'
quintets.
"None of it matters. We're in it for ourselves anyway. To become excessively
popular you have to cater to the whims of mass taste, which I don't
feel we've done. Popularity is relevant to business but irrelevant to music,
and we're only in business to the extent that we have to stay in business
so we can afford to make music for fun. I'm pleasantly surprised at the
level of acceptance we've attained. It's far beyond my mother's wildest
dreams."
Neither Becker, Fagen nor Katz ever showed up at show-biz or record
company parties. It just wasn't their scene; they felt uncomfortable with
the forced bonhomie and refused to go along with it. "I think we insult
people unintentionally," said Fagen. "We keep getting invited to this and
that, like the Grammy awards. I got a thing that said, 'Wear beautiful
clothes'. I don't have any beautiful clothes! Now I know what they
wanted me to come like, they wanted me to come dressed like Cher!"
At least one of the Steely Dan studio musicians felt that Gary Katz, too,
was uncommunicative in the studio, and he took that to mean that Katz
wasn't impressed with his contributions. Other musicians felt the same way, but kept their mouths firmly shut for fear of losing a lucrative
engagement and future session fees.
Despite their hostile reputation, which Becker and Fagen thought
amusing to encourage, they very seldom adopted an attitude when a
musician made a mistake. But when Michael Omartian blundered musically,
he would go into the control room and light-heartedly say, "Man,
I'm really sorry, I shirked my responsibility as a musician to really practise
and be prepared." This became a standing joke between Omartian and
Becker who, each time he played a wrong note or chord, would smile and
say, "You're shirking again." Christopher Cross eventually hired Michael
Omartian to produce his multi-Grammy-winning debut album purely on
the strength of his work with Steely Dan - Katy Lied in particular.
The usual routine at the Katy Lied sessions was for Fagen to sit at the
piano and play a tune while Omartian, who has perfect pitch, stood
alongside transcribing it. Omartian would then write out the voicings
that were necessary to pull off the chord immediately before the session.
The band then learned the song from a combination of Fagen playing it
a few times on the piano and from the charts that Omartian had just
prepared. Becker and Fagen invariably came in psyched up to work
exclusively on one song per session and stuck rigidly to that routine.
If they were stuck for ideas, Omartian offered suggestions for certain
parts of songs. Fagen and Becker were always receptive to a musician's
suggestions, and Omartian was given freedom to play around with bass
lines and elaborate on Fagen's basic piano parts.
Becker admitted that the superimposed triads that end 'Throw Back
The Little Ones' were Omartian's idea. Sometimes Becker and Fagen
made crude demos with Fagen's piano and singing and occasionally
Becker's bass line. Since neither could read or write music, this still
entailed someone writing out the charts. At other times, if the studio
players were having difficulty, they would request Fagen to go into an isolation
booth. To assist everyone, he would sing a reference vocal as they
rehearsed the tune so all the musicians knew the feel of the tune and the
direction in which Becker and Fagen wanted to go.
Most studio musicians who played on Steely Dan sessions remember
Fagen as the originator and more musically organised. Becker would concentrate
on the lyrics, and tended to improvise on Fagen's suggestions
with an excellent sense of overdub possibilities. Typically, Becker would
be in the booth observing through the glass, while Fagen would be in the
studio, guiding musicians and suggesting things.
Becker and Fagen had written a sequel to the Countdown To Ecstasy version of 'Your Gold Teeth' by appropriating a strange series of chords
from an extended instrumental version of'Do It Again', which Steely
Dan used to perform live on stage. They later described this extended
instrumental as "an overture" and admitted that it was vastly unpopular
with audiences and "received such an unenthusiastic, soggy welcome"
that they were eventually "bullied out of it".'"Your Gold Teeth I and
II', the second version, much more closely resembles the original
version that we never recorded. It was just a simple sort of waltz," Becker
said.
'Rose Darling' is yet another example of a Becker and Fagen tune with
all their characteristic elements of deceit, an illicit affair, drugs and even
murderous intentions. As usual, not enough of the story details are filled
in to allow an accurate assessment of the plot and, indeed, Becker and
Fagen's structure allows several vastly different interpretations to co-exist
alongside one another. Usually Becker and Fagen only gave the musician
certain guidelines when playing a solo, allowing them room to improvise,
but in 'Rose Darling' Dean Parks played a specific solo transcribed note
for note.
'Doctor Wu' contains an absolutely divine alto saxophone solo played
by Phil Woods. Woods was booked in for what Steely Dan anticipated
would be a long and demanding session, but he floored Becker, Fagen and
Katz by nailing it in the first take. It was rumoured that Fagen was so
dumbstruck by the performance that he asked Woods to play it a couple
more times just so that he could hear it again.
A couple of years later, Fagen was happy to give his version of the story.
'"Doctor Wu' is about a triangle, kind of a love-dope triangle. I think usually
when we do write songs of a romantic nature, one or more of the
participants in the alliance will come under the influence of someone else
or some other way of life and that will usually end up in either some sort
of compromise or a split. OK, in this song a girl meets somebody who
leads another kind of life and she's attracted to it. Then she comes under
the domination of someone else and that results in the ending of the relationship
or some amending of the relationship. When we start writing
songs like that, that's the way it usually goes. In 'Doctor Wu' the "someone
else" is a dope habit personified as Doctor Wu. In 'Haitian Divorce'
it's a hotel gigolo. The details of 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number' and
'Through With Buzz' are vaguer but the pattern is the same."
Queries about their lyrics continued to dog them in almost every
interview they gave. Sometimes Becker and Fagen delighted in playing
the game and one such occasion concerned'Chain Lightning', the haunting,
modulatory blues from Katy Lied. Challenging Richard Cromelin
and their audience to unravel the song, Becker said: "No one will ever come close to 'Chain Lightning'. No one will ever touch 'Chain
Lightning'."
"Even the clue wouldn't have helped," Fagen continued. "I'll tell you
what the clue was. In the guitar break just before the second verse, I was
gonna say,'40 years later', but we decided it wasn't a good musical idea."
The mystery remained intact for many years, and Becker and Fagen
never did divulge the song's subject matter. Then, during an interview to
promote The Nightfly some seven years later, Fagen finally admitted that
'Chain Lightning' in their minds described a "visit by two guys to a fascist
rally". Given Fagen's supposed fascination with Hitler, it came as no
surprise -- and they had talked flippantly several times about composing a
song about his beer-hall putsch in Munich in November of 1923.
Less of a mystery was the Latin-style arrangement of'Everyone's Gone
To The Movies', originally copyrighted in 1971, which takes a comic
look at teenagers corrupted by watching blue movies "in Mr LaPage's
den". But Becker and Fagen took the story a stage further with the allusion
to a far more serious undercurrent: Mr LaPage's covert goal was to
deflower some of the nubile young virgins.
Although Katy Lied contained only 10 songs, Becker and Fagen found
it necessary to use seven guitarists and they flew in New York-based Rick
Derringer and Hugh McCracken especially. Only Walter Becker takes
two solos, on 'Black Friday' and 'Bad Sneakers'; Denny Dias played the
solo in 'Your Gold Teeth II'; Dean Parks played 'Rose Darling'; Rick
Derringer played'Chain Lightning'; and Elliott Randall resurfaced to play
'Throw Back The Little Ones'.
Becker and Fagen heard about Larry Carlton, who was working with
The Crusaders (probably through Wilton Felder, who also appeared on
'Katy Lied'), only when the album was almost finished, and he was
invited to add rhythm guitar parts to 'Daddy Don't Live In That New
York City No More'. It was to be the beginning of a long and rewarding
relationship.

The reviews of the album were surprisingly poor.The Melody Maker critic
thought Katy Lied was a good album but not as "masterful" as Pretzel

Logic, then he added that Becker and Fagen's songwriting partnership had
grown in stature and that in the long run Katy Lied might be seen as their
best album. Rolling Stone's John Mendelsohn hated it; he felt Fagen's
singing lacked passion, said he didn't care if he never again heard another
Steely Dan song and described their music as "essentially well crafted and
uncommonly intelligent schlock". Nick Kent in New Musical Express described it as "easily their worst album to date" and predicted that unless
Becker and Fagen built a new group identity, "things may deteriorate further".
This
was all water off a duck's back to Becker and Fagen. Criticism
never bothered them. They wrote and recorded for themselves anyway; if
other people liked it, all well and good. If they didn't, too bad.
"We write for effect," Fagen said of their songwriting technique.
"Lately, we've been getting into the social protest thing, like 'Black Friday'
on the new album. We may even do a song about Gerald Ford, the
Kennedy assassination or Da Nang." Fagen's tongue was surely firmly in
his cheek. "We write topical music. I don't think audiences have a problem
relating."
Of course, most of the audience did have a problem understanding
Becker and Fagen's lyrical sketches. But it was as much the sound of the
words in the context of a song as their actual meaning, and 90 percent of
those who enjoyed Steely Dan music probably couldn't care less what
individual songs were actually about. Most fans were happy just to listen
to the music without worrying too much about what story, if any, the
lyrics told.
If, as Walter Becker said: "Steely Dan is a scribe who writes upon the
wind, in search of fertile ground," then a great deal of the seed was spilled
in the desert.
Fagen: "Our heart is still on Second Avenue and that's what we like to
write about. Our lyrics are basically experience combined with a little
fantasy."
"I think there's a lot of New York, urban-type imagery and settings and
so on," added Becker. "Even the language in our songs is imitation
thereof."
The first single to be lifted from Katy Lied was the opening tune, the
ominously titled 'Black Friday'. In US history the first real Black Friday
occurred on September 24, 1869, a day of panic in the securities market
that was repeated nine years later. The term is often used on both sides of
the Atlantic for any day of crisis, financial or otherwise, but there is no
evidence to suggest that Becker and Fagen were referring to any 
particular occasion. They had simply used their collective imaginations to create
a fictitious incident.
Becker and Fagen's tale is of a crooked speculator who makes his fortune
and absconds to Australia with the proceeds, living in the lap of luxury
and seeking forgiveness for his sins. As well as Omartian's piano it
features David Paich playing a Hohner electric piano. It wasn't typical Top
40 fodder, but it hit number 37 in the US... not bad for an act that wasn't
touring, wasn't about to tour and wasn't making any secret of it either.
They chose Muswellbrook, a town in New South Wales, Australia, for
the lyrics of the tune. "It was the place most far away from LA we could
think of," explained Fagen... and, of course, it fitted the metre of the song
and rhymed with "book".
Becker and Fagen were now in their absolute element: touring was off
the menu, they had no internal personnel problems to deal with and they
were able to hire and work with the creme de la crime of session players.
"It's a luxury to use Larry Carlton and Wilton Felder," said Fagen. "It was
a logical outgrowth to have sundry different musicians on different tracks.
Specialisation pays off. We always used outside singers of some sort. Given
the basic personnel, there weren't enough voices to sing all the notes in
the chords, especially the harmonies."
The question most critics and fans wanted answered was what made
Steely Dan so different from other groups? "Harmonically we're a little
more complicated," Fagen explained diplomatically. "Perhaps we're a little
more careful in the studio. We strive for all the songs on an LP to be
of equal quality. The music, the writing, the recording. We have some sort
of framework that helps us write songs. When the songs come out, people
have some pretty bizarre interpretations. A chord with four notes isn't
really better than one with three notes. We like to throw in a ringer once
in a while. It makes things interesting."
Becker and Fagen recited the musical doctrine according to Steely
Dan: "We write all the music and arrange it and show it to the musicians.
We provide the framework for them to work Šwith. We try to bring out
the best in them. I think we've been very successful, especially this last
album."
Despite Jeff Baxter's departure some six months earlier, Becker and
Fagen were still being questioned about their future prospects without
him."I saw him the other day," said Becker."He wanted to play live more
'cause he likes the action. With The Doobie Brothers he's got a 38-city
tour lined up. That's work. The Doobie Brothers are doing very nicely.
He'll be in Oxford, Mississippi before us."
Yet when Fagen told New Musical Express that... "the only reason
Jeffrey didn't play on the last album was because he was on the road with
The Doobie Brothers," he was not being honest. "And we missed him on
the dates where we could have used him, so somebody else did it."
Although they reckoned that the return of the "Skunk" was a possibility,
he and Hodder never played another note on a Steely Dan record.
Baxter's contributions had been an integral part of the early Steely Dan
sound - he played outstanding solos on some of their greatest songs - and
their flippant comments testify to the deterioration of their relationship
with him. Baxter was everything Becker and Fagen weren't: extrovert, a
practical joker and truly in love with life on the road.
There was even some speculation in the press that Baxter and Hodder's
departure might lead to the end of Steely Dan as a group. Becker and
Fagen smiled incredulously at the suggestion and Fagen responded: "If
you think of it more as a concept than a group of specific musicians,
there's no way it'll break up." It was too early to discuss the next configuration
of Steely Dan and Baxter's name was even included in the list of
possibles. "We're always meeting new musicians," said Fagen. "There are
certainly some that are well qualified. Including Jeff."
If there were to be any future Steely Dan tours, Becker said, "You'll see
two Steely Dan shows on different tours; it'll be different bands and a different
kind of musical presentation. The nucleus of the band has always
been the same."
Fagen: "We have a bunch of satellite performers who are more or less
interchangeable from time to time. Usually we pick musicians that we
think will fit the particular song. Sometimes we'll just hear somebody on
a record and hire them for the date, and if it works out it's all the better...
"You know, we grew up listening to jazz musicians and they're always
playing with different musicians, so I don't see why the same thing can't
happen here. It makes it much more interesting."
"I remember Rick Derringer," Becker said. '"Chain Lightning' has all
the aspects of a straight blues, except the chords constantly modulate, and
he was sort of freaked out by that for about three or four seconds, and
then realised he had to do something a little different from what he usually
does."
Derringer, by now a regular on Steely Dan sessions, rose to fame in The
McCoys, whose 'Hang On Sloopy' was a number one "garage" smash in
1965, but more lately he'd appeared with Edgar Winter's band White
Trash. Hugh McCracken's more illustrious session credits included Paul
Simon and a stint with Paul McCartney's Wings.
Becker and Fagen admitted that before they even considered another
tour they were going to record another album. "The idea," Becker said "is
to get an ongoing recording process going and not have to be interrupted
by a tour. 'Cause what usually happens is just as you're finishing an album,
you have some ideas on how you'd do it differently, things that you'd like
to do while it's still fresh in your mind, and it's always been for us that
immediately on completion of the album, we were always pressured by
various forces, internal and external, to go back on the road. As if we're
going to make some money or something."
Asked to explain the concept of Steely Dan, they couldn't, or wouldn't,
define it. The word games continued. Fagen: "We've been working on it
and as soon as we can articulate it properly, it'll appear on the record probably.
See, all we can do is give clues, because we're too close to it. It's all on
the record, you know. It's all there. There isn't much to say about it."
"Even if we could answer the question," Becker said, "you know that
we would lie. We would deliberately lead you off the scent."
Fagen:"We do have rather venomous personalities at best, although we
try to keep it to ourselves."
Henceforth the sum total of promotion for a Steely Dan album was
however many interviews Becker and Fagen were prepared to tolerate.
One journalist in particular who regularly championed their cause and
gave their albums laudatory reviews was Richard Cromelin. Whenever
Steely Dan released an album, Cromelin was always among the first in
line to interview Fagen and Becker about it, and their relationship
seemed to be one of mutual admiration.
But Becker and Fagen's friendship with Cromelin was soured once and
for all years later when he interviewed Fagen about the NewYork Rock and
Soul Revue album. When the article appeared in the Los Angeles Times, he
referred to Becker as a "baby-faced sadist". Cromelin also - quite justifiably
-- questioned Fagen about his partner's drug addiction and induced
him to discuss Becker's unreliability during the Gaucho sessions. Becker
was incensed by the article and, in the wake of it, both he and Fagen
wrote letters to the LA Times castigating Cromelin and attributing his
"outburst" to a desire for revenge for all the teasing to which they had
subjected him over the years.
Katy Lied reached number 13 in England and, on the strength of this,
Steely Dan's UK record company Anchor reissued 'Do It Again' in late
summer, which finally gave Steely Dan a long overdue, albeit minor,
English hit. Despite heavy airplay on local radio stations, it only scraped
into the Top 40 at number 39.
In interviews to promote the album and single, Becker, Fagen and
Katz were very secretive about what actually went on during Steely
Dan recording sessions; when asked for anecdotes about those sessions,
Katz laughed and said, "Well, every night someone falls down and I spill
a cup of coffee, usually on a piece of equipment, which drives Walter
berserk."
Fagen:"It's obvious to anyone really interested that Steely Dan is a conceptual
group, like jazz bands have always been. Not that I'm saying we're
a jazz band by any stretch of the imagination. But whoever's in the band
is in the band. We use different people for different purposes, and people
we like to work with tend to reoccur in rotation. It's a good way to avoid
stagnation. That's a chronic problem with pop music, the stagnation
caused by using the same people over and over. We choose the band to
suit the piece.
"It takes a process of getting to know who's around and where to find
them when you need them. Once you find people who will subordinate
to your trip, you can get somewhere. The best musicians will be able to
subordinate either to themselves or to someone else. It comes down to
discipline.
"I find it hard to look for trends in what we're doing.We write whatever
we write and arrange however we arrange. But I think it's fair to say
we're getting more spontaneous, going with the flow in the studio more
than we used to. But it's never been a matter of contriving anything to be
commercial; the most obvious examples like 'Reelin' In The Years' were
not contrived.They were composed and then improvised upon."
Fagen's ambitions were nonexistent outside music. "I don't have any goals. I just enjoy making records. It's fun, it's something to do, you make
a little bread, you know? I just bought a new synthesizer to fool around
with, an ARP Odyssey. It's not too overwhelming, but the one I had
before was even more elementary."
Ironically enough, during one exceptionally frustrating session at ABC
Studios, Becker took exception to the sound of an ARP String Ensemble
and smashed it into a hundred pieces. He and Fagen then had the shards
mounted on the wall as a kind of monument to his work.
ABC put 'Bad Sneakers'/'Chain Lightning' out as the second single in
August 1975, but once again Steely Dan had completely misjudged the
singles market. Gary Katz belatedly realised the extent of their miscalculation.
"It was a terrible mistake not putting that out as the first single," he said. 'Bad Sneakers' made not the slightest dent on the US singles
chart. By then Becker, Fagen and Katz were already back in the studio
working on songs for the follow-up. Gary Katz had put his disappointment
behind him and was more than confident: "We have songs in the
can you wouldn't believe."
When the album was finished, Becker and Fagen, as ever, were eager
to use the latest technology and, not keen on the Dolby sound-reduction
system, put into effect another of Roger Nichols' ideas to put the Katy
Lied mixes through a DBX sound-reduction system. It proved to be a disastrous
decision.
Once mixing was finished and they played the songs back, the sound
reduction system was pumping and sounded odd. They tried everything
to correct the fault but, despite Roger Nichols' expertise, were unable to
do so. There was only one answer: one night Nichols, Katz, Becker and
Fagen flew to the DBX factory in Boston to see if the makers could succeed
in getting the damaged mixes to play back properly. They made
countless adjustments to the equipment, but even they were unable to
recover the sound.
The maker's final resort was to make a special set of DBXes that had
external controls for some of the adjustments that were usually internal.
Under normal circumstances this meant that the equipment would have
to be periodically sent back to the DBX factory to be realigned, but DBX
responded to Steely Dan's request by giving them external control of
those adjustments so that they could listen to the mixes and adjust the
controls at the same time.
They returned to ABC and remixed the album using the new
DBX-adjusted equipment, a very tortuous and painful experience, and
everyone connected with Steely Dan maintained that the album never
sounded as good again. "If you had heard that album the way it originally
went down on tape," Becker said, "you would have heard something
else."
Katz, it seemed, was even more crushed by the sonic damage than
Becker and Fagen. "We had to decide whether we were gonna scrap the
album or put it out. It was close." Katz said the album suffered 85 per cent
and placed the blame squarely on the studio. "I can't listen to it. I hate to
hear an album that we're involved in that's not up to our standards. It was
the best-sounding thing I'd ever heard before it was mixed. ABC Studio
is a mess. But we feel we can go on and do a better one next time."
Eventually he became philosophical about their problems in the studio,
saying that any group who spent as much time recording as Steely Dan
was likely to suffer with similar difficulties. Nonetheless, Katz moved to
Warner Bros at the first opportunity afterwards.
Then, typically for Steely Dan, Becker and Fagen wrote some
tongue-in-cheek sleeve notes for the album demonstrating the extreme
care and attention that they took with each album, only to have this
havoc wreaked upon them.
Initially Fagen was so angry at their misfortune that he refused to even
discuss the problem: "There was a technical problem that I don't want to
get into.These are things the public doesn't want to know." However, the
questions persisted and he eventually relented and spoke about the disaster,
telling Harvey Kubernik: "It took us a long time to figure out what
it was and then undo it. Machines 10, humans nil."
Becker also conceded defeat. He admitted that he couldn't even listen
to the record, adding, "I'll get back to it later."
Becker and Fagen's quest for technical perfection had rebounded in
their faces and ruined the album. They had been taught another very
costly lesson: don't be so hasty to use the latest and greatest piece of
equipment.



Chapter VII
Luckless Pedestrians


Steely Dan's fifth album, The Royal Scam, was released on both sides of
the Atlantic in May 1976. It was a nine-song collection that, despite
Gary Katz's criticism of ABC Studios, had again been recorded there with
additional sessions at A&R Studios in NewYork.
By now, Fagen and Becker's pool of musicians had expanded into a
veritable orchestra of session players. They thought nothing of flying a
guitar player or a drummer -- or indeed both -- across the country to play
little more than a few bars of one song that might not even make it onto
disc. Expense didn't enter into it; their foremost consideration was to find
the right stylistic match and to create as perfect a rendition of each composition
as was humanly possible. Within a few years they would take
their obsessiveness even further, using the latest technology to create
absolute millisecond-perfect drum tracks, using either a drum machine, a
computer, a live drummer or a combination of all three.
At the sessions for The Royal Scam, Fagen and Becker began to record
each tune with six or seven different rhythm sections, switching the players
around to try almost every configuration possible. They would record
all the songs with Rick Marotta and then record them all over again with
Bernard Purdie to see what each drummer could bring to the tunes.
Bass players, guitar players and keyboard players would flit in and out
of a variety of studios so often they never knew what was going on.
Different combinations of musicians were playing all the songs on successive
nights and no one knew in advance - including sometimes Becker
and Fagen - who (if anyone) would end up on the final track. On some
frustrating occasions, after countless unsuccessful takes, a song would be
dropped because Becker and Fagen decided that none of the multitude
of efforts had come close to their vision of the song. Often Becker and
Fagen's microscopic fastidiousness bewildered the session players, who
thought every facet of the track sounded fine but which for some reason
Becker and Fagen refused to accept. And no amount of talking could persuade
them otherwise.
Fagen and Becker took their controlled experimentation further with
each album; it would reach its limit on Gaucho when it became increasingly
unlikely that they would ever be satisfied with virtually any basic
track. During Gaucho they employed an astonishing 40 musicians and
singers, and worked on one song for so long and listened back to it so
many times that they actually wore the oxide off the tape.
Recording for Scam began in 1975 in Los Angeles with Elliot Scheiner
at the controls. His first experience of working with Becker and Fagen
had been on Jay and The Americans' 1970 album Capture The Moment. In
1975 Scheiner had engineered Destiny, the second solo record by
ex-Rascals vocalist and keyboardist Felix Cavaliere. The sound of
'Destiny' impressed Becker and Fagen enough for them to ask Scheiner
if he was available for their forthcoming project. They were also looking
for a different sound for this album and, with Scheiner acting as tracking
engineer, they spent two weeks working at a new studio (for Steely Dan)
called Davlin on Lankersham Boulevard in LA. But after two frustrating
weeks Fagen and Becker hadn't got a single satisfactory basic track, so
they abruptly flew to NewYork to try some of the tunes at Scheiner's
home studio, A&R.
Up to that point Steely Dan had been using one-inch 24-track tape,
but Scheiner had heard about a new recording technique called the
Eicosystem, whereby two 16-track machines could be linked up together
to provide 32-tracks. The mixing problems they encountered with Katy
Lied had not deterred them from experimenting with new technology,
and when they got to NewYork Scheiner persuaded Becker and Fagen
to try cutting the tracks for the album using the Eicosystem.
Becker and Fagen not only changed the studio, they changed the musicians,
too, except for Larry Carlton who accompanied them on the trip
to New York. The change of scenery and studios seemed to do the trick;
the A&R sessions were successful beyond their wildest dreams compared
with their Los Angeles dates, and in another two-week period they managed
to get more than half the album's basic tracks on tape.
But then Steely Dan's technical gremlins intervened again. When
Scheiner began to edit the tape, it became clear that the Eicosystem wasn't
working and Steely Dan abandoned the sessions. The system was
absolutely brand new so they had expected some teething troubles, but
what the makers had failed to tell them was that they couldn't edit the
tape if two machines had been linked up together. Almost immediately
after one technological disaster, Becker and Fagen had been plunged
into another. Their scant consolation this time was that at least this
problem could be rectified and didn't affect the sonics of the final
record.
Nevertheless, Becker, Fagen and Katz held Scheiner personally responsible
for the chaos. They went back to Los Angeles and transferred all the
16-track material back to old-fashioned 24-track. Scheiner was put on
the "shit list" for the rest of the Scam sessions and later, when it came to
mixing the album, Roger Nichols and Barney Perkins carried out that
task. However, Scheiner was soon forgiven and reinstated to mix Steely
Dan's next album.
Scheiner was disappointed by his enforced exile. In their two-week
spell at A&R Studios he had successfully recorded six or seven basic tracks
for the album before Becker and Fagen returned to California. In sharp
contrast to their fruitless LA sessions, they got a first-night take on 'Kid
Charlemagne' with a band consisting of Bernard Purdie, Chuck Rainey,
Don Grolnick on clavinet, Larry Carlton andVictor Feldman.
For The Royal Scam Becker and Fagen hired Garry Sherman to write
the charts. Sherman was a veteran of New York commercial dates, but
during the sessions his abrasive manner and condescending attitude
towards the other musicians led most of them to develop a strong dislike
of him. He also irritated Becker and Fagen one evening by arriving at the
studio with a photographer and requesting his picture be taken flanked
by the duo. Becker and Fagen, who weren't renowned for. their tact,
refused to cooperate and Sherman didn't get his picture.
They were also pretty annoyed that Sherman should expect this of
them, especially at a critical time during recording, so notions of revenge
began to form in their minds. One Friday night, when Steely Dan were
finishing up at studio AI (which could be locked from the outside), they put into operation Elliot Scheiner's idea of getting all the musicians out
of the studio, sending Sherman back to pick something up and then locking
up and leaving him imprisoned for the weekend. At the last minute
they decided that perhaps the stress might cause the middle-aged conductor/arranger
to have a heart attack, so the idea was abandoned.
While Steely Dan were working on The Royal Scam in October 1975
and before the Eicosystem debacle, Elliot Scheiner had separated from his
wife with little hope of a reconciliation. Scheiner's lawyer told him that
if he was going to seek a divorce, then for tax purposes he should do it
before the end of the year. Scheiner asked how the hell he could possibly
achieve that in only a couple of months. The lawyer went on to advise
him that there was a way to accomplish this before the deadline - go to
Haiti where real "quickie" divorces were available.
Scheiner mentioned to Fagen and Becker that he wanted to take some
time off from recording in order to fly down to Haiti and get his failing
marriage annulled. They were amazed and intrigued by the idea, and
encouraged him to spill more of the relevant facts of the story. What Scheiner
didn't realize was the reason for their undue interest in his predicament.
He duly flew to Haiti, where his US lawyer had arranged for a Haitian
lawyer to meet him at the airport and drive him to his hotel. The lawyer
explained the procedure and the next morning both men were in a
courtroom listening to a magistrate reciting the official procedure in
French. This was translated by the lawyer and Scheiner answered briefly
in English. After only about five bewildering minutes Scheiner's divorce
was complete. He had beaten the deadline with time to spare and celebrated
by staying in Haiti for another couple of days, exploring and soaking
up the atmosphere of the island.
On his return to the studio, Becker and Fagen continued to pump him
for information about his visit, pressing for some of the finer details of
what had happened. It all became abundantly clear some time later when
Scheiner was surprised and delighted to hear they had written and
recorded a song,'Haitian Divorce', based very loosely around his experiences.
Becker and Fagen had used extensive creative licence on the song:
they injected some fictitious elements to spice up the story and made the
protagonist of the song a woman in order to add the "semi-mojo" twist
in the final verse.

Becker and Fagen were looking for a different drum sound for The Royal
Scam and Jeff Porcaro, who had played on all but one song on Katy Lied, was passed over in favour of two Steely Dan debutants: Bernard "Pretty"
Purdie and Rick Marotta. But Porcaro was a very personable guy as well
as a great musician, and certainly didn't hold his exclusion against Becker
and Fagen.
Steely Dan used three drummers - Purdie, Marotta and Herb Lovelle
- on the tracking dates.The latter played on sessions for 'Sign In Stranger'
but his contribution didn't make the final record, though Becker, Fagen
and Katz liked his snare-drum sound so much that they wanted to retain
it on a two-bar drum loop for possible use on a later album. Lovelies
snare was eventually put through Roger Nichols' self-built drum
machine, Wendel (which got the credit), and used on a song for'Gaucho'.
After the melodic Bosendorfer piano approach on Katy Lied, The Royal
Scam took an altogether ballsier point of view. "It's got a stomping mood
to it compared with Katy Lied" said Becker. Fagen also acknowledged
this: "We were looking for a bigger bass and drums than we've had. I
think there were probably less overdubs in general as far as the basic
rhythm tracks. Almost everything was there and everyone played it."
Of the two percussionists appearing for the first time on a Dan album,
the most famous was Bernard Purdie, a very strong-willed and boisterous
character best known for his work as Atlantic Records' in-house session
drummer but who later claimed to have played on several early Beatles
tracks. Purdie liked to carry three signs around with him reading
"Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie", "The World's Greatest Drummer" and "The
Hitmaker" and, depending on his mood, displayed them in the studio
where he was working. He also had a neon sign proclaiming, "Another
hit being made", which he plugged into the mains at the studio, and he
often displayed hit albums on which his playing was featured on the floor
around his drum kit. At one point he even claimed he should have
received a co-writing credit for 'Home At Last' because his drums were
such an integral part of the song.
Purdie tuned his own drums to perfection to suit his own taste and
wouldn't normally alter the tuning but, perhaps inevitably, Becker and
Fagen wanted him to try a different sound for one song on The Royal
Scam. He absolutely refused to do so. Determined to have things their
way, Becker and Fagen arranged for Dinky Dawson to crawl into the studio
on his belly in pitch darkness and fix some pads under Purdie's drum
heads to dampen the sound a little. Hence Dawson's credit for "Techno"
on the album sleeve.
Gradually Purdie was persuaded to come around to their way of
thinking -- to tighten or loosen his drum heads as requested -- but the
drummer always ensured they knew he was doing them a special favour.
He could afford to be arrogant; he was an excellent sight reader and
an incredible time-keeper, and he often seemed to have an innate sense
of a Becker and Fagen composition, which he would nail in the first
three or four takes. But even after what he deemed an acceptable take,
Becker and Fagen invariably wanted more, and Purdie found this hard to
accept.
"With me they always wanted something specific," he said later. "They
had already recorded The Royal Scam with other drummers so I had to
overdub. I stuck to the original patterns, but they wanted what I could
do. They knew my earlier work, so they wanted to hear my own take on
their music. They were very strict to the point of super precision. Really
picky. They wouldn't take no for an answer and they wouldn't accept
mistakes - period. It was truly frustrating in the beginning. I come from
the school that when you feel good about what you've done, it's hard to
do better. It only goes downhill from there. I learned to curtail my own
feelings and just wait. They wanted it their way, so you had to do many
takes."
Sometimes Purdie would nail it during an early take, but Becker, Fagen
and Katz wouldn't be happy with one or some of the other instruments.
Then Purdie would start goofing around, not concentrating and even,
one studio insider suggested, deliberately make mistakes to demonstrate
his musical superiority and vent his frustration. Despite his occasional
bouts of sulking, Purdie was most impressed by Fagen and Becker, admitting
that he thought they were "the closest thing to genius I've seen". He
was impressed by how incredibly precise they wanted their drum tracks;
they would allow him some leeway to express himself in the early takes,
then make their own suggestions. In some of their songs, Becker and
Fagen would tell Purdie they didn't want a shuffle, but Purdie considered
his shuffle to be unique and he often played variations on it and managed
to get away with it. Becker and Fagen had long since learned how to get
the best out of any particular session musician and with Purdie it was no
use mentioning another drummer's name as a stylistic guide, as doing so
would more than likely cramp his own creative input.
The second drummer making his debut on a Steely Dan record was
Rick Marotta. In an interview with Modern Drummer he maintained that
he didn't even know who Steely Dan were when he sat down to record
'Don't Take Me Alive'. "I remember I wanted to get in and out as soon
as possible. Larry Carlton and Chuck Rainey were there - pretty much
business as usual. Then they counted off this tune... the first thing I heard
was the lyrics 'Agents of the law/Luckless pedestrians' and I almost
stopped playing. I thought I'm listening in my 'phones to this guy who
can really sing, and the tune sounds amazing, and the band is amazing. It
was just different. You have to kiss a lot of frogs when you're a studio
player. After that I had to stop and collect myself. This is real. Every time
I went in with them, I knew it was going to be something really historic.
They were the most demanding of anybody I've ever worked with.
Donald was like the Prince of Doom. For instance, I'd walk into the control
room and it would sound unbelievably great and he'd be looking at
the floor, saying,'Yeah, I guess it's OK'."
Marotta illustrated Fagen's incredible ear for the minutest of flaws. "On
'Don't Take Me Alive' there's one backbeat in the 16th or 17th bar that
was a little softer than the others. I'd say,'Donald, show me where'. He'd
wait for the tape to come around and he'd point it out. 'Right here'. He'd
pick the same spot each time. He wasn't crazy, he was just microscopic.
Walter was as well. It was beyond my imagination how anybody could be
so focused for so long."
Becker and Fagen were so attuned to the same wavelength in the studio
that it became a talking point among the studio players. Rumours of
an uncanny telepathic link even began circulating. On the rare occasions
when they disagreed about a musical component and were both adamant
about their respective views, Gary Katz usually told the musicians to take
a break, and when they came back the difference had invariably been
resolved.
The consensus of opinion among various studio musicians trying to
sum up the difference between Fagen and Becker's studio personae was
that Becker was vocal about what he wanted, while Fagen would quietly
direct musicians, maintaining his professional composure, but stalk around
with a look of dejected resignation when he was unhappy.
Another musician who helped to shape the sound on The Royal Scam was Larry Carlton. Becker and Fagen flew him to NewYork and placed
him firmly at the forefront of the material, not only to play some blistering
solos (seven in all) but to add to the rhythm dates as well. Carlton
helped fill in Becker's bass lines where necessary, too, although he was
quick to point out that he could take no credit for the arrangements.
Becker spoke effusively about Carlton's musical ability, as well as his
temperament. "With Larry, every pass he made was something good. His
disposition was so even that it always seemed fairly easy, even if it took a
while to get what you finally wanted. It was mostly just a question of stating
clearly what the idea was that you had in mind. If we had something
in mind that was even remotely appropriate for Larry, he could do it well.
It was never like pulling teeth with Larry, as it had been with many other
people.
"If that is the definitive Steely Dan guitar album, then Larry Carlton is
the reason why. He contributed quite a bit to the tunes. There would be
a lot of volatile people with volatile musical styles in the room and, in a
lot of cases, it seemed to me that Larry, more than anybody else, was holding
things together rhythmically and in other ways."
Certainly one of Carlton's best solos on The Royal Scam, and arguably
one of the best he's ever recorded, was on the opening tune and first
single from the album, 'Kid Charlemagne'. He admitted that it was his
claim to fame: "I did two hours' worth of solos that we didn't keep. Then
I played the first half of the intro, which they loved, so they kept that. I
punched in for the second half, so it was done in two parts and the solo
that fades out in the end was done in one pass."
In some of their earlier interviews Becker had hinted at the lengths to
which they would go to achieve the effect - or solo - they were seeking.
They had attracted an ominous reputation for some of their more hostile
methods of encouragement with a musician. But the truth of the matter
was somewhat different, although both men encouraged the myth:
"Donald and I have resorted to almost every possible mode of communication
or demonstration to get soloists to do solos. Usually we'd start
with a brief musical characterisation. A little discussion of some of the
pivotal points of the piece and some sort of extra musical description as
well. Something like 'fiery' or 'fluid', 'spirited' or 'subdued' or 'bluesy'."
The rhythm track, with its original back-east groove, was a revelation.
Becker and Fagen knew that if Chuck Rainey didn't play the bass part,
then Becker would, so as usual they didn't need to have a part written for
the song. Chuck Rainey was just given the chord changes and 'Kid
Charlemagne' brought out the best of Rainey's musical instincts; using all
his experience and imagination to improvise, he incorporated as much of
his rhythmic and melodic knowledge as he could into the song. Rainey
later wrote in Bassics magazine how he based the part on the James
Jamerson school of thought, on rhythm rather than melodic notes. He
also generously gave full credit to the drummer for allowing his bass part
to work so well.
'Kid Charlemagne' is set in San Francisco and is about a drug dealer
who, in Fagen's words, "had been overtaken by society and was left standing
in the road with nothing."
Becker, Fagen and Katz variously described the main protagonist in
'Kid Charlemagne' as a maker, an artist, a chemist and a chef. "Someone
who makes consciousness-expanding substances of the most dramatic,
sensational kind no longer in vogue." Becker said that they didn't use any
particular model for the song; Fagen said he thought it was more about
the age - the late Sixties - and the reflections of someone who found
himself in a decade where he's no longer of any use. They denied that 'Kid
Charlemagne' was based on a Timothy Leary or Charles Manson-type
character, saying that he would probably be much less of a celebrity than
those two examples. Becker claimed that there was an individual on
whom the song was based, "who hung over the song like the Sword of
Damocles", but he refused to name names.
"I think our songs are about people who exist all the time," said Fagen.
"Occasionally there is a reference to someone who actually exists, but by
and large the characters are largely fictitious. There's more topical material
on this record. We wrote about 1976 more than we usually write
about the time that we're living in."
'Kid Charlemagne' also contains a unique vocal interpretation from
Fagen -- the line "Yes, there's gas in the car" - with very distinct vibrato
and an almost falsetto emphasis on the last word. Denny Dias was not
present for many of The Royal Scam sessions and so hadn't been around
when Fagen cut the vocals. He can clearly recall listening to the album
for the first time and, when he heard Fagen's unbelievable vocal leap, he
was so astounded that he sprang right out of his favourite armchair.
Backed with 'Green Earrings', 'Kid Charlemagne' reached only a
dismal number 82 in the US singles chart in July 1976, and yet again a
Steely Dan single failed to make any impression in the UK. Donald Fagen
didn't sound too disappointed, though, and wasn't any more optimistic
about its successor. "I really thought that single was gonna go. It didn't.
They've put 'The Fez' out, hoping they could get a disco hit. Well, you
can dance to parts of it, you just have to stop in the middle once in a
while."
'The Fez' was released in October 1976, but even when Becker and
Fagen put out what was unashamedly a dance track -- albeit a parody of
disco music - at the height of the disco era, they couldn't crack the Top
40. But they weren't considering chart success; it was another of their
inside jokes - normally disco songs tended to hang on one chord, so they
took up the challenge to compose a disco-type song with plenty of chord
changes. They certainly succeeded on that score, but it didn't succeed as
a chart single, only reaching number 59 in the US.
'The Fez' is unique in another way. A veteran of sessions with Bob
Dylan, Van Morrison and much of the NewYork soul of the Sixties, keyboard
player Paul Griffin is the only other individual ever credited as
co-writer on a Steely Dan song. Becker and Fagen were always fair in
recognising and praising a musician's contribution where appropriate, but
in Griffin's case there was some disagreement as to his exact role in 'The
Fez'. "He wrote the main theme," Fagen replied tersely when asked about
it. Becker disagreed. "I wouldn't call it the main theme," he said. "He
wrote a melody that is featured. At least, he says he wrote it."
Fagen said they had set up a riff at the session that Griffin picked up
on and started noodling around with, and which eventually became the
main keyboard hook of the tune. Becker denied that the song was written
in the studio. "But there is an instrumental melody that Paul started
playing in the session, and when we decided to build up that melody to
a greater position, since we had some suspicion that perhaps this melody
wasn't entirely Paul's invention, we decided to give him composer credit
in case later some sort of scandal developed and he would take the brunt
of the impact."
Paul Griffin remembers it differently. He claims that Fagen already had
the keyboard line and that he recognised the classical piece that had
perhaps subconsciously inspired it, and so Griffin deliberately chose to
move away from the original pattern in order to defeat any potential plagiarism
suit. That similarity was to a classical piece by a European composer
- the first four notes are exactly the same - but Griffin took it elsewhere
completely.
Indeed, Becker and Fagen had made a demo of the song but the groove
was less catchy than the final recording. Even today, Chuck Rainey still
maintains that Jeff Porcaro played drums on the song, but Bernard Purdie
received credit on the album. Since Purdie did overdub drum tracks for
Steely Dan on some of the later albums, it's possible that Porcaro played
the part, then Purdie added his unique feel to the track later.
The album contained the usual intoxicating mix of intellectually
obscure lyrics and tight playing. 'The Caves Of Altamira' was an old song
that Becker and Fagen had written and demoed with Kenny Vance
around seven or eight years before in NewYork. It was very unusual subject
matter for a pop song, and once again Fagen's taste for historical
knowledge informed the lyrics: the Altamira Cave is in northern Spain
(just west of Santander) and is famous for its prehistoric paintings and
engravings; the roof of the cave is covered with paintings of bison and
elsewhere there are black-painted or engraved figures of deer, horses, wild
cattle and goats. In the 1976 version of the song, Becker and Fagen omitted
the third verse, in which the narrator reflects on his childhood adventures
and returns to the caves only to find that many others have discovered
what was once his own secret little world.
'Don't Take Me Alive' was set in mid-Seventies America; it dealt with
Fagen and Becker's unease about the regular outbreaks of violence in Los
Angeles. Gangland shootings, wanton murders and armed sieges were so
commonplace that Becker and Fagen felt compelled to reflect it in a
song. They saw it as violence for its own sake, and in interviews they
became involved in discussions about the relative merits and drawbacks
of life in Los Angeles and NewYork.
"In Los Angeles and throughout the world in general, terrorism is a
way of life, actually, for a lot of people," said Fagen. "The song was
inspired by a run of news items where people would barricade themselves
inside an apartment house or a saloon with an arsenal of weapons. It's
about individual madness rather than political situations."
Becker and Fagen admitted that their literary backgrounds led them to
write short story-type plots into many of their songs. Obscurity came
from their editing out superfluous information to avoid the danger of
creating "a lousy or pretentious song".They also stressed the importance
of taking the music and the lyrics together, because by putting a sweet
melody to a subversive lyric, or vice versa, they were creating irony, one
of their favourite tools.
Becker and Fagen always enjoyed writing about people who were "at
the end of their proverbial tethers" ('Do It Again','Charlie Freak','With
A Gun' etc.) or who were "in a life or death situation". "It goes back to
Greek drama," said Fagen. "They didn't write about people who were
having a lot of fun."
Neither Becker nor Fagen played an instrument on 'Don't Take Me
Alive', but they weren't in the least bit concerned - in fact, they actually
relished it. Becker even refused to exclude the future possibility of their
not playing at all on an entire Steely Dan album, and Fagen was in total
agreement: "If we ever received an award, we'd like to receive it for songwriting.
At least we'd rather be recognised for that than our musicianship,
although we both feel we have interesting styles as musicians."
In a 1979 interview with Dennis McNamara on WLIR-FM in
New York, Gary Katz explained how they told Larry Carlton to make
the guitar intro as "nasty and loud as possible". McNamara told Katz that
the song made him think of Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon; Katz
responded by saying: "I think of much nastier things than that when I
hear it."
Fagen had been a science-fiction fan since he was a kid and had once
belonged to a sci-fi book club.This was reflected in 'Sign In Stranger', a
song based on an imaginary planet where criminals, gangsters and murderers
were banished for their crimes. "That's true," Fagen said. "Of
course, it does take place on another planet. We sort of borrowed the Sin
City/Pleasure Planet idea that's in a lot of science-fiction novels, and
made a song out of it." Paul Griffin improvised a suitably interplanetary
piano solo after Fagen had given him some idea of what they were looking
for.
'"Green Earrings', for example," Fagen continued,"has a very contemporary
vamp that leads into a cycle of fast progression and another section
that is actually from another era." Despite the sparseness of the lyric
with its one-word lines, a story can be gleaned about a relationship 
blemished by a compulsive thief who shows no remorse for stealing his
partner's prized jewellery. Denny Dias's short chiming guitar solo is punctuated
by some machine gun bursts from Bernard Purdie's snare and
hi-hat before Elliott Randall launches into the second solo, which starts
off just quirkily but then becomes increasingly deranged as the fade
approaches.
'Haitian Divorce' was recorded with Walter Becker altering Dean
Parks' guitar notes with a voice box. In contemporary interviews, Becker
made absolutely no mention of Elliot Scheiner's experience in Haiti. "It's
a divorce you get in Haiti and they're not hard to come by, let me tell
you," he said. But over the years Becker and Fagen would make more
cryptic comments about 'Haitian Divorce' than any other Steely Dan
song. "It's a fierce and terrible ritual," said Fagen, sounding for all the
world as if violent and painful self-mutilation was part of the process.
"You wouldn't want your sister to have a Haitian divorce, believe me. It
was a quick divorce, without too much red tape. If you can say 'incompatibility
of character' in French, you're as good as gold. But we added a
few moments to the ceremony itself."
Becker and Fagen liked nothing better than leading interviewers up
the lyrical garden path and into a maze of allusion and perplexity. So
Becker added another level of intrigue to the conversation: "The thing is
now, I know a lot of people don't believe in voodoo and all that, but people
like that shouldn't go to Haiti. Because they'll just nail you with that
stuff. That's powerful medicine. We did a lot of research."
They refused to elaborate further and the word games began again, this
time on operatic lines. They told Richard Cromelin, who duly reported
in New Musical Express that... "Donald and Walter are well aware of the
fact that Aida is not joking with you", whatever that meant. Being slightly
more realistic, they said they simply wanted to hear how a reggae song
would sound with lots of jazz chords. Needless to say, they were amused
at the result.
'Haitian Divorce' wasn't released as a single in the USA, since its slight
reggae feel convinced the record company that its likelihood of success
was small; reggae had hardly any commercial appeal in the US at this time
and its most famous exponent, Bob Marley, never had a hit in the US
under his own name (although Eric Clapton had topped the charts with
Marley's 'I Shot The Sheriff' in 1974).
This was not the case at all in the UK, where the tide had finally
turned for Steely Dan. Contrary to what ABC had decided across the
water, Anchor really went out on a limb by issuing 'Haitian Divorce' as a
single. With 11 singles and three Top 10 hits behind them in America but
only one Top 40 hit in the UK - it inexplicably struck a chord with
English singles buyers and sailed into the Top 20, reaching number 17.
Ironically enough, 'Haitian Divorce' was to be Steely Dan's biggest UK
hit and their solitary Top 20 entry. Fagen was pleasantly surprised,
"because it's quite an exotic number," he said.
Although at the time the tune was recorded the US Government
recognised a Haitian divorce, the rules changed from one period to
another. On other occasions a divorce obtained in the Dominican
Republic would be recognised, while a Haitian one would not. But
Becker was at pains to point out the legitimacy and factuality of their
song. "Of course, you can't get a Haitian divorce any more," he said. "You
used to be able to go to Haiti and get a divorce real fast. They give you
this document in French with ribbons and plumes and everything, and
it's recognised by the American government. In a way that's enlightening.
It's a situation people thought we probably made up. There are people out
there who probably think we made up the name Haiti. We've been
accused of everything else." As this comment indicates, the incessant accusations
of lyrical obscurity occasionally irritated Becker and Fagen, and
Becker went on to accuse some of the Steely Dan audience of being
intentionally dumb.
Ostensibly, 'The Royal Scam' is about Puerto Rican immigrants coming
to NewYork with the expectation of a better life and eventually discovering
that it was nothing like they'd been led to believe, especially for
Latin Americans with little or no money and poor English.
In an interview with Steve Clarke of TIME, Becker and Fagen were in
their element again when it came to discussing -- or refusing to discuss -- their lyrics, particularly of the title cut. A measure of the fun and revelry
they enjoyed can be gauged by comparing Becker's responses to Clarke's
questions. When he was asked what 'The Royal Scam' was about, Becker
set the tone for the conversation when he replied: "About four and a half
minutes". Interviewing Becker and Fagen when one - or both - of them
was in this mood must have been a nightmare.
Turning serious for a moment, Becker admitted that Puerto Rico and
NewYork City both featured in the lyric, then seemed to regret his honesty
and began to argue that divulging what the song actually meant
would be doing the song a disservice and would be "lending credence to
the notion that in order to enjoy a song, you have to know exactly what
it means. Or that it does mean exactly one thing. And it doesn't really.
None of these things are true." Almost in the same breath Becker
denied... "that Puerto Rican nonsense that someone over here (the UK)
invented" and complained that the speculation was getting out of hand.
When Michael Watts interviewed them for Melody Maker and asked
them to confirm this Puerto Rican theory, Fagen's response was almost
as if he was disappointed that their lyrical puzzle had been solved:
"Because the interpretation is so accurate, wouldn't even want to comment
further."
Fagen maintained that Dan fans could enjoy the song on many different
levels and that that was the biggest part of the fun anyway. As with the
word pretzel, scam wasn't an everyday word in England, and Fagen was
occasionally required to explain its meaning.
"Particularly because that song does have a topical aspect and because
of that it's dangerous to give specifics. It is an allegory and it is written in
rather a Biblical argot, I can tell you that," Fagen said. "The song does
have rather a poetic way of expressing what we wanted to express. I'm
very fond of that lyric. I wasn't totally satisfied with the way the actual
track came out."
There was nothing unusual about that, but Fagen was pleased with
their lyrics, which he felt were getting better - and tighter - with each
album. "Just generally more charming and wonderful in every way."
One critic suggested that their lyrics on Katy Lied were not their best.
Fagen disagreed. "I thought they were good. I just think that from Pretzel
Logic on, all our lyrics have been superior to what we were doing before.
More adult, if you will - not that that's such a good thing for rock'n'roll
music, but make of that what you want."
'"The Royal Scam' isn't the key song," said Becker. "It's regrettable that
if you call an album after one of the songs, which is something we don't
do all the time, people take it for more than it is. We like each song to be
listened to individually, without relating to the whole album, although if
you record a certain selection of songs the album will have a certain character.
Generally the cheese stands alone."
Real people as well as places were also mentioned. In the song
'EverythingYou Did', Becker and Fagen included the lyric "Turn up The
Eagles/The neighbours are listening" and far from being seen as a
put-down, many people (The Eagles included) regarded it as a compliment.
Asked by interviewers which contemporary groups they admired,
Fagen and Becker, tongues firmly in cheek, occasionally listed The Eagles
among their favourite rock acts.
But Fagen denied that they were harbouring some sort of vendetta
against The Eagles, a band whose album sales far exceeded those of Steely
Dan. "Oh, no. We enjoy their music very much, we think they're swell.
There is something funny about them, though. They're imitative of a lot
of late Sixties bands. At one time a lot of critics spent a lot of time lumping
us together with them. We both started at the same time and we were
all white guys who sang in 3-4 part harmony. So we have a running joke
about how The Eagles are our only competition." Becker and Fagen later
referred to The Eagles as The White Drifters.
Within a few months of hearing 'EverythingYou Did', Don Henley
and Glenn Frey returned the "compliment" and included a line in 'Hotel
California' to acknowledge their own namecheck and send a message
back to Steely Dan. "We liked the way they would say anything (in a
song)," Glenn Frey explained. "That's why we used the words 'They stab
it with their steely knives/But they just can't kill the beast'."
Comparing Steely Dan to other acts was becoming a harder and harder
task for rock critics. Steely Dan knew full well they sounded nothing like
the country-rock influenced Eagles, and such comparisons might have
sparked off the ill-natured banter in the first place. During their visit to
the UK comparisons were drawn between Steely Dan and 10cc, perhaps
because both acts tended to use the studio as an instrument in itself.
Fagen refuted the suggestion by saying that lOcc were "more in a
Beatle-type bag than we are", which must have seemed like a compliment
to the Manchester quartet. Becker simply dismissed the comparisons and
reminded journalists of the fact that on their last visit they were being
compared to The Doobie Brothers.

Once the recording of The Royal Scam was finished, Becker and Fagen
urgently needed some artwork for the cover. Fagen called their photographer
buddy Ed Caraeff and asked him if he had anything to hand.
Fortunately, Caraeff had been working with Van Morrison, who had told
him that his new album was to be called Naked In The City. Accordingly,
Caraeff had asked a friend called Larry Zox to paint some Los
Angeles-type skyscrapers as the basis for the cover. Caraeff and Zox had
already tried out numerous ideas, all of which included Zox's 8' x 6'
painting: one idea entailed photographing a young Rae Dawn Chong
and her little brother in front of the painting; in another, Caraeft, and
Zox devised a way of making it look like dollar bills were falling from
the sky. As things turned out, Morrison returned to Europe, eventually
abandoning his own recording plans, so Caraeff now had no use for theprints.
After speaking with Fagen, Caraeff came up with the idea of using
Zox's painting with, superimposed upon it, a photograph of a sleeping
vagrant on a Boston bus bench taken by Charlie Ganse, a Caraeff house
guest.They took it to Hollywood where a specialist was able to match the
tone of the photograph to the painting. Three of the buildings in Zox's
painting were based on photographs he had taken of real skyscrapers on
Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles, the fourth was based on an old snapshot of
the Prudential building in Chicago. Towering above the man were ominous'
skies and the skyscrapers, which metamorphosed into a variety of
snarling animal heads. The centrepiece was a king cobra just about to
strike at a mongoose on its neighbouring edifice. It proved to be one of the great album covers of the Seventies.
"We had the title, but we didn't have a cover, so we went to see this
photographer who we'd worked with before," Walter Becker explained.
"We said,'We're in a hurry, because we have deadlines, what do you have
lying around the house?'And he had a photograph of the painting that's
on the cover of the album." The painting has hung in a number of different
places in and around Los Angeles: it spent some time in the
Museum of Rock Art in the San Fernando Valley and most recently was
on display in a gallery on Main Street in Santa Monica. It is for sale but
only for the right price.
Fagen added that coincidentally it had... "a rather delightful relation to
one of the tunes on the album. Also it had a nice colour. It looked vaguely
purple; royal, regal." That coincidental relation is almost certainly to the
cave paintings referred to in 'The Caves of Altamira'.

Becker and Fagen came to London to promote The Royal Scam immediately
after its release. They were particularly looking forward to the visit
but certainly not to the interviews they would have to endure. Fagen
planned to visit the Napoleonic Museum in Monaco and Becker was
headed to the Monaco Grand Prix. While in London they were supposed
to be looking at recording studios (they purported to want a change of
scenery) and were seeking inspiration for songs, but it's pretty unlikely
that either of the latter two conditions were ever realistic proposals. Fagen
justified his visit to the Napoleonic Museum by saying that he wanted to
get some of the atmosphere of the place for a song they were planning to
write about the Congress of Vienna!	&
Needless to say, the visit proved fruitless as far as finding a suitable studio
outside their list of favourites in Los Angeles and New York. Almost

everything about the idea was impractical: for one thing, recording in
London would have meant extortionate bills for transporting session
players across the Atlantic and accommodating them in fine hotels, and
for another Becker, Fagen, Katz and Nichols were unfamiliar with the
studios, which would have set them at an immediate disadvantage.
With the release of The Royal Scam, discussions about a Steely Dan
comeback tour were rife. It was rumoured that they would be back in
Britain in 1977 and touring America before that. This depended on how
fast they could record their next two albums, which would fulfil their
contractual obligations with ABC. At the time of their promotional visit
to the UK in early summer 1976, they were already one album behind,
with two more to finish before January 1977. With Steely Dan's predilection
for working on an album for however long they deemed necessary,
there was never any way they would be able to fulfil their contractual
requirements ahead of the deadline.
In order to improve on their original contract, Fagen and Becker had
negotiated a new one and, although this improved their royalty rates, it also
brought a new form of pressure."At one time we had no deadlines. We just
had a number of albums to deliver. Our royalty rate was nonexistent. This
is true," Becker assured Steve Clarke of New Musical Express. "At the time
we were in England, we had never gotten a royalty statement that showed
a plus. In other words, every penny we earned in record royalties was taken
up by recording budgets -- which were not inordinately large by any means -- and by loans to buy amplifiers to keep us on the road, which was something
else that we weren't making any money out of.
"We renegotiated that contract, so that instead of getting no record
royalties we'd get virtually no record royalties. And in return for that we'd
get deadlines for albums. When we were working on this one we started
getting all this legal mail, harassment-type mail from the record company,
threatening to do things to us if we didn't finish the album by a certain
date."
Becker concluded his overt statement with a wisecrack. "Some of your
big heavy groups, when they hand over an album, the record company
has to hand over x hundred thousand dollars. When we hand in an album,
they just say, "Thank you.'" But at least this provided them with the
excuse, if they needed one, not to tour. "Caesar wants a record every three
months, it turns out," Becker said, "so we have to render unto him before
we render unto the concertgoer."
Aside from Keith Moon regularly bragging that he was a millionaire
when he probably wasn't, very few rock musicians ever discussed money
in their interviews in case it came to the attention of the tax-man, but
Steely Dan had no qualms about mentioning the perilous state of their
bank accounts and bemoaning their lack of financial security. "I don't
make any money whatever," said Fagen. "I live in a sort of financial limbo.
When we were young and innocent, we signed a contract that was less
than sensible, in the sense that we could have a lot of success and not
make much money. And our studio costs have to be paid back through
royalties. All the same, the single will help us to sell more albums so more
people will hear the music, which is good."
Questioned about the expense of using top session players, Fagen and
Becker bounced their answers back and forth like a scripted ping-pong
session: "Some of them are very expensive," Fagen said. "Some of them
are outrageously expensive," Becker elaborated. "Although we usually
spare no expense." Fagen wound it up by joking that as the album had
cost so much at least people would be getting their money's worth.
Despite all their complaints about the life of a touring musician, Becker
and Fagen had submitted to the incessant requests and were realistically
considering touring again. "We've never gone out with the same band
twice," Becker said. "It's always been different. So there's no reason to start
duplicating ourselves now." But although they wanted fresh faces as well
as the top-notch players, Fagen and Becker weren't about to desert their
old friend Denny Dias: "Denny's got staying power vastly above that of
most of his comrades," said Fagen. "He's actually shown an amazing dedication
to our vision, if you'll allow me to use that [term], for many years.
Although he plays with outside groups quite a lot while we're writing or
working on something else, he's always ready to play with us."
Indeed he was. Dias would always make himself available for whatever
musical venture Becker and Fagen were about to embark upon.
For once, Becker and Fagen didn't completely rule out a tour, but they
did decline to name names, merely stating the obvious -- that the line-up
would probably include some of the musicians who had appeared on the
recent albums. Their most satisfying touring aggregation had been their
1974 outfit, with guest players of the calibre of Mike McDonald and Jeff
Porcaro, but now they were looking at hiring players like Bernard Purdie,
Chuck Rainey and Victor Feldman, and that would be a very expensive
business.
In August 1976, Becker and Fagen were featured in Newsweek under
the headline "Recluse Rock", and were called "perhaps the best and certainly
the most imaginative American rock group of the Seventies". But
the Newsweek writers obviously hadn't even spoken to Becker and Fagen
first-hand and the article had very little substance, relying on secondary
sources and ridiculous hearsay for their research. It centred on the "prolific
pair's forbidding menace" and their alleged surliness and antisocial
behaviour towards anyone but their immediate circle of musical colleagues.
They took Walter Becker's tongue-in-cheek quote about their
"direct one-to-one hostile attitude towards fellow members of the race"
seriously, and held their non-attendance at showbiz parties and lack ofTV
appearances against them. Gary Katz responded to the latter charges by
admitting that it was simply because they weren't asked that often.
Becker and Fagen defended themselves against allegations of hostility
and also denied they were difficult to work with. "If a musician likes a
lot of freedom and he's not doing what we want, sometimes we can be
constraining," said Fagen. "But I don't think we're difficult. We're not
mean."
Becker tried to illustrate the point further by suggesting that the average
producer was more difficult to 'work with than they were. He was
quick to add that he didn't include Gary Katz in that category.
Another constant enquiry that dogged them was why it took them so
long to record an album. Fagen denied that that was even the case, and
fell back on the (true) excuse that they had experienced technical problems.
"It doesn't take us that long to actually work in the studio, but we
do write all the songs, which takes a while, and the last two albums we've
run into technical trouble.When we were recording The Royal Scam there
was a lot of dead time waiting for studios to become free. We'd book a
studio and it was no good or we'd do some sessions that didn't pan out.
We weren't quite happy with the results."
Becker and Fagen would book studio time only when they were
absolutely convinced that they had enough strong songs to make up an
album.They had to be absolutely convinced of a song's structure and lyrical
content before they began recording it. A common method in the
Seventies was for a band to book a studio and then try to construct a song
around some guitar riffs or a jam. With the high cost of studio time, even
Steely Dan could not afford to waste money on it for musicians to merely
experiment with what might well turn out to be a less than inspired song.
"I remember one occasion when we were lacking a verse, but that's about
it," Walter Becker said.
Fagen told TIME that they threw a lot of material away. He skirted
around their difficulties with the Eicosystem by saying that the equipment
in a NewYork studio was not compatible with that in LA,"so we
had to order some new equipment". However, this statement was not
corroborated by studio staff, which indicates that Fagen was disguising
the true reason for their tardiness. While they were allegedly waiting for
this gear to arrive, Becker and Fagen composed yet more songs. "It is the
songwriting that actually takes most of the time," said Fagen. "It is three
or four months to write enough material and two or three months to
record it." But despite the advances in technology, each Steely Dan album
actually took longer to complete than its predecessor.
The Royal Scam charted higher in the UK - number 11 - than it did
in America, at 15. Even though they just missed the Top 10 in England,
it was a remarkable achievement, especially as there had been no hit single
at that stage. No doubt their European promotional visit, some
impressive spreads in New Musical Express and particularly a lengthy and
detailed interview with Michael Watts in Melody Maker, contributed to
the album's good showing.
It soon followed all the other Steely Dan albums and was certified
gold. And with another "comeback tour" failing to materialize, all Becker
and Fagen had to do was summon enough energy to write sufficient
material for their next studio venture.
And not even scholars as wise as Becker and Fagen could predict how
long it would take - or how successful it would be.
Chapter VIII

The Crimson Tide



Becker and Fagen's January 1977 deadline for another two albums
passed without so much of a hint that even one album was in the offing.
In fact, there was to be a 16-month gap between the release of The
Royal Scam and its follow-up, Aja.
It was even reported in the music press that Steely Dan were recording
enough material for two albums to fulfil their contract with ABC,
after which they would be free to join Warner Bros. Becker and Fagen
offered to do one live album (with half the material new) as well as a studio
album, but ABC refused, fearing damage to the inevitable greatest hits
package. Several midsummer dates came and went as ABC jockeyed for
exactly the right time to release the album. Ironically, Aja was released in
September 1977, on the same day as the long-awaited but ultimately disappointing
Rolling Stones live album LoveYou Live.
Aja was the record that finally realised Becker and Fagen's artistic vision
and catapulted Steely Dan into the platinum bracket. It surpassed all their
previous sales figures by a long way, eventually going on to sell around five
million copies and spending more than a year on the US album charts.
On Aja, Becker and Fagen's extensive studio experience meant that
they were able to exploit the full potential of the musicians that they
hired. By now, they had certain musicians in mind for specific parts or
solos even during the preliminary stages of composing a song. Another
reason for Aja's excellence was the simultaneous realisation by those
favoured musicians of what Fagen and Becker had spent five years aiming
towards. In effect, Steely Dan was almost a band again, albeit a studio
band with a multitude of members, all of whom were actually the cream
of the session world. Now, the composers and their hired hands were all
moving forward as a single unit.
Steely Dan tried not to recognise any time or budget constraints, and
simply kept on recording until they had either achieved exactly what they
were looking for (or as close to it as was humanly possible) or decided
that the idea was a bad one in the first place.
Most Steely Dan songs boasted either a guitar, sax or piano solo, but
when Becker and Fagen included a solo in a song it wasn't just a throwaway
or an opportunity for an instrumentalist to indulge himself, it had
to make sense, have a purpose and relate to the rest of the song. By the
same token, Becker and Fagen understood that they could get away with
lyrical and musical murder on a verse, but when the chorus came in they
had to have a melodic and memorable hook. Two prime examples of
songs where complex but interesting verses open up into hook-line choruses
are 'Doctor Wu' and 'Bad Sneakers' from Katy Lied.
In attempting to deny the widely held perception that they were inaccessible
as both people and musicians, Fagen tried to lay the blame on
their record company's publicity department. When Steely Dan were in
the studio recording they didn't want outsiders watching the often long
and laborious process of getting takes. "A lot of the requests we get are to
'observe us in the studio or to watch us write'," Fagen explained, shaking
his head in disbelief. "We reject that sort of thing. It's boring, what we do.
Also there have been periods when for personal reasons we weren't up to
interviews. If we're involved with a project that isn't going well, we don't
want to present it to the public."
Nevertheless, the requests wouldn't go away and ABC's publicity
department persisted in passing them on until Fagen and Becker finally
relented. In December 1976, Susan Shapiro from Music Gig magazine was
invited into the Village Recorders to hear some of Steely Dan's new
material. She listened to two songs tentatively titled'When Josie Comes
Home' and 'Asia' (sic), which were scheduled for Steely Dan's forthcoming
LP. Becker was supposed to be there for the interview but had gone
missing for a couple of weeks, during which time neither Fagen nor Katz
knew his whereabouts.
In his partner's absence, Fagen was talkative and sincere. Shapiro asked
him how he and Becker had reacted to some of the criticism that had
been levelled at The Royal Scam. "The reason that the critics were disappointed
is that they get tired. The first LP is always the easiest to like, the
second they still like, the third they think is pretty good. The longer you
last as a group, the harder the critics are. That accounts for some of the
disappointment with Scam. Myself, I think it's one of the best ones we've
done. I think, in fact, each record is a little better than the last." Fagen told
Shapiro that his favourite part of record making was still to come sequencing
the tunes once they had all been cut.
As for sequencing their albums, Fagen and Becker would decide where
each tune went on the record based on the key of each song, while Gary
Katz argued in favour of songs with similar tempos being kept together.
Fagen said the songs were sequenced for sound rather than narrative
potential, but Katz admitted that to a large extent sequencing was down
to pot luck. "There's no science to that at all, except first cut first side,"
he said. "It's probably as important as making the record in that it sets the
feel in the same sense that you would edit a movie... so that it flows from
beginning to end. And it's a very difficult thing to do, 'cause everyone
feels another thing. Lots of lists, lots of lists."
In the summer of 1977, Becker and Fagen were lured into
listener-sponsored radio station KPFK in Los Angeles for an in-depth
interview with disc jockey Captain Midnight (alias Steve Tyler), the
writer Harvey Kubernik (who among other things was Melody Maker's West Coast US correspondent) and the omnipresent Richard Cromelin.
The incentive for their visit was the opportunity to play some favourite
jazz sides from their own record collections. Becker and Fagen christened
it Radio Free Steely Dan, and said they were still open to other deejaying
offers.
It also proved to be quite a coup for the station, since one of the Aja songs ('Black Cow') was exclusively premiered on air that night -- several
months before the album came out. KPFK also threw the phone lines
open for listeners to call in with questions for the jovial duo. The jokes
flew thick and fast and Becker and Fagen enjoyed themselves a great deal,
especially towards the end when they stopped taking calls and double
handedly took over the airwaves with some of their favourite jazz selections.
They played music from the Bill Evans Trio, Miles Davis, Charlie
Parker, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Charlie Mingus and Duke Ellington.
Fagen very rarely spoke ill of the session players they used, but on this
occasion he showed his frustration:"I can't mention any names, but we've
been greatly disappointed by a lot of people who we thought were more
versatile. They're all good musicians, but we have them in mind for 10
tracks and it'll turn out they were only good for two."
At the time of the phone-in, Becker and Fagen had been living in Los
Angeles for almost six years, and they made no secret of the fact that they
were now looking for a way out. They had resumed recording in New
York with Scam, and it seemed that whenever things weren't running too
smoothly they headed back to New York for a much-needed shot of
energy. Becker was more frustrated with life in California than Fagen, and
when he was asked why he had stuck it out for so long if he disliked it
so intensely, Becker replied: "Convenience". "And inertia," Fagen said
with great honesty. But they were about to shed their convenience and
inertia: within months they had sold their Malibu homes and were homeward
bound.
Another example of Fagen and Becker's inertia concerned their promptness
for interviews -- if indeed they showed up at all."We are sort of a pain
in the ass to get to places on time," Fagen admitted. "If it's not directly
related to working, we have a tendency to have very selective memories."
The amount of time Steely Dan spent in the studio perfecting their
songs was a common topic among interviewers, and Becker and Fagen
seemed always to be explaining reasons why each LP took longer to make
than its predecessor. "Before, we used to knock off two in an evening and
that was that, but now it's really hard. Now when we come into a session
the sheets are like this," Fagen said, stretching out his arms to maximum
width."We're not trying to be more complicated or anything.They're still
almost pop song forms, but there's little things you can do to make it
interesting by way of development of the themes that are stated in the
popular part of the song."
Another worry for ABC was Steely Dan's recording budgets, which
had been increasing steeply and which had prompted the record company
to start hassling them during the Scam sessions. But Fagen didn't
regret anything: "It just takes time to get something to be good, to get
eight or 10 songs that are all good. Most rock'n'roll albums will be padded
with less than wonderful material. We want every bar of the thing to be
good. It's all time and we just eat it up. We're not total perfectionists in
the studio, we just have aspirations in that direction."
Reportedly, The Royal Scam had cost over $100,000 to produce, which
in the light of what was to be spent on Aja and particularly Gaucho, was
chicken feed. Steely Dan's deadline was eventually extended to March
1977, and Fagen suggested that a new Steely Dan style would emerge
after their contract with ABC expired. He also hinted at a "slick, stylistic
change", and warned that the new album's lyrics "would have no social
significance".

All the basic tracks for Aja were cut in Los Angeles except 'Peg', which
was the last tune to be recorded in NewYork while the rest of the album
was being mixed. Elliot Scheiner cut the basic track for 'Peg', then Becker
and Fagen took it back to Los Angeles for overdubbing and Al Schmitt
mixed the song.
'Peg' featured a fantastic groove from Chuck Rainey and Rick
Marotta, which the latter described by saying, "We had done stuff with
them before so we knew what to expect, so we just started playing.
Chuck and I had played together so much that we got into a groove. I
don't remember everything about it exactly, but I remember I was very
sick, and Don Grolnick had to take me to hospital in the middle of the
night during a rainstorm to get a shot. Anyway, once Chuck and I started
playing, you could have hung your coat up on the groove." Marotta went
on to say how flattered he was to learn that Jeff Porcaro loved the rhythm
so much he made a tape loop of it and rode around in his car for hours
on end listening to their stupendous playing.
While a few of the less tolerant studio players complained about the
length and repetitiveness of Steely Dan sessions, the vast majority enjoyed
the experience, and said that the songs were such fun to play anyway that
they didn't care how many times they were required to play them. Chuck
Rainey, for one, didn't mind and perhaps that's why he turned out to be
the most used musician on Aja. He recorded every song on Aja -- plus
most of the out-takes -- at the Village, at Producer's Workshop, and at
various studios in NewYork. He was virtually the sole constant in each
experimental rhythm section. Becker and Fagen continued with the
method they had adopted during Scam, spending perhaps a week recording
all the tunes with six, seven, or even eight different drummers.
They were somewhat reluctant to use Bernard Purdie extensively again
because his distinctive stamp was all over Scam, and they didn't want to
repeat themselves. But eventually, after some unsatisfactory rhythm tracks,
they couldn't resist calling him into the studio to see what he could bring
to the tunes. In the end, six different drummers were used on only seven
songs, and Purdie was the only one to appear on more than one cut.
Each studio player had his own little foibles: Chuck Rainey liked to
hear the demo (if there was one) in his earphones; Jeff Porcaro liked to
hear it in the studio and look at the chart at the same time.The musicians
would listen to the demos and either play along with the song or learn it
directly from the chart. In the days before decent home studios, Becker,
Fagen and Katz would often record a basic demo of a song as a guide for
the players. Chuck Rainey claimed that their demos of'Peg' and Josie'
were so good that they could have been released without any further
embellishment. It's doubtful whether Becker and Fagen felt the same way,
though.
Becker and Fagen had at various times made it quite clear to Chuck
Ramey that they didn't want him to slap his late Fifties Fender Precision
bass on any of their songs. A session player of considerable experience and
renown, Rainey felt somewhat annoyed about this precondition and what
he saw as Becker and Fagen's inflexibility. He felt more than qualified to
determine when it was appropriate to use his thumb on a bassline.Thus,
while they were recording 'Peg' in New York, Becker and Fagen told
Rainey that despite its slap-style groove, they didn't want it to sound like
a lot of other current records that featured such a technique. Rainey felt
that a slap line would be perfect for 'Peg' and when the recording of
actual takes started, he turned his back to the glass of the control room
and did slap the part. Becker, Fagen and Katz didn't realise.They thought
his bass line was really neat and everyone left the session happy.
Later on, during the recording of Aja, Rainey had serious problems
with his lower back and couldn't make some sessions. Gary Katz told him
that he couldn't get a bass player at such short notice and, rather than cancel
the session, suggested that Rainey send somebody over just to hold
the part down in his absence.They could then overdub the bass part later
when Rainey had recovered. He was delighted that Katz wasn't about to
hire another bass player, and not just because he would lose two or three
weeks' worth of double scale session fees.
Rainey taught bass guitar in Los Angeles, and he prepared one of his
more talented and adaptable students for the Steely Dan session and sent
him along to the Village Recorders. Unfortunately the student, in trying
to appear as a hardened studio professional, ignored all Rainey's advice
and very quickly became a target for ridicule. He took three basses
instead of only one; he arrived two hours before the scheduled one
o'clock session instead of immediately before the start time; and he scattered
handwritten notes all over the floor around him. He also broke the
golden rule of professionalism, which is not to bother any of the players
with questions about past projects. Chuck Rainey went on to suffer a
couple of years' worth of good-natured kidding about the incident.
However, there were times when things did not go according to plan.
Many of the hottest guitar players in Los Angeles tried to play the legendary
guitar solo in 'Peg' to Becker and Fagen's satisfaction. In all about
eight different guitarists (exaggerated estimates varied from 13 to over 20)
attempted it in what Becker and Fagen described as a "pantonal 13-bar
blues with chorus". Larry Carlton tried it, Robben Ford tried it, Walter
Becker tried it himself twice, but in the end it was Jay Graydon who
nailed what they were looking for.
Gary Katz explained why they found it so hard to get a solo that everyone
was happy with. "Everyone had their own idea of what that solo
should be and it just wasn't matching up to what Donald and Walter
expected of it. Jay Graydon was their last-ditch effort - it became Jay
Graydon's solo by default. It came out pretty much the way they had in
mind, though."
Becker admitted that though they demanded the utmost from guitar
players, the ends justified the means. "In the past it has been Larry who
played most of the guitar solos. We're probably hardest on guitar players.
But we get the best work. We've real charts and everything. It's more productive.
The musicians enjoy getting asked to do something that's challenging.
We like working with an overview, too. It's difficult, but it's fun.
It's not stupid music."
Despite the fact that Larry Carlton's solo was one of those rejected, he
later borrowed the opening chords to 'Peg' for his own composition,
'Room 335', and when playing this song live would introduce it by saying,
"This is the tune that I stole from Steely Dan." In fact Carlton hadn't
stolen it, but had obtained Becker and Fagen's permission to use their
chords beforehand.
Marotta also described how, on the same song, he was amazed when
Walter Becker called him and said, "Man, the difference between the
verse and the chorus is that you opened your hi-hat about a billionth of
an inch every couple of beats.' He called to ask if I did it on purpose. It
was just for a little lift."
Michael McDonald's distinctive background vocals also helped make
the song what it became. In fact, another well-known singer tried
McDonald's parts but it didn't turn out to Steely Dan's satisfaction.
Quizzed about the identity of the singer, Katz refused to name names for
fear of embarrassing him. Paul Griffin did feature on background vocals
on 'Peg', and that came about purely by chance. Griffin played electric
piano on the session and had a habit of singing along with playbacks in
the control room. When Katz heard Griffin blend with Michael
McDonald, he pointed it out to Becker and Fagen, who suggested that
he should go out and try it in the studio. It came out perfectly.
In 'Black Cow', the opening song of the album, Becker and Fagen used
a veteran studio drummer named Paul Humphrey, a Motown sessionist
with The Four Tops and Marvin Gaye. Humphrey's snare drum sounds
beautifully dry amid Chuck Rainey's thick, lubricious bass. Fagen told
Jim Ladd that 'Black Cow' depicted the foundering of a relationship
when a certain incident will stand out in a person's mind, and in this particular
case it was "this luncheonette in Anywhere, USA -- it was probably
in Brooklyn, I would imagine -- where the shit hit the fan."
The wilting sax break on 'Black Cow' was by Tom Scott, and Fagen
commended him for his work as horn arranger on the album. "We
consulted with him about the sort of thing we wanted; sometimes we'd
sing him some lines that we wanted in a certain spot. It was really a collaborative
thing, and then he would fill in a lot of the voices. He's a real
expert arranger for small bands -- well, for any kind of band really -- and
he took it very seriously, tried to do a great job and he really knew how
to match the kind of harmony in the rhythm section with the horn
charts. It really sounds like it was of a piece, although a lot of it wasn't
planned until the tracks were done.
"We went over the tunes very carefully with him," Fagen continued,
"and told him what we wanted. And generally his voicings follow the
piano voicings. He does have a very fine working knowledge of how to
do the proper voice at the right time."
Walter Becker admitted that Scott had contributed substantially more
to the horn charts than any of their earlier horn players. Usually Becker
and Fagen specified almost every detail, but in Scott's case, they gave him
an idea of what he definitely should and shouldn't do, while still allowing
him a certain amount of freedom. They used a mixed horn section of
five saxes, two trombones and a trumpet, as required by Becker and
Fagen's complex jazz chords.
Tom Scott was himself delighted to have been asked to work with
Becker and Fagen. "I tried to bring a real advanced harmonic conception
in the horn writing to their thing, and that has never been quite done
before -- at least with that size of band. You know, when you've got five
saxes and there are only three notes in the chord, sometimes I would
throw in a few funny notes. And they seemed to dig it. I was just trying
to add some kind of different harmonic intention that would enhance
what we already know about Steely Dan and their sound."
Walter Becker played some great guitar solos on Aja, including
'Home At Last' and 'I Got The News', but a candidate for the best must
surely be Josie', which was a real stormer. Usually both Fagen and
Becker were unduly modest when discussing their own musical contributions
to Steely Dan records, but some time after their split, when
Fagen was asked about Becker's guitar playing, he said: "Self-loathing is
really our speciality. He is a great guitar player; he doesn't have the kind
of technique that a Barney Kessel or someone has, but he's very inventive
and his touch is fantastic, and I always thought that his solos were
really my favourites, even though we were using the best players in the
country. I think even so his playing - at least stylistically - is so perfectly
matched to what we were trying to do. I guess that it's back to the word
attitude."
On 'Josie', Chuck Rainey was given a rare written bass part but he
asked to improvise and improve upon it using his own creativity. As with
'Peg' he employed a right-hand technique of palm slapping in the verse
to add colour and variety.
Even before they started recording the title song, Fagen and Becker's
vision of it featured a drum solo, and they admitted that initially they had
Tony Williams in mind for the part but eventually called New York-based
Steve Gadd out for the session.They had heard several good reports about
him recently, and Becker admitted that they may have mentioned
Williams' name to Gadd as a stylistic indicator. "Fortunately he didn't take
that too seriously," Becker said later.
There was never any explaining the vagaries of a Steely Dan session.
Some supposedly straightforward tunes would need endless takes to
achieve the track that Becker and Fagen were looking for, while others
that were long and complicated pieces would be nailed in the first or second
take.
On this occasion the latter applied. The whole studio was astonished
by Steve Gadd who, Fagen said, had "really invented a new kind of drumming
in those days." When the band came into the studio, the chart for
the song was pretty awe-inspiring itself. The song moved from section to
section like a suite, and Becker and Fagen wanted each part to be
extremely precise. "We figured we'd rehearse it for a day 'cause.it was quite difficult, but when we got to the studio, it must have been six or
seven pages and we just decided to run it down once and Steve Gadd,
aside from being a fantastic drummer, is a fantastic sight reader and didn't
really need to rehearse; neither did the rest of the band. They were really
good readers: Larry Carlton, Michael Omartian, Chuck Rainey and they
just went through the first take ...There was a little mark on the chart for
Steve Gadd to ad-lib through a certain part and a couple of different parts
that we figured we'd talk about and so on, but they just ripped through
it on the first take and we kept it." In fact, Gadd "ripped through" the
drum solo so much that some of the other musicians were mesmerised
into looking at him and not concentrating on their own playing.
Consequently, some of the other parts had to be re-recorded and
punched in later.
As well as Steve Gadd's drum solo,'Aja' included a masterful tenor saxophone
solo by Wayne Shorter, which was an excellent example of economy
and restraint. Fagen described how Shorter's solo was compiled in the studio. "On the song'Aja'Wayne did two or three takes. The first was
kind of a rehearsal, then he wrote down the changes, because they were
tough and hard to remember, so he wrote out the scales and did two
more takes, which we later combined. If Larry Carlton found a guitar part
complicated he'd play a bit and then we'd come up with a couple of suggestions.
It seemed like we were doing a lot of takes, but we were recording
on tape."
In order to complete the title song, Becker and Fagen inserted parts of
another discarded composition entitled 'Stand By The Seawall'. Michael
Omartian couldn't understand why Becker and Fagen had given up on it
'- he thought the song was "totally cool". The long guitar solo on 'Aja'
was played by Denny Dias, and Becker played some nice little blues
phrases the second time it went through the main theme.
It was one of their most outstandingly successful pairings of musician
and song. But more often than not it didn't turn out that way: "There
were many instances," Becker said,"when we conceived what we thought
were dynamite solo sections, but then nobody was comfortable with it.
We were wrong in thinking that so-and-so would rip this one right off."
I Got The News' was originally written for The Royal Scam sessions,
and in many ways is almost as sparse lyrically as 'Green Earrings', but is
decidedly more erotic. Originally, the tune didn't work out to their satisfaction
so Becker and Fagen rewrote it and changed the lyrics, but still
retained the keyboard part with Victor Feldman in mind. "We let him play
rather freely on the date," Fagen said. Fagen failed to mention another
occasion when Steely Dan had Feldman doing nothing but shaking a
salt-cellar for an entire six-hour session.
When Becker and Fagen were writing the songs for the album, Becker
called their ex-tour manager, Warren Wallace, a big sports fan and close
friend, and asked him for the names of some successful college football
teams. He reeled off a few names and was surprised months later to find
the most lyrically appropriate - Alabama, the Crimson Tide - used in
'Deacon Blues'.
Later, ABC asked Becker, Fagen and Katz to edit 'Deacon Blues' for a
single, but they refused on the grounds that the song would have been
totally destroyed. Pete Christlieb's sax solo was such an integral part of the song that to edit it out would have made a mockery of the whole tune.
'Deacon Blues' did come out as a single in April 1978, backed by 'Home
At Last'. It peaked at number 19.
Pete Christlieb was located by a process of trial and error. "He came
about because we liked the sax player on The Tonight Show and we found
out who it was," said Gary Katz. "We kept hearing this one guy who was
great, but never could figure out who in the band it was. We had one
piayer come down thinking it was him and when it wasn't, we called the
other one and it was Pete, and he was great. Pete's a free spirit, there's not
much controlling Pete, which is exactly what we want. So you just run
the music by him and he blows his brains out. He's just a great player.That
was just a very uninhibited session with Pete because he just wants to
play And we like that sort of spontaneity."
Katz also admitted that recording'Deacon Blues', as with 'Doctor Wu',
was "emotionally crushing" for him. Once again, Becker and Fagen's adolescent
hipsterism and jazz ideology formed the basis of a Steely Dan
song. Some years later, Donald Fagen explained the intent behind the
song: "Well, the idea of the song was about this kind of alienated kid out
in the suburbs who was looking for some sort of alternative values and
turns to jazz and hip culture as something to grab on to. And the basic
idea is that there's a kind of culture of losers that he'd rather be part of
than the general way of life in America.
"You know, they've got a name for the winners in the world, and the
losers should have some sort of franchise as well. And the name that he
has chosen that conveys a certain power is 'Deacon Blues'."
Aja was mixed at A&R Studios in NewYork, which was still a favourite
of Becker and Fagen's. "It's a real old studio, great echo. The whole album,
with the exception of'Peg', was mixed there because we like the engineer
that works there, Elliot Scheiner, who did the mixdown on all the
tracks but one. And there are some players in NewYork that we particularly
like. Sometimes it's easier to go there rather than get players to come
out from NewYork."
Fagen explained that both Becker and Nichols were "deeply into the
golden age of hi-fi. Our model was not the rock sound but Rudy Van
Gelder's Fifties sound, the sound he got on his Fifties Prestige recordings.
We'd mix our records to sound as much as possible like a Fifties Miles
Davis recording. We got so into that sound that at one stage we tried to
persuade Roger to forget stereo and mix everything down into mono.
He refused. For good or ill, it all came out of our own personalities, that
East Coast Beat sensibility. The beboppers had a way of dealing with the
white world that amounted to a kind of intense irony, and that influenced
us.
"There's something very funny about smooth sounds, they go along
with the whole American idea of slickness and smoothness, the idea faux-luxe; Mantovani, Mancini, the soundtrack of the Fifties. And we
rejected that whole Fifties sensibility... more of an insensibility really... and
looked for some authenticity in beat and blackness."
Becker and Fagen's legendary perfectionism in the studio meant that
they consigned many wonderful songs to the scrap heap. "It's happened
to more songs than I care to think about," Gary Katz confessed. Songs that
didn't make it on to Aja included the aforementioned 'Standing By The
Seawall', 'Shanghai Breakdown' and 'Were You Blind That Day?' Indeed,
they already had one version of'Gaucho' written, but it wasn't perfected
until three years later, during the sessions for the album of the same name.

Aja received a million dollars' worth of advance orders in the US alone
and, while the LP was selling by the truckload on both sides of the
Atlantic, the rising tide of punk began to rock the boat for many older
established groups. Aja, with its smooth, pristine production, was the
absolute antithesis of the unproduced, raw-edged records being made by
The Sex Pistols,The Clash and The Damned but Steely Dan went largely
ignored by the punks, who spewed invective on the likes of Led Zeppelin,
Yes and Pink Floyd, the old dinosaurs - or old farts - of rock, as they
called them. Becker and Fagen did say that punk music was of no interest
to them, though they did concede that as a sociological event the
upsurge may have had its benefits.
In truth, the punks' scorn made little impact on the old guard's record
sales, especially in America, and by the end of the year Aja had become
the third best-selling album in the country, surpassed only by Fleetwood
Mac's multiplatinum 'Rumours' and Linda Ronstadt's 'Simple Dreams'. It
won a Best Engineered Recording Grammy for Roger Nichols and was
nominated for Best Rock Album of the Year by the National Academy
for Recording Arts and Sciences.
Aja received unprecedented initial airplay and sales. It entered the Billboard album chart after only three weeks and virtually every song on
the album was being programmed while ABC were readying 'Peg' as the
first single. Eager Top 40 programmers even cast aside their usual reticence
to play album cuts.
Eventually 'Peg'/'I Got The News' became the lead-off single from the
album in November 1977, and justified its selection in the new year by
providing Steely Dan with their first Top 40 hit for 18 months. It was also
to be their biggest hit from the album. ABC wanted Steely Dan to edit
'Peg' - which was less than four minutes long anyway - but after a lot of
consideration and one abortive attempt to do so, they refused.
Reflecting on the album's phenomenally successful musical marriage
some years later, Fagen said, "I think the album reflected a wish on the
part of a lot of players to do something a little more sophisticated, more
mature, just expand the vocabulary of pop music." But they were only
expanding that vocabulary within Becker and Fagen's parameters, and
Becker placed more emphasis on their own input: "The way we did it we
were kind of the auteurs of the record, in the sense that a director is the
author of his film."
Becker put the success of Aja down to the fact that they now had the
luxury of being able to throw away everything that didn't work in the studio.
In the past, despite their perfectionism and because of budget constraints,
they were often forced to allow certain things through that they
knew they - and indeed the studio musicians - could improve upon, given
the time. On Aja, Fagen and Becker simply kept throwing material away
until they had an entire album's worth of wholly satisfying performances.
Becker also attributed the success to the general conditions of the
record-buying market at that time. He modestly maintained that during
certain periods of the year some records sold far more than at others. He
put it down to good timing and didn't claim any personal credit for Steely
Dan's skyrocketing sales figures.
Fagen admitted he was surprised by the number of units shifted, and
thought the reason the LP may have achieved such huge success was
because... "the audiences are being conditioned to getting more used to
jazz harmonies because of all this fusion business - that may have something
to do with it. I had assumed our audience would not go much
beyond 500.000 for an album, which it was up until Aja''
With the passage of time, Fagen was justifiably proud of the album and
called it "a wide range of listening experience". A few years later, Walter
Becker admitted to thinking that Aja was "dangerously ambitious".
Throughout its recording - before Aja clocked up record sales figures
- Steely Dan experienced business problems with ABC. They were trying
to renegotiate their contract with the record company anyway, but
their relationship had deteriorated to the point where what really worried
them was the thought - which Becker confessed in public - that the
company might actually have confiscated the master tapes as a penalty for
going over budget in studio costs. They had been in the studio for a very
long time and, after some modest rumblings during The Royal Scam, ABC
were now making loud noises over Aja's spiralling costs. Becker even
talked about finding a secret hiding place for their masters. They officially
put the difficulties down to a failure of communications between them
and the label, without specifying who was actually at fault. But their
confiscation fears proved to be totally unfounded.
"Generally, I would say that ABC didn't mind the fact that we didn't
tour that much, because each album sold more records than the last. It
seemed like the more invisible we were the more albums we'd sell, so that
wasn't much of a problem," said Fagen. "They complained about the
budgets, but not that hard. They realised that a lot of people go into the
studio and spend $100,000, some $200,000 and then some half a million
dollars and come out with something you can't sell. But if we went in and
spent a lot of money at least they knew we'd come out with something
good. There was some trouble over it, but not that much. Eventually we
got an offer from Warner Bros -- we actually signed with them while we
were making Aja or just before -- the idea being we'd have one more
album to do, then go over to Warner Brothers. It turned out we had two
more to do and by the time we got to Warner Brothers there was no more
Steely Dan."
"Our record budgets are large and our record sales are moderate," said
Fagen. "These days we probably spend maybe half what the profit is."
Becker and Fagen's inexorable drift away from ABC had picked up a
considerable head of steam. Then current ABC president, Steve Diener,
commented: "I hope they stay with the label. I have a lot of respect for
those guys. I really mean that. The reason I tolerate and even encourage
them is it's necessary for their own creative perfection. But when they
deliver... they deliver. They are a very special breed of cat, and that
includes their producer Gary Katz." Diener demonstrated his enthusiasm
and admiration for Steely Dan's music by writing half of the liner notes
for Aja. Comparing Becker and Fagen to medieval troubadours and
placing them on a "very special level", Diener exposed ABC's desire to
keep Steely Dan with the label, but his attempt was in vain. Ironically,
Diener himself was soon to be ousted from ABC (his failure to keep
Steely Dan on the label may well have been a contributing factor), and
Jerry Rubinstein put in charge.
Aja was also far and away Steely Dan's most successful album in the
UK; it charted in the top five, even without the benefit of a hit single.
The only significant interview Becker and Fagen granted was to Sylvie
Simmons from Sounds and they were in top form: joking about merchandising
the Steely Dan name with breakfast meats and Kewpie dolls,
and citing their fondness for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck - both Warner
Brothers characters - as their reason for signing with Warner Brothers
Records.
ABC International's Elaine Corlett faced obvious problems breaking
Steely Dan worldwide: there were only two relatively anonymous,
uncharismatic members, they didn't tour, they didn't like having their
photographs taken and hated doing interviews - and even when they did
an interview they often insulted the interviewer. Steely Dan albums were
selling very well, but ABC knew they would sell in even greater quantities
if Becker and Fagen would deign to do some dates, but nothing ABC
could do would force them onto the road. "The situation is not yet where
I'd like to see it," Corlett said. "If they would tour or do a film, it would
improve." As things turned out, the increasing pressure contributed to
Steely Dan moving over to Warner Bros.
The relative success of both 'Peg' and then 'Deacon Blues' on the singles
charts inspired ABC's creative services chief, Herb Wood (a former
executive at Motown, where his experience of TV advertising included
Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder) to arrange for a second advertising blitz
on Aja.WooA was a very strong advocate of the success of television marketing
and the two-week campaign ran during the first two weeks of July
and cost $275,000 in all - ABC's most extensive television advertising
campaign to date. The original TV ad had plugged the album with an
audio excerpt from the title song and a visual play on the LP cover; the
second ad concentrated on linking the album to the hit singles and followed
a plotline supposedly taken from both songs concerning a glamorous
movie star and her forgotten lover. In fact, as ABC didn't want
viewers to tire of the new commercial, they ended up mixing it with the
old one.
The third single within a year from Aja was Josie'/'Black Cow', which
was released in August 1978. It peaked at number 26 the following
month. 'Josie' details the return -- probably from a prison stretch -- of a
highly regarded ringleader and all the celebrations that will herald her
reappearance. She's a hellcat, a thief, a motorcycle freak and easy with her
virtues, but she's also violently loyal to her friends and disciples. It contains
another allusion to a Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie composition,'Scrapple
From The Apple'. Jim Keltner played on the song (he also
tried 'Peg' without success) and told Modern Drummer how Becker and
Fagen wanted something weird to overdub on the breakdown. Keltner
had been given a garbage can lid with rivets in it for Christmas and played
that, hence his credit for percussion. Becker and Fagen liked it and left it
on the song.
Gary Katz still couldn't understand why Steely Dan's singles weren't
bigger hits. "I have a sense that we put people off.There's something cold
that puts people off, whether it be the lack of touring, the lack of interviewing
or the lyrical content. I don't know why."
Steely Dan's harmonic complexity and strange lyrical puzzles didn't sit
easily alongside the majority of simple pop tunes that usually populated
the Top 40 in both the US and the UK, and most of their fans were somewhat
older than the average singles buyer anyway. Also, since all Steely
Dan singles (with the exception of'Dallas') were taken from their albums,
it's no surprise that the vast majority of Steely Dan fans didn't buy the
same song on two different formats. As Fagen later admitted, he came to
view singles simply as an advertisement for the albums.






Generally the critics heaped praise upon praise on Aja. Billboard said it
may well rank as the year's most polished album, High Fidelity called it
"easily the best album released thus far this year", and Richard Walls in Creem described it as "one of the most satisfying albums of the year." In
the UK, Steve Clarke of New Musical Express wrote that "Aja	stands
as simply the finest and certainly the most sophisticated and intelligent
rock album to be released this year."
In an interview with Melody Maker, Fagen cryptically described Steely
Dan's new album as "quite a departure, considering our past tawdry
records. This is the first album to include the elusive combination of the soak, the salta, the awn and the alder."
He was less cryptic about Aja's lyrics. "I think we're steering a little bit
away from melodrama. The tunes we ended up with are in a somewhat
lighter vein than the last album." As he had earlier promised, the album
contained... "some basically erotic material [but] not heavy breathing or
anything."
"A lot of people don't give a tinker's damn what in particular you're
singing about, and we're aware of that," said Becker. "So it should work
that if, theoretically, some portion of the audience didn't understand the
English language to any significant extent - which may be true, for all I
know - these things would actually sound good."
Some critics had scrutinised Steely Dan's albums so closely that they
felt they had discovered a theme linking all the songs. But Fagen denied
there was ever any grand concept to a Steely Dan album. "We do it song
by song," he said. "We don't really plan the shape of an album, except perhaps
subliminally. First in this album we had too many medium or slow
tempo songs, so we went in and cut a couple of uptempo ones. 'Peg' was
the last cut. We had a song slated for it [called] 'Here At The Western
World' that had originally been cut for The Royal Scam album. It was
laying around and we liked it a lot, but it didn't fit on Scam and we
thought we had too many songs in that tempo on this album, so it's still
sitting around. We'll get it out sooner or later."
Despite all their experience, Steely Dan still did not know where to
start looking in the search for a hit single, and were glad they were no
longer saddled with that responsibility. When he was asked if they were
bothering to release a single from the album, Becker took the opportunity
to take a swipe at programming restrictions, saying: "I'm sure we
will, but I don't know which one it will be. When we write the songs and
prepare the album, we really don't concern ourselves with that, because
we're not a good judge collectively of what's going to strike the public's
ear in that way. And a lot of our things are too long - there's all kinds of
restrictions in radio here, it can't be more than two minutes or something"
Steely
Dan were now being bracketed in the fusion category, but
Becker denied that they had found a new direction. "It's not more jazz or
less pop. It's just rock. We write rock songs, because when we were starting,
rock was the most exciting field. It was actually more interesting
melodically than jazz in the post-Coltrane period, before a lot of the new
jazz started."
Becker and Fagen had deliberately made a point of keeping their faces
off Steely Dan album covers, and Fagen admitted that they did this specifically
to try and avoid any image making. "We wanted it to stand by
itself..." Both men enjoyed their privacy and were very keen to remain
faceless, and this anonymity also served to deepen the mystery surrounding
the band. Likewise their habit of wearing sunglasses in photo shoots
(it was another in-joke between them), their long, unkempt hair and
shambolic clothes maintained their anti-image stance. But looking back
on it years later, Fagen's attitude had shifted." We could have been much
looser about the whole [image-making] thing," he said.
The anonymity was exacerbated by their continuing aversion to touring,
although there were serious talks about going on the road again
around the time Aja was released. After a three-year hiatus and all the
will-they-won't-they rumours, Becker and Fagen finally conceded and
agreed to some dates. Just as for the Katy Lied sessions, Becker and Fagen
hand-picked a seven-foot Yamaha piano for their planned post-Aja tour
and installed it in Denny Dias's house, where rehearsals were due to take
place. But after precious few they called the whole deal off.The piano still
resides with Denny Dias and his family in Los Angeles.
Donald Fagen was adamant about wanting certain crack musicians on
the tour and allegedly said that if they didn't go, he wouldn't either. These
studio players knew of their indispensability and all wanted enormous
amounts of money to sign up. Being the crime de la creme, they were entitled
to ask for those sums, but what none of them knew though was that
as a mark of respect to Denny Dias, Becker and Fagen intended paying
him more than any of the hired guns. Certain estimates asserted that the
tour would be bound to lose money. Others voiced the opinion that
Donald Fagen didn't think he could perform well enough vocally.
Whatever the true story, Steely Dan was being offered an awful lot of
money, and Katz was trying his damnedest to persuade Fagen to do it. "I
push them so much," he said. "I hate to see Donald turn that money
down, I really do. It's selfish. They may not owe it to anybody, but they
do owe it to themselves to go out and play."
But as Fagen had told Katz on several occasions, "You don't have to go
out there and make a fool of yourself." Fagen still had strong reservations:
"All we can do is please ourselves and then assume the average fan is
something like us. We can't try to please the fans because we really have
no idea who buys our records.
"We'll go out on tour eventually. As soon as we get all this business stuff
straight. Do maybe 20 dates. I don't like to travel, but I'd like to do maybe
20 dates. We'll see how it goes. If it's a good band, we'll probably take it
out again. It depends how sick I am after the 20 dates."
After the aborted rehearsals, Fagen disguised the real reason for their
abandonment. "We had rehearsed a few musicians, but it became apparent
that we just didn't have enough time between the album and the tour.
The whole thing was going to be more complicated than we had
expected."
Amid all the confusion, even Walter Becker didn't seem to know what
exactly was going on. "We had planned to do it, to tour, but at this point
I'm just not sure what we're going to do. The album was originally going
to be released considerably sooner and when we did finish it, the record
company wanted to hold it for a while. So the tour that had been planned
was completely inappropriate, because it was going to happen before the
record came out. And we decided we'd put it on the back burner for the
time being." Becker even went on to suggest that they would begin
rehearsals again soon, having underestimated the amount of time necessary
to start from scratch and work the songs up to an acceptable standard.
Incredibly,
Fagen then declared that when they realised that the audience
would expect them to play 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number',
'Reelin' The Years' and other Steely Dan chestnuts, they just weren't
interested in recreating their old hits live on stage. "We're interested in new material. Once it's done... get rid of it."
Very little had changed since Steely Dan's earlier tours. Before it had
been, in Fagen's words, "bridges between almost every song" and "a constant
din from beginning to end". For the past-Aja tour, Fagen mentioned
having written a 45-minute medley of songs from the first three
Steely Dan albums. He never actually specified which songs were
included in that medley, but it would have made interesting listening
nonetheless.
Despite all their imaginative excuses as to why the rehearsals were
abandoned, Becker and Fagen eventually came clean on the real reason the
salary arrangements. "There was a sliding pay scale ... based on the
amount of money to be lost by various musicians leaving town. When this
became evident to some of the members who had, uh, slid considerably
from the top of the pay scale, they had things to say like,'How come him
... ?' and 'And me?'And we said,'Oh, shit', we felt like capitalists exploiting
and repressing these musicians, so we cancelled the band after the first
rehearsal."
At one stage, Becker and Fagen claimed to have been looking for some
young musicians to feature on their album, but had been disappointed
and had had to resort to the same studio clique again. Although they
failed to find any new and exciting players there were no less than 11 new
names on Aja that hadn't appeared on previous Dan albums. They
included Steve Gadd, Wayne Shorter, Lee Ritenour, Steve Khan, Pete Christlieb and Jim Keltner, any one of whom could have commanded a
touring salary of at least $1,000 a week.

After they had finished working on Katy Lied, Becker and Fagen had
agreed to produce an eponymous album by their old Bard friend Terence
Boylan. Label boss David Geffen had just signed him to Asylum Records
and, when Becker and Fagen heard Boylan's songs, they were impressed.
If they were going to produce the album, Becker said, they would stipulate
which studio to work in as well as which musicians to use: Jim
Gordon, Victor Feldman, Dean Parks and Chuck Rainey.
Becker worked on a Boylan song called 'Rain King', but after booking
some sessions a month or so ahead something cropped up that prevented
the Steely Dan duo from attending. Boylan went ahead without them,
and when Becker and Fagen eventually showed up they said he'd done
just fine and suggested he might as well continue without them. Fagen
contented himself with playing piano on two songs, 'Don't Hang Up
Those Dancing Shoes' and 'Fame'.
Once the Boylan album was finished, Asylum wanted to hold it until
the fall of 1976; then Boylan decided to add another song, which meant
the deadline was missed and spring of 1977 was mooted instead. Then
Asylum changed their minds again and the album didn't appear in the
shops until the fall of 1977.
In December 1977, ABC in the UK released a Steely Dan 12 inch in
the Plus Fours series that included 'Do It Again', 'Haitian Divorce', Steely
Dan's first and rarest single, Dallas', and another previously unreleased
Becker/Fagen song called 'Sail The Waterway'.
Only two days after Aja had been certified gold, Fagen called Paul
Griffin and asked him to attend a studio in Los Angeles to work on some
new tunes. Griffin was astonished by Fagen's dedication; if he had just
released a gold album he admitted that he would almost certainly have
been on a beach in the South of France or some other exotic destination,
rewarding himself for his hard work and achievement.
In the wake of Aja's success, Walter Becker confirmed that, as had been
rumoured, Steely Dan were intent on following Gary Katz to Warner
Bros but admitted that ABC did own the rights to a greatest hits album.
But they couldn't be serious about it: among their suggestions for possible
titles were 'Steely Dan:The Golden Years', I Remember Steely Dan',
'That Was The Steely Dan That Was' and 'The Good Songs'.
It was also time to sort out two pressing matters: Denny Dias and their
lack of management. Dias officially left Steely Dan after Aja was released.
He was glad that it was finally over, because he felt he had been holding
on under false pretences. His contributions had grown progressively
sparser with each successive album and, in the meantime, he had been playing
with other groups, notably The Hampton Hawes Quintet. When
Fagen and Becker asked Dias what financial requirements he had, he asked
for a guaranteed minimum for a couple of years just so that he could get
himself on his feet, and without hesitation they agreed generous terms.
As the band had been managerless since their acrimonious split with
Joel Cohen, Gary Katz wanted to see Steely Dan's business affairs put in
the hands of an experienced manager with plenty of clout in the industry,
and he mounted a small campaign for them to adopt a higher profile
in this regard. Katz arranged a meeting for them with Irving Azoff, whose
company Front Line Management handled The Eagles, Dan Fogelberg,
Boz Scaggs and Jimmy Buffett. "We were ready to go blissfully through
life without a manager," Becker admitted.
The meeting convinced Becker and Fagen that Azoff was indeed the
man who could give Steely Dan the lift they needed to get to the top of
the league. "We were doing fine, you know," Becker said. "Going out and
looking for managers is like going out and looking for rattlesnakes. Irving
impressed us with his taste for the jugular... and his bizarre spirit. He
thought we could do much better about making America Steely Dan conscious.
He wanted a new hobby. We figured, sure, take a shot."
Azoff, rich, short but powerfully built, and a big noise in the US rock
industry, was a very big Steely Dan fan already, and he immediately put
into motion a plan to push sales of Aja high above the million mark.
"Here's how we did it," he explained later. "Simple strategy. Think of the
biggest American supergroups: Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Chicago...
and Steely Dan. Everybody knows Steely Dan. They belong in that list.
All we had to do was make it official.
"I used my power base and called all my rack-jobber friends -- the
guys in the field and the record chains - and I offered them Aja for a
suggested $6.98 instead of the $7.98 list price. Most of them knew they
could stock up early and retail it as if it were $7.98. They all bought
two, three, four times as many as normally. I told them the offer would
last two weeks. We never raised the price. And they kept selling. So
here's this album that's number three in the country. What radio station
isn't going to play a hit Steely Dan album? It's been the most played
album for weeks. We killed the Stones, didn't we? It was fun. Those guys
would have gotten there sooner or later anyway. They deserved it
sooner."
The album cover also proved to be a strong selling point, featuring a
stunning and enigmatic photograph of a Japanese model called Saeko
Yunaguchi by Hideki Fujii. Becker and Fagen finally got the go-ahead to
use an expensive finishing process called "liquid lamb", which gave the
cover more depth and gloss. They had wanted to use it on earlier albums
but it had proved to be too expensive.
In the short term, Becker and Fagen stayed in Los Angeles to write the
theme song for the film FM. Steely Dan's new manager Irving Azoff was
originally the movie's executive producer, but once shooting was complete
he asked for his name to be dropped from the credits. It was an early
indication of the quality of the film that soon reached Fagen and Becker,
but they were already committed. They penned the title song, 'FM',
which was built up layer by layer from a click track and featured their old
buddies" from The Eagles, Glenn Frey, Don Henley and Tim Schmit, on
backing vocals.
'FM' was their first film song since 'You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk
It'."We wrote a song that would sound good with a big production, and
an overdub of strings (arranged by Johnny Mandel), that would sound
good coming out of movie-theatre speakers," said Fagen. "If it had been
a mystery film it would have worked out better. I feel like we didn't compromise
on the song at all to make it programme music. But then, we still
haven't seen the movie."
Bearing in mind the title of the single, A.M. radio stations naturally
wouldn't play the song, but then in an amazing display of initiative, they
took the 'A' from Aja, which was harmonically compatible and edited it
into the song so that where 'FM' should have been,'AM' came out instead.
Boasting another fine sax solo from Pete Christlieb,'FM' was a sizeable
hit for Steely Dan in America - number 22 - and a minor one in England,
but Fagen was not necessarily impressed by chart placings."The song was
a hit, but I think we should have seen the movie before we committed
ourselves. But I enjoyed doing it, and I thought it was a very successful
piece of movie music. As you know, it wasn't a successful movie."
Roger Nichols won another Grammy for Best Engineered Recording
for 'FM/FM Reprise' -- his third Grammy and the only time any engineer
has won a Grammy for a single song.
Becker and Fagen decided to take a year off in 1978 and used the time
to work on a couple of projects that were really labours of love. Woody
Herman had heard Steely Dan songs on the radio, but when one of his
musicians gave him a cassette of Aja, he loved it and became a true fan.
Then Dick LaPalm, who had worked with both parties and knew that
the big band leader was looking for material to stand alongside a suite
written by Chick Corea, played him some of Steely Dan's earlier material.
Herman was impressed enough to decide to devote an entire side of
an album to their compositions.
The Village Recorders donated studio time free of charge and the
engineers and technicians also worked for nothing. Becker and Fagen,
who had long been Woody Herman fans, got together with him and
selected five songs, 'Green Earrings' (arranged by Joe Roccisano, for
which he was nominated for a Grammy),'Kid Charlemagne', I Got The
News', 'Aja', and 'FM'. The 15-piece Thundering Herd orchestra
recorded all five songs at Wally Heider's Hollywood studio in just two
days during January 1978 and they were mixed the following month.
Becker and Fagen were delighted to be able to attend the sessions. "They
were the happiest two days of my life," said Becker. The album was called Chick, Donald, Walter And Woodrow and was released on the Century label.
When BBC Records in the UK issued a CD of the album in the early
Nineties an extra track,'Deacon Blues', was included on the list.
"The tunes that came out the best, like 'Green Earrings', were the ones
that were most reworked for the big band," said Fagen. He joked that it
could end up with Steely Dan music being rearranged for marching
bands. Becker and Fagen wrote some humorous sleeve notes based on
Dick LaPalm's habit of dangling a quarter attached to a length of nylon
fishing line from his third-floor office on to the sidewalk below, pulling
it away from anyone's grasp if they bent to pick it up.
The same year Becker and Fagen snagged the job of producing their
first out-and-out jazz album by tenor saxophonists Warne Marsh and Pete
Christlieb. Marsh and Christlieb hit upon the idea of playing together,
and their recordings of some tenor duets found its way into the hands of
Becker and Fagen. The band was a quintet with piano, bass and drums
completing the line-up. The record was called Apogee - Dick LaPalm
came up with the title. Becker and Fagen wrote a song especially for the
album called 'Rapunzel,' which was based on a particular Fagen favourite
by Dionne Warwick called 'In The Land Of Make Believe' and written by
Burt Bacharach and Hal David. They asked Robert Palmer to write the
sleeve notes for the album. "We heard the song on a Dionne Warwick
record and thought it would be nice to blow on," Fagen said, adding that
the album "is basically for tenor freaks".
Other compositions on the album included Charlie Parker's 'Donna
Lee', Jerome Kern and John Mercer's 'I'm Old Fashioned', a song written
by Joe Roccisano, and Christlieb's own 'Magnatism'.
Since they had found Pete Christlieb in The Tonight Show band, Becker
and Fagen decided to send Johnny Carson a copy of the album, but it
appears that even if he got to hear the record at all, he was singularly
unimpressed. "His secretary wrote back saying he'd listen to it," Fagen
said. Of course, Becker and Fagen never heard from the chat show host.
Originally due for a late October shipping, ABC released a double
album of Steely Dan's Greatest Hits (1972-1918) in November 1978.
There was one previously unreleased song on the album, a divine song
about a brothel featuring Michael Omartian's exquisite piano playing
called 'Here At The Western World'. Becker and Fagen overdubbed the
background singers during the same period when they were mixing the Apogee album with Elliot Scheiner in NewYork.
The album featured another enigmatic cover photograph, this time by
Image Bank's Pete Turner. The inside photo of Becker and Fagen was
taken by Anton Corbijn in the lobby of the Hotel de L'Europe in
Amsterdam in the summer of 1976, when Becker and Fagen were in
Europe promoting The Royal Scam. The photograph also featured a mystery
piano player in the background and accompanied an interview
Becker and Fagen gave to Oor ("ear") magazine in Holland. As usual,
Becker and Fagen were reluctant subjects, but they liked Corbijn's photograph
so much that after Oor's editor had taken the shot to the USA
and Rolling Stone bought it for use in a December 1977 piece on Steely
Dan, Becker and Fagen then asked for it to be used on the forthcoming 3 Greatest Hits package. The album was a sure-fire winner, ultimately
racking up platinum status, reaching number 30 in the US and 41 in
the UK.
Becker and Fagen had taken great care in selecting the songs for the
record, but Fagen was still sure... "that somebody will find something to
object to our leaving off the album". Then he adopted his less serious
mode: "We were going to put 'FM' on our Greatest Hits album, but we
decided not to. But they sent us over all the tracks from the soundtrack,
so we were thinking of putting 'More Than A Feeling' by Boston on our Greatest Hits, too."
After the fun that Becker and Fagen had working on FM they were
already supposedly considering some other offers in that same sphere.
"We have also recently been talking to a German animator named Klaus
Gorman about doing music for an animated film he's making tentatively
titled The History of the CIA," they told one interviewer, but whether they
were serious is anyone's guess.
Buoyed by Aja's success, the fun projects they had undertaken and their
time off, Becker and Fagen were in fine fettle. The only dark cloud on
the horizon was the difficulty of living a fulfilling life in Los Angeles.
They simultaneously decided to return to the East Coast to live.Although
they were not planning on recording, they continued to write songs
together and, in an unusual display of loquaciousness, Donald Fagen
called Rolling Stone to inform them that he and Becker were thinking of
moving back to NewYork.
Their plans then called for the next Steely Dan album to be recorded
by two different studio bands, each playing one side of material. All the
songs were to be written in NewYork, followed by one of the bands then
touring under the Steely Dan banner. It would be easier to teach one of
the groups all the songs, but this turned out to be another grand idea that
never came to fruition.




Chapter IX
Bodacious Cowboys


When Becker and Fagen finally did return to NewYork, Fagen especially
was delighted to be back in his adopted home town. "I
moved into the Stanhope Hotel and from my window I could watch steel
drum bands, Latin, salsa and even bagpipe groups playing in front of the
Met," he said with something approaching cheerfulness, although this was
never a state of mind much associated with Steely Dan. "Then I'd go outside
for a walk and all the way down to 43rd Street, one tenor sax would
fade into another. It's nice to have music in the streets."
Eventually they moved into the same luxury apartment building on
Central Park West, Fagen on the third floor and Becker on the 11th. Like
John Lennon and Paul Simon, both of whom lived nearby, they could
look down on Central Park's sylvan delights and choose between the solitude of their remote castles or the street life at ground level.
Soon after their return, Fagen discovered a bad-taste blues singer called
Root Boy Slim and The Sex Change Band with The Rootettes through a
friend at a radio station. With time on their hands, Fagen and Becker took
their enthusiasm for the band to unusual lengths -- even attending recording
sessions at Criteria Studios in Miami while on vacation, and going
down to Washington DC to see Root Boy Slim perform live. Gary Katz
produced his eponymous album, which contained such delightful titles as
'Heartbreak Of Psoriasis','Too SickTo Reggae'and'Boogie 'TilYou Puke'.
Steely Dan's patronage had no impact whatsoever upon sales of the
album and Warner Bros dropped the band.They signed to Illegal Records
and followed their 1978 debut with an album entitled Zoom a year later,
which was also a flop. (Root Boy Slim's own life was an unhappy one,
too. He became an alcoholic and drug addict and was admitted to various
institutions several times. He turned to writing poetry but eventually
died in 1993, aged 48.)
A previously unreleased Becker and Fagen composition appeared in
1979 on the eponymous debut album of a jazz-funk band called Dr Strut,
the album was released on the Motown label which was at the time 
trying to broaden its musical horizons, and featured Countdown To Ecstasy assistant engineer Tim Weston on guitar. Dr Strut was comprised of four
other hot session players and songwriters, and 'Canadian Star' was the
only song on the album not written by the band themselves. It was a
superbly melodic instrumental boasting some lovely guitar and sax interplay
between Weston and David Woodford. The band never achieved the
recognition they deserved. They released a second LP called Struttin' in
1980, but faded rapidly from sight after that.
Becker and Fagen began recording again themselves sometime in
1979. The sessions flitted between Soundworks, A&R Studios, Sigma
Sound and Automated Sound in Manhattan, but they occasionally flew
cross country to Los Angeles for sessions at their favoured Village
Recorders and Producers Workshop.
A variety of circumstances, most of them unfortunate, caused the next
- and final - Steely Dan album to be the longest, most expensive and certainly
most difficult to complete. First and foremost, Becker and Fagen
were under enormous pressure to top Aja's runaway critical and commercial
success, but several other factors would weigh them down. They
both underwent private, personal crises; there were lingering legal hassles
to be resolved with their former record company; and, most disturbing of
all, there was the complete loss of one of the best tracks for the new
record. In the end, after working steadily for five days a week for just
under two years, Gaucho was complete -- but the price they paid was the
end of their partnership.
"There was a long getting-to-know-you phase with the New York
musicians, a courtship," Fagen offered as a none-too-convincing excuse
for the delays. "We would put in a lot of work just to find out that ultimately
something wasn't going to make it, whereas in the past we could
tell on the first layer of work. On 'Glamour Profession' we must have
spent three times as much time and effort making versions that turned
out to be just demos."
Years later, Fagen's terrible memories of the record still lingered. "The
writing was hard, the recording was hard, everything about it was like
pulling teeth," he said in 1993. "That album is almost a document of
despair. We were running out of steam as far as our youthful energy was
concerned and we hadn't matured enough to deal with it. We were still
adolescents."
Fagen went on to say that they had "made more use of layering than
we have in the past. Some of our experiments with tunes became more
than experiments -- we thought they became more than experiments --
We thought we had a record for a long time. We didn't realise that we didn't
really. Then we had to start from scratch."
Gary Katz was behind them all the way when it came to justifying
their long stint in the studio. He stressed the testing nature of Steely Dan
sessions. "The songs are all really hard to play well. There are a lot of
changes, and we demand more than some people do in the final product.
Session musicians come from 14-jingle dates or whatever, and they sit
down and see these chord changes, and they have to, like, sit for a while
and play. Negotiating all the rhythmic nuances of the chord changes correctly
and as a unit, it's time-consuming. Most of these guys are used to
going in, seeing a track, and ripping it off in two or three hours. That
never happens. The only time that ever happened was Aja; Steve Gadd
ripped that off, solos and all. That tune was done in an hour and a half,
the only tune that has happened with in all the years. It freaked us out."
During the same 1979 interview with Jon Pareles in Musician, Katz said
that he was already throwing away two tracks for the current album that
were 60 per cent complete. "Either it's great till the minute it's done," he
said, "or it's as worthless as never having been done. We punch in everything,
anything, anywhere."
They were always on the lookout for new and exciting players to
incorporate into the Steely Dan sound. Consequently they were frequently
being encouraged to check out this guitarist or that drummer.
But they needed more than just the plaudits of friends before they could
contemplate using a musician on one of their songs. "People will say that
so-and-so is a great player," Becker said, "but usually they're not descriptive
enough about what it is he does, not enough to give us an idea of
what's appropriate or how to use him."
Most of the regular studio players were more than familiar with Steely
Dan's methods and knew how to handle the pressure. But during the Gaucho sessions, Steely Dan utilised the skills of at least one novice as far
as session work went - Dire Straits' guitarist (and singer and principal
composer) Mark Knopfler. Becker and Fagen had first heard and been
impressed with his guitar playing on Dire Straits' debut album in 1978.
Knopfler was asked to take a crack at the solo on 'Time Out Of Mind',
but he was not a sight reader and had to ask Becker and Fagen for a tape
of the song so that he could take it back to his hotel and work on it. It
was his first studio session outside of recording with his own band, and
here he was in NewYork with one of the most demanding outfits around.
It was no surprise to learn that Knopfler was intimidated by Becker and
Fagen's reputation. Once the session was under way, he didn't appreciate
that their demands to try things over and over again, and persistent
requests to try something different, were standard Steely Dan behaviour,
and no reflection on either their dissatisfaction with his efforts or his ability
as a guitarist.
Becker gave Knopfler a copy of the tape, but didn't make it clear which
sections of the song they wanted him to play over -- and he didn't know
all the chords either. "When he came in we could tell he was worried,"
said Becker. "He got set up and said there were some sections he didn't
know. We said,'Don't worry, because that isn't where we're going to have
you playing'. But what came out was good. Anyway, it takes a long time
for us to do things and maybe he felt like he was some kind of remedial
guitar player, because it took hours for us to do the stuff. But that happened
with everybody."
Initially, when Knopfler was questioned about the session, he wasn't
able to disguise his disappointment. It was, he said, "A strange experience
- like getting into a swimming pool with lead weights tied to your
boots." Knopfler wasn't used to the brash NewYork manner and how
they would discuss his efforts - in complimentary fashion or not - right
in front of him. But the tape operator came up to him at the end of the
session at about four in the morning and said, "Man, you did great. I've
seen musicians crawling out of here after their sessions."
Becker and Fagen weren't able to allay Knopfler's nervousness and
frustration. "I think he definitely felt that, because he would play something
and it was ok, then we'd say, 'Let's try one more'. Occasionally it
happened where a jazz player played something and we'd say that sounds
good, let's try one more and he'd say, 'What was wrong with that?' The
answer to that question is that there was nothing wrong with it, but we wanted to achieve some other effect. So I think there was a bit of that and
probably a little culture gap there as well. Anyway, I'm glad that it worked
out."
In his review of the album, Richard Evans in Melody Maker wrote that Knopfler's solo was barely audible and likened it to "employing
Michelangelo to paint your ceiling with Dulux".The solo was overshadowed
by Rob Mounsey's stabbing brass parts, and didn't do justice to
either Knopfler or Becker and Fagen.
Producer Katz was Becker and Fagen's main line of communication
with the session musicians and singers. Fagen later said that he and Becker
were often too shy to talk to players and that Katz's task was to put the
musicians at ease by making small talk, more often than not discussing
baseball and hockey, and thus get them in the mood to play.
Since Katz himself was a sports fan who set up several video
recorders to tape various baseball, football and hockey games, and who
insisted on never knowing the result before watching them, this was no
problem.
"We try to run Steely Dan sessions like jingle dates," Katz said of their
methods. "Everyone loves jingle dates. They go so quickly, they sound so
great, everything is laid out so clearly.They don't go quite so quickly for
us, but that's what we try for. With Donald and Walter right from the first
it was serious business. At the beginning we knew exactly what they
wanted in their music, but they had to learn the technique of making it
work. It took work in the studio to bounce it back, to refine it. After the
basic rhythm track is done, the rest is trial and error, apart from a little bit
of an idea. We try everything we think might work and reject them if we
don't like it later."
Becker and Fagen fully intended the Gaucho album to herald a return
to shorter songs in the mould of Pretzel Logic and Katy Lied. But things
didn't turn out that way, and Katz later sounded almost apologetic.
"Before we even went near the studio and before most of the tunes were
written, one night we said, 'Listen, this album we're gonna make short
pop songs, we'll put ten songs on the album'. But the tunes wound up
being longer than that. To this day I couldn't tell you what happened.
Donald said, 'Look, all right, I mean, it's a verse, a chorus, a verse, a chorus,
an instrumental and out -- I mean, what's so big?' And it comes out
to be five and a half, six minutes. It's not like excess, it just works out that
way. There isn't a lot of dead space in their songs now, everything that we
use from bar to bar has a good reason for being there. They're much
tighter pop songs now, even though they run six minutes."
When Becker and Fagen were composing material for their albums,
their prime consideration was Fagen's vocal ability, and his honest but
modest self-appraisal of it. "I don't have a large range," he said, "so it has
to be within a certain interval." However, occasionally Becker and Fagen
must have overlooked this because on one song slated for Gaucho called
Heartbreak Souvenir', which featured some classic Bernard Purdie and
Anthony Jackson, Fagen discarded the track because he said it was "too
hard to sing". As a result of this habit, Fagen gave Roger Nichols a piece
or paper personally signed on which he promised not to write songs he
couldn't sing. Nichols admitted that he's had to show Fagen the note several
times since.
During the recording of Gaucho, the atmosphere in the studio was
distinctly uneasy all round. Walter Becker was wrestling with his drug
problem and Fagen, too, was depressed and tetchy about the slow and
painful progress of the sessions. They were beginning to have their first
serious disagreements; Becker's problems led to unpunctuality and sometimes
even failing to arrive for recording sessions at all, and even Fagen,
himself not the most reliable of time-keepers, wasn't prepared to tolerate
his partner's sloppy agenda.
Fagen later put it as delicately as he could without offending Becker.
"Music wasn't his first love at that point, I think," he said. "He was kinda
leaping towards destruction." Fagen explained that the problem had spun
out of control in California and said that since Becker didn't like himself,
he was headed for trouble no matter where he chose to live. Not only did
he find Becker difficult to work with, he didn't know how to begin to
address the situation... and decided that it was best for him not to interfere
at all. Hopefully, once Gaucho was finished, Becker would eventually
figure out a way to resolve his problems.
Christmas 1979 was a very bleak time for Becker and Fagen, but for
different reasons. They had been working on a song called 'The Second
Arrangement', which was the first tune to be finished for the album. It
had been a dream to record -- the track almost fell together and it was
Roger Nichols and Gary Katz's favourite song on the album at the time.
One evening, Fagen asked Gary Katz to get an engineer to prepare the
song for listening when they next returned to the studio. Unfortunately,
in the process of carrying out this task, the engineer thought he was at
the tail leader of the tape and put all twenty-four tracks on record. In
actual fact, he was at the head leader and he inadvertently completely
erased all 24 tracks three-quarters into the song.
That night Katz was having dinner at the Stage Deli with his young
son. Midway through the meal Roger Nichols burst into the restaurant
and informed him that 'The Second Arrangement' had been erased. Katz
knew Nichols wasn't the type to joke about such a serious matter, and
when he returned to Soundworks he found the engineer in tears in the
middle of the studio. Many weeks and thousands of dollars' worth of
effort had been erased at the careless flick of a switch, and although
Becker and Fagen tried to re-record the song, they could never recapture
the spontaneity of the original and it had to be shelved. (Steely Dan had
long since decided never to make safety copies of tunes due to the inferior sound quality.)
The responsibility for telling Becker and Fagen the bad news fell to
Roger Nichols and when Fagen heard it, he didn't utter a word - he just
turned around and walked out of the studio.
Tracking engineer Elliot Scheiner could never understand why Becker
and Fagen used a different band when they attempted to recapture the
song.The original featured Ed Greene on drums, Don Grolnick on keyboards,
Will Lee on bass and Hiram Bullock on guitar, but when they
tried it for the second time they brought in Steve Gadd instead of Ed
Greene - and two more different drummers would be hard to imagine.
Fagen eventually got over his disappointment and was pretty
matter-of-fact about the incident. "He was aligning the machine making
record tests, and he was making the record tests on the same reel
the tune was on. He went past the tape leader - he must have fallen
asleep or something - and into the tune. And when he woke up it was
somewhere in the last quarter of the song. And he had all 24 tracks on
record. We tried to do the song over, but it was too depressing. We
decided we'd either do it sometime in the future or forget about the
whole thing."
The loss of such a gem -was a tragedy. 'The Second Arrangement' -was
another Becker and Fagen cracker and would have set well with the other
songs on the album. Hiram Bullock's majestic guitar hook masked a tale
of loneliness, adultery and sexual jealousy.The song contained their usual
references to unusual objects: in this case a yellow Jag and a Gladstone
bag.
"I would like to think that the next album won't take this long," Katz
said midway through the sessions. "An engineer accidentally erased a
completed track. That was one of the most serious emotional setbacks
we've had in the studio. We started it again from scratch, building up the
rhythm arrangement, the guitars, the voices, and when that didn't pan
out, we had to start another tune from scratch." That "new" song turned
out to be 'Third World Man'.
Becker and Fagen had the erased song in a variety of forms and were
using 'The Second Arrangement' as its working title. Eventually the
dummy lyrics they had been using in the studio took on greater significance
and became the basis for the actual lyric. This was by no means an
unusual occurrence; sometimes when Fagen was singing to assist the
musicians with a tune, if he sang impromptu lyrics they occasionally
became so used to them that they sometimes wound up retaining them
anyway.
Rob Mounsey had also been involved in the recording of the tune and,
during an encounter with Donald Fagen some years later, began quoting
the lyrics to him. Fagen was astonished that they were still lodged in
Mounsey's brain. He could barely remember them himself, but what
really amused Fagen was that the words Mounsey remembered were the
dummy lyrics that they had used for the scratch vocal.

In January 1980, Walter Becker was devastated when Karen Stanley, his
girlfriend of many years, died from acute mixed drug intoxication in their
shared Upper West Side apartment. She was 31. One year later, her
mother, Lilian Wyshak, a lawyer from Beverly Hills, hit Becker with a
massive $17 million lawsuit claiming that he had caused her death by
introducing her to heroin, cocaine, and encouraging her to live with him
in an intimate relationship.
Becker's close friends countered with information that had not
been made public previously -- that he had paid numerous very costly
hospital bills for Stanley in trying to assist her to beat her dependency, and
had gone into seclusion after her death. Becker's grief turned to anger
that he should be blamed for his girlfriend's death and he aggressively
countersued. The case was eventually settled out of court in Becker's
favour, but his troubles continued to dog him for some time afterwards
too.
"The reason why the album cost so much," Fagen said, "and why it
took so much time was first and foremost bad luck. We had numerous
technical problems in recording the LP. We lost what was to be one of
the album's most up songs when the tape was mistakenly erased. We also
moved back to NewYork from LA and were unfamiliar with the musicians
and the studios."
Being unfamiliar -with the players hardly bears examination, since the
only mainline musicians on Gaucho who had not previously appeared on
a Steely Dan album were bass player Anthony Jackson (who wound up
on only two songs anyway) and keyboard player Rob Mounsey. As for the
studios, Steely Dan did much of the work for Gaucho where they had
logged countless hours on earlier albums, so that also proved to be a rather
poor excuse.
Fagen eventually offered what was perhaps a much more accurate
assessment of the reason for their tardiness. "It can also be attributed to
the fact that we were going through a pretty dry period creatively. We
were writing songs, but it took us a while to get enough songs that met
our standards. We would have worked on it longer, but we didn't want
to go over a million dollars, because we felt it would be too excessive
and self-indulgent. We went into the studio before we had a selection of
songs that met with our standards and some misconceived ideas."
Fagen had often lamented the shifting nature of their band and the fact
that he and Becker had never been fortunate enough to know other
like-minded musicians from their early days in their own neighbourhoods."A
perfect situation for me is the Duke Ellington Orchestra, which
stayed together for 60 years. Unfortunately, we write such a variety of
material, it's best to finish it and then decide stylistically who would be
the best for it. I do miss having a band now. Having musicians there who
are always ready to try things out, that sort of thing. But the original
band was thrown together rather haphazardly. It was never as satisfying a
relationship as some groups have. It never gelled like The Band or even
something like The Grateful Dead, where it's guys who have played
together for years and have developed a relationship as people as well as
musicians."
It was during the making of Gaucho that Roger Nichols' growing
interest in computers and Fagen's desire to have a machine that could
fulfil extremely precise drum patterns led to him designing a beast they
christened Wendel. Working in his living room at -weekends and around
Steely Dan sessions, Nichols designed and built Wendel almost entirely by
himself.
"We found there were certain feels that we couldn't get out of real
drummers -- they weren't steady enough," he said. "So we had to design
something that would do it perfectly, but with some human feeling, the
right amount of layback. Instead of just one hi-hat sound that repeats
machine-like, over and over, we had 16 different ones, so it had the inflections.
Wendel can play exactly what the drummer plays - if he plays it a
little early or hard, Wendel plays it a little early or hard. Play it once and
Wendel memorises the song, then you play it again and it repeats what it
hears."
The first version was an eight-bit machine, similar to a Linn drum
machine. "Roger Linn was working on his at the same time I was working
on Wendel. I decided to use mine for studio application because of
the extra-high fidelity we needed and the amount of memory it took to
do that - it was a pretty expensive machine. The first Wendel would've
been 20 grand. It takes a lot of memory to have a higher sample rate,
which gives you an 80kHz frequency response -- today's consumer units
have only 20kHz. Just one snare drum beat takes 48k of memory. One
crash cymbal takes $12,000 worth. We just used the brute force method
so we could get it done. The new improved Wendel has a megabyte of
memory, 32-megabyte hard disk, higher sample rates and it's 16-bit. I use
it quite a bit these days."
Drummer Chris Parker was called in to play his first Steely Dan session
during Gaucho, but he, like Mark Knopfler, found it a particularly
difficult experience; Becker and Fagen spent an eternity getting exactly
the right snare and bass-drum sounds and when they commenced recording
the track, Parker said that there were so many varying suggestions
being offered from all sides - from Gary Katz and Elliot Scheiner as well
as from the composers - that he lost all sense of the tune. Parker said he
couldn't get a clear indication as to which direction he should follow and,
combined with his lack of experience, he wasn't surprised when his
efforts didn't make it to wax.
When Becker and Fagen were unhappy with a musician's contribution
they would usually leave the dirty work to Gary Katz and head out to a
nearby diner, giving terse instructions to the effect that they wanted the
guy gone by the time they came back. Very rarely was the situation
reversed, when a session player could not tolerate Becker and Fagen's fastidious
perfectionism. One such musician was New York-based bass player
Will Lee. Although Lee eventually appeared on Fagen's 'Walk Between
Raindrops' on his first solo effort, he wasn't as tractable as many of the
other session players, and neither was he afraid of letting Steely Dan know
it. His work on Gaucho never made the final cut.
All the musicians hired by Steely Dan knew the score. Steve Khan:
"When you record with them, no matter how much you like what you
did, you never get your hopes up, because it will easily get erased tomorrow."
The
title song of the album, recorded at A&R Studios, developed into
a 12-hour endurance test. "'Gaucho' was a five-minute-plus song with
seven pages of score, which took up three music stands," said Khan. "We
had tried a couple of versions with different bands and failed.Then a band
of Anthony Jackson (bass), Jeff Porcaro (drums), Victor Feldman (percussion),
Rob Mounsey and myself tried it one night for four hours. Just
before dinner I thought we had a good take, but [Becker and Fagen] didn't
like it. We returned from dinner and tried again unsuccessfully, and
Donald and Walter gave up on it.
"The musicians can get attached to this stuff, and we had a feel for it
and didn't want to give up. So after Donald, Walter and Victor left, I
asked Gary if the rest of us could try it a few more times. We stayed till
five in the morning, completing eight full takes and some extra pieces
Gary wanted. The next night during a break they listened to it. We
thought they were going to laugh at us, and they did, but it was because
they liked it. Then, like most of the songs, they kept the drum track and
rebuilt it to their idea of perfection, in some cases using different players.
To the musicians, it means more than the money to see that this music
comes out."
Becker and Fagen were looking unhappy when they left around midnight.Victor
Feldman went back to his hotel and, after several more takes
with a click track, the next musician to leave was Jeff Porcaro, who had
to go to the airport to catch a flight to Oklahoma for aToto concert.The
players thought it sounded great; no one had made any mistakes and they
were praying that Becker and Fagen could find something they could live
with. When they returned and listened to all the takes, they thanked the
band for staying on and said, "There might be something here we can
work with."
Becker, Fagen and Katz then cut the multi-track over 40 times
and edited together a drum track only. Becker played a new bass part,
Steve Khan overdubbed some new guitar and, over the course of a
couple of nights, Rob Mounsey recorded new acoustic and electric piano
parts.
The saxophone solo on 'Gaucho' also posed problems. "Where that sax
is," said Becker, "on that site had been erected many things. Various piano
things, things more thematically integrated with the rest of the song.
Although it seems like an obvious conclusion, that sax took months to
arrive at. As for the verses, it's really a very simple thing. If you ever listen
to the most primitive blues, there is no 12-bar blues.There's 13-bar blues
and 13-and-a-half bar blues, they'll throw in an extra beat of'ahh-ha,
hammmm', and that's what 'Gaucho' does. Just use a little space where
you have something to say, and if you don't have something to say, just
skip right ahead to the next thing."
"Although that song is extremely angular rhythmically," said Fagen,"it's
very comfortable sounding. I don't think it's awkward. Generally, if there's
something that just doesn't make sense musically, we'll change it. It's a
matter of taste. We stay away from anything where the musical effect is
basically to shock; I don't like harsh, nasty-sounding things just for some
kind of cultural shock or political statement.The intention when we were
writing it was that it would have a horn-like melody and be kind of
jagged. We felt there could be great humorous potential for putting lyrics
to a melody like that, providing it didn't become too humorous. I think
it worked out quite well."
Gaucho' was typical Becker and Fagen imagery: the two homosexual
partners live together quite contentedly in a luxurious apartment high
above Manhattan until their relationship is threatened by the arrival of a
handsome young South American cowboy wearing a "spangled leather
poncho" and "elevator shoes". Becker and Fagen later said that when they
were listening back to one of their songs, if it didn't make them howl
with laughter, they regarded it as a failure.
They weren't at all keen on discussing the lyrics to 'Gaucho.'The only
explanation Walter Becker was prepared to give (and even then only
semi-seriously) was the definition of the Custerdome. "It's, ah, one of the
largest buildings in the world.You know, an extravagant structure with a
rotating restaurant on top."
But Fagen was more forthcoming. "It exists only in our collective
imagination. In the Steely Dan lexicon it serves as an archetype of a
building that houses great corporations...
For 'Glamour Profession', Rob Mounsey overdubbed the piano at
Automated Sound and was pleasantly surprised that in the space of only
an hour and a half he'd constructed a solo that Fagen instantly liked.
Mounsey began by improvising it, then he and Fagen together decided
on parts to develop around his improvisation and the more formalised
rehearsals.
Although Mounsey was credited with arranging the horns on 'Babylon
Sisters' and 'Time Out Of Mind', he admitted that the basic ideas for
horn arrangements usually came from Fagen. According to Mounsey,
Fagen's ideal horn section was three saxes and a trumpet; the method they
used was for Fagen to sing his ideas to Mounsey, who would chart them,
then consult with Fagen as he filled in the spaces.
The horn arrangement on 'Babylon Sisters' features two bass clarinets
and some alto flutes, because Fagen was keen to get some woodwind
instruments on the record. During the session, Fagen came out into the
studio and squinted at Rob Mounsey's score, looked at Mounsey, turned
to Gary Katz and said, "It's perfect.The arrangement's perfect." Mounsey
thought he sounded almost disappointed.
George Marge and Walter Kane were the reed players on 'Babylon
Sisters'. The latter had been one of the best and most in-demand studio
reed players in New York over the past 20 or 30 years. Of all his
impressive studio credits, nothing Kane had played on up to that point
impressed his now grown-up kids, but when they heard he was playing
on a Steely Dan record, they were prouder than they'd ever been.
As with 'Don't Take Me Alive', neither Becker nor Fagen actually
played on 'Babylon Sisters'. "We've got it all except the fingers," Fagen
said. "Both of us have terrific feel. I think we get a lot of points for style,
but technique and execution are weak. There tend to be a lot of mistakes
and inconsistencies. If we can't find a musician who's comfortable with a
particular feel, then we'll haul out our instruments."
Katz was wholeheartedly behind Becker and Fagen in wanting
absolutely the best players available."! guarantee that if John Coltrane was
alive, Donald would be down on his knees," he said.
"The B band is me and Donald. The A band is anyone else - professionals,"
said Becker. "I prefer to have someone else play bass -- someone
I know who's better than me -- unless all else fails. The way I feel about
my guitar playing, to be perfectly honest with you, is that it's to be used
only as necessary or 'taken as directed'. If there's anybody else we think
can do it, we get him first." He did concede that his innate understanding
of the songs had found him choosing that last resort more often.
Asked about a stylistic shift on Gaucho to electric piano and synths
from the acoustic piano sound of Aja, Fagen claimed that was simply happenstance.
"Some of that was just a matter of practicality. The studios we
were working in didn't have particularly good-sounding acoustic pianos.
At one point we rented a Steinway and got a lemon."

Late one Tuesday night in April 1980, Walter Becker was walking near his
home with a friend when he stepped off the kerb and was hit by a speeding
yellow cab. He fractured his right leg in several places. The breaks
were severe and, henceforth, collaborations with Fagen and Katz had to
be conducted over the phone, with Becker listening to tapes in the hospital.
The actual recording had just about been completed; all that
remained were some overdubs and the final mixdown. But mixing was a
crucial element of the Steely Dan sound and Becker had always had a
considerable influence on it in the past.
Becker was in real pain for a long time and suffered fever and secondary
infections. He was in a cast for seven months, but nonetheless retained
his sense of humour, telling Rolling Stone, "That car and me, we were
attempting to occupy the same space at the same time. We were definitely
in violation of certain fundamental laws of physics -- we were quantum
criminals."
In fact, he did make one wheelchair-bound attempt to attend a mixing
session, but the sheer impracticalities of getting to the studio over
Manhattan's potholed streets meant he was in so much pain before he
even got to the studio that he could not tolerate any more than about 30
minutes at one time. Although the album was mixed with his consultation,
his hands-on input at source was badly missed.
As they had done with The Royal Scam, Steely Dan allowed a journalist
into the studio to observe them at work. Robert Palmer described in
the same Rolling Stone article about how, in the summer of 1980, Fagen,
Katz and Nichols worked on 50 seconds of music for four hours. They
were mixing the fade of'Babylon Sisters' and after some 60-plus attempts,
Fagen was not satisfied. During further attempts Fagen asked Nichols and
two assistant engineers to add minuscule amounts of echo and delay to
the background singers' voices, but he was still not happy. He then wanted
to try it with and without the girls. Finally, Fagen was happy with the
results. "This is the happiest night of my life," he said.
Later that same year, Rick Derringer was working on 'My Rival' at
Soundworks. Becker was still absent, so Fagen, Katz and Derringer
worked on the song's eight-bar introduction for an hour before everyone
was happy with Derringer's phrases. The same night, Derringer spent
another hour playing a guitar solo for the same song, but was not surprised
to find that eventually the solo was played by Steve Khan. "The
parts Rick did were voted yes, but the solo was voted no," Fagen said
tersely. Khan recalled that while recording the solo for 'My Rival', Fagen
told him he wanted the guitar to sound "like Howlin'Wolf's guitar player
- if he could play these chord changes." Khan wound up using a
Telecaster and tried numerous different amps before they settled on the
appropriate Hubert Sumlin-hke sound.
The amount of time they spent working on Gaucho caused problems,
with oxide shredding off the tape because it had passed across the heads
so many times. It got to the point where one tape, which featured the
song 'Time Out Of Mind', had deteriorated so badly that, as they
approached mixing, Steely Dan had to cut down on the number of times
they ran the tape, but they succeeded in mixing the tune before it finally
fell apart.
Roger Nichols and Elliot Scheiner also finally succeeded in persuading
Becker and Fagen to use a computer to mix the album, and they spent
about three weeks just mixing 'Babylon Sisters' in Los Angeles. It was the
highest amount of mixes that the computer had ever undertaken and
Neve, its manufacturer, threatened to award Steely Dan the platinum
floppy disc award for the most mixes.
In a Musician interview with David Breskin published in March 1981,
Fagen explained to him their songwriting technique and his obsessive
habit of hoarding ideas and anything that might prove useful for a future
song. "I usually come up with the harmonic framework and then Walter
comes over and we take it from there. Also, a lot of the songs are a sort of
testimonial for saving things. I still have cassettes left over from college
that contain ideas, little snatches of things. They sometimes come in useful
in other contexts if you keep them around long enough. For example,
the chorus in 'Glamour Profession' - I can't even remember when I
wrote that."
Becker remembered all right. "We wrote the hook [to 'Glamour
Profession'] when we were in college and now just changed the words."
It was yet another song about Hollywood high life: a famous basketball
star is hooked on cocaine, smuggling in large quantities from Colombia
and throwing very expensive parties with the profits. The final line of the
chorus, "Living hard will take its toll", was to prove uncommonly
prophetic.
Breskin challenged Becker and Fagen over the similarity of the title
song to a Keith Jarrett composition called 'Long As You Know You're
Living Yours', which appeared on a Jan Garbarek/Keith Jarrett 1974 ECM
album called Belonging. Becker admitted that he loved Jarrett's song and
they eventually approved their off-the-record comments for publication,
with Fagen admitting, "We were heavily influenced by that particular
piece of music." Jarrett later sued them for plagiarism, and, given the circumstances
and their admission, won the case. He was granted a co-writing
credit and royalties on all future pressings of the song.
Except for the obvious influence of Horace Silver's 'Song For My
Father' on 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number', Becker and Fagen had never
been confronted with any similarities between their own compositions
and those of other writers. But now there were some surprising admissions
in the pipeline. "We haven't invented everything we've ever done,"
said Fagen. "We've borrowed ideas, but they're good ideas. They may
sound fancy, but not contrived. We have different values from most
rock'n'roll composers."
Fagen jokingly suggested that "we are the robber barons of rock'n'roll"
but went on to admit quite seriously that... "The bridge on 'Glamour
Profession' is a take on the bridge of Kurt Weill's 'Speak Low'", and that
it was influenced by disco music in general. Breskin also pointed out its
similarity to, of all bands, Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, and
Fagen confessed to having bought their first album.
Hey Nineteen' deals with a thirtysomething hepcat trying to get
inside a musically naive teenage girl's pants, but he finds they have nothing
in common except their taste for "Cuervo Gold" and the "fine
Colombian". Fagen said: "Sentimental love is the stock in trade of every
songwriter. Actually, we use it quite often, but we just try to change the
angle a little and change the quality of the relationships a bit. It's innuendo,
and innuendo is a tradition in rhythm and blues."
Listening to 'Hey Nineteen', some critics suggested an even greater
sense of alienation than usual beneath the surface. Becker and Fagen had
both passed 30 and the majority of their audience were much younger.
"At one time I felt I would be morally obliged to blow my brains out at
this age," said Becker. "But I no longer feel that.
'"Hey Nineteen'... we had a lot of trouble with," Becker continued.
"We couldn't get a track we were happy with and we ended up doing it
from the bottom up, starting with the drum track and overdubbing the
rest of the stuff. That's a real pain in the ass. Part of the reason we did it
that way was that we didn't want a real live sound. We were looking for
a kind of mechanical version of early rhythm and blues. It was our intention
to let it sound a little machine-like, with Hugh McCracken's warm
obbligato guitar juxtaposed against that."
Evidently, Becker was not in one of his more informative or affable
moods during an interview with Mitchell Fink. "I don't know how many
songs we've written about whores - it must be every other one. It's all
very deliberate.You can only say so much about love. I don't see anything
unreasonable about 'Hey Nineteen'. I think that song's self-explanatory, if
not strictly autobiographical. I figured a lot of people could identify with
it."
"We felt we could get more freshness and divergence if we had some
new players," said Katz. "The chemistry of cutting a track as far as we are
concerned depends on having the right guys in the room at the same
time, and having everybody tuned in to the music at the same time. It is
not too dissimilar from everybody else, but we are more demanding, more
exacting."
Fagen went on to say that despite this approach..."We allow the musicians
the freedom to play within the structures of the tunes in the style
for which we hired them. We have pretty complete charts when we come
in. It's basically where takes one through 10 will be rehearsals, and takes
11 through 50 will be takes."
Recording Gaucho, Steely Dan kept regular hours in the studio, working
in the evenings (usually from 3 p.m. till 11 p.m.) and leaving it free
during the day. Nevertheless, one unnamed source said, "It can get pretty
boring hearing them play the same things over and over again for a
year."
Walter Becker played only one guitar solo -- on the title track of the
album, but admitted that he would have played a lot more if he had been
able to attend the later overdubbing sessions. Due to his immobility,
most of that responsibility fell to songwriter Sammy Cahn's son, Steve
Khan.
One song on which Steve Khan didn't get to play the solo was 'Third
World Man'. The reason was that the solo had been recorded at the Aja sessions by Larry Carlton for a song entitled 'Were You Blind That Day?',
which Fagen had described as a third-world fantasy. The song didn't quite
come up to Becker and Fagen's expectations and so was left off Aja at the
last minute. When 'The Second Arrangement' was erased, Steely Dan then
pulled the song out of the vaults, reworked the lyrics and re-recorded it
under the title 'Third World Man'. Larry Carlton's original and moving
guitar solo remained intact and, indeed, an integral part of the new song.
A song that surprised Becker and Fagen by being nailed early on was
'Babylon Sisters'. Bernard Purdie's genius came into play once again.
Becker used the song as an example to refute criticism that Steely Dan
albums were bland, overproduced and didn't sound like a bona fide
group. "What really takes so long are the things on an album that don't
work. And it's never the musicians fault. It's always our fault," Becker said.
"When a musician comes in and looks at a piece of material that he's
never seen before, sometimes it can gel. When it does it's the best thing
in the world. We got 'Aja' on the second or third take. On Gaucho, 'Babylon Sisters' was a second take. It doesn't sound as if it's been read or
played by studio hacks. It doesn't sound as if it's been made by old men.
It doesn't sound commercially motivated. It sounds like good music to
me. Take some old Charlie Parker records. On certain days his band
sucked. It can happen to anyone."
During the making of Gaucho, Roger Nichols had been working on a
video of Steely Dan in the studio, which was done from an offbeat angle,
to say the least. There were no regular shots of musicians or singers - it
featured a hand moving a fader on the board and shots of Donald Fagen's
leg as he left the studio. Although Nichols mentioned its commercial possibilities,
the video was put on hold because of all the legal hassles, and
never got beyond Nichols' home collection.
Nichols explained how they approached getting the right sounds for a
Steely Dan album. "Instead of using EQ on the board to change a drum
sound, for instance, we'll bring in 52 different kick or snare drums to try
to get the sound we want. We find it's better to make the adjustments at
the instrument end rather than try to fix it with EQ and things. So we'll try many different instrument and microphone combinations with minimum
EQ or no EQ at all to get something that sounds right."
He continued to describe their mixing techniques and the equal attention
to detail Steely Dan employed even when recording was finished.
"When we're mixing we'll use a lot of limiters, because they're nice and
fast and you can't hear them doing anything. We'll use those on most of
the vocals just to level things out. We try not to bounce tracks together. A
lot of the other people I've worked with will take backgrounds, which
might be on five or six tracks, and bounce them together onto two tracks
or one track, just as a matter of course. Or they'll ping-pong all the guitars
together or the horns together,just because it's easy that way; one knob
for the guitars, one knob for the horns and so on. But bouncing is a generation
down and if you listen you can hear the difference, no matter how
good the machine is. And the ambience disappears when you ping-pong
things together. So if at all possible, we try to keep all the instruments apart
on the separate tracks they were recorded on, so that you get true hi-fi,
with the least amount of generations before it gets to the record."
For Steely Dan's next album, Nichols was eager to experiment with
the 3M digital machine, and had persuaded Walter Becker of its advantages
and benefits. "We had the Soundstream people come in, since they
were in town for another project. They did a little demonstration for us
with our tapes, but it was unsatisfactory for us," Katz explained. Steely
Dan were thinking of mixing to the Soundstream, but it never materialised
and they eventually decided to stick with analogue -- this time.
"We decided that it didn't sound any better than the Studeo conventional
analogue two-track. Digital sounded a little different, but not necessarily
better," Becker said. Greater editing problems with digital also
swayed them back to analogue. Katz also found digital had a harsher high
end.
With all the technical difficulties that continued to dog them throughout
the making of Gaucho, Gary Katz was already keen to establish a studio
expressly for use by Steely Dan. "Had you asked me about this last
year, I would have given you the same answer. But we're talking about it
now, along with Elliot and Roger. We'd like to put up a room, or buy an
existing facility, to serve as a workshop, primarily for overdubs and mixing.
There are more than enough rooms for basic tracking, and we're not
interested in being in the studio business. We wouldn't lock everybody else out, but it would basically be there for us, so we wouldn't have to
worry about other people coming in in the middle of a project."
Eight years after the formation of Steely Dan, Becker and Fagen hated
hearing some of their early records on the radio or in restaurants. Fagen
said, "We started out imitating, as most people do," and that if he
happened to hear one, his general feeling was one of humiliation."! don't
really understand some of our earlier stuff."
To a lot of people on the outside Can't Buy A Thrill was a sensational
debut album, with at least five really great, inspirational songs and five
good songs that virtually any other act would have been proud to have
had on their album. Walter Becker didn't think so. "There were a lot of
things that were very shoddily done, and a lot of things that were just bad,
but probably different things for me than for Donald. We were doing the
best we could, but fuck it, it wasn't very good. It's like looking at yourself
in a mirror, it's not really how you look. I don't know whether it's ultimately
good or not, I really don't."

As Gaucho neared completion and before ABC was absorbed into MCA,
Irving Azoff tried to find out exactly how many albums Steely Dan had
sold over the years. This was a ploy often used by managers attempting to
renegotiate or break record contracts, and record companies often had difficulty
giving exact sales. Most artists' contracts contain a clause that
enables the act to send in auditors once a year to check sales figures against
royalties paid, but this is complicated by contracts that only pay royalties
on 90 per cent of sales. The remaining 10 per cent of "sales" are actually
records that are given away -- promotional copies to radio stations, review
copies to critics and miscellaneous "complimentary" copies that somehow
float out of record company offices into the hands of "friends". Many of
these wind up being sold anyway, a big bone of contention with most artist
managers, and the difficulty lies in coming up with an exact figure of how
many records have been sold - and how many given away.
According to Azoff's accounting, Becker and Fagen were owed several
million dollars in unpaid royalties, but MCA in turn claimed that payment
of these royalties was not its responsibility. The matter of the royalties
became linked to a separate dispute over whether Gaucho was rightfully
MCA's album, and Steely Dan found themselves in court arguing
the toss.
Becker and Fagen had signed an agreement with ABC in January,
1979, for one more album with the company, so when MCA bought out
ABC in March 1979, they automatically acquired the rights to Steely
Dan's next album. But having completed the album, Steely Dan wanted
to put the record out on Warner Bros. MCA naturally tried to block
Becker and Fagen's defection and went to the Superior Court in Los
Angeles, where the judge ruled in MCA's favour. Steely Dan, however,
claimed that their MCA contract was void, because the audit of MCA's
books revealed that they were indeed owed several million dollars.
"There were some inaccuracies and it was discovered that some bookkeeping
records were lost in the MCA-ABC transition," said Azoff.
MCA, in turn, claimed that they had spent a million dollars on Steely
Dan's new LP and were therefore entitled to release it.
MCA's auditors did experience difficulties in going through their
books, and could not disprove Azoff's claim that Becker and Fagen were
owed royalties. The auditors entered into negotiations over the audit, but
wanted to postpone them for a year, a delaying tactic that could have put
back the release of Gaucho.
Just before completion of the album, Front Line Management
approached MCA for a settlement of the issue. When MCA did not
respond, Azoff wrote a letter claiming "material breach of contract due to
non-payment of royalties". MCA countered by taking the case to LA
District Court and seeking a temporary restraining order.They scored the
first success when they were granted such an order preventing Steely Dan
from releasing the album on any other label. After that, the negotiations
between Front Line Management and MCA were pursued with much
greater urgency, since both parties realised the necessity of getting the
album out before Christmas.
MCA settled partial claims to the audit, which they said related to
MCA and not ABC. Becker and Fagen were a little concerned that MCA
would not give the album their full promotional and advertising muscle,
but MCA's Gene Froehch said the record company was right behind
Steely Dan: "We're going to give this album our maximum effort. We
consider it one of the most important releases of 1980," he stated.
With that settled, Gaucho was in the stores in a matter of days. The
album had been tentatively scheduled for release in September 1980.
Gary Katz said: "We are meticulous in our work and we have had some
mishaps. There were some personal things, Walter broke his leg a while
ago, though it is hard to say how much that slowed us up, since we did
continue to work."
Steely Dan actually delivered the master tapes for Gaucho on October
28, 1980, and MCA had pretty much everything set for a rush release.
They wanted the album in the shops before Christmas, but they outstripped
themselves by a clear month, having the album out on
November 21.
One of the conditions of MCA being awarded the album was that
Steely Dan still had total quality control over the material. Gary Katz
went to a special plating facility called Europadisc in NewYork to oversee
the initial pressings, and these were used for disc jockey and promotional
copies. Similar monitoring continued for the regular production
run. The need for haste also added to the cost of the album.
MCA had planned a basic advertising campaign well in advance and
production of the album jackets was started immediately. They shipped out
5,000 retail streamers, which simply stated that the album was finished and
called Gaucho; they just couldn't wait any longer for the graphics.
Gary Katz told Sam Sutherland in High Fidelity that they had cut 12
songs for the album, which was general operating procedure and gave
them the option of more choice on the final work. In addition to the
seven songs on the record, there was the infamous erased song 'The
Second Arrangement','Kulee Baba' (on which Rick Marotta had played
and said, was "really unbelievable"), I Can't Write Home About You' and
'Heartbreak Souvenir'.
As for the embarrassing need to scrap performances by highly regarded
performers, Katz saw that happening "less and less - it used to be more
guys on the floor than were left on the tape in the machine. But I think
our experience is reducing that somewhat."
The album was finally issued in November 1980 and went platinum in
the US, peaking at number nine in January 1981. Reviews ranged from
the accusation of its being Aja part two in Melody Maker, to Sam
Sutherland in High Fidelity who voted it "a stunner" and his "candidate
for best of the year". Musician's reviewer urged readers to spend the extra
buck and buy the album, but TIME, now staffed by hawkish young punk
rock fans, whose lack of taste often ranked with their inability to spot a
winner, called it "an almost perfect blandness".
When it was released Gaucho retailed at $9.98, the first non-soundtrack
album in history to sell above the $8.98 suggested list price. A very angry
Irving Azoff said, "They (MCA) went to $9.98 over my screaming objections."
He blamed the high price for the album's failure to match the
incredible success of Aja.
Becker and Fagen were also outraged by MCA's pricing of the record
and suspected it to be pure spite. "We pleaded with MCA not to put the
album out at $9.98, but their position was,'We price the record, you have
nothing to say about it or else we shelve it'," Fagen said. "I really regret
it, because we've been getting a lot of flak about this. I know that our
audience will blame us for being avaricious when, in fact, we did the best
we could to prevent it. We had no legal recourse; MCA won the court
battle."
When he was asked about the controversy, Walter Becker didn't mince
his words: "I think they're the Mafia. I really do. I don't like them. We
said please don't make it $9.98, that's too much. But we didn't matter. I
feel like I'm robbing somebody, even though I benefit from it - I don't
want it. It has nothing to do with recording artists. I don't think any
recording artist says,'Make the records a dollar more so I can make more
money.'"
In their defence, MCA claimed they were trying to recover some of
Steely Dan's exorbitant recording costs.
Gary Katz argued that the production costs for the album were considerably
less than a million dollars, but he did admit... "It is an inexcusable
amount to pay for a record album." The trend in music at that time
was moving away from high studio costs towards the punk ethic of making
records simply and cheaply, but Katz said: "We are not part of the
trends, so it is not applicable to us."

Although Becker and Fagen suffered more than their fair share of
"jerk-off interviewers", they had always resisted the temptation to really
tear into any particular one. But during a round of promotional interviews
for Gaucho at the Park Lane Hotel in NewYork, Becker (whose disposition
wasn't helped by the fact that he was still on crutches) was in a
vituperative mood, while Fagen was trying to moderate the conversation
by cracking jokes.
When New York Times journalist Kristine McKenna's turn came, she
likened the encounter to being a new kid in school thrown into a room
with a cruelly cool in crowd. After a long day of repetitive questioning,
Becker and Fagen were in no mood to continue, and it was McKenna's
bad luck that she arrived at the end of the day. She wrote that the duo
found most questions too insipid to merit serious thought, and when she
asked if they thought competition in popular music had gotten stiffer
over the last few years, Fagen quipped, "Yeah, it's gotten stiffer; rigor mortis
has set in."
But the question that flipped Becker over the edge was prompted by a
lyric ("But I'm just growing old") from 'Hey Nineteen'. McKenna asked
if they were going through a midlife crisis and caught the full brunt of
Becker's contempt. He snapped: "Are you a journalist or a whore?
Sheeesch!" The interview was curtailed rather swiftly and when
McKenna's piece appeared in the New York Times it was entitled "Steely
Dan: A (Very) Brief Encounter".
A month later, when Becker and Fagen taped a live radio interview
with hip Jewish comic Robert Klein in front of an invited audience of
some 200 people at RCA's recording studio on West 44th St, they were
in a much better frame of mind. On his nationally syndicated show Klein
interviewed pop stars of the day, featured some live music and reeled off
a five-minute monologue, cracking plenty of jokes. It was the only public
appearance Becker and Fagen made in support of the album, but it was
strictly limited to an interview only. Klein joked that this was the Steely
Dan 1980/'81 tour. "Yeah, that was it. And believe me, it was better than
the band was," Fagen said.
Matching Klein joke for joke, Becker and Fagen facetiously explained
how they fired all their roadies in order to once and for all terminate
Steely Dan's touring period, and how Steely Dan's last live gig in July
1974 was the last time they saw a smoke bomb go off. Referring to their
staff-writing job at ABC, Fagen described Hamilton, Joe Frank and
Reynolds as "another audacious group of the time and also registered
nurses."
Becker and Fagen also responded to a claim by Mitch Miller - one of
the world's-best selling recording artists in the Fifties who lived above
Becker - that he had apparently been forced to endure a lot of guitar
practice at very unsociable hours. Miller, who once worked as an A&R
chief at Columbia Records and whose antipathy for the music was
largely responsible for the company's late (and economically disastrous)
entry into rock'n'roll, was alleged to have said: "This guy from Steely
Dan - (Walter) Becker? He lives in my apartment building in NewYork
City. He plays the same licks all night long. I feel like calling the cops on
him.To get into rock you don't have to be a very good musician." Never
ones to bypass an opportunity to respond to such claims, Becker and
Fagen had the last laugh at the Klein taping. "We get all our ideas from
Mitch," Fagen said. "We have a little microphone that we've snaked
through the pipes and when he's practising his oboe we just flip on the
recorder."
Becker and Fagen's infamous reputation concerning interviews was
demonstrated to by an attempt by Melody Maker writer David Fricke to
set up a telephone interview with the pair. It involved a personal introduction
at the Robert Klein taping, two weeks of phone calls and several
missed deadlines. Finally having arranged the interview, Walter Becker
called once; Fricke's line was busy and that was the last Fricke heard of
him. However, when Fagen called he spoke amiably and frankly for an
hour on a host of topics.
"I like my privacy. I love writing songs and making records. Records
for me have integrity. I didn't even know there was any live music until I
was old enough to get into bars where they played jazz."
Talking frankly about the time they had spent making Gaucho, Fagen
admitted that at one point the record company's patience ran out, they
cut off the money and refused to pay for any more studio time. Becker
and Fagen sent the bills to their manager, who footed them for a while
until MCA relented and finally agreed to fund more sessions.
Fagen was in a particularly communicative mood. He was willing to
discuss the influences on their songwriting techniques and admitted quite
frankly that much of their output was derived from music of the Thirties,
Forties and Fifties, as well as jazz and big band. This was music with
which, he said, the vast majority of the pop audience was not familiar.
Indeed, he admitted that they managed to obtain just enough information
about it so that they were able to adapt the various techniques to
their own purposes.
During other interviews for Gaucho Becker and Fagen for the first
time referred to their so-called "travelogue concept" of songwriting. In
Fagen's words this was... "aimed at transporting the listener to foreign
lands and foreign worlds. Many of the songs show that attraction for exotica
that Duke Ellington had.They're concerned with unexplored territories,
the crowded streets of foreign lands - the romantic frontier."
A close examination of Becker and Fagen's lyrics does reveal an
extraordinary number of places scattered liberally throughout each
album. In particular, they seemed to have a morbid fascination with
Hollywood, which crops up several times in 'Reelin' In The Years', 'The
Caves of Altamira' and 'Glamour Profession'. Other more diverse places
include Paraguay, Guadalajara, Peking, Biscayne Bay, Lhasa and Bogota.
But Becker and Fagen's "travelogue" wasn't nearly as international as they
would have us believe: a very large proportion of the places referred to in
their songs are in the US, with the streets, districts and neighbourhoods
of New York and Los Angeles featuring by far the most frequently, proving
that although their stories might have been imagined, the locations
they chose to set them in were taken from first-hand experience.
Fagen was under no illusions about Steely Dan's success. "Our success
is an accident in a way. We have so many more traditional influences and
are more uncompromising than most rock'n'rollers. We've taken our style
from jazz, early 19th and 20th-century serious music, R&B, blues and to
some extent white rock'n'roll, and simply played for ourselves. I guess we
appeal to a certain audience that dances, a certain audience that likes the
backbeat and yet another one that can pick up on the nuances. We never
expected to sell as many records as we have recently, we just lucked out
really."

Becker and Fagen songs had never been a popular choice among other
groups and artists as far as cover versions were concerned. Much of their
output was simply too hard for many rock musicians to play anyway.
Those who did record versions of Steely Dan tunes could hardly be
termed big-name bands: Birtha and Jose Feliciano both covered 'Dirty
Work', Herbie Mann did 'Do It Again' and Deodato recorded a version
of the same song. In the UK in 1984, Tom Robinson had a very minor
hit with a version of'Rikki Don't Lose That Number'. (In early 1979,
ABC had reissued Steely Dan's version of 'Rikki', which peaked at a
miserly 58 and within three weeks had disappeared from the top 75.
Amazingly, Tom Robinson's cover peaked at exactly the same position
and for the same number of weeks.)
Fagen was mystified by the Herbie Mann and Deodato cover versions.
"We seem to be big with the lightweight jazz crowd, for some reason. We
didn't write it with those kinds of bands in mind, it's just that that song
lent itself to that kind of treatment."
Becker lamented the fact that other groups were somewhat reluctant
to cover their songs, and reckoned it was because of some of the attitudes
expressed within their lyrics. Those artists that had gone out on a limb
and covered one, Becker said, "make it sound like a worse idea than it was
in the first place. Even 'Dirty Work', which I think we didn't execute well,
everyone else executes at least as badly as we did - which is inexcusable,
and usually worse. I haven't heard a good version of'Dirty Work'. There
should be one."
With all the literary allusions in their lyrics (Becker and Fagen were
often asked to list their favourite writers), it was only a matter of time
before they would be asked about developing their mutual or individual
storytelling techniques into a full-length novel. Becker admitted to writlng
poetry "a long time ago", but said that they intended to stick to lyrics
and had no plans to write a book. Fagen admitted he'd thought about
writing a book, but said, "I have no talent for that sort of thing... too
lazy."
One thing that did please Becker and Fagen was the knowledge that
Steely Dan's music encouraged their fans to investigate their jazz influences
further. If Steely Dan opened people up to the music of John
Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins, Becker and Fagen
viewed that as a reward for their efforts in many ways more pleasing than the royalty cheques that dropped through the mailboxes. They must have
been acutely aware, if not slightly embarrassed, that Steely Dan records
outsold those by their jazz heroes by about 20 to one.
The first single to be taken from Gaucho was 'Hey Nineteen'.This was
 pretty much an all-Wendel track, but wherever possible, a live drummer
was credited and Nichols' invention got him credit for sequencing and
special effects. It was scheduled for release the same week as the album,
but at least three radio stations in Los Angeles and San Francisco somehow
managed to obtain copies of the single almost two weeks before the
actual release date, and two of them began airing it as an exclusive. Many
other programmers claimed to have had a copy of the single and, in some
cases, the entire album. This caused an investigation to be launched at
MCA to try and determine how the tapes were leaked. Both MCA and
Front Line Management denied having been responsible for the "exclusives".
Donald Fagen didn't give a damn who was responsible. "Who
cares? The music business works the way it works. It's a mentality that
means nothing to us."
In a similar vein, when MCA staff received advance copies of Gaucho on cassette, some immediately rushed to their favourite disc jockey to
ensure that he was the first to air the new Steely Dan album. Fagen might
not have cared, but Irving Azoff, who liked to control the marketing of
his acts with an iron hand, was once again livid.
'Hey Nineteen' was backed with a previously unreleased live version of
'Bodhisattva', which had been recorded at Steely Dan's July 5,1974, concert
at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. 'Bodhisattva' was released
complete with a rambling two-minute-plus Jerome Aniton introduction,
recorded when he was almost blind drunk and slurring his speech, and
numerous expletives had to be bleeped out. Fagen could be heard laughing
aloud in the background at Aniton's ad-libbed intro. The single
reached number 10 in the Billboard chart.
An unexpected bonus came about through their use of the lyric "The
Cuervo Gold/The fine Colombian", which gave some very handy publicity
to the Heublein Spirits Group, the importers of Jose Cuervo tequilas,
who by way of gratitude sent Irving Azoff a case of the stuff. Azoff,
ever mindful of the chance to earn an extra buck or two, brazenly asked
Heublein what royalties Steely Dan could collect from the deal.
Yet another dispute erupted between MCA and Steely Dan in March
1981 when the second single taken from Gaucho, 'Time Out Of Mind',
Šwas released with the same live version of'Bodhisattva' that had appeared
on the B-side of 'Hey Nineteen'. Becker, Fagen and Gary Katz had
already agreed that 'Third World Man' would be the B-side. However,
MCA had also already decided to use 'Bodhisattva' again as the supporting
song; the duplication didn't harm the single's sales, which still reached
number 22 in the US.
At this point Irving Azoff seemed to be conducting an ongoing feud
with MCA. He said: "To add insult to injury, they've now maliciously
removed'Third World Man'from the B-side of'Time Out Of Mind'under
the pretext that since there are only seven cuts on the album, it would hurt
the LP's sales to include another album track as the next B-side." Azoff
viewed the move as one with dire implications. "I contend that they're
foolish enough to be considering seven singles from the album."
Bob Siner of MCA Records dismissed that forecast, saying the decision
to use 'Bodhisattva' had stemmed from radio stations' demands for a new
single, not from any formal sales strategy. According to Siner, a delay in
finalising production plans led to a minor crisis when several radio stations,
including WABC-FM in New York, began airing 'Time Out Of
Mind' prior to its release as a single.
Siner also cited Gaucho's multiplatinum predecessor Aja as having only
seven tracks, but that album spawned three hit singles: 'Peg', 'Deacon
Blues' and 'Josie'. Gene Froelich of MCA said that 'Third World Man'
was... "never the B-side - it was simply up for consideration. At one time
they (Steely Dan) wanted it for the B-side, but at another time they didn
t care what it was." He added that several radio stations were already
playing 'Time Out Of Mind' and... "since we already had a B-side mastered,
we decided to use that. There was no malice involved in removing
anything. There was nothing to remove."
At that time, Tower Records was also in dispute with MCA and was not carrying the company's product, so no Steely Dan records were available
in Tower stores.
Time Out Of Mind' was one of the tunes that had been written a
couple of years earlier at Fagen's home in Malibu. During recording of
the song, Fagen played piano and electric piano/synth for most of it, but
Rob Mounsey played the same instruments in the instrumental section,
it was far too complicated to credit it that way on the album sleeve so
they compromised by simply listing Mounsey as the piano player and
Fagen as the electric piano and synth player.
Gaucho was voted the Rock/Blues album of the Year in Downbeat magazine's 46th Annual Readers' Poll. Steely Dan were also voted the
leading Rock/Blues group, narrowly beating Earth, Wind and Fire. They
also came a surprising second to Manhattan Transfer in the Vocal Group
category. As for sales, Gaucho went platinum in the US, reaching number
nine, while in the UK, again without the benefit of a hit single, it just
scraped into the Top 30 at number 27. It won Roger Nichols his third
Grammy in five years for Best Engineered Album.
But despite the many plaudits, all was not well between Becker and
Fagen. Once Gaucho had been completed, Fagen spotted an ad in the
back pages of a Los Angeles newspaper stating that Bob Dylan was looking
for musicians to accompany him on the road. Using his real name,
Fagen answered the ad and, a few days later, Dylan's bass player, Rob
Stoner, called Fagen excitedly and said what a great idea that the co-creator
of Steely Dan was interested in a musician's job with Dylan. "I will
definitely talk to Bob about it and I'll get back to you in a few days,"
Stoner said. But Stoner never called back and Fagen never did become
Dylan's keyboard player. "As far as I'm concerned Dylan passed up a good
thing," Fagen said later. "Sorry, Bob, I'm not available any more."
Fagen's interest in joining Dylan on the road probably had a twofold
purpose - an attempt to jolt Becker into realising that life could go on
without him, and to gain some time and space away from their deteriorating
relationship. Nevertheless, for a musician with such an aversion to
life on the road and who allegedly suffered from acute stage fright, it
seems the unlikeliest of ambitions. Dylan, after all, played more concerts
in six months than Fagen must have played in his entire career. Obviously
the deciding factor was not being required to sing.
Fagen later dismissed the application as "basically a whim" and stressed
that he was "secure in my own endeavours". But all the signs were there;
Steely Dan had spent two years making a record, Walter Becker badly
needed to sort himself out, and Fagen had obviously had enough of watching
his partner self-destruct while he was left to take all the critical decisions
and bear responsibility for the album on his own shoulders. Fagen
clearly needed to escape from the chaos that now enveloped Steely Dan.
Since Steely Dan no longer toured, time spent recording in the studio
was Becker and Fagen's only means of communication. Their deep commitment
came at the expense of other areas of their lives; they expended
so much time and energy striving to make every last bar of every last song
as close to perfection as possible that they were in danger of becoming
robots.
Nevertheless, Becker and Fagen would not allow themselves the luxury
of putting out a disappointing album. "We make mistakes and some
of the mistakes get on the record," Fagen explained. "And no matter how
long we work on it, not every song comes out the way we want it to. I'm
not pleased with every last bar on Gaucho, but it's up to a standard that
pleases us. This is music, music we care about. We don't make records to
find girls. We already have girls."
Becker and Fagen's concentration in the studio was unsurpassed; they
would stay focused for hours on end. But occasionally even they had to
admit defeat and change tack to gain some light relief. One such night at
Soundworks, Fagen and Katz pitched a baseball to and fro across the studio;
another night Fagen had complained that he couldn't listen any
longer after hours of concentrating on the finer points of a mix, and
strolled into the studio, sat down at the piano and ran through some jazz
standards, including a favourite Thelonious Monk tune.
Nevertheless, the writing was on the wall for Becker and Fagen in the
early part of 1981, although Fagen wasn't admitting it just yet. He said
there had been times when they were about to call it quits, "but the way
it looks now, it looks like we'll probably stick it out a while. You have to
have a certain amount of tolerance to keep something like this going for
so long -- to get through when times are sticky."
However, on June 17 1981, it was announced in the NewYork Times that Becker and Fagen had indeed split up after 14 years of writing and
recording together. Fagen exclusively broke the news to Robert Palmer
and described the parting this way: "Basically, we decided that after writing
and playing together for 14 years, we could use a change mondaire as
the French say. We wanted to do something fresh." Fagen refused to be
drawn on whether or not they would ever do another Steely Dan album.
'We just kind of left that up in the air. It would be fun but it depends on
our mutual inclinations further down the line. Nothing is planned; we'll
see."
A Front Line spokesman said that both would be embarking upon_ solo
Projects, with Walter Becker likely to produce outside acts, and indeed
Fagen had already composed an instrumental piece for the animated
Columbia film Heavy Metal. The film was based on the Heavy Metal comic-book characters, and Fagen told Palmer how he came to snag the
deal: "They sent me the script and the comic book, and frankly it didn't
make much sense to me, but I took it as a jumping-off point to do a
five-minute piece that's mostly instrumental, with a little harmony vocal,
" it got me back in the studio."
The album's executive producer was Steely Dan manager Irving Azoff
and, with Howard Kaufman (founder of HK Management - future Fagen
representatives) and Bob Destocki, he compiled the album.
Accompanying Fagen on the soundtrack were Black Sabbath, Grand
Funk Railroad, Eagles guitarist Don Felder and Stevie Nicks. Named
after a spaceship, Fagen's track 'True Companion' was recorded at
Automated Sound Studios in New York and featured Fagen himself on
synthesizers (with Ed Walsh) and on kalimba and lead and background
vocals (with Zack Sanders), with Steely Dan regulars Don Grolnick on
Rhodes piano, Crusher Bennett on percussion and Will Lee on bass, but
the central piece of the song was another great guitar solo by Steve Khan.
(The musicians' credits on the subsequent Steely Dan release Gold were
incomplete and also incorrectly identified Steve Jordan as the drummer.)
Gary Katz was busy with another project, so Fagen asked Elliot Scheiner
to co-produce the song with him.
"I should be ready to start recording my own album before the end of
the summer. Working on it has been interesting. The fact that it's not a
Steely Dan album has freed me from a certain image, a preconceived idea
of how it'll sound. I hate to use the word 'personal', but I do think it's
going to be more subjective. The album has a theme that all the songs
relate to in one way or another, although I would hate to call it a 'concept
album'.The theme has a lot to do with the blues."
The final irony of Steely Dan's career occurred when just a week or
two before the official announcement of their separation was made,
'Babylon Sisters/Gaucho' became the third single from Gaucho and the
final Steely Dan single. It failed to chart in both America and England and
fittingly marked Steely Dan's demise.



Chapter X
New Frontier


Only a year after Steely Dan had officially announced their split and
while Donald Fagen was busy recording his first solo album, a tribute
to their music was being planned in Gresham, Oregon, at the first
annual Mount Hood Jazz Festival. On August 7, 1982, a band at Mount
Hood Community College devoted an entire set to Donald Fagen and
Walter Becker compositions.
The idea was conceived by rabid Steely Dan fan Dick LaPalm. Since
so many jazz musicians had appeared on Steely Dan albums throughout
the years, he thought it would be fun to show the musicians' appreciation
of their writing skills. LaPalm was unstinting in his admiration: "To me,
Donald and Walter are the Rodgers and Hart of this generation. I think
we're putting together what will prove to be a magic afternoon." The
band consisted of Chuck Rainey playing bass, Victor Feldman on keyboards
(he also wrote all the arrangements), Paul Humphrey on drums
and Mitch Holder on guitar. The reed section included Ernie Watts and
Jerome Richardson, on brass was Slyde Hyde and Chuck Findley, and
conducting the band was Joe Roccisano.
Among the songs rehearsed for the performance were 'Babylon
Sisters','Green Earrings','Sign In Stranger' and 'Black Cow'. As the concert
was being finalised, LaPalm said that the tribute didn't necessarily end
there. "I just got off the phone with Gary Katz and he will be coproducing
the album of Mount Hood with Al Schmitt. And I spoke to
Donald last night. Gary and Donald have been working in NewYork on
Donald's solo album. They both seem very excited about the project. We
don't have a record deal for this yet, but I'm talking to Arista,Warner Bros
and others."
But the question everyone wanted answering was whether Fagen
would demonstrate his approval for the concert by actually making an
appearance in Oregon himself? Knowing Fagen's reluctance to even be
seen in a public place, let alone on a stage, LaPalm said: "I have a hunch
Donald might want to show up. He's excited, yes, but he's also a
last-minute kind of guy. I talk to him every other day, but I don't know
for sure whether he'll show. I said to him,'Donald, you won't have to sing.
Maybe you can just play keyboards on a couple of tunes'. He said,'What
do you need me for when you have Victor Feldman?'"
Due to time constraints, the band could not rehearse as much as they
would have liked and, in fact, only managed to have a very brief sound check before their spot arrived. They preceded Bobby Hutchinson on
stage and, although the performance lasted about an hour and the audience
appeared captivated, it was difficult for the musicians to tell exactly
how well it was received. Chuck Rainey was under the impression that
as the concept was never pursued, perhaps it wasn't as successful as they
would have liked. Gary Katz and Al Schmitt did go to Oregon and record
the show live; Fagen didn't show up, which was no surprise to anyone.
Even with all their contacts and music business experience, LaPalm
and Katz had great difficulty in selling the idea of the album to a record
company. Eventually it was bought for MCA by Irving Azoffi, Steely
Dan's one-time manager, who by this time had jumped the fence to
become the President of MCA Records, but it wasn't released for fully
six years. It came out under the title The Hoops McCann Band Plays The
Music Of Steely Dan, the name taken from the character in 'Glamour
Profession', but instead of a live recording of the actual tribute all the
tunes were rerecorded at Village Recorders with basically the same band,
one notable exception being the absence of Chuck Rainey, who was
replaced by Chuck Berghofer on bass. On a sad note, Victor Feldman
(who is the only musician to have appeared on all Steely Dan albums
besides Becker and Fagen) had died in May 1987, and by way of tribute
to him the band used Feldman's 1982 arrangement of'Babylon Sisters'
for the album.
A few months before Fagen's album was due, MCA put together a second
Steely Dan greatest hits package. Called Gold and released in July
1982, it was a disappointing collection of tunes that hadn't appeared on
1978's Greatest Hits.There was nothing from Can't Buy A Thrill or Pretzel
Logic, there were no sleeve notes and, although the subsequent compact
disc version was improved to contain full musician credits, which had previously
been unavailable for some songs, the credits for 'True
Companion' were inaccurate and incomplete. After Steely Dan's superbly
imaginative album covers, the artwork on the countless compilation
albums that would follow showed no such inventiveness.
Coining less than four years after the Greatest Hits double, Gold was
not well received by critics, who not only detected the odour of MCA
cashing in on Becker and Fagen's split, but also recognised a slick marketing
ploy when they saw one. In the UK the first 20,000 albums sold
included a limited-edition, four-track 12" single containing Steely Dan's
four most popular singles, the turntable hits 'Rikki Don't Lose That
Number', Haitian Divorce','Do It Again' and 'Reelin' In The Years'. The
ploy was only marginally successful because the album could only manage
to reach number 44.
Donald Fagen's debut solo album, which would be released in October
1982, was originally to be called Talk Radio but eventually came out under
the title of its key song,'The Nightfly'.The name represented a fictitious
all night "jazz jock" character - a composite of many of the disc jockeys
that Fagen had spent so much time listening to, and imagined himself as,
when he was an adolescent 20 years ago.
These DJs filled the young Fagen's night with the music he was so passionate
about, speaking in what would later become "FM-type voices,
very slow, cool, reassuring," and Fagen included a brief statement on the
inner sleeve as to the effect they had on him. "The songs on this album
represent certain fantasies that might have been entertained by a young
man growing up in the remote suburbs of a north-eastern city during the
late Fifties and early Sixties, i.e. one of my general height, weight and
build."
Despite several requests from various TV shows, there was no way
Fagen could be persuaded to appear on any of them. He was brutally
honest about his shyness, saying,'I'm too scared.There's millions of people
looking at you. Also, as you can tell, I tend to let a lot of dead air go
by." As with Steely Dan, Fagen's promotional round included only press
and radio interviews. In an Off The Record broadcast in January 1983
with Mary Turner, when she read out his brief sleeve note on the air,
Fagen feigned a little embarrassment, saying: "It was cute when I wrote
it."
In the same interview but on a far more serious note, since Fagen had
indicated many times that writing and recording was his "strongest suit"
and what he enjoyed the most, when she asked him if he liked recording
as well as writing, Fagen's answer hinted at the difficulties that had begun
to haunt him during the latter stages of writing The Nightfly and would
continue to haunt him for many more years. "Actually, I've slowly been
losing interest in the writing and recording aspects. As soon as I get the
idea I feel like I should be finished somehow, and the rest is basically a
job, filling in the blanks. Periods of recording are punctuated by great performances
by musicians, which gives you the impetus to keep going."
Even with The Nightfly's autobiographical concept and his own experiences
liberally sprinkled throughout, Fagen found writing songs without
Walter Becker to offer ideas and alternatives a much harder task, and
the seeds of what would eventually turn out to be a bad case of writer's
block were already being sown. "Actually, I wrote six songs that came
rather easily, at least the ideas did, but I had a little trouble with the last
two -- filling them out. But I think the concept was strong enough to support
a whole LP."
Fagen explained that the genesis of the album came from the reasons
why he became a musician in the first place. He looked back nostalgically
to the late Fifties and early Sixties, when his attitudes were formed by the
whole jazz/hipster ethic in general, and decided that his "jazz jock" character
represented the ethos of the era and built all the songs around that
idea.
The album contained seven new Fagen compositions, plus his version
of Leiber and Stoller's 'Ruby Baby', originally recorded by The Drifters
in 1955 and then again in 1963 by Dion. When Leiber and Stoller
appeared on Charlie Gillett's UK radio show in 1982 playing their
favourite records, they selected Fagen's version of 'Ruby Baby', which
pleased him no end and vindicated his decision to cover the song.
Becker's absence made no significant difference to the methods Fagen
employed in making the album. Once again recorded in New York and
Los Angeles with a similar array of crack session players, The Nightfly was
an immediate hit in America and, bolstered by the success of the first single,
TGY', climbed to number 11 .The subsequent singles 'New Frontier'
and 'Ruby Baby', however, did not emulate TGY's' success. In England,
Fagen solo fared no better than Steely Dan in the charts; all three singles
flopped and the album itself barely made the Top 40.
Because of the personal nature of the album's subject, Fagen broke
with Steely Dan tradition and actually appeared on the cover of the
record - the first time he had ever done so. "It was an autobiographical
album so it seemed like I might as well go public with it," he said. The
front cover depicted Fagen's fantasy concept, while the back was a straight
depiction of a typical US neighbourhood in the Fifties.
Fagen had moved across town by now and the radio studio mock-up
was erected in Fagen's Upper East Side apartment (close to the Whitney
Museum) by photographer James Hamilton. After the first shoot, an assistant
engineer at Soundworks, Mike Morongell, noticed that there was a
basic error in the photograph, the RCA microphone was facing the
wrong way, with the wire coming out of the rear of the mike and towards
Fagen. A second shoot had to be arranged to correct the mistake. One of
Fagen's favourite albums, Sonny Rollins' 'The Contemporary Leaders',
featured in the shot, along with the character's favourite brand of cigarettes,
the Chesterfield Kings mentioned in the title song.
Steely Dan had been the critics' darlings for most of the Seventies, and
there was every likelihood that a critical backlash would hit Fagen this
time. However, most reviewers loved the album, despite being unable to
discern the difference between the Fagen record and its Steely Dan predecessors.
Citing the note-perfect playing by the army of session players,
the jazz influences and the sheen of Gary Katz's production, critics raised
the inevitable but blatantly unfair question: "So what was Walter Becker's
contribution to Steely Dan?"
In Fagen's mind the difference between Steely Dan albums and his
record was clear. "In all the albums I did with Walter, we never said,'We're
going to write about a certain period or a certain motif'.And I think that
accounts for a lot of the difference right there."
Fagen continued to rebut the suggestion that Becker's input into Steely
Dan must have been minimal by saying that they developed the Steely
Dan sound together over the years and that there was really no way to
separate how much of the style came from either one of them. Because
Fagen used many of the same musicians and because his voice was the
focal point of the record, Fagen admitted that it was basically the same
sound and that there was not much difference until "you start looking at
some of the details".
In documenting his adolescent fantasies, Fagen imagined himself to be
that distant night-time jazz disc jockey playing the hippest records by
Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker. The
message was clear: the Fifties and Sixties were an enormously important
period in Fagen's life. "I was a member of that minority that thought,
because of the cultural climate, life in the suburbs was arid. Jazz and black
music in general, late-night radio, hipster culture and the whole jazz ethic
seemed like a vital alternative to the life I was leading," he said.
"There was a great emphasis on technology at the time. The Cold War
was going strong, as it is again. Kids, through the media and what the government
and their parents wanted them to know, grew up with a certain
vision of the world. I think my discovery of black music and the hipster
culture really broke all that apart. It made me see it a different way. And
that's basically what the record is about."
The Nightfly was Fagen presenting a "kid's eye view of the way things
Were then and their expectations of the future." The record covered
roughly the period from the International Geophysical Year, when he was
ten years old, through the early Sixties when he discovered jazz in his
early teens, to the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963.
"I used to like Chuck Berry and Fats Domino when I was a little kid.
But then something happened when I was about 12 or 13. Something
happened to rock'n'roll, actually; it became more mainstream - more
white. I don't know if I was conscious of what was at work there; in fact,
I probably didn't connect it to a racial thing. And it didn't appeal to me
any longer. About that same time, I discovered these late-night radio
shows, and it seemed to have a vitality that rock'n'roll, by the early Sixties,
didn't have. So I started listening to that. I was a lonely kid, and I guess
jazz was probably a symptom."
At the time he was promoting the album, Spielberg's E. T. was cleaning
up at the box office, and Fagen drew a parallel between the film and his
own situation 20 years earlier. "The E. T. in my bedroom was Thelonious
Monk. Everything he represented was totally unworldly in a way,
although at the same time jazz to me seemed more real than the environment
in which I was living. It was one of those developments with a
thousand homes that all looked exactly the same. It was pretty barren
actually. But jazz was an escape, not only from the architecture and the
landscape, but also from the climate of thought at the time, the Cold War
mentality and all that."
When Fagen and Roger Nichols were ready to start work on the
album, they decided that the first Wendel model wasn't hi-fi enough, so
Nichols set about building Wendel II, which had 16 bits as opposed to the
original Wendel's eight. Wendel II also plugged straight into the 3M digital
machines, so there was no degradation of recorded sound. On The
Nightfly, Wendel ended up "playing" on 'Ruby Baby', TGY and 'Walk
Between Raindrops', as well as embellishing the rest of the tracks and
repairing various bits and pieces.
While he was perfecting Wendel II, Daniel Lazerus engineered The
Nightfly. He was recommended by Nichols and had worked on an Eye to
Eye album that had been produced by Gary Katz. The Nightfly was his
first full album as engineer.
At first Fagen was nervous at the thought of embarking upon a solo
career. He'd always had Walter Becker there to fall back on and to bounce
ideas off, both in the studio and during the writing process. Now,
although he still had most of the team behind him, he was strictly on his
own. Certainly the lyrics on the The Nightfly lacked the bite of Steely Dan,
but this may have been as much due to Fagen's choice of subject matter

as Walter Becker's non-participation in the lyric-writing process. "I was
sort of striving for a lack of irony. A lot of the songs are from a teenager's
viewpoint, so I wanted them to have a certain innocence. I thought that
the period and some of the concepts that I was trying to get over
deserved that kind of treatment. Of course, there's a limit to how little
irony I can pull off at this point."
Fagen's decision to record an autobiographical album caused him some
misgivings. In retrospect he occasionally appeared to regret the temporary
abandonment of his traditional defences, and expressed concern that he
might have revealed too much about himself. In one later interview, he
contradicted his earlier comment by insisting that the album was not
strictly autobiographical."! play myself as I was 20 years ago. But it is not
me exactly. It is a composite character of myself, what I remember and
people I knew. Plus, it includes my feelings in retrospect."
Fagen became very touchy about his lyrics being recognised as a
reflection of something that actually existed, and therefore open to
closer -- and probably more accurate -- scrutiny than those on Steely Dan
records. In 'The Goodbye Look', he changed a line to, "Behind the big
casinos by the beach" because the previous line reminded him of a line
from a well-known poem. He also expressed anxiety over the line "late
line, night line" because of the Ted Koppel TV show of the same name
in the US.
Fagen produced simple demos for The Nightfly, mostly with just a
drum machine and keyboards, but he deliberately held back on the lyrics,
which he would be altering and amending when he was in the studio.
Lyric writing was the chore where he missed Walter Becker's input the
most, but musically he had everything worked out in his head and knew
exactly what he was looking for with each tune when it came time to
record.
The first of The Nightfly sessions were held at Village Recorders in Los
Angeles, and one of the first decisions taken by Fagen, Katz and Nichols
was to bring in a 3M 32-track digital machine as backup to the analogue
Studer. Nichols was so surprised by the difference m sound between the
two that he embarked on a series of rigorous experiments. "One was
exact and the other was... you could tell that it was the analogue tape. And
that's when we decided to do the album digitally."
Despite the sophistication of the digital technology, Nichols had found
that they could be fixed with surprising components. "The 3Ms are like
Fords -- you can repair 'em with baling wire and paper clips and parts
from Radio Shack.The Mitsubishi and Sony are like the next generation:
they've got the better error correction, but if they go wrong they're
harder to troubleshoot, because each circuit does nine different things."
Nichols was an immediate convert to digital recording, and became a
crusader for the benefits and advantages of digital as opposed to analogue.
Punch-in and punch-out was infinitely easier. "You can punch-out in the
middle of a note without any glitches or holes left in the tape. With digital
you can combine different tracks with no degeneration," he said.
Nichols first became aware of a problem after Fagen's album was finished.
Stevie Wonder, of all people, called him and told him that the CD
of The Nightfly sounded "funny". When Nichols played a copy of the CD
he discovered that it sounded inferior to the analogue LP. Comparing The
Nightfly with a CD of Billy Joel's The Nylon Curtain confirmed Nichols'
worst suspicions: third and even fourth generation masters were routinely
being used to manufacture CDs. Nichols was outraged, and wrote a
detailed article in the December issue of Recording Engineer And Producer, demanding that record companies tighten up their downright careless
attitude to their artists' product and only use original two-track masters
to make CDs, especially if they intended to imply to the suspect masses
that digital was superior to analogue.
As long ago as 1984, Nichols, ever at the sharp end of sonic technology,
had invented a digital microphone that digitised air pressure changes,
but his attempts to go further proved frustrating due to existing patent
laws. He was informed that he couldn't patent his invention until other
associated areas had been filled in. (As of 1993, Nichols was about to again
submit his microphone for consideration, since other inventions have
now filled in the blanks around the digital microphone.)
Although Fagen had heeded his engineering staff's recommendation to
commit himself to digital recording, they had more than their usual share
of technical problems, not least because of the newness of the machines.
"The machine was up on the rack a lot, although toward the end we were
using it with total freedom from problems. It's a matter of getting to know
the machine and not abusing it. They need a lot of maintenance. If you
really take care of them, there are no problems; the problem is finding out
how to take care of them."
One persistent headache for Fagen and Nichols was an alignment
problem between the digital machines in Los Angeles and those in New
York. The West Coast 3M representative would come in with his alignment
tape, align the machine and swear it was perfect. Then back on the
East Coast, the NewYork guy would do the same and swear his was perfect,
but the machines wouldn't line up exactly right. Eventually Fagen
and Nichols' patience ran out and they decided to learn how to align the
machines themselves. Roger Nichols, Jerry Garsszva and Wayne Yurgelun
went to 3M's Minnesota headquarters, stayed in a sleazy motel and
attended classes in the daytime. When they came back, they knew enough
about the machine to know if it had been aligned correctly. The problem
turned out to be a very slight difference between East and West Coast
alignment tapes.
Fagen admitted that while working on The Nightfly he was bitten by
the machinery bug, and moved away from the tried and tested Steely Dan
method of putting a rhythm section together in a room and instead built
up the tracks layer by layer.They completed the recording of The Nightfly in eight months, and compared to the three months they spent mixing Gaucho, the new album was mixed in ten days.
Nichols explained that when Fagen came to recording a vocal, all the
performances tended to be very good and that it was difficult to choose
between three or four excellent ones. "Then we'd spend a lot of time
doing a 'beat the computer', where he'll (Fagen) perform it again and
again. Here's a phrase or a couple of words and he likes the way he sang
them better than what's on the computer. So we'll put those in and periodically
we'll go back to the song when he feels like it and try it again,
and he'll sing the whole song two, four, six or eight times. Then we'll listen
to lines and, 'Oh, this is a new way he did this line' and, he likes this
better', so we'll pop this stuff in. It's a long process, but it keeps improving
it a little at a time, but as far as the general public is concerned the
first or second take would have been just fine -- everybody would have
been happy with it except Donald."
TGY'-- an acronym for International Geophysical Year -- wasn't simply
a figment of Fagen's imagination. It actually covered an eighteen month
period from July 1957-December 1958 when an intensified programme
of geophysical research was carried out throughout the world. It was a
massive effort involving co-operation among more than 70 nations, the
participation of several thousand scientists and observers and the operation
of an equal number of scientific stations from all over the globe. The
measurements and observations fell into three main categories: the
physics of the upper atmosphere, the heat and water regimen and the
earth's structure and interior. TGY' was a strange choice of subject for a
song, but Fagen used it as an example of how optimism can soon turn
sour and of how his own hopes were dashed.
"TGY' is a child's view of the future, with technology solving the
World's problems, a gleaming future," Fagen explained. "Very little of that
came about and we found that technology creates more problems than it
solves. I guess I just wanted to look back." Fagen's optimistic ten-year-old
view of International Geophysical Year included an undersea rail tunnel
that linked Paris and NewYork by a 90-minute journey, and in a 1983
interview he still held out a little hope for such a dream. "Who knows?
Maybe they'll start that project any day now.
"With TGY' we started out with a rhythm machine to get the feel, then
used a sequenced synth for the backbeats, then I put down a bass line for
reference using the piano, then Greg Phillinganes came in to put the basic
thing down with the Rhodes. At that point we had the basic track."
After the idealism of TGY' came the Chinatown romance of'Green
Flower Street' (Fagen's nod to the jazz standard 'On Green Dolphin
Street'), in which Jeff Porcaro and Chuck Rainey were reunited on drums
and bass. With Kennedy and the White House at a permanent stand-off
with Khrushchev and the Kremlin and the threat of nuclear war hanging
over the nation, Fagen wrote an upbeat song.'New Frontier', about having
a good time underground before the "Reds decide to push the
button down". "I was trying to show how ridiculous fallout shelters
were," he said. "The concept that there was any real life possible after an
all-out nuclear war. I thought having a party was a good way to display
that in a sort of funny way."
Fagen always seemed particularly pleased with the title track.
'"Nightfly' uses a lot of images from the blues: that hair formula gets its
name from Charley Patton, the old delta blues guitarist, and Mount
Belzom gets its name from another old blues lyric: 'When the trial's in
Belzom/No need to scream and cry'. It's music I associate with a time of
innocence, and in a way I can say goodbye to that now."
Fagen took the idea for 'Walk Between The Raindrops' from an old
Jewish folk tale about a famous rabbi/magician who could perform this
remarkable feat. The song was recorded almost as an afterthought when
the rest of the album was finished, and was interesting in that Fagen
allowed a flawed - but ultimately enchanting - instrument track to get
through his rigorous screening process. "The organ at the studio where
we were working was very funky-sounding, which is unusual. I think it
was broken, which is probably why it sounds so good," he explained.
The song, which swings along as befits a man obsessed with Duke
Ellington's swing theorem, also features a keyboard bass line played by
Greg Phillinganes, which was doubled by Will Lee on bass guitar so that
it sounded like an authentic upright bass. This was an early example of
the doubling of bass lines that would eventually become common practice
on many records. "Whether it was the intention to have the bass
replace the keyboard bass is irrelevant now; it sounded so good that they
chose to keep both parts in the final mix.
Daniel Lazerus was surprised when Fagen started a completely new
song at Soundworks when the album was virtually complete. It gave him
the opportunity to engineer the track alone; in fact, the "Oh, Miami!"
exclamation was Lazerus's last-minute idea as they were mixing the
song. He'd always enjoyed the "Oh, rock!" breaks on some old records
and Fagen suggested that they try "Oh, Miami!". Gary Katz, Lazerus and
Fagen sang the parts, with Katz most audible among the three voices.
Fagen had always loved bossa nova - particularly Luis Bonfa and Astrud
Gilberto, and 'The Goodbye Look' was inspired by this music. A tale of
military upheaval on a Caribbean island, the title bore no relation to the
1969 Ross Macdonald detective novel of the same name, and Fagen also
denied it was inspired by the Bay of Pigs incident in 1962.
Fagen was still putting musicians to the test in the studio. One of the
hardest songs to record as far as Michael Omartian was concerned was
the title track. Fagen had Omartian sitting at a piano in the middle of
the room at Village Recorders playing with nothing except a "nauseating
quarter note click" in his earphone, expecting him to play as if he
were part of a group. Omartian found that very difficult because he had
no other instruments to play off and Fagen wanted him to set the
groove that way. Omartian said that Fagen would be standing in the
control room with the advantage of knowing what he wanted the complete
track to sound like, while he could only read the dots and try to
imagine what Fagen was going to mould around his keyboard. After
several hours of frustration, Omartian uncharacteristically threw down
the music, exclaimed, "I can't do this", and started to walk out. Fagen
followed and convinced Omartian that he was sounding great. He
coaxed him back and eventually his persuasion paid off, because
although it took about six hours, they eventually got the track they
were looking for.
But if Omartian thought that was difficult, then he had another surprise
in store. For the piano part of his version of'Ruby Baby', Fagen
wanted isolation between the right and left-hand parts. It seemed he wasn't
satisfied with the placement of the chords in the right hand coming
down at the same time as the left. He wanted the left hand to be more
laid-back than the right, so he asked Omartian to play the left hand as if
he was playing with his right as well, which was virtually physically
impossible, since any pianist has to play off his other hand.
"I tell you there's no piano player on the face of the earth that could
accommodate that," Omartian told Fagen. Eventually they achieved the
effect Fagen was seeking by seating Omartian and Greg Phillinganes at
the piano together, with Omartian playing the low part and Phillinganes
playing the high part. Fagen had decided that as Phillmganes was going
to play the solo, he may as well play the right-hand parts so he could place
them where he thought fit.
Sure enough, Phillinganes' solo didn't disappoint Fagen; it was a stupendous
instrumental break. But once again their problems were just
beginning. The piano by itself sounded fine, but when the synthesizers
had been recorded and put over the top they found small tuning discrepancies
underneath Phillinganes' solo. He later said that he based his solo
on the riff from The Kinks 'You Really Got Me'. Fagen loved
Phillinganes' solo almost as much as he had done Phil Woods' alto-sax
break on 'Doctor Wu'.
After the synth tracks were stacked up it sounded like they were rubbing
with the piano, so they had to go back and take the whole track
apart to figure out what was causing the problem. Fagen was adamant that
he would not replace the piano solo. What they found was that the tuning
increments of synths were too big; one notch would be too flat and
the next notch would be too sharp. So Fagen and company rented a
high-tech piece of Hewlett-Packard equipment to change the clock frequencies
on the machine so they could move the tuning around in tiny
increments. Then they took some of the piano, put it into Wendel II,
looped it so they could get a tuning reference on a rota tuner and started
again from there tuning the synths. The song caused plenty of headaches
and for a long while things were touch and go, but much to Fagen's relief
the synths worked out at the third attempt.
" 'Ruby Baby' is a rearrangement of the Drifters' version," said Fagen.
"I liked the innocence of the lyrics. We needed party noises for it, and
^since our studio was right next door to Studio 54, we surreptitiously suspended
a mike from the ceiling of one of Jerry Rubin's 'business parties'.
But it sounded more like a stadium crowd, so we threw a party in the studio.
A lot of people got very drunk, and we got our party noises."The first
digitally recorded party in history was at Automated Sound, and saw
Fagen himself getting into the spirit of things by standing on a chair waving
his arms like some insane conductor. The studio party was fun and
provided them with the hubbub they were looking for.
'Ruby Baby's "love is blind" theme fits in well with Fagen's memories
of his adolescence and his concept of innocence, and he listened to several
other Fifties records to get a general atmosphere of the period and
jolt his memory"! threw in a lot of other jazz chords and basically made
it sound like a big R&B party situation. But it has a lot of dissonance it's
pretty strange, in a way," he added.
During the recording of one song, Ed Greene played drums on a
track that Fagen didn't think was working, but he loved Greene's drum
track so much that he took the tape away and eventually came back
with a new song and lyrics ('Maxine') totally rewritten around the old
song's drum track. Even with his limited experience at that stage, Daniel
Lazerus was amazed by the dedication that Fagen put into rewriting that
song.
'Maxine' dealt with an "extremely idealised version of high-school
romance", the ordeals of growing up in the remote suburbs and seeking
any form of escape, be it through fantasy or love. Fagen said that he was
a crooner - "I think that's basically the way my voice sounds over lots of
changes" - and confirmed that the rich choral backdrop of both 'Maxine'
and 'Ruby Baby' were "takes on typical four and five-part harmony of the
period."
Knowing Fagen's propensity for the perfect drum track, it was not surprising
to find two drummers credited on TGY'. James Gadson was the
live drummer - he played the kick, snare drum and hi-hat, which was
looped to become the track; then Jeff Porcaro came in and overdubbed
tom-tom fills. The situation was reversed on 'Ruby Baby'. Fagen succeeded
in getting strong performances from both players but was still
unsatisfied, hence the reason Wendel II was also involved in each song.
After his non-appearance on Gaucho (his solo on 'Third World Man'
had been cut during the Aja sessions), Larry Carlton flew to NewYork
for five days, spent four days working on the album and in a few hours
was homeward bound. On The Nightfly he used a late Fifties Fender
Tweed amp with only one speaker. At one point Carlton was getting an
extremely bad case of hum while recording his guitar and the engineers
couldn't find any AC problems in the studio. They went on a neighbourhood
hunt and eventually found the cause - a huge magnet on the
other side of the studio wall that formed part of the NewYork subway
system.
One day when Fagen was recording vocals at Soundworks, he noticed
a bad smell, which became worse as the day went on and gradually permeated
the control room as well as the studio itself Over the course of
the next two days it became so bad that Fagen and his crew were unable
to work until its source had been located and eradicated. Initial searches
failed to find the cause of the stink, so the studio staff masked it by burning
candles and sticks of incense. They went right through the air conditioning,
removed the console, took up carpets and finally gutted the studio
until, when they took up the floorboards, they found the cause: in the
corner of the room, in a small drainpipe, was a big, moist, dead rat that
had died from eating rat poison. The rat caused Fagen to lose a week's
work and Soundworks to lose considerable revenue.
Chuck Rainey was living in Colorado when he received a call from
Gary Katz to fly into LA for the sessions. When he arrived they weren't
ready for him, so he sat in his two-bedroom hotel suite in Westwood for
three days waiting a call. This had never happened before - being paid
double-scale fees without having to play a note. Not that he was complaining.
Eventually he was put to work on 'Green Flower Street', his only
appearance on The Nightfly.

The Nightfly was nominated for a Grammy in seven categories: album of
the year, song of the year (for TGY'), best pop vocal, best instrumental
arrangement with a vocal, best vocal arranged for two or more voices,
engineer of the year for Roger Nichols (yet again), and Katz was nominated
as best producer. As ever, Fagen was very reluctant to attend - he
had refused to do so in the past for Steely Dan nominations - but since
the album was nominated so many times he seriously considered breaking
with his tradition.
'New Frontier' was released as the second single and Rocky Morton
and Annabel Jankel of Cucumber Studios in England made a video for
the song based on Fagen's "party in a fallout shelter" scenario. Morton
and Jankel had directed award-winning commercials and went on to
direct a remake of the classic 1940s thriller D.O.A. with Dennis Quaid
and Meg Ryan. The video combined animation with live action and featured
a bespectacled, nerdy Fagen lookalike partying in a New Jersey fallout
shelter with his girl. In their Rock Videos Hot 100 Rolling Stone described it as "warm and witty and stunningly crafted, and nominated it
as possibly the greatest rock video ever.
Fagen didn't appear in the clip and, when he aired his views on the
medium, it's easy to see why. "The animator seemed very excited about
doing it. As for myself I'm not interested in video. When you listen to a
record you have to bring your imagination to it. It's more interesting to
me to hear pure music. I don't need any visual imagery to go with it,
especially if it's like the kind you see on MTV"
Once The Nightfly was out, Fagen again faced questions about a possible
tour. He proclaimed the unlikelihood of "any grand tour", but did
mention that he was considering doing some local club gigs in the New
York area. He was obviously speaking out of turn because they didn't
materialise for fully seven years.
The Nightfly didn't sell as well as Gaucho and Fagen was critical of
Warner Bros' marketing of the album, saying that they didn't get behind
it as perhaps they could have done.
When Gary Katz read the reviews of the album, he wasn't sure about
the so-called "left turn into jazz" that many critics sensed, and said that
although songs like 'Maxine' and 'Walk Between Raindrops' did have the
sense of another era about them, he reckoned that some songs on the album
could have worked on earlier Steely Dan albums, particularly Katy Lied.
The 18-month gap between Gaucho and The Nightfly wasn't such a
long hiatus by usual Steely Dan standards. But Fagen was still asked why
it had taken so long to come up with the album. "I'm a slow writer. It
took eight months to write and a year to record - there were lots of technical
breakdowns with the digital equipment." Fagen pushed himself hard
and expected the musicians and engineers to do the same, and when long
and demanding sessions extended beyond their scheduled hours, he came
to regularly refer to it as "being on the night train". In several post-Nightfly interviews, Fagen half jokingly said the reason he loved
recording studios so much and why he spent so much time in them during
the Seventies was because, "they remind me of my parents' house;
wall-to-wall carpets, bland colours, Swedish furniture. I find them very
comforting."
Fagen explained that the inspiration behind the record was that as he
approached his mid-thirties, he began thinking about why he became a
musician. "I was headed towards a different kind of life really, maybe an
English teacher or something like that. I studied literature at college and
basically had my course set out for me. When the Sixties came along I
perceived that there were other options and, since music was my hobby,
I decided to try to make a living at it."
Despite Fagen's reputation as an aloof and cold individual, Daniel
Lazerus found him to be a very good friend, almost like an elder brother.
Lazerus was young and in awe of NewYork, but they went to the movies,
Walked home from the studio together and, most surprising of all, ran
together in Central Park. Fagen's jogging route took him around the
Central Park reservoir. The Fagen of Steely Dan days didn't look like a
man who would eventually come to participate in keeping fit.
Once he was settled back into his daily life in New York, Fagen discovered
that the problems he'd had completing the last two songs for The
Nightfly had extended beyond that and into his total songwriting routine.
Although he wrote songs every day and found time to play some jazz
standards and perhaps go through some scales, when he listened back to
the material he had managed to write, he either didn't like it, found it
repetitive, or it just didn't move him. It was the beginning of a seven-year
creative drought.





Chapter XI
Big Noise, New York


With Gaucho finished and nothing on the horizon for Steely Dan in
the near future, Gary Katz had spent his time listening to as much
new music as possible. Among the records he particularly liked was one
he'd been sent by an American group called Eye To Eye on a small
English label called Renegade. The group was built around the songs of
keyboard player Julian Marshall and vocalist Deborah Berg, and when
they discovered that Steely Dan's producer was interested in them, a deal
was struck.
Katz must have secured the band a considerable budget since the credits
for their first album read like a Steely Dan LP: Chuck Rainey, Jeff
Porcaro, Jim Keltner, Rick Derringer, Elliott Randall and Dean Parks to
name but a few. The songs were catchy and had quirky lyrics and, no
doubt due to Katz's involvement, Donald Fagen made a very brief
appearance playing a synthesizer solo on the closing tune called 'On The
Mend'. Their eponymous debut album was recorded between February
and July 1981 and released the following year on the Warner Bros label,
but even with Katz's name in the credits it failed to chalk up any significant
sales.
During the lull after The Nightfly, an unexpected skeleton appeared from
Becker and Fagen's cupboard: an album entitled Walter Becker/
Donald Fagen -- The Early Years, introducing Steely Dan fans to such long
lost gems as 'Brain Tap Shuffle','Let George Do It', 'I Can't Function' and
Old Regime'. Put together by their old mentor Kenny Vance and licensed
to Aero Records in NewYork, these old demos were welcomed by Steely
Dan fans, but as far as Becker and Fagen were concerned, they were a most
unwelcome reminder of their early days.They had never imagined for one
moment that these primitive demos would ever become available to the
public, and Fagen's vexation was apparent in his comment about "some
greedy little record people" making them available.
The cover photograph, taken by ex-American "guitar owner" Marry
Kupersmith, showed Fagen looking appropriately wasted and uninterested
and Becker looking much younger than his 18 years, in their bare-walled
office inside JATA's production office in the Brill Building.Their upright
piano was just visible in the background.
Fagen had mentioned during promotional interviews for The Nightfly that Robbie Robertson had asked him to write a "jazzy ballad" for the
upcoming Martin Scorsese/Robert de Niro film, The King Of Comedy. Fagen obliged with a beautifully melodic out-take from The Nightfly called 'The Finer Things'. As with 'True Companion', it was an instrumental
enhanced with harmony vocals from a female chorus. Alto saxophonist
David Sanborn took the lead and Fagen sang backgrounds,
arranged the strings with Rob Mounsey and co-produced with Gary
Katz. It was eventually revealed that Fagen had a deep-seated anxiety
about large string dates, and always liked to get someone in to share the
responsibility.
In the years that followed, with Becker and Fagen spectacularly inactive
musically, Steely Dan's back catalogue continued to sell so well that
neither of them needed to produce material or work in any way simply
to survive.Whatever they thought about it personally, the music they produced
with Steely Dan would provide a substantial and lasting pension
for the two composers. Indeed, with the advent of compact discs, hundreds
of thousands of Steely Dan fans went out and replaced their black
vinyl records with the new silver digital formats, and this alone secured
the duo's financial futures once and for all.
Fagen speculated that each new year thousands of college kids, newly
introduced to Steely Dan's music, went out and bought copies of their
albums, so steadily did they sell throughout the Eighties. At one point
Fagen said that if the compact disc hadn't been invented, he would probably
be playing in a lounge somewhere. Once Becker was back in harness
producing pop and jazz acts, he said that the sales of the eight Steely Dan
albums made everything else he did look like a hobby.
Even when Becker and Fagen were recording they didn't work everyday,
so if Gary Katz wasn't on the lookout for other interesting projects,
he would have been semi-retired, and he wasn't ready for that just yet. In
an unlikely combination, the ex-Steely Dan producer snagged the job
producing one side of an album by former Supreme diva Diana Ross for
RCA, and he asked Fagen to write a song specifically for her. Fagen was
already writing material for his second solo album, but he came up with
a menage a trois song called 'Love Will Make It Right', and played synthesizer
on what for him was a rather weak tune, especially lyrically. It was a
song that looked at the revelation of an adulterous relationship between
two married couples, all of whom had been close friends up to that point.
It boasted the customary thick, squeaky synth sounds and washes of keyboards
of early-Eighties period Fagen.
Gary Katz later admitted that he didn't enjoy the experience of working
on the Ross album, wasn't fond of the result and accepted most of the
blame for it. Katz felt his true forte was working with artists who knew
in what direction they wanted to go and then assisting them to achieve
their goals. Diana Ross expected her producer to find the songs, put the
musicians together and then virtually create the record in the studio, so
that all she had to do was simply turn up and sing the material. Katz was
unused to working with an artist who required so much input in so many
different areas.
Fagen, Katz and Daniel Lazerus spent plenty of time on the song,
working on some experimental drum sounds with Jeff Porcaro at Media
Sound Studios, which used to be an old church. Later Fagen and Lazerus
spent two days mixing the composition at Soundworks using some new
SSL equipment, but the studio was experiencing problems with "burn
in". After all their diligent work they had a superb mix, but it was lost to
the computer. They worked on a second mix and that was also lost.
Finally, the third mix survived to make it onto the album. But Lazerus
maintained that the third mix in no way matched up to their original.
Eye To Eye's follow-up LP was called Shakespeare Stole My Baby, and
came out in 1983. Once again Gary Katz produced and once again the
same impressive list of session players was featured. Donald Fagen made
his obligatory appearance on a Katz-produced album, adding an additional
keyboard to the track Jabberwokky', but as with their debut, the
album didn't sell and lost Warner Bros a small fortune.
Marshall and Berg put together a band of mostly British players for
some gigs rehearsed in NewYork and were offered the support slot for
a forthcoming Fleetwood Mac US tour. But by then Warners calculated
that they had spent enough on the band, and refused to put up any
more money. Berg and Marshall quietly dissolved Eye To Eye soon
afterwards.
In 1984, producer Hal Willner, knowing Fagen's penchant for
Thelonious Monk, asked him if he was interested in performing a Monk
composition on a tribute album to be titled That's The Way I Feel Now and
to be released on the A&M label. The concept involved an array of artists
Performing their favourite Monk compositions and the cast list also contained
Todd Lundgren, Joe Jackson, Was (Not Was), Dr John and Carla
Bley.
Fagen was a fan of guitarist Steve Khan (he'd written sleeve notes for
Khan's 1979 album Arrows, Steely Dan had called him in for much of the
work on the Gaucho sessions and he particularly liked Khan's 1981 album, Evidence) and he asked Willner if Khan could record something for the
project with him. Khan was delighted to be offered the opportunity to
work with one half of Steely Dan. As most of the other artists had chosen
medium or uptempo numbers, Khan thought it would be nice to treat one
of Monk's ballads to show how beautiful his writing could be. They
recorded 'Reflections' at Media Sound Studios in Manhattan. Steve Khan's
acoustic guitar took centre stage in the first half of the song, with Fagen lending a supporting role before coming into his own during the second
half.
In the summer of 1983, Fagen went to see a show at the Next Wave
Festival in NewYork called The Gospel At Colonus, which was based on
an adaptation of Sophocles' Oedipus At Colonus. The show was set in a
black Pentecostal church, and Fagen loved it so much that he paid for
engineer Daniel Lazerus to go and see it too. While he was there, Lazerus
wondered if anyone had approached the show's writer and arranger Bob
Telson about recording it.Telson said no, but told Lazerus there had been
a considerable buzz about the show and that David Byrne, for one, was
also interested.
Lazerus reported back to Fagen, who then approached Warner Bros
about the project. Anything that Fagen suggested received very careful
consideration and eventually he, Lazerus and Telson were in Clinton studios
producing an album. Fagen and Lazerus's inexperience in dealing
with budgets and paying for everything meant that Gary Katz was soon
involved, too. Bob Telson had his powerful vision of the show, Lazerus
took care of the engineering side, and one of Fagen's main contributions
- because it wasn't featured in the original show - was to get Hugh
McCracken in to do all the slide guitar and harmonica work on the song
'Lift Me Up (Like A Dove)'. The album was recorded quite quickly, but
there wasn't a large market for gospel music and even with the Steely Dan
connection, Warners were unable to get a handle on the record, which
didn't get the exposure it deserved.
Fagen was scheduled to begin recording his next album in early 1984.
Gary Katz had called Roger Nichols in California to inform him of the
start date and he packed up his family and headed to NewYork. Eager for
a date, when he didn't hear anything further Nichols called Katz back, but
was told that the start date had been delayed because Fagen was having
problems finishing the songs.
This problem wasn't evident when Fagen was interviewed by Bruce
Pollock in Guitar magazine in February 1984. Fagen outlined his current
working routine: he said he worked mostly in the daytime in a sunny
room, spending five or six hours almost every day composing at the
piano. Fagen admitted that he had managed to diminish his workaholism
and said, "I have six tunes finished and when I get two or three more I'll
record. It'll still basically be a personal record like the last one, but I'll be
working more with blues material."
Although Fagen was booked into Soundworks in the early summer, the
sessions still didn't materialize, and this delay eventually went on for nine
months before Nichols' patience ran out and he went back to California
to work on another project. Fagen finally began recording in 1985 and,
after Elliot Scheiner had cut four or five basic tracks in NewYork, Fagen
and company went to Jeff Porcaro's home studio in Los Angeles ("the studio
that 'Africa' built", as the drummer called it) to work on overdubs.
Fagen had given Daniel Lazerus some Howlin'Wolf records and told
him that that was how he wanted the snare drum to sound on his album.
Fagen had laid down the bass lines on synthesizer and among the musicians
booked were Rick Marotta and Greg Phillinganes, and bassist
Jimmy Haslip was waiting in the wings. Wendel II was being utilized to
shift beats around and fly things in and out of choruses and verses, and
Fagen was considering doing another standard oldie.
One tune that was cut was called 'Big Noise, New York' which was
co-credited to Fagen's then girlfriend Marcelle Clements, who wrote part
of the lyric. The tune eventually surfaced seven years later on Jennifer
Warnes'Elliot Scheiner-produced album The Hunter and then Fagen's own
demo version of the song was released on the CD single of 'Trans-Island
Skyway'. Although about five tracks were recorded, after they went back
to NewYork again Fagen decided not to use any of the tunes they had cut.
Greg Phillinganes recorded an album entitled Pulse for Planet Records
in 1984 and Fagen contributed a tune called 'Lazy Nina'. It was a good
song, but the album, produced by Richard Perry, was too keyboard heavy
and relied too much on programming. Fagen's song had no bass or guitars;
it was basically only drums and synthesizers with background vocals,
and would have been vastly improved by some "real" instruments. Also on
the album was a song called'Countdown To Love', written by Fagen's old
buddies from Jay and The Americans, Kenny Vance and Marty
Kupersmith.
Towards the end of 1982,Walter Becker sold up in NewYork and moved
right away from the city to what was for him the most unlikely of locations
-- the island of Maui in sun-drenched Hawaii. He wanted to escape
from the painful memory of his girlfriend's death, get right away from
NewYork and to make a fresh start in a totally new and different environment.
The
change of scenery and the easy pace of living turned out to be just
what he needed. He cut off his waist-length hair, straightened out his
drug problem, took up yoga, formed a steady relationship with his yoga
teacher and waited for musical inspiration to return.
Becker re-emerged publicly as the producer of Liverpool group China
Crisis, gladly pronouncing that, "I feel like all my troubles are behind
me". He had by then been living in Hawaii for three and a half years and
had cleaned himself up physically and mentally, got married and become
a father for the first time.
He made no secret of his troubles and admitted that had he not succeeded
in making changes, he was sure he would be dead by now. Prior
to that, making records had been all-consuming: "I'd wake up, have a cup
of coffee and head down to the studio. I spent my twenties in
smoke-filled rooms with no windows. To suddenly wake up one day living in Hawaii seemed like an invitation to some other kind of life, which
I accepted. It was like a new start for me. I learned to enjoy other things.
My whole attitude changed and I got into a much better frame of mind.
"Then once I was in that better frame of mind, well, there I was driving
in Hawaii in my truck and I started to think,'Gee, I kind of miss those
big speakers and leather couches and the lights that dim'. Eventually I got
antsy about it, and finally I found something I wanted to do."
During his rethink, one of the things that Becker reconsidered at some
length was the unnatural amount of time he and Fagen had spent slaving
away in recording studios."! think that part of what was going on was we
just liked to be in recording studios. We were in charge. We felt everything
good was there. And our circumstances afforded us the rather rare luxury
of just going on ad infinitum until we had something that was such a
fucking incredible jewel that we would deign to present it to the public.
I thought that was a good thing. But I also think we developed a perfectionist
attitude that became more of a problem than a solution."
Now Becker returned to basics and had no such luxury. "Being forced
to do the China Crisis record in eight weeks was a tremendous experience
for me.You don't have the time or money to be indulgent, so you
do things differently. Listening to English records, I can see that they're
not so concerned as in America about that tightness of production - they tend to sketch out their musical ideas with bold strokes. After a while that
appealed to me. I can see the value of making records with that kind of
immediacy. And so I've come to the conclusion that too much repetition
in the studio often translates into a loss of musical ideas, and that's what's
really important. Sometimes you hear people's demos and then you hear
the records and most of what you liked about the demo is gone. Also, I'd
done all that studio stuff before, and once you know how to achieve an
effect that way, it's no longer so fascinating."
After Steely Dan's demise, Becker stopped writing songs completely,
but as time passed he began to feel his way gradually back into a writing
and recording routine. After a few years' enforced break, his creative juices
began to flow again and stimulate his appetite for the whole routine of
recording. "Well, I was very seriously distracted, so it helped me make the
break. Nothing relieves creative anxiety like unconsciousness. But since
this project (Flaunt The Imperfection), I got myself a little synthesizer and
started noodling around on it. I think I might go down and buy myself a
drum machine and maybe one of those four-track recorders like all the
other kids."
Becker denied that he and Fagen were considering a reunion so soon
after they had split up, but did concede that they spoke regularly on the
telephone despite bad connections, echo and the time delay. Becker
admitted to being surprised by the concept of The Nightfly and at Fagen's
choice of'Ruby Baby' as the cover song of the album.
Bearing in mind the subject of The Nightfly and his choice of a first
production job with a mellow group such as China Crisis, Becker was
asked if he and Fagen had tended to give each other an edge. "I think
we're probably just getting older. It's hard to maintain that frantic adolescent
humour well into your thirties, though we did. But maybe you're
right, we did feed off each other in that way, spurred each other on. Now
we're getting mellow."
Becker's association with China Crisis came about when they were
touring the US to promote their Working With Fire And Steel album. They
were having lunch in Warner Bros' Burbank offices when they were asked
if they had any idea who they wanted to produce their next album. Eddie
Lundon jokingly said, "Someone from Steely Dan", but he was actually
thinking of someone like Gary Katz or Michael Omartian. Time passed
and, having forgotten about this off-the-cuff remark, China Crisis eventually
got a call from Warner Bros asking them if they would like to work
With Walter Becker. The Dan bass player and guitarist had been looking
for an act to produce and, having been apprised of China Crisis's interest,
had listened to Working With Fire And Steel. Becker picked out 'Papua'
as his personal favourite. It was a song about a nuclear holocaust, subject
matter that may have reminded him of Steely Dan's own end-of-the
world sketch,'King Of the World'.
Becker jokingly explained that another reason he chose China Crisis
as his first solo-production job was that they weren't built around their
clothes or their haircuts, and that they were primarily interested in
enhancing the song. "Plus their lyrics didn't make much immediate
sense so, of course, I was drawn to that in a big way. I saw that as pure genius."
Becker also wanted to come back in as a producer with a group who
could benefit from his kind of acumen. He felt that some of Gary Daly
and Eddie Lundon's songs could indeed benefit from being enriched a little.
Becker came to England to work on the album at Parkgate Studio in
Sussex, and was as nervous as the band themselves. His creative input was
soon firing; he was able to contribute to the songs and suggested the synthesizer
parts at the end of 'Gift Of Freedom', which were inspired by
Miles Davis's Kind Of Blue period. But Becker also admitted that they ran
out of time; having reached week seven of the eight-week recording
schedule, and time to begin mixing, China Crisis had still to put percussion
on the album (the player they had brought in turned out to be terrible,
Becker said), so they were left with no option but to almost totally
dispense with percussion. Becker himself played some cowbells and they
used a drum machine for a tambourine effect. The stripped-down sound
of the album was through necessity, not choice.
In fact, when the Kick Horns arrived at the studio for 'Flaunt", Becker
didn't like any of Eddie Lundon's horn arrangements -- he said they were
all too predictable - and asked each player to play their second instrument,
so that instead of the usual two saxes, with a trumpet and a trombone,
there were some different voicings altogether.
China Crisis were on Warner Bros in America and, since it was their
idea for Becker to produce the group, bass player "Gazza" Johnson was
justified in expressing his disappointment with the marketing of the
album. "Warners just couldn't find a peg to hang the record on," he said.
Strangely enough, much more was made of the Steely Dan connection in
the UK than in the US. In fact, Warner Bros knew so little about China
Crisis that when they first met the group, they were expecting a
two-piece outfit. They also described China Crisis as a Scottish band in
their original publicity promo.
Becker returned home to continue his... "groovy little lifestyle in
Hawaii, which I'm now rather attached to. I'm a new daddy, you know,
so most of my time is spent burping and changing. Basically you find very
healthy, happy people -who want to preserve their good mood. At this
stage of my life, I value that."
It would be hard to imagine more of a contrast between the new
Walter Becker and the one of old.

In 1986. while Katz was recording with ex-model Rosie Vela at Village
Recorders, Becker stopped by to say hi and also to play back the China
Crisis album to Katz. Fagen was also there - he was playing on Vela's
album -- and Becker liked what he heard. He ended up hanging out for
a few days and, one day, while Vela was nervously trying to play keyboards
in front of one of her all-time heroes, Becker started noodling around
with a little Casio keyboard. Vela gestured to Katz to get him plugged in
and Becker added a snaky little synth line to a song called 'Tonto'.
Once word got out that Fagen and Becker were playing together
again, the inevitable Steely Dan reunion rumours began. In December
1985, with typical tabloid exaggeration and wild inaccuracy, The Daily
Mirror - of all newspapers -- printed a brief piece saying that Steely Dan
had indeed re-formed ("after a bitter power struggle between Becker and
Fagen") and were planning a world tour the following year!
Unbeknownst to either of them, both Becker and Fagen had individually
selected 'Interlude' as their favourite tune on Vela's album. Their
symbiotic relationship was still intact. After that,Vela and Katz schemed to
get Fagen and Becker back together in the studio again. Eventually, Fagen
ended up playing on seven out of the nine songs and Becker on three.
After one session, Becker and Fagen walked about 60 blocks home
together, and that night everyone present knew that the musical and personal
bond between the two songwriting partners had in no way been
severed.
Vela's Zazu came out in 1986, and A&M's marketing department didn't
flinch from using Becker and Fagen's names in the publicity blurb.
What brings Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen back into
the studio under the production of Gary Katz, after almost five years'
absence?" they asked in bold letters on accompanying Vela biographies.
The album was very well received despite some natural critical misgivings
about a model-turned-singer. But the doubts were unfounded
because she was a talented songwriter with a musical and lyrical
quirkiness and a damn good voice, too. The first single, 'Magic Smile',
received plenty of airplay and did very well in England, cracking the Top
40 to reach number 27 in January 1987.
"Some of her songs are weirder than Donald's in structure," Katz
admitted. "Rosie had never made a record before and didn't really have
much of an idea about what went into making one. So we spent a lot of
time in preproduction. She had numerous variations on a lot of her songs.
In one version, a given section would be a certain length, and in another
version it would be a different length. We made decisions on exactly how
long each section was going to be and began picking musicians for the
project."
As with most of Gary Katz's productions, the session musician list was
very long, even more so than the Eye To Eye project. Katz was angry that
most reviews stressed the Becker and Fagen connection - this despite the
fact that 90 per cent of it was done before they set foot in the studio or
the claims that "this is a Steely Dan warm-up".
In the aftermath of the Vela LP, Katz was tired of refuting rumours of
a Steely Dan reunion and refused to elaborate any further on the reasons
why. "When we go in to record, then I'll tell you about the Steely Dan
record."
On the other hand, Vela's interviews were riddled with references to
Steely Dan. "To people of my generation," she said. "Steely Dan were The
Beatles of America." She explained she had been slowly purchasing
recording equipment with her modelling fees and storing it in her New
York apartment. Her brother, Chat, was a recording engineer, so she'd had
plenty of good advice. Vela had received classical training on the piano as
a child, so this wasn't simply just another example of a model exploiting
her beauty for success in the music business. She had now given up all
modelling assignments in order to concentrate on her music. A tape containing
some of her demos was passed on to Jerry Moss of A&M. He
thought 'Fool's Paradise' could be a potential hit single, so he signed her
up to do an album.
Soon after that, Fagen and Becker resumed writing songs together.
Becker would fly to NewYork for a month and then Fagen would fly to
Maui for a similar amount of time. Rosie Vela was now being talked about
as the girl who re-formed Steely Dan. However, although they did "write
a few good songs", they just as promptly abandoned the idea and left the
new compositions in limbo. Becker admitted that they had been working
on some tunes together, but also quickly added that they wanted to do it
with as little fanfare as possible.

MCA released Steely Dan's first greatest hits CD compilation, A Decade
Of Steely Dan, in 1985. It was a reasonable cross section of material and
included song-by-song musician listings of some of the early songs that
hadn't been available up to that point. But as with previous compilations,
the packaging of the CD was terrible; for some inexplicable reason the
front cover featured a picture of a crumpled paper bag.
Despite Steely Dan's dissolution and their inactivity, Becker and
Fagen's influence in the UK in the Eighties was as great - if not greater
- than it had ever been. Up and coming bands like Danny Wilson,
Deacon Blue (who took their name from the Aja song),The Kane Gang,
whose 'Motortown' single was a direct nod to Steely Dan, Roachford, Go
West, Curiosity Killed The Cat and Nick Heyward of Haircut 100 all
admitted being inspired by the Dan.
As well as the music, there was something else about Steely Dan that
impressed the more serious up-and-coming young pop and jazz musicians
of the Eighties. There was an almost complete absence of hype surrounding
their career, which, in the image-conscious Eighties, appealed
very much to those artists and fans to whom the glitziness of the immediate
post-punk era was particularly unattractive. Although they were
never an "indie" band - MCA are about as major as you can get - Steely
Dan had carried themselves in a manner that befitted most of the acts
signed to Rough Trade or any of the newly formed independent labels of
the Eighties.
The Dan were much admired for having maintained such a low profile
in contrast to the overblown, often macho, image-mongering that
infected so many of their Seventies contemporaries. Becker and Fagen
had always maintained a dignified distance from the crasser aspects of the
record industry, and this attitude - which at one time may have cost them
a few record sales - was now rewarded with a genuine respect from fans
old and new.

Seemingly having given up on both ideas of another solo album and a
Steely Dan record, Fagen now found something else to occupy his time.
Unlikely as it may seem for someone so antipathetic towards the press in
general, he landed a job as movie and music writer on Rupert Murdoch's Premiere magazine. His first article appeared in August 1987, and in it he
Wrote about his oft-discussed writer's block and how a request to write
some film music seemed a good idea to get him away from the frustration
of his home studio.
His articles appeared at irregular intervals right up until 1991 and during
that time he conducted an interview with Ennio Morricone (for
which, embarrassingly, his tape recorder failed to work -- and Morricone
couldn't speak English anyway) and wrote about his admiration for
Henry Mancini. Several tongue-in-cheek pieces followed: one about the
computer age of music, and how if a composer wasn't careful the
machines could control him, and another about a fictional German composer
named Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisel, which was illustrated with a picture
of Fagen with a centre parting dressed up Twenties style.
Fagen was by this time living with Marcelle Clements, who later also
wrote for Premiere. Clements went on to write a novel entitled Rock Me, which was published by Simon and Schuster in 1988 and which
described the misfortunes of a rock musician with a drug problem who
retreats to Hawaii to recuperate.The similarity to Walter Becker's predicament
was uncanny, but Clements ensured she was on firm ground by
making the main protagonist of her story a female.
Around the same time, Fagen was composing music for a friend in
NewYork. Jane Aaron was an animator whose brother, Peter, had been at
Bard College with Fagen and Becker back in the Sixties. In 1985 and
1986,Aaron made two short films, sponsored by the NewYork Council
for Arts, called Travelling Light and Set In Motion. Both films featured patterns
of light moving around a house (her husband featured in the latter
film) and also, as the title to the latter suggests, the set itself shifted to
Fagen's electronic music. For Fagen it was just a light-hearted pastime
with no pressure that might help his "serious" writer's block.
Fagen went into an eight-track recording studio with Aaron to work
on the music and played keyboards while responding to the visual
images on the videotape. Even though the animation was only two minutes
long, Fagen conducted several sessions and constantly rejected
material. Jane Aaron was amazed at his dedication to the project: just
when she thought it was great and he couldn't improve on the soundtrack,
he would add another element or come up with something even
better.
In 1986, Fagen composed an instrumental composition,'Shades', for
the title track of a Yellowjackets album on MCA Records. Three years
later, he wrote a third piece of music to another Aaron animation entitled This Time Around, which Aaron said was "pretty wild".
After China Crisis in 1985, Walter Becker was interested in producing
an even more mellow band, Norwegian duo Fra Lippo Lippi, named after
a Robert Browning poem. Working with his old buddy Roger Nichols
again, the album Light And Shade was recorded in Los Angeles and was
released on the Virgin label in 1987.
That same year when China Crisis's record company were looking for
someone to produce their follow-up to Flaunt The Imperfection, several
names were tossed into the hat, but the band didn't want to use someone
who would go straight for drum machines and samples. After about six
weeks waiting for answers, Eddie Lundon said that the least they could
do was let Becker hear their demos and ask his opinion.
Becker again loved the songs and the arrangements and was really keen
to do the album.Virgin wanted him to return to England to record it, but
Becker didn't want to travel because that would involve a long separation
from his girlfriend and baby.
Becker and Nichols had decided on digital recording and suggested a
compromise of working in Los Angeles, but Becker was able to negotiate
such a low rate for a Maui studio -- a three-month block booking at
George Benson's studio, Lahaina Sound - that when Virgin saw the projected
figures they agreed to China Crisis being accommodated in a
rented condo on the paradise isle.They worked 12 six-day weeks in Maui
and, often, before each recording session began at around one or two
o'clock, Roger Nichols took them down to the beach and taught them
to scuba dive. They all qualified as divers while recording the album.
Becker was much more relaxed recording Diary Of A Hollow Horse on
his home territory than he had been on Flaunt The Imperfection. Also, he
knew the Liverpool lads really well by now and they were all comfortable
with each other. The album featured some very tasty Becker guitar
work. He came up with a lovely solo on 'Sweet Charity In Adoration',
which Roger Nichols thought should go on the record, but Becker
remained unconvinced and he got Tim "Weekend Knobjob" Weston
(who had been an assistant engineer on Countdown To Ecstasy) to replace
it- Becker also intended to include brass parts on the album, but the
arranger couldn't make it and he took this as a sign from God that there
was not meant to be brass on the album. Nichols called Jim Horn, with
whom he had worked on John Denver records, and they settled for keyboard
brass parts. Becker was also credited with being responsible for
starting the song'Stranger By Nature'.
ular!
At that point Becker was more concerned with his leisure time and
didn't want to go full tilt back into music. Nonetheless, he still liked to
get away from Maui for a month or two just to work on short-term projects.
In contrast, Fagen loathed surfing and swimming and hadn't particularly
enjoyed any of his visits to Maui. So when Fagen showed up on
the island with his girlfriend he brought chests full of books and records
with him, because they considered Maui to be a desert island and they
had to bring their own culture with them.
Much to Becker and Nichols' disgust, when China Crisis returned to
the UK, Virgin didn't think there was an obvious hit single on the album
and hired MikeThorne to do some work on three songs, including what
was to become the first single,'Red Letter Day'. Becker and Nichols' stuff
was 24-track Sony digital mixes, butThorne transferred the tracks to analogue
and did more overdubs.The single bombed anyway and, despite its
lush and clear sound, the album singularly failed to show any success.
Six years after the Mount Wood Jazz Festival in Oregon, The Hoops
McCann album came out."I like their 'Green Earrings' and 'Black Cow',"
said Fagen, "and I thought 'Babylon Sisters' was really good. What they
heard in the structure and chords were things I never thought of. Also, the
things they do with harmonics and solos compensate for hearing it without
lyrics, which is an equal component in the original recordings.
"A few years before,Woody Herman had done an album with Chick
Corea's tunes on one side and ours on the other. And it had mixed results.
The more adventurous arrangements were pretty good, but the less
adventurous were not so great. But Joe Roccisano took the originals as a
starting point and did something different with them. Our things weren't
jazz.There wasn't much improvisation and it was too rigidly constructed.
But it's a great side effect of our success that it got a lot of people to listen
to jazz who ordinarily had no contact with it. People have told me
they started listening to jazz after listening to our records, which is nice."
Once again, Fagen and Daniel Lazerus worked on a mix of 'Black
Cow' for the^album but, after spending some time on it and loving the
sound of it, they discovered that they had been given the wrong master
tape. It was eventually remixed using the correct master tape by Al
Schmitt.
In November 1988, Fagen told David Browne in The Daily News that
he had six tunes finished - two co-written with Walter Becker - and
would soon begin recording his follow-up to The Nightfly. "When we get
back together, we feel very funny," Fagen said. "It was fun to work for a
while but... there's something sad about it. We did come up with two
songs, but I think that both of us felt at the end that, well, that was another
time.
"I have a problem writing songs. Some people may have noticed. I have
to be in control. The collaborator has to know that I'll have the final say.
I have a very queer idea about what's acceptable."
Fagen was at his lowest ebb when he was interviewed by Stephen
Williams at the Brighton Grill on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Finally
laying Steely Dan to rest, he told Williams that he found the group's
records... "unpleasant to listen to. I wish it wasn't, but the older it is, the
more unpleasant. Although Gaucho does reflect its time in an honest way,
it's never dishonest. Just sometimes, it seems no good."
Fagen said that they had reunited two years ago, not with the idea of
re-forming Steely Dan, but simply... "to see what would happen. We
wrote two pretty good songs and then, just stopped. I might include one
or both of them on my album, and Walter will somehow be involved in
the production, but not in the performance."
Fagen was asked to compose the soundtrack for Bright Lights, Big City, a Michael J. Fox film by Mark Rosenberg, the co-producer who was also
Fagen's cousin. Fagen had often mentioned his cynicism about movie
music being sublimated to the director's whim, but on this occasion, since
he had enjoyed Jay Mclnerney's novel and felt attracted to a new experience,
he agreed to give it a try.
Rosenberg wanted executive music producer Joel Sill to make Fagen
feel comfortable with the project. Sill confessed he had never met Fagen,
but they became acquainted over the phone and his job was to create a
framework where Fagen could work at ease. "After he did a couple of
cues, it was like second nature to him," he said.
Fagen recorded a one-verse and one-chorus version of Jimmy Reed's
'Bright Lights, Big City', which was eventually dropped from the soundtrack
album. Sill said it was... "more of a cue than a record, so we left it off."
Both Sill and Rosenberg had once worked for Warner Bros, so it was
natural for them to approach the label about releasing the soundtrack
album. In addition to this Fagen was contracted to Warner Bros. Towards
the end of negotiations, Warner Bros offered them a Prince song,'Good
Love'.The staff at the label had extremely high expectations for the album,
anticipating another Dirty Dancing.'At's a great sampling of contemporary
music. Basically it's a dance album, but I think it will appeal to a' broad
demographic base," Sill said. The record company staff began jokingly referring
to it as Bright Lights, Big Singles. United Artists were running ads for the
"Im that included just music, which boded well for the album, too.
After the film's release, Fagen said he was not encouraged by it. "I don't
think I'd do another," he told friends. He co-wrote the score with Rob
Mounsey but told him he couldn't face writing Diane Wiest's death scene
~" it was simply too traumatic for him.

Fagen co-wrote with Timothy Meher the lyrics to 'Century's End', the
song that closed the film and featured a typically Fagen-like stabbing
horn arrangement. It was released as a four-track CD single that also featured'Shanghai
Confidential','The Goodbye Look'and'The Nightfly'.
The single went absolutely nowhere. A video was made by Fagen's friend,
Jane Aaron, but Fagen was conspicuous by his absence once again. Just to
keep it in the family, Aaron's brother Peter took the photograph that was
used on the cover of the CD single.
'Shanghai Confidential', with its whistling synths and jungle sounds,
had originally been called 'The Squash Lesson' and had been composed
for a dance troupe. Steve Khan played guitar on the cut, but when he
heard the final mix he was very disappointed. "That wasn't the sound we
had when I left the studio. When a Telecaster gets placed that far back in
the mix it thins out," he said.
Of all people, Mel Tonne covered two Fagen songs, 'Walk Between
Raindrops' and 'The Goodbye Look', on his 1988 album Reunion with
the Marty Paich Dek-tette. Fagen wasn't surprised. "He's always looking
for new songs to sing and I guess while checking out material he discovered
my tunes," he said."! think they were done really well."
In December 1988, Fagen made an extremely rare TV appearance,
playing piano behind Patti Austin on a show called Sunday Night, which
was introduced by Jools Holland and David Sanborn. Each week the
show was given over to a different personality. This particular week was
producer Tommy LiPuma's idea and the band included Hiram Bullock,
Omar Hakim, Marcus Miller and Fagen playing keyboards on three or
four songs, before they closed the show with Patti Austin singing a version
of Fagen's TGY'.
Afterwards Fagen said his appearance was purely an experiment."! really
like having a certain amount of privacy. I'm very nervous about going on
television, 'cause television is what makes you fiimous. I did it actually to
see how nervous I'd be. I wasn't that bad." However, when his turn came
to be introduced, Fagen looked distinctly uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, hard on the heels of his China Crisis production, Walter
Becker produced Rickie Lee Jones's 1989 album Flying Cowboys. "It was
a real tough school year," he said. "One thing I've learned is that everybody
works in a different way and has a different atmosphere that they
like to create for themselves. Rickie is as spontaneous as she can be with
everything that she does - which is exciting to see when things work. For
somebody who has the job of trying to plan things out, it keeps you
guessing. But it was a delightful experience for me."
Becker played synthesizer on 'Satellites', bass on the title song and was
even given a co-writing credit on the opening tune of the album, 'The
Horses'.There was a vivid contrast between Jones' stark records and the
polished sheen of Steely Dan's music, and Becker admitted that this had
bothered her beforehand. "That was something we talked about from the
outset. The Steely Dan stuff that I used to be involved with, we tried to
make as slick as we possibly could, because some of the other elements
were so subversive that they needed to be sugar-coated or disguised. And
Rickie, of course, is quite different from that. The presentation is very
honest and open and straightforward."
Although the partnership had cautious beginnings, it worked out
very well in the end. Rickie Lee Jones admitted that she was somewhat
fearful of working with Becker as her producer, and described Steely
Dan records as "boy music". She was intimidated by Steely Dan's
unsmiling publicity shots, and thought Becker was probably just an
unpleasant person. She was also worried that Becker would encourage
her to adopt the well-documented Steely Dan approach of take after
take. She wanted simplicity and a "starkness of presentation", but once
she had spoken to Becker about the approach to the record, she realized
that he had rethought his methods and was prepared to work to her modus operandi.
Becker said that the resulting album, Flying Cowboys, contained songs
that were barely more than cleaned up original guitar and voice demos
that she had recorded herself at home. Becker felt that those demos contained
such spirit and creative spark that it was virtually impossible to better
them. The song 'Rodeo Girl' was Jones' demo as was 'Ghost Train',
with a few added sampled overdubs.

Fagen, meanwhile, was taking his first very tentative steps on the road to
what he termed "a new career". Fagen's then girlfriend, Libby Titus
(who had once been married to Levon Helm from The Band), was producing some low-key jazz and cabaret shows in and around New York
and, one night in 1989, she persuaded Fagen to join Dr John and Early
Simon on stage at a small but fashionable restaurant/club on the Upper
East Side of NewYork called Elaine's.They sang'Such A Night', a hit for
Johnnie Ray before Elvis Presley took the song into the US charts in
1964. Fagen enjoyed the experience and Dr John was delighted, too. He
told Rolling Stone that Fagen was... "a hero of mine. When he jams he's
something else."
Fagen evidently had fun doing the show at Elaine's and he began
working on an idea of presenting an evening of great Sixties soul songs and
some personal favourites. Fagen was a fan of songwriters Bert Berns
and Jerry Ragavoy, and he decided to call the event "NewYork Soul".
Fagen was on a crusade. "Those guys and the records they made with
Solomon Burke and Garnett Minims were responsible for a New York
soul sound that was never really recognised," he told his radio audience
with the kind of enthusiasm he'd never have been able to muster for anything
associated with Steely Dan.
The shows were booked in for September 1989 at the Lone Star
Roadhouse on 52nd St., and the week before, Fagen went on Pat St.John's
lunchtime WNEW-FM programme to promote them. The two-show
evening was completely sold out long before the date and was produced
by Libby Titus. The buzz was out on the streets of NewYork - Donald
Fagen was about to break his 15-year absence from the stage.
Berns and Ragavoy were responsible for writing some classic soul
songs in the Sixties, often under pseudonyms such as Norman Meade
and Norman Russell. Their catalogue included such classics as "Time Is
On My Side', 'Twist And Shout', 'Piece Of My Heart' and 'Everybody
Needs Somebody To Love', some of which were written together and
some separately. They were also producers, but their partnership was curtailed
when Bert Berns died of a heart attack on New Year's Eve, 1967.
But Ragavoy turned out to attend the tribute and thank Fagen for his
efforts.
Fagen had called Paul Griffin and, working together at Fagen's apartment,
they wrote between 30 and 40 arrangements of soul and rhythm
and blues standards for the succession of gigs that were planned.
Fagen, who emceed the shows, credited Libby Titus with badgering
him into getting back on stage. The band consisted of Jerry Jemmott on
bass, George Naha on guitar, drummer Joe Ascione, and Paul Griffin
(also the musical director) and Dr John on keyboards. The horn section
consisted of David "Fathead" Newman, Alan Rubin and Lou Marini,
and vocals were shared between Phoebe Snow, Jeff Young, Jevetta Steele
(from The Gospel At Colonus), singer, harmonica and violin player Mindy
Jostyn, and Griffin. Dr John sang 'Cry To Me' and 'Look At Granny Run
Run'.
Fagen took to the stage carrying a strange little instrument called a
melodica, a toy instrument that was a cross between an oversized harmonica
and a small piano. "I'd been looking around for a solo instrument
I could play where I could be mobile, so for a while I was playing one of
those keyboards you strap around your neck. It was all right, [but] I
wanted something that sounded more natural," he said.
The show was introduced by Pat St John and the set opened with a
loose version of'Time Is On My Side'. Other songs included 'Stop!',
'Piece Of My Heart','Twist And Shout','Cry Baby' and a rousing version
of'Everybody Needs Somebody To Love' by Paul Griffin.The choice of
material ensured the gigs were rapturously received, but it was Fagen's
presence that drove the crowd wild. As the show progressed, some members
of the audience became agitated, yelling and screaming for a variety
of Steely Dan songs, but Fagen steadfastly refused to perform any of his
own material, let alone sing any. His irritation at the incessant demands
for Steely Dan songs was apparent and he was obliged to tell the audience
that it had been advertised as a soul show and they should not
expect anything else. The show closed with a surprise appearance by the
Brigati Brothers from The Rascals, who were joined by everyone on the stage for a version of 'Good Lovin'.
After the commotion at the September show, Fagen made it quite clear
that there was no prospect of a Steely Dan reunion. In November he told NewYork magazine: "Nobody should expect us to do a reunion concert.
It would be ridiculous. It used to be, if I heard 'Rikki Don't Lose That
Number' I would walk out of a restaurant. Say you were 41 and they put
a picture of you from 1972, blown up, on a Broadway stage. There was a
narrative of what you thought, how you acted. You'd remember how
strange a time it was. Out of the context of time, it seems funny. Or tragic." However, he did concede that Walter Becker may play at one of
the forthcoming Lone Star shows.
The September shows proved to be such a success that in November
1989, Fagen returned to the Lone Star for a 'Thanksgiving Soul Party',
but by this time musical director Paul Griffin had mysteriously departed.
Very soon the only remaining member of the original New York Soul
Band would be the Night Tripper himself, Dr John.
This time, Fagen publicised the event with an interview with KROQ
m NewYork and stressed several times that it was not a Steely- Dan concert
and that he was undecided as to whether he would be singing or not.
More significantly, during this interview he announced that..."there is no
more Steely Dan". Speaking as if he was never a part of the ensemble in
the first place, Fagen said emphatically,"They're gone". He added that his
solo album would be out in 1990, that he talked to Becker frequently on
the phone and they were considering other projects for potential production
work.
With the soul shows Fagen had tested the water and regained confidence
as far as his singing was concerned. "I think for my psychological
profile it's a good idea that I sing. I owe it to people who want to hear
me sing. On the other hand, I'd like to hear what I sound like."
At the Thanksgiving Soul Party Fagen did indeed sing, but he again
avoided Steely Dan material and chose instead a version of Kenny
Gamble and Leon Huff's 'Drowning In The Sea Of Love', a Top 20 US
hit for Joe Simon in early 1972.
Amid all the talk about a second Fagen solo album, Becker gave interviews
in which he admitted that his appetite for recording an album of
his own had been whetted. "Well, maybe [there'll be a Walter Becker solo
album]. If Walter Becker could sing a little better, there probably would
have been one already. I'm beginning to realise that I don't have the luxury of sitting around wishing I was a better singer than I am, so I'm
thinking about doing something. Either I have to accommodate myself to
the equipment I have or find better equipment. But I'd like there to be a
Walter Becker record now, which I never really thought about before. I
think working with Rickie has influenced me. I see how much fun she
had doing this and I want to do it too." Becker was honest enough to
admit that he had no preconceived notions about how his album would
sound, interviewers noted that, and admitted that he wouldn't know until
the record was finished. Interviewers noted that, surprisingly, for such a
publicity-shy and modest man, who wasn't one to dwell on trivialities,
Becker had press clippings tacked up on his LA office wall, and he even
admitted that he liked to see his name in print.
On April 4,1990, the NewYork Rock and Soul Revue moved into the
big time with a concert at the Beacon Theater on Manhattan's West Side.
By now the line-up had been expanded to feature Fagen, his old Steely
Dan buddy Michael McDonald, Patti Austin and Phoebe Snow, backed by
Jeff Young and his band Curious George, an R&B outfit featuring Sam
Butler on rhythm guitar and Drew Zingg on lead.The format for the show
was a round robin with everyone on stage all the time. As well as the soul tunes such as 'Shaky Ground','Smoke Gets InYour Eyes','Soothe Me' and
'At Last', each performer also sang some of their best-known work. Michael
McDonald sang'Minute By Minute', Phoebe Snow did'Poetry Man' and
Fagen opened the show with 'Black Friday' and TGY' and closed it with
'Pretzel Logic'. Fagen introduced the song as'"Pretzel Logic'... it's a funny
name, but it's the blues". Just as they had done on the 1974 Steely Dan
tour, Fagen and McDonald shared vocals, with McDonald singing the lines,
"I stepped up on the platform/The man gave me the news."
Performing Steely Dan material had its drawbacks. It was not going to
be easy to persuade the audience that he wasn't there to sing solely Steely
Dan tunes. "I guess some people think I owe it to fans to do Steely Dan
tunes. What I really owe to them is to be honest about what I want to do
and to show some evolution. And occasionally take some old things and
rework them. But as far as owing anybody a nostalgia show, I don't feel
that's my responsibility.
"When we first started doing the songwriter-oriented shows, there was
a section of the audience that was obviously enraged that I wasn't doing
my own material, so rather than make a big deal about it, or be snobbish
about it, I started doing a couple of songs. And it turned out to be, oddly
enough, not a bad mix. Since I grew up with that sort of music, and it
was an influence on me, it all flowed together pretty well. In a way it's a
tribute to the producers and writers and singers who first invented this
music. I hope there's some spirit there that the singers are really connected
to the songs. To me (the key element is) just a love of the music,
and a desire to get together and play without any sequencers or anything
that encumbers live playing."
Throughout May and June 1990, Fagen made various unannounced
appearances at NewYork clubs, the most regular being Tuesday nights at
Hades with Jimmy Vivino's Little Big Band. The Little Big Band was a
10-piece outfit that included some of the best musicians and singers available
in NewYork: Jeff Young on organ and vocals, Catherine Russell on
vocals, Vivino himself on vocals, Harvey Brooks (a veteran of the Electric
Flag and sessions with Bob Dylan,The Doors and Jimi Hendrix) on bass,
and three or four horn players, including Vivino's brother Jerry. The band
were in it for love, since there was certainly no money to be made for an
unknown 10-piece playing NewYork clubs.The Little Big Band opened
at Hades to a tiny audience, and Jeff Young suggested to Fagen that as
they were playing only a couple of blocks from his apartment, he might
like to take a stroll over to the club and check them out.
The gigs were poorly attended and, one night, Vivino noticed Fagen
sitting by himself at a table in the corner. They met up, talked, and one
night Fagen joined them on stage to play organ on a couple of songs.
Vivino had no idea when Fagen would show up, but his visits became
gradually more regular, though he didn't sing, and eventually he and
Vivino began discussing potential soul and rhythm and blues cover versions
and incorporating them into The Little Big Band's set.
Fagen showed no signs of nervousness at these Tuesday night gettogethers, even though a barely adequate 15 minutes' rehearsal was set
aside for each song and Fagen showed up for only the second of two days'
rehearsal anyway. Often, on the day of the gig, there would be a frantic
scramble as the musicians called each other on the telephone to find out
which songs were on the set list and whether they knew their parts. As
Fagen became more comfortable with the band, he participated more
fully and started singing, initially soul covers and eventually the occasional
Steely Dan chestnut.
In May, when Becker was staying in NewYork, they both showed up
at Hades and jammed with The Little Big Band -- Becker played guitar
alongside Jimmy Vivino, and Fagen shared vocals with Phoebe Snow on
'634-5789' and 'In The Midnight Hour', but no Steely Dan material was
aired. Fagen's choice of which songs he would sing depended on whether
or not he was comfortable with the lyrics. On one occasion a month
later, ever mindful of his long performing hiatus (and with a sense of
humour about it), Fagen changed the 'Black Friday' lyric "Gonna let the
world pass by me" to "Gonna let the years pass by me."

Fagen had decided to produce his second solo album himself, but just
before he was about to begin recording he suddenly got cold feet about
the prospect of going into a studio without his former partner. Becker
was duly installed as producer of the record. The sessions began on the
long-awaited follow-up to The Nightfly in May 1990 at the Hit Factory
on West 54th St. Both parties were at pains to stress beforehand that it was
not a Steely Dan album. Roger Nichols was still busy finishing another
project and Fagen really was eager to get under way -- he couldn't wait
any longer so he hired another engineer, Tony Volante, to start work on
the sessions. In his regular article in EQ magazine, Nichols joked that that
was Fagen's first mistake.
Becker refused to name any specific studio musicians involved with the
project and described Fagen's recent material as having a soulful flavour
with "somewhat greater harmonic and lyrical complexity [than traditional
R&BJ. It's been delightful. I always have a great time working with
Donald. We enjoy each other's company, and over the years we've developed
our own little corner of the marketplace where we set up our tent.
Even if we haven't been together or talked a lot, we immediately have a
rapport and fall right back into a routine."
Fagen continued with his occasional live appearances between recording.
The sessions were divided between NewYork - where they worked
on rhythm guitars, drums, horn parts, background vocals and anything
that required a pool of musicians - and Becker's home studio in Maui,
where they recorded Becker's bass, guitar solos and Fagen's keyboard
playing and vocals.They quickly fell into a pattern: work for between four
and six weeks in New York, take a month off, then work for a similar
period in Maui. Their days, weeks and months of endless touring were
definitely a thing of the past now.
In typical jocular manner, Becker explained why he preferred producing
to the hard slog of writing and recording. "All the hard work is really
done, and you just book into some swank recording studio, find a comfortable
chair, order some food and start recording."
Fagen had made models of each tune in his home studio and came into
the studio itself with a sequence of the tune consisting of drum samples,
DX bass and DX-7 rhythm parts. These were to be used as a strict guide
to the live musicians. Despite this, Fagen had an aversion to hearing drum
machines and sampling on actual records. "I'm insulted when I hear
something and I know that for the drum track and maybe a lot of the
other instruments, someone just pushed a button and that's what I'm
hearing. I feel really manipulated by it." And yet on his album, Fagen,
Becker and Nichols spent weeks (possibly months) just moving drum
sounds around on a track, seeking absolutely perfect time.
In one of his EQ pieces, Roger Nichols attempted to outline the
remarkable precision that Fagen requires for a drum track on his songs.
Fagen and Nichols dealt in milliseconds, and might spend a month trying
to create the perfect drum track by means of editing and piecing together
bits of live drums played by Chris Parker. It prompted several letters of
disbelief as to how Fagen could be that picky. In fact, in the same amount
of time that it took to record drums and piano on two tunes for Fagen,
Nichols and Becker had recorded ten hours of music on 11 jazz albums
for Triloka and the new-age Windham Hill Records, and half of those
records were already in the stores. Mixing was also a veritable Cakewalk
compared to Fagen's schedule: their rate was closer to 10 tunes a day
instead of 10 days per tune. When he wasn't working on Fagen's album,
Becker produced several jazz albums for Triloka and Windham Hill with
Roger Nichols at the controls.The artists included LeeAnn Ledgerwood,
Andy Laverne.Jeff Beal, Bob Sheppard and Jeremy Steig.
Becker explained the care and attention that went into Fagen's tracks.
one-track-at-a-time kind of procedure, stretched out in time, where
every track is very finely honed to fit with what's already there, and then
each successive layer has the same level of scrutiny and so on. With the
songs we've been doing with the jazz artists, basically everybody's 
playing at once and we're going more for the overall quality of the performance,
the main artists' solos probably a primary concern, so if there are little
glitches here and there or flaws, that's part of it.
"My approach to these things is that, when you're working for a very
condensed period of time in a studio, there's only so much room for a
producer to add his two cents to what's going on. For the most part, I just
try to facilitate what the artists want to do. It's really their time up at bat,
and Roger is really helpful in that way, too."
By a strange coincidence, within a month of Becker and Fagen resuming
their working partnership, original Steely Dan drummer Jim Hodder
was found dead in the swimming pool at his Point Arena, California,
home. Hodder had drowned while his blood alcohol level was more than
three times the legal limit for driving in California. After being found by
a friend on a Monday afternoon, Hodder was put on a life-support
machine but was pronounced dead very early on Tuesday morning at the
Ukiah Medical Center.
One stormy evening at Hades in October 1990, Fagen jammed with
The Little Big Band and former Jimi Hendrix Experience bass player
Noel Redding and Paul (Late Night With David Letterman) Shaffer. While
Redding and Shaffer sat at the front before taking the stage, Fagen jokingly
asked for some lighter fluid to set his melodica on fire and launched
into 'Purple Haze'. Shaffer took over lead vocals and Fagen played his
"burning" melodica.
The same month, Fagen headlined at the Long Island Evian Music
Festival in Southampton, playing with most of the musicians from the
Beacon show as well as Curious George. Bill Withers was also due to
appear, but was forced to cancel at the last minute.They played several classic
soul songs including'Knock On Wood', Sam Cooke's 'Soothe Me', Sam
& Dave's 'You Got Me Hummin', and Berns and Ragaroy's 'Piece Of My
Heart' before Fagen sang 'Black Friday', 'Pretzel Logic' and 'Chain
Lightning'. The surprise of the evening was the inclusion of'Home At
Last', which he sang live for the first time ever. Fagen even harked back to
the halcyon days of Jerome Aniton by introducing himself as Stevie Dan.
Fagen's semi-regular appearance at Hades had increased the size of the
audience to a dangerous level, so it was unfortunate that once he'd
become comfortable with the place, the New York Fire Department
should take it on themselves to close it down. Due to insufficient fire
exits, the music licence they issued permitted only three people on the
stage at any one time. When The Little Big Band played, this limit was
exceeded by at least fourfold.
After Hades was closed, Vivino took his band to a comedy club called
Catch A Rising Star on the Upper East Side, which was looking to add
music to a schedule that normally comprised up-and-coming comics. It
quickly became obvious that this venue wasn't going to work out, so
Vivino hit the road again and moved to The China Club on 75th and
Broadway, where eventually Fagen would premiere a live version of
'Green Flower Street'.
In November 1990, Walter Becker called Chris Parker, who had been
on the road with Bob Dylan solidly for eight months.They flew him out
to Maui, put him up in a house and, each morning, picked him up in
Becker's truck while listening to Sonny Rollins on the way to the studio.
It was a completely different vibe from working in New York - considerably
more relaxed, due to the studio being miles from anywhere, and
only the three of them plus Roger Nichols present. They spent 10 days
working just on drum sounds and drum tracks at Becker's studio Hyperbolic
Sound - and Parker enjoyed the experience immensely.
Becker's studio was housed in two separate buildings with the musicians
visible to Becker, Fagen and Nichols in the control room via a video link.
Parker was in Maui for Thanksgiving Day, and as usual, they worked all
day, but when Parker suggested they go out to dinner together, Becker
said, "I'll give you Thanksgiving Day," and offered him some Oscar Mayer
smoked turkey sandwiches.
At the Hit Factory Chris Parker played his own drums, but on Maui,
Becker and Fagen had a Gretsch kit already set up in the studio provided
by Paul Marzetti. Parker played on 'Tomorrow's Girls' but the song was
still in its infancy and had a different groove -"a Sly Stone kinda groove"
according to Parker - and Fagen had not yet come up with the intro to
the song as it finally appeared. They were also uncertain as to who should
play bass, and it became a running joke that whoever was finally chosen
had to have a weird name - Lincoln Schleifer, Zev Katz or Teaker
Barfield. Just about the only person not mentioned was Walter Becker
himself, and Chris Parker said he would have played differently had he
known that Becker was going to end up playing all the bass lines' on the
album.
Parker said that Becker and Fagen wanted his drum heads as tight as
they could possibly go. For the song 'On The Dunes', Becker came into
the studio and fixed some mutes to Parker's drums. The drum break in
on The Dunes' was not planned, but Parker was really into the tune and
just kept playing. They didn't ask him to stop so he continued, assuming
that they must like what he was doing. In fact, Parker reckons the take
that made the record is one on which Fagen played live Rhodes in the
control room while he played drums separately in the studio. They also
altered the drum sounds on the tracks he played on after he had left, making
them much crisper and drier than the way they had sounded before.
In March 1991, Fagen took the NewYork Rock and Soul Revue back
to the Beacon Theater, and both the Friday and Saturday night shows
were recorded for a live album. The line-up now included Michael
McDonald, Phoebe Snow, Boz Scaggs and 67-year-old Charles Brown.
For the subsequent live album, most of the performances were taken from
the Saturday night performance and the sequencing was juggled around.
The show opened with Fagen and Jeff Young and The Youngsters performing
an instrumental version of'Madison Time', quickly- followed by
Michael McDonald and Phoebe Snow's rousing version of Eddie Floyd's
Stax standard 'Knock On Wood'. From there each performer stepped up
to the microphone intermittently, with Fagen singing 'Home At Last',
'Black Friday','Chain Lightning' and 'Pretzel Logic'. Michael McDonald
did his own 'Minute By Minute' and 'Little Darling', plus Jackie Wilson's
vocally challenging 'Lonely Teardrops'; Phoebe Snow covered The
Temptations' 'Shaky Ground' and Etta James' 'At Last'; Boz Scaggs sang
Joe Simon's 'Drowning In A Sea of Love'; Eddie and David Brigati of the
Rascals sang 'Groovin"; and Charles Brown played 'Quicksand', Joyce's
Boogie' and 'Driftin' Blues', a song he wrote when he was just 12 years
old.The full cast joined together on The Rascals"People GotTo Be Free'
before Fagen and Mike McDonald encored with 'Pretzel Logic'. In
Fagen's liner notes for the album, he wrote that at Steely Dan shows back
in the Seventies, the audience reaction to McDonald's singing made him
wonder what he was doing up front, but his favourite part of those shows,
he added, was when McDonald sang the line about the shoes. A true-to
the-original live version of'Pretzel Logic' was released as a single, to no
avail.
Becker was due back in NewYork in May 1991 to continue work on
Fagen's album, which they hoped to finish by September. In the spring of
that year Fagen and Gary Katz's own studio, which they had decided to
call River Sound because of its views over the East River and theTriboro
bridge, had opened. It was designed by Frank Comitali and fitted with the
old console from Motown s Hitsville Studios in Los Angeles. The studio
manager,Todd Alan, warned Fagen that it was a difficult time to be in the
studio business, but Fagen said they had only one room to fill and was
confident that the project would be a success. "The studio is built for
music," he said. "No one's going to make any videos here or commerŠ
Is" Fagen left the choice of equipment to Wayne Yurgelun, Gary Katz
and Roger Nichols.
On May 9 1991, Fagen appeared at the Bottom Line in a show entitled
"Five Songwriters Sitting Around Singing". In an intimate setting, Fagen
played piano and was joined by Al Kooper (Korg Ml),Dan Penn (acoustic
guitar), Spooner Oldham (keyboards) and Gary Nicholson (acoustic guitar).The
show was introduced by Vinnie Scelsa ofWXRQ-FM, who interviewed
the songwriters in turn about their songs. Each writer was also
asked to select a couple of their favourites and explore the ways in which
they came up with the music and lyrics. Fagen selected 'Black Friday' and
'Green Flower Street' and wound up his segment with 'Home At Last', for
which Jimmy Vivino joined the band on acoustic guitar.
Fagen told the audience he played the piano like "a giant guitar with
a few notes thrown in" and acknowledged that "a lot of the Steely Dan
attitude was Walter's".
Towards the end of the show, each songwriter was asked to perform a
song that they wished they'd written, and Fagen didn't hesitate in choosing
Bacharach and David's 'In The Land Of Make Believe'.
In July 1991, Fagen and The Little Big Band played a concert at the
Bearsville Theater in Woodstock, which acted as a showcase for various
members of the band to demonstrate their talents before their peers in the
upstate NewYork music community-. The week before the show, Fagen
and Vivino's band played a dress rehearsal at The China Club and Fagen
introduced another two "new songs into the set, 'Josie' and 'Green
Earrings'.They also rehearsed 'Sign In Stranger' and 'Deacon Blues' but,
due to the restrictions on rehearsal time, they were never perfected."Maybe
we're trying to be a little too ambitious," Fagen commented.
By the time the Woodstock gig came around, however, they had managed
to fit in some more rehearsal time on 'Deacon Blues' and the song
was premiered there. Evidently Fagen hadn't found time to relearn the
lyrics, since they were taped to his piano. During the Saturday night
encore, the band was joined on stage by Cyndi Lauper and two members of the Hooters.
October 1991 saw the release of yet another Steely Dan compilation,
the compact disc Gold Expanded Edition which once again included the rip-roaring live version of'Bodhisattva', a remixed version of'Century's end, and two songs making their first appearance on CD, 'True
Companion' and 'Here At The Western World'.
Fagen spent the entire month of February 1992 in Maui working on
is album. But one wonders what progress was made in such a small amount
of time. Even Roger Nichols was expressing doubts. In EQ he wrote that
the level of acceptance that had been set for the project was so high that
it involved tempos having decimal points, microseconds replaced milliseconds,
while a typical Fagen comment on the groove of a track was: "It felt
pretty good on that beat right there." Nichols joked about going to his stationery
store to buy a calendar planner but found to his dismay that they
didn't manufacture "The Rest Of Your Life At A Glance", which he
thought would be needed before the album was finished.
Becker was also preparing to embark upon his own solo album with
Fagen as producer. Fagen told Rolling Stone. "I've heard some stuff that
was just great. He's a totally original person, and the songs really express
his personality. It's a kind of pop music, but very funny. It's really smart
and witty, and I think it will do very well."
In a Musician interview in June 1991, Becker said, "I'm kind of tired of
the record-making methods I'm typically known for. It takes too long.
I'm into more of the immediate gratification of capturing everybody in
the room playing together. You know, the fear is that something is not
gonna work, or one of the musicians is not going to be up to snuff or
something, but that hasn't happened yet. It's organic and fun. The nice
thing about working this way is by the time you've finished something
you're not sick of it; you haven't heard it thousands and thousands of
times."
Asked if his singing was the primary obstruction to a solo album,
Becker replied: "And laziness and sloth and lethargy, considerations like
that. But I am trying to write with that in mind now, and finally realised
I might as well just do it. I have some instrumental, some songs that are
pretty firmly rooted in the disco/jazz/spacefunk/muzak vein. Hopefully
at some point in the next six months or year I'll have enough tunes and
an idea about how to go about doing it."
The live album of the Beacon Theater show was released in November
1991. Fagen's versions of'Black Friday' and 'Home At Last' didn't even
make the record, but that was primarily due to time limitation. Fagen and
Elliot Scheiner rejigged the order of the songs to make it flow better and
it charted briefly in the US Top 200.
Libby Titus was again promoting shows at the Lone Star Roadhouse
under the banner "New York Nights", in which a diverse group of jazz,
blues and rock performers guested with The Little Big Band and Fagen
to play their music in a casual and low-key setting. Among the artists who
appeared were Dion DiMucci, Curtis Stigers, Bob Dorough, Annie Ross,
Gary Busey and Little Jimmy Scott.
For the October 23 show it was strongly rumoured that both Fagen
and Becker would be there. A queue started forming in the late afternoon
fully five hours before the show was due to start. Fagen opened the show
with 'Green Earrings' and, though Becker's guitar wasn't on stage, the
atmosphere was still electric. Roger Nichols was spotted in the club and,
as Fagen swung into 'Deacon Blues', Becker was seen in the upstairs balcony
area. Rick Danko was guesting with the band. Jimmy Vivino took
the microphone and asked Becker to come up and play.The crowd went
crazy but Becker shook his head and hid his face beneath his sweater in
mock horror. Eventually Becker relented, made his way to the stage and,
using one ofVivino's spare guitars, played the solo on 'Josie'. He left the
stage only to return later to solo on 'Chain Lightning' and 'Black Friday'.

In January 1992, amid much embarrassment, it was revealed that MCA had
been using inferior analogue master tapes in the manufacture of all seven
Steely Dan studio albums. The original run of CD releases in 1985 was
made from the correct digital masters, but subsequent pressings were
made from the inferior analogue ones. Roger Nichols said that the analogue
tapes were in terrible shape and had poor fidelity due to poor storage.
Nichols had transferred them to digital in 1981 in anticipation of the
demand for CD reissues.
MCA admitted the error, but vice-president Andy McKaie defended
the engineers' error by explaining that there were various new formats on
trial when Steely Dan had remastered their tapes, and the oversized
Scotch reels that they had chosen lost out. Consequently, when the engineers
came to remaster the second run, they could not be bothered to
locate the machines and reverted to using the inferior analogue copies
again. McKaie also pointed out that MCA had not had a single complaint
about the quality of the faulty CDs. He promised that in future they
would be remastering the CDs from the correct tapes and reissuing them
two at a time, beginning in early 1992, with a "digitally remastered"
sticker affixed to them. MCA had even provided Mobile Fidelity - which
manufactured high-quality gold-plated CDs that sold for twice the price
of ordinary discs - with the wrong tapes. There was really no excuse for
such carelessness, and Roger Nichols was so outraged that he threatened
to quit the music business.
Immediately after the record company fiasco, MCA requested Becker
and Fagen to look through their old tapes in search of unreleased material
for a box set, but they found nothing that they were entirely happy
with and the idea was rapidly shelved. "There was nothing too significant,"
Becker said. "We used to throw away a lot of things because we didn't
think they had it. And don't forget this was at a time when a lot of
people thought that if a song had lyrics, it was finished." Although both
agreed that they would continue to work together, they said Steely Dan
was dead; Becker even said that the collaboration would be easier to call
under "any other rubric".
Despite Fagen's statement that "the idea of a 25-song show frightens
me" only a few months earlier, the rumours were confirmed that Fagen
and Becker were to participate in a three-week 12-date tour in August
1992 under the name of the NewYork Rock and Soul Revue. Chuck
Jackson was added to the line-up alongside stalwarts Michael McDonald,
Phoebe Snow and Boz Scaggs. Rehearsals for the tour took place at SIR
Studios in NewYork from August 4 through August 12.
The tour was basically an extension of the Beacon shows in 1991, with
the band comprising 16 players. Harvey Brooks had replaced Lincoln
Schleifer on bass, Leroy Clouden replaced Denny McDermott on drums
and Chuck Jackson replaced Charles Brown. The set list was expanded to
three hours and almost 30 songs:'Green Earrings','Josie','Deacon Blues'
and 'My Old School' had now been added. But Donald Fagen admitted
submitting to pressure: "There was a large vocal minority in the audience
that was very insistent about hearing some of those Steely Dan tunes. I was very reluctant to start singing those tunes, but I realised that if I
wanted to be involved in the thing, I'd have to make a compromise. After
a while I started to enjoy singing them and reinterpreting them." Then
Fagen added a warning to that vocal minority for the upcoming gigs: "If
they keep making trouble after that, we'll just have them executed." The
tour opened at the Riverport Amphitheater in Michael McDonald's
home town, St Louis, on August 14 and ended in Detroit on August 30.
The format was the same, with each artist performing a mixture of
their own material and/or classic soul covers. After publicly expressing his
doubts about his vocal abilities,Walter Becker sang an adequate version of
Paul Butterfield's 'Mary, Mary'. Fagen prefaced the song with the wry
comment, "The Monkees recorded this, but we'll do it anyway."
The tour proved to be extremely popular -- not all the shows in the
Midwest were sold out, but most of the East Coast shows were. The
opportunity for a lot of younger Steely Dan fans to witness these Becker
and Fagen songs live for the first time was too tempting to pass up. Each
one was received rapturously, but the emotional high point each night
came when a gut-wrenching 'Deacon Blues' -- which featured a violin
solo from Mindy Jostyn - was followed by the hearty and uplifting 'My
Old School'.
Steely Dan had fans in very high places. During the 1992 US election
campaign,
Democrat Bill Clinton used music from the Seventies in his
rallies across the country. The principal song featured was Fleetwood
Mac's 'Don't Stop', but second in line was Steely Dan's 'Reelin' In The
Years'. Clinton played the song immediately before 'America The
Beautiful' at his Arkansas victory speech.
While Becker and Fagen were in the midst of rehearsals for the Rock
and Soul Revue tour, drummer Jeff Porcaro died of a heart attack in Los
Angeles as a result of accidentally inhaling pesticide with which he was
spraying roses in his garden. Porcaro was not just a widely admired drummer
but an enormously likeable man. Gary Katz acted as one of the
pall-bearers at the funeral and four songs by Porcaro's two favourite artists
were played during the service: Steely Dan's 'Home At last', 'Deacon
Blues' and 'Third World Man' (none of which Porcaro played on), and
Jimi Hendrix's 'The Wind Cries Mary'. Eulogies were spoken by Gary
Katz and Jim Keltner, and Katz read from a letter from Becker and Fagen
describing the sense of fun he always inspired in the studio.
A tribute concert was held for Porcaro at the Universal Amphitheater
in Los Angeles in December 1992, with the proceeds given to a trust
fund for his three children. Fagen appeared along with Don Henley,
Michael McDonald, David Crosby and Eddie Van Halen. Backed by
Toto (with Simon Phillips on drums), each performer sang a couple of
their best-known compositions. Fagen chose 'Chain Lightning' and
Josie', and Denny Dias, who had introduced Porcaro to Becker and
Fagen and was a very good friend of the drummer's, played guitar. Boz
Scaggs played 'Lowdown' and 'Lido Shuffle', Don Henley performed
'Dirty Laundry' and 'You Better Hang Up', Michael McDonald did I
Keep Forgettin" and 'Takin It To The Streets', with David Crosby
singing background vocals. George Harrison joined in the big finale
when everyone sang a grandstand version of'With A Little Help From
your Friends'.
In 1992, Fagen had a song featured in a film written by David Mamet
based on his play Glengarry Glen Ross, which dealt with greedy real estate
gents. Fagen wrote a song especially for Lou Marini of The Joe Reccisano Orchestra entitled 'Blue Lou'.
With Becker recording his material much faster than Fagen, and projected
release dates of April 1993 for Fagen's album and midsummer for Kers, there were strong rumours that they would combine for a
Steely Dan tour to promote their respective solo albums and play some
of their old favourites. Within months, Fagen went from vehemently
denying any possibility of a reunion tour to conceding that perhaps it
could happen.
This time the rumours became reality. Becker and Fagen would blow
the dust off Steely Dan and take her on the road again after 19 years.



Chapter XII
C'mon Snakehips



K'amakiriad, Donald Fagen's long-awaited follow-up to The Nightfly, was finally released in May 1993, fully 10 and a half years later. It was
the first Steely Dan or Fagen album on which Gary Katz had no direct
production involvement - primarily because Fagen was able to record
detailed demos in his home studio and Katz was therefore "automated
out of a job". Instead, it was produced by Walter Becker, who Fagen felt
was best suited to assess his vocal performances and was as familiar as anybody
with his working methods.
"It's just more fun to work with somebody you know so well," he said.
"We crack each other up. We've known each other for 25 years now, so
we almost talk in code at this point. Walter's got a very personal style and
he knows exactly what I'm looking for. He has a very stylised way of
playing the guitar, which is very swingy and laid-back, the kind of thing
I like, and he takes some weird chances. He was more than a producer
really, he was a collaborator as far as some of the music went. Especially
in playing."
Becker and Fagen tried out a number of session players, but eventually
Fagen decided that since Becker was on the spot and cheaper than any
other session players, he should try a few of the songs himself. Becker did
and it went so well that they never bothered to hire another bass player
or a lead guitarist.
Becker, Fagen and Nichols actually spent three years on and off and
almost a million dollars recording the album. Like 'The Nightfly, it was a
concept album (although Fagen was still somewhat hesitant to use that term), and one that paralleled the literal journey in the Kamakin with
fagens torrid psychological journey through an extreme case of writer's
block and various other personal problems, notably the break-up of his
long relationship with writer and ex-Bard student, Marcelle Clements,	i
fagen was very hopeful about the likelihood of Kamakiriad's success,
"I'm optimistic. Things are shaping up nicely for the Nineties. Well, better than
the Eighties anyhow." He explained his choice of title by saying
that he looked in a Japanese dictionary and discovered the word
"kamakiri", which meant praying mantis and which he thought was a
great name for his protagonist's mythical, steam-powered, custom-tooled
car. The environmentally sound Kamakiri also had a hydroponic farm in
the back and a direct link with a Teleologic Routing Satellite acronymically
called Tripstar. Fagen had no fixed image of how the car looked, but
he imagined it to be a medium-sized vehicle, probably with large tyres
and a bubble, covering the garden. He also decided that the car would not
move at speeds greater than 40 miles an hour.
By setting the scene in the near future, Fagen was able to take a
detached view of the story and steer away from sentimentality. It also
enabled him to invent certain gadgets and instruments that facilitated the
advancement of the story past difficult points, but he admitted that he
didn't want to "do a hard sci-fi thing".
"I haven't kept up with it (science fiction) that much lately, though i
have read a few of the William Gibson books, which I find are like the
Alfred Bester stuff I used to read. I always liked the idea of total freedom
that science fiction allows as regards plotting and characters, and the way
you can come up with ideas that have no way of being executed now. i
thought it was a good premise to build a story on, because I didn't want
it to refer to anything that's happening now, even though in a way it's
probably more about the present than the future."
Fagen wrote all the songs on the piano and then arranged them using
a sequencer. Once he had the basic structure, he put down his keyboard
parts, but almost all the sequenced and electronic parts were replaced by
live musicians later.
Fagen was continually asked to explain his long absence. "Well, the
Eighties weren't very inspiring for a start. More to the point, I had used
up all I knew on The Nightfly and I had to live another 10 years to write
a new album. Basically, I was just trying to get a life, having been a workaholic
ever since I was in college. I'd never been able to figure out what
to do with myself when i wasn't writing or recording, and it was time to
learn.You know, getting into relationships... getting out of relationships. I
even practised the piano a little." As well as practising the piano, Fagen
took some one-to-one lessons in music theory and singing lessons to
strengthen his voice.
The continuing questions about his activities in the meantime soon
wearied him though, and he began to start cracking the jokes. He told
one interviewer that he had been working in a shoe store on Madison
Avenue, and said that when he was recognised on NewYork streets and

asked about the release date of his new album he bounced the question
straight back, "I dunno, where's your record?" Fagen even had the audacity
to jokingly blame Steely Dan fans the world over for his 11-year
hiatus, since the continuing and steady sales of their albums enabled him
to maintain an affluent lifestyle throughout his dry years. On another
occasion he said sardonically that he suffered from the same problem as
Prince - being too prolific.
Fagen explained that he gained the energy to begin writing in earnest
for the album in 1988. Playing local gigs around NewYork and working
with musicians he admired enthused him, but he said: "My songs are still
basically inspired by music I listened to as a kid." Some of the songs came
to Fagen in sequence, but they weren't written that way.'On The Dunes'
was in fact written in 1983, long before Fagen had conceived the project
as a whole. He also mentioned several times that there would be a couple
of tunes that he and Becker had written together on the album, but he
wound up using only one collaboration - 'Snowbound'- while the other
one might turn up on Becker's own album.
Kamakiriad opens with a song that was originally entitled 'The Trip',
but which Fagen renamed 'Trans-Island Skyway'. It tells how the main
character picks up his multinationally constructed Kamakiri and embarks
on the first stage of a hazardous and random journey through such places
as Five Zoos, Cape Sincere, Lake Nostalgia, Laughing Pines, Key Plantain,
Good Time Flats and finally Flytown, where he is faced with a decision as
to whether to abandon the journey or press on regardless. Soon after
departing, he happens across an accident and picks up an attractive female
survivor whose presence more than compensates for the dangers ahead.
Fagen described 'Countermoon' as being "a moon that makes people
fall out of love". It features his only solo on the record and was based on
a sax sample; it was also the first time that Fagen had played a keyboard
solo based on a sample. Six months after the release of the album, Fagen
realised that some snare drum fills that had been intended to be included
in the mix had been mixed so low as to be inaudible. He called Roger
Michols and requested him to insert the appropriate fills into the song.
fagen said that apart from the missing fills, the mix was perfect, so he
didn't want to go into the studio and remix the whole song. Nichols
made the change and subsequent pressings of Kamakiriad were issued with Chris
arker's drum fills up where they could be heard.
Nighttime is the name of the most popular amusement park on the
Way, which is like a sci-fi Disneyland.The narrator decides to stop and
his brain scanned and some old romances replayed to him in a 
virtual reality theatre. The first verse introduces the park and its attractions,
then each successive verse replays one of his lusty encounters and their
attendant memories: Connie Lee's car, listening to Coltrane with Mad
Mona and partying at the Smokehouse in the Sand. Fagen's creative sense
of humour was still intact and he demonstrated this by using an old Steely
Dan trick - putting music with an inappropriate mood beneath the lyric.
He said that nostalgia was a trap everyone fell into sometimes and nostalgia
prevented people moving forward.
'Snowbound' was the first new Fagen/Becker collaboration to be
released for almost 13 years, even though it had been written in 1985
during one of their early attempts to revive their songwriting partnership.
In subsequent years frequent writing sessions followed, during which they
discovered that they did still have what it took to compose together
despite the radical divergence in their lifestyles and the 5,000 miles
between them.
Fagen cited a lyric from 'Snowbound' as one of his favourites on the
album: "We sail our icecats on the frozen river/Some loser fires off a
flare/Amen/For seven seconds it's like Christmas Day/And then it's dark
again."
While he was working on Kamakiriad, Fagen realised that'Snowbound'
could fit nicely into the album's theme.The song covers an episode where
the Kamakiri pilot is stuck in a frozen city that suffers with terrible
weather most of the time. Due to the climatic conditions, the inhabitants
have little to do except party all night and sleep all day. He is inexorably
drawn into this lifestyle for a while before he manages to escape the city's
decadent clutches and continue his journey.
The first single to be taken from the album was 'Tomorrow's Girls',
undoubtedly the most accessible and commercial song on the record.With
a cracking guitar solo by Becker/Tomorrow's Girls' again reflected Fagen's
sci-fi leanings insofar as the narrator wakes up one morning to discover
his female partner has been replaced by an alien lookahke. "I've put the
song into a B-movie context, where aliens are replacing yesterday's girls
with pseudowomen." Fagen said he thought that in many ways the album
was about loss, and the loss in this case was waking up to a partner from
whom the narrator has been drifting apart for some time. Fagen had himself
been through a traumatic break-up and the song could be his comment
on the termination of his relationship with Marcelle Clements.
The CD single also included Fagen's previously unreleased demo version
of'Confide In Me' and a bonus track called 'Shanghai Confidential.
'Confide In Me' featured Drew Zingg on guitar, Lincoln Schleifer on
bass Denny McDermott on drums and Mindy Jostyn on harmonica and
background vocals. A token video was made for 'Tomorrow's Girls' featuring
Rick Moranis as the nerdy husband whose wife becomes aliemsed, and Fagen also appeared wearing sunglasses, intermittently lip-synching
to the song. Despite airings of the video on MTV, the song failed to chart
to any degree.
Fagen married his girlfriend Libby Titus at City Hall in NewYork in
April 1993, and held a party at the Lone Star Roadhouse to celebrate. He
had given his new wife a co-writing credit for helping with the lyrics on
'Florida Room', and dedicated the album to the memory of his former
girlfriend, Dorothy "Dotty" White, who had since died of breast cancer.
Fagen confessed that at one point he was going to link all the tunes on
the album in some musical way, but decided against it because he feared
it would become pretentious. He did decide he needed a musical transition
from 'Tomorrow's Girls' into 'Florida Room', and wrote a horn
arrangement to achieve that.
'On The Dunes' had been intended to be part of one of Fagen's
abortive follow-up attempts to The Nightfly. As with 'Snowbound',
although the song had been written years before the concept for Kamakiriad took shape, Fagen knew he would comfortably be able to slot
the song into the story somewhere.This song breathes space, warmth and
contentment, yet despite its romantic setting the lyrics tell a completely
different story of an affair's termination leading to despair and suicide.
Fagen was originally also going to write a horn chart for 'On The
Dunes", but had acquired a Roland FP-8 and instead used synth strings
on the tune.
Teahouse On The Tracks' is the name of a club that the narrator
encounters along the way, when he is exhausted and has to decide
whether to continue or call it a day. After a particularly inspiring night's
dancing at the club, he is rejuvenated and finds the necessary energy to
press on. Fagen admitted that it was an old idea: "Dance away the
heartache".The trombone solo was played by Birch Johnson.
With Kamakiriad, Fagen played his own demo to the musicians and
then asked them to play exactly the groove that was on the tape. Almost all 
the sequenced drums were replaced by live drummers. Despite the
sophistication of drum machines, Fagen had done an about-turn and and now
didn't like the "mechanical thing". He argued that "the difference
between having a groove and not having a groove can be a 10th of a
millisecond or less. That's how detailed a live drummer's rhythmic sensibility
can get. It would be very hard to duplicate that with a machine."
Fagen didn't much like modern dance music, and wanted to pay tribute
to what he considered classic dance material."It's a little more aggressive
than anything I've done before. Dance music to me is still the soul of
the Sixties and the funk of the Seventies, and that's kind of what I wanted
to capture on the record - funk based on 16th notes rather than eighth
notes, everything from Sly to Earth, Wind And Fire. I was writing the
album when we were putting the Rock and Soul Revue together, and
that whole experience had a major impact on the songs."
Fagen told Giles Smith in The Independent that during the recording of Kamakiriad his voice occasionally caused the microphone to distort the
sound. "My engineer, Roger Nichols, says sometimes there's what sounds
like an electronic distortion triggered by my voice, which must have to
do with some sort of harmonic quality. We've never been able to figure
out what it is. It only happens under certain notes. My voice freaks out
the microphone."
This was the first time that Fagen had written the horn charts without
outside assistance and he was wary of taking on the task alone. Previously
he'd always had Rob Mounsey or Tom Scott there to advise him.The horn
arrangements were the last thing Fagen did after the vocal was done and
he could see where each one sat. He admitted that his arranging techniques
were basically just to fill the holes -just as any big-band arranger would
do. He gave himself a pat on the back for his work when he said that at a
listening party for the album the horn players had a great time, because
where usually horn sections were put back in the mix, on Kamakiriad they
were way up front and they could really hear themselves.
When he was asked about the lack of synthesizers on the album, Fagen
said that their lack of stretch-tuning caused him anxiety. "Records that
mainly use synthesizers aren't in tune and listening to them makes it feel
like my head is in a vice," he said. "A new Grammy category' should be
introduced for a record being most in tune. If it was, I'm confident I
would win it!"
Fagen told Robert Doerschuk in Keyboard that he was losing his interest
in melody and was getting more into rhythm. He said things used to
bother him if they didn't have a nice melody,"but now I don't care much
about it."
After the long list of guitar players who graced Steely Dan albums,
Fagen displayed a rare sense of economy on Kamakiriad. Apart from
Walter Becker, the only guitarist he used was Georg Wadenius. He did Ins
sessions over a period of many months but had no idea that he was the
only rhythm guitarist playing on the record.
Three drummers are credited on the album: Leroy Clouden, Chris
Parker and Denny McDermott, but it was strongly rumoured that Buddy
Williams had played on some of the sessions in NewYork. Parker played
four songs, Clouden played three and McDermott played only on the
most Steely Dan-like tune on the album,'Snowbound'.
Fagen admitted that during his "writer's block", the pressure to create
had been more internal than external. He was often confronted with the
shattering fear that he had lost his songwriting skills for good. He was a
big fan of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, but Fagen knew what had happened
to the former: "He had this couple of years of incredible inspiration.That's
what most artists have,just a couple of years.You're very lucky
if you have them and very lucky if you can maintain some standards.
There's only a few people, great artists, who work until they die:
Stravinsky or Vladimir Nabokov..."
Fagen warned his record company that..."there was no way I could be
sure of meeting any particular deadlines",but despite this he formed a good
relationship with Mo Ostin, the chairman of Warner Bros Records, having
regular discussions with him about the scheduling of his album. Fagen
said that often when he called the record company, the secretary didn't
even recognise his name and he would be required to spell it out for her.
He also said that the projected release of his album became a running
joke between Ostin and himself. Fagen would eagerly tell Ostin about his
latest idea and Ostin would schedule the album, only later to be told once
again that Fagen had thought better of it and the album was removed
from the list.
Kamakiriad was mixed in February 1993 at River Sound by Roger
Nichols.The first problem they had was that the board had only 40 inputs
and they had 48-plus tracks full of instruments to mix. They hired some
extra equipment from Neve and Nichols mixed the album to CD-R
(recordable CD).
Fagen admitted that he knew the album was finally ready for release
when he liked every last part of all the tunes - nothing in any of them
rubbed him the wrong way. He said, "I just try to write a solid song and
kind of hope that it gets over." But he did admit on one occasion that he
would still be working on the material some three months after its release.
Fagen seemed to be blaming his parents and the American lifestyle
for his thirtysomething creative problems. He explained how he
was an extreme idealist" in everything he did, and this eventually led
to his having to seek proper psychological help. He eventually came to
understand that while he could seek perfection in his music, he could not expect
perfection in his personal life. He drew parallels between his journey
through his own maze of difficulties and the problems faced by the album's
narrator: "Most people start out rather optimistic about their life.They fall
in love, they idealise their partner, but it doesn't work out so well.The main
character on the album goes through a series of losses ending 'On The
Dunes', where he is totally abandoned and despondent, even suicidal.Then
he experiences a sort of resurrection through music. It's salvation through
art in a sense." Fagen spoke about his fondness for sci-fi and his penchant
for writers such as Alfred Bester, Philip K Dick and William Gibson, but
said his favourite was Frederik Pohl. "I've always liked science fiction
because you can comment on the present in an advanced way.You can deal
with cultural or social issues of today by using the setting of tomorrow."
As for William Gibson, the admiration was mutual because his novels
are littered with obscure references to Steely Dan lyrics. "Kids today
probably think of Steely Dan as the ultimate muses," said Gibson.
"Whereas their albums were easily the most subversive records made in
the Seventies. I always wonder what Donald Fagen must think when he
stumbles on a bar I called The Gentleman Loser!" As well as that, in a later
novel, Count Zero, the location was called Barrytown, in Mona Lisa
Overdrive Gibson included a character called Becker, and he dedicated
another of his novels to a "major dude, my friend."
Since the average length of song on Kamakiriad was well over twice the
usual pop single, Fagen knew that he would have to edit them down for
the singles market, but he was willing to do that. He said he viewed singles
as merely advertisements for the album.
The second single from the album was 'Trans-Island Skyway', and it
was backed by some teasing, previously unissued material: another Fagen
demo of'Big Noise, NewYork' and the live version of'Home At Last'
from the NewYork Rock and Soul Revue show at the Beacon Theater
in March 1991. As with 'Tomorrow's Girls', the single went nowhere.
Fagen described his hero in Kamakiriad as "kind of a fuck-up, but with
excellent intentions." He contended that the album "completes some
inherent trilogy", with The Nightfly being the past, the Steely Dan records
about the present as it unfolded, and this album being about the future.
"In Steely Dan we were very arrogant kids, and when life starts to kick
you around, you have to swallow your pride. See, there was a real family
feeling about the Rock and Soul Revue that I'd never experienced
before, and certainly not in Steely Dan. In a way, people from my generation
have had to create new families, since their own families have so
often failed to satisfy the needs that a family historically provided."

Fagen
claimed that he couldn't even recognise himself as the person
who wrote and recorded those early Steely Dan records, but he wasn't
denying their cynicism and aloofness. "No, because it wasn't like we
were promoting or endorsing that cynical attitude. We were just reflecting
the Zeitgeist, talking about the way the world seemed to us in the
Seventies. But by the end, -when we were making Gaucho, I think both
Walter and I were down and depressed, and both of us really had to make
changes." In Fagen's words, Becker's idyllic Hawaiian lifestyle "is very
amusing to me, and to him as well.
"I was part of a generation that believes you can reinvent yourself at will;
start from scratch and detach yourself from a past that had bad faith in it
and lots of values that weren't valuable. I really did try to invent myself according to the spirit of the times. And one of the things you learn as you
get older is that there's no escape. I don't know what it was inventing but
whatever it was, it wasn't -what my parents expected of me. That was my
addiction. The Fifties were so repressed they were a recipe for insanity."
Fagen described Kamakiriad as a science-fiction allegory of his Eighties
experiences but hoped it wasn't as dull as Pilgrim's Progress. "But yes, it's a
journey of loss. I like the sci-fi idea because it divorces you from the present.
It lends itself to a mythic, heroic plot, gives the story a magical quality.
Plus you imagine all kinds of marvellous technologies.
"I've grown more suspicious of romance as I've grown older. When
Walter Becker and I were first working together in the late Sixties, we
were jazz fans, but the vocabulary of jazz had already been co-opted for
commercial purposes. Our idea was to use that already corrupted vocabulary,
with its romantic connotations, and combine it with anti-romantic
lyrics.
I think it's different from Nightfly in a number of ways. It's more
aggressive as far as the rhythms go. I write in a certain style, which I don't
know how much I could depart from - it's the natural way I play the
piano and derive the harmonies. I'm not interested in any kind of radical
departure, unless it comes naturally, otherwise it would just be pretentious.
But I think it's a much more mature album."
Fagen's Seventies workaholism had even extended to trying to persuade
engineers to work on Christmas Day, because he was bored if he wasn't
working. "I think a lot of it had to do with not wanting to address certain
things I had to address personally, and working gave me the chance not to
perform any kind of self-examination. I'm a very introspective person as it is, so
the action of always working, it's a kind of therapy in itself. I'm basically
someone who has to fight nervousness and depression. I've 
experienced numb periods in my life, for sure. I'm an emotional person and I
think that for that reason maybe I'm a little guarded. I feel a lot happier
now, but I still keep my therapist busy." He even admitted that during one
of his worst periods of block, he considered going back to college or university
to learn to do something entirely different.
The single biggest factor in unblocking Fagen's muse was the resumption
of his collaboration with Walter Becker. After several songwriting
sessions together, Fagen felt he was beginning to find some creative spark
again. "Nobody can make transitions from chord to chord like Walter. I
think Walter and I have an idea of groove that goes back to the Thirties
and Forties -- very laid-back and [it sounds almost like the whole thing
is going to crash every bar. It has this kind of falling-over feeling about it
that gives it a lot of forward motion. And a lot of guys don't play like that
now, don't play naturally laid-back."
Fagen's musical policy, he said, was a combination of picking the best
from the past and the present; past music such as Thirties swing and Fifties
bebop, which had humanity, combined with current technology, which
enabled him to achieve the effects that a modern recording studio
offered.
Despite having made a video for'Tomorrow's Girls', Fagen wasn't keen
on making videos for the songs on Kamakiriad. "Kamakiriad is meant to
be listened to without associated visual imagery like videos," he said."See,
I used to love radio and records, and what was great about them was they
made the listener an active participant.You could summon up your own
images. Videos just make the listener a passive spectator."

After the enjoyable low-pressure experience of the Rock and Soul Revue
in 1992, a Becker/Fagen summer tour on which they would perform old
Steely Dan material as well as tunes from their respective solo albums was
definitely on the cards. Although he'd apparently laid Steely Dan to rest
during a radio interview a couple of years earlier, Fagen now relented and
said, "I'm afraid there'll be pressure for us to call it a Steely Dan tour. I
don't know whether we can get out of it. If people think they're going
to make more money calling it Steely Dan rather than the Don and
Walter show, I don't really care that much."
During the spring of 1993, in interviews to promote Kamakiriad, Fagen began talking about a Steely Dan tour that summer. He was still uncomfortable
with using the name Steely Dan, but manager Craig Fruin assured him it would make more money if they did call it Steely dan.
Fruin also reminded them that nowadays - if you were rich enough - it
was possible to undertake a tour without the practical problems and discomfort  
that had soured them on the touring treadmill in 1973 and, to a
lesser extent, 1974. The New York Rock and Soul Revue had been a
relaxed affair and the response to the Steely Dan material they played was
overwhelming. "It made up for some of the love we never got as kids,"
said Becker. "There were moments when the level of pandemonium during
the intro to 'Deacon Blues' became frightening."
There were no actual auditions for the Nineties-look Steely Dan.
Becker and Fagen joked that they had left it too late to think about hiring
musicians and wound up having to hire whoever happened to be free
for the summer.The line-up of the band eventually settled on ex-Weather
Report drummer Peter Erskine, jazz pianist Warren Bernhardt, bassist
Tom Barney and Rock and Soul Revue guitarist Drew "Larry Carlton
Junior" Zingg, who was also the musical director. Michael McDonald was
asked, but he had just released an album of his own and had prior commitments;
Pat Metheny was also asked but declined, saying that three guitar
players would be one too many.
Fagen promised that the band would be rearranging some Steely Dan
tunes if only to make them more interesting to play, but when they came
to rearrange some of them they cited'Babylon Sisters' as an example -"it
was difficult to know what to do with it".Their criteria for selecting the
material was simple: if they didn't enjoy playing any one tune, they
dropped it from the set. Fagen confessed to being "allergic" to 'Do It
Again'. "I despise that song," he said, adding that he found 'Rikki Don't
Lose That Number' very boring, too. Their attempts to rearrange these
songs and "get something fresh happening" weren't successful, so both
were omitted from their potential set list. The only song that actually
ended up being extensively rearranged was 'Reelin' In The Years', with
saxophones replacing the guitar-driven original's pace, but it still didn't
have the spark of the 1972 version.
Fagen warned people not to expect too much spectacle-wise. "We
started as jazz fans and our idea of a good show is a bunch of guys
in cheap suits with their backs turned to the audience." But Fagen was
the focal point of the evening, usually dressed in a dark suit and shades,
changing between a grand piano, a synthesizer perched on top of the piano
and leaning into  the mike to sing with an ungainly portable synth strapped
around is shoulder. Becker was more informal, usually in jeans and a black
shirt, , looking suitably indifferent to all that was going on around him.
"We're counting on people still responding to a good rhythm section, a
good live band and lyrics that are about a number of different things," said
Fagen. He even told USA Today that he had tried to get Becker to sing
a duet with him, but failed.
Fagen met with Becker in Hawaii before Steely Dan started rehearsals
for the 1993 US tour, and they proceeded to plough through their songs
for interesting live ideas. Becker even confessed to going out and buying
all their back-catalogue CDs so that they could learn the chord changes
from some of the older tunes. "That was a toughie because all the song. books, of course, have all the wrong chords in them," he said. Even more
surprisingly, Fagen later admitted that during a gig, he would "lay out on
a couple, because I keep forgetting what the chords are."
The rehearsals were conducted in July at SIR Studios in New York.
Initially, Warren Bernhardt, Drew Zingg, Peter Erskine and Tom Barney
worked for three days, learning the charts and running through the suggested
set list even before Becker and Fagen arrived. The next week, the
horn section arrived until by the third week all the assembled musicians
were running the complete show down. They soon realised that the
intended show would be far too long and had to take some difficult
decisions in order to shorten it to a manageable length. Becker and
Fagen then took the band to the Auburn Arena in Detroit for three
nights to rehearse the entire show, complete with lights, sound and full
stage.
The tour kicked off the following month at The Palace, Auburn Hills,
Michigan and wound across America for six weeks, 27 cities and 32 gigs,
closing at the Richfield Coliseum in Cleveland in late September. It was,
according to Performance Magazine, one of the three hottest tours of the
summer along with Peter Gabriel and Van Halen. Steely Dan sold out the
Greek Theatre in 75 minutes - the fastest Los Angeles sell-out since Paul
McCartney sold out the Forum in 1989. Then the Madison Square
Garden and the Chicago shows allegedly sold out in 40 minutes and half
an hour respectively. Steely Dan played to some 415,000 people and
grossed about $12 million in ticket sales. Merchandising stands did very
brisk business too, selling the much sought-after Steely Dan, Kamakiri"" and Aja T-shirts, official tour logo T-shirts and even ones that borrowed a lyric from 'Deacon Blues' - "Sue Me If I Play Too Long" - printed on the back.
The 1993 set opened with a favourite tactic of Becker and Fagen's "
an overture of'The Royal Scam'/'Peg'/'Aja', during which time neither
of them was on the stage. Towards the end of the overture, they would
come out, shake hands and the band would launch into 'Green Earrings
"We always wanted to have an overture, to tell you the truth," Becker
said, "In fact, at one time we had kind of an overture and we were bullied
out of it by the audience. It went on the beginning of'Do It Again'
and received such an unenthusiastic, soggy welcome that it didn't
really go over, so we took this opportunity." Fagen was considerably more
bullish about their recent effort: "When we hear the overture, we start to
fill up with blood." The overture was changed after three gigs when
Fagen suggested that they should dispense with 'Peg' and introduce 'Bad
Sneakers' as the middle leg of the trio.
The set was made up of a combination of classic Steely Dan songs,
Fagen solo material from both The Nightfly and Kamakiriad and a few
audacious previews of some Becker solo material slated for his own
album. Becker and Fagen were still juggling the set list early on in the
tour and 'Springtime' was dropped after the Madison Square Garden gig,
then, mostly due to the audience response, Becker's 'Girlfriend', 'Our
Lawn' and 'Cringemaker' were also consigned to the sidelines.
Becker himself came to calling the mass exodus "the procession to the
concession" and later agreed when a critic suggested that the Midwest
dates hadn't turned out too good: "Show business isn't really in my blood
anyway. I'm looking forward to getting back to working on my car." But
Fagen didn't find it as amusing as his partner, remarking that although a
large proportion of the audience took the opportunity to "go get some
steamed clams - that was their loss."
Another problem raised its head after a couple of dates. Becker and
Fagen became dismayed about the lacklustre audience reaction, and
Roger Nichols wrote in his regular EQ column that they considered
abandoning the tour right there and then. It turned out that they couldnt
hear the audience because their in-ear monitors blocked out the
sound of the crowd. Thenceforth Nichols set up two shotgun mikes on
either side of the stage aiming out at the audience, and mixed them into
Becker and Fagen's ear monitors. They could then hear the excitement
being directed their way, and the tour and indeed the principals' enthusiasm
was back on course again.
During the encores at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Becker's
wife joined them on stage to sing along with 'My Old School' and
Donald Fagen dedicated the final two tunes to Jeff Porcaro, who had
tributed so much to so many Steely Dan albums over the years and
who had tragically died in 1990.
For old times' sake, Becker and Fagen invited Denny "Stereo master General" Dias to join them on stage at the Greek Theater.
Denny relived his guitar spotlight for 'Bodhisattva', and jammed along
with 'Countermoon' and 'Teahouse On The Tracks'. Later on in the tour
their erstwhile Rock and Soul Revue buddy, Boz Scaggs, made a guest
appearance in San Francisco at the Shoreline Amphitheatre.
Gary Kamiya of the San Francisco Examiner was convinced by Becker
and Fagen's assertions that they were not trying to cash in on baby
boomers'vague memories, and reckoned they were back at the top of their
form. However, in the San Francisco Chronicle,Joel Selvin was unjustly critical
- surprisingly, not of Becker's singing but of his guitar work, arguing
that he "brought little to the party other than a smattering of brittle guitar
solos that stood in the shadow of the powerful Zingg."
The tour, however, was a resounding success; in fact, after they
resolved the early teething problems, it proved to be so successful and
enjoyable that Becker and Fagen would be back for yet more the following
year.

The third single to be lifted in vain from Kamakiriad was the Becker
and Fagen composition,'Snowbound'. The CD single featured an interesting
couple of rarities in support of the title track: sparse bass, drums
and vocal mixes of 'Snowbound' and 'Trans-Island Skyway', with
assorted grunts, groans and vocal experimentation from Fagen. A video
with a mixture of stop-motion animation and live actors' faces was
made to support the single; each character was represented by a face
with a vehicle for a body and two spanners instead of arms. It was set in
a futuristic, frozen city where everything was mechanized and Fagen
was portrayed as an all-seeing dictator who sat in a corkscrew cockpit
towering over the rest of the city, ensuring all his flat cap-wearing,
oppressed workers were pulling their weight. As soon as he spotted
someone slacking or falling asleep on the job, Fagen zapped him with a
lightning bolt. The video was made at C. J. S. Studios in Phoenix by a Frenchman named Michel Gondry and was inspired by Fritz Langs 1926 futuristic epic Metropolis. In the end, one of the workers drives up
to the tyrant's tower and after a brief spanner-waving struggle, Fagen is thrown over the edge.
As with 'Tomorrow's Girls' and 'Trans-Island Skyway', the single didn t
sell, but the lack of a hit single didn't affect sales of the album, which
officially hit gold status and was rapidly heading towards a platinum award for a million copies sold at the turn of the year. Kamakiriad went on to outsell The Nightfly - a testament to the power of the live concert.
in December 1993, MCA released Citizen Steely Dan 1972-1980, the
-awaited Steely Dan CD box set of four discs that comprised every
album they'd ever released, but disappointingly only featured one previously
unreleased song.a 1971 demo version of'Everyone's Gone To The Movies'
which was tacked on to the end of the set almost as an afterthought. Although
they claimed to have listened to many of their old tapes for potential unreleased
material for possible inclusion in the set, they reckoned they couldn't
find any interesting tunes that they liked.The 1971 demo was recorded
at one of Steely Dan's very first sessions, and included Flo and Eddie on
background vocals. Becker and Fagen apparently included this to verify
Flo and Eddie's claims to having"worked with Steely Dan in the old days".
Neither 'Dallas' nor 'Sail The Waterway' - both of which have still yet
to be released on CD - were included, while 'Here At The Western
World','FM' and the old chestnut live version of'Bodhisattva' - all of
which have had at least a couple of outings on various Steely Dan/
Donald Fagen CD releases - appeared yet again.
In an open letter to MCA vice-president Andy McKaie which was
reprinted in the accompanying booklet, Becker and Fagen reckoned that
as far as out-takes, rarities and alternative versions went their "shelves
were pretty much empty". But there is very good reason to believe that
they were being economical with the truth: a couple of years earlier,
Fagen admitted in a Q interview that there were "10 to 20 things" that
were then under consideration for inclusion in the box set. A much more
realistic appraisal of the situation is that Becker and Fagen are too perfectionist
and plain embarrassed to allow any of their discarded material
to be released into their fans' grabbing hands.
Many of the badges, buttons, ticket stubs and picture-sleeve singles that
Becker and Fagen admitted help make the set a "fun package", had been
supplied by Pete Fogel of Metal Leg, the Steely Dan fanzine. The sleeve
notes were basically a reprint of an article written by Chris Willmaii and
published in the Los Angeles Times during Steely Dan's 1993 tour, but once
again this was the way Becker and Fagen wanted it.
Much of the disappointment at the lack of out-takes and rarities and
the sequencing of the 'Movies' demo can be attributed to Becker and
Fagen themselves. Although they are no longer signed to MCA, they are
in the enviable position of being able to control everything the label
releases, including the contents of the box set. A clause written into their
contract back in the late Seventies prevents MCA from issuing anything
by Steely Dan without their consent, so for once the record company is not to blame.
Nevertheless, it was still an extremely frustrating episode. The band's
biggest hits and most popular tunes have already been repackaged many
times in different guises, and the box set was just another example.
The first project to be completed in 1994 was an album of children's
music that Walter Becker worked on with Windham Hill recording artist
John Beasley. The music was composed as the soundtrack for an episode
of the American Heroes And Legends TV show on Showtime called Xlose
The Fireman. Released on Rabbit Ears Records on March 1, the show was
narrated by Michael Keaton and dealt with the exploits of a Gotham fireman.



Chapter XIII
Sizzling Like An Isotope


Walter Becker went back to Hawaii to work on his forthcoming solo
album and Donald Fagen broke the habit of a lifetime to personally
accept Q magazine's "Inspiration" Award. Presenting the trophy, Ricky
Ross of Deacon Blue said: "He's made a unique contribution to popular
music, co-founding one of the most influential and creative bands in the
world. A lot of people think I named my band after him, but the truth is
he actually wrote 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number' about me..." A dapper
Fagen, dressed in a blue suit, white shirt and thin red tie, mumbled his thanks and looked suitably embarrassed.
The Q award was highly appropriate. In the eight years of Steely Dan's
initial existence, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen created some of the
finest popular music since The Beatles. They consistently turned out one
gem after another and can now rightfully be ranked alongside the greatest
popular songwriters of all time.
It was somewhat unfortunate that Walter Becker wasn't there to share
in the plaudits, but far from signalling a recognition of a past career, the Q award was, in fact, just another small step along Becker and Fagen s
comeback trail. But, as ever, the duo were in no great hurry. The real
comeback would take another five years.


In April 1994, Becker and Fagen took their All New Fresh For (1994)
Steely Dan Orchestra (it was the same line-up as the '93 US tour) to
Japan for gigs in Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo and Fukuoka. It was their first
time playing in the land of the rising sun and they had retained virtually
the same set list as the 1993 US tour; the only exceptions being that
'Tomorrow's Girls' and 'Countermoon' had been excised from shows due
to time constraints, while 'Parker's Band' replaced 'Bad Sneakers' in the
overture. Donald Fagen was given to announcing that they were very
proud of their band and, as the duo had often admitted their passion for
all things Oriental, in the concert programme Becker and Fagen wrote
that "the Japanese people have long come to admire the icy and sophisticated
stylings identified with the group Steely Dan", and in return
praised the strength and wisdom of the heroic Japanese people.
Japanese audiences upheld Becker and Fagen's high opinion of them
by bestowing their full level of attentive reverence on the band; short
and scattered bursts of polite applause interspersed each song and dried
up immediately Fagen spoke or an introduction began. There was very
little whooping and hollering. Rod Stewart and Jackson Browne were
also touring at this time and members of their backing bands made sure
that they caught at least one of the Dan shows, though by all accounts
they were not nearly as reserved in their appreciation as their Japanese
hosts.

While rehearsing in New York, Fagen mentioned that they needed
what he called some "travelling music" to start the second half of the
show and that he liked 'Tuzz's Shadow' from a Warren Bernhardt solo
entitled Reflections. Fagen played it for Becker and they asked
Bernhardt if he would be interested in writing an arrangement of the
tune for two tenors and an alto to accompany people back to their seats
for their refreshments etc. Bernhardt obliged and a barometer of the
knowledge and musicality of their band could be gleaned from the fact
that occasionally at the sound check, Fagen would launch unannounced
into 'Confirmation' by Charlie Parker or 'Solar' by Miles Davis and the
rest of the band were able to effortlessly come in on time and jam along
with him.
Subsequently a couple of bootleg CDs -- An Evening With Steely Dan and At The Bay Area (the latter was on Rikki Records!) - appeared of the
Japanese shows with a few intriguing misspellings, the best being 'Box Of
Rears' ('Book Of Liars'). Overall, the shows were fairly low key and unremarkable,
with the band seeming to find it difficult to get motivated by
the naturally withdrawn disposition of the Japanese people, which could
have been misinterpreted as an apparent lack of enthusiasm.
During this tour, Fagen took to doing a corny little rap in the middle
of'Hey Nineteen', which few of the audience could have understood, in
which he and his female counterpart had in their possession a bottle and
sleeping bag to keep out the cold, but he could not remember what the
drink was and what was the cue for the girls to come in with the line
about the "Cuervo Gold".
During high summer, Becker and Fagen reconvened their band back
in rehearsal for a week and a half, learning 25 to 30 songs for their forthcoming
jaunt. As ever, they had rung a couple of changes from the 1993
line-up just to keep everyone on their toes, and what came to be known
as the Citizen Steely Dan Orchestra now had Dennis Chambers replacing
Peter Erskine on drums and Swedish guitarist and ex-Blood Sweat &
Tears man Georg Wadenius replacing 1993's lead guitarist Drew Zingg.
But Erskine and Zingg need not have felt aggrieved at their exclusion this
time around, because Becker and Fagen simply wanted to experiment
and explore their compositions with some different musicians. As one
musician reasoned, what film director uses the same cast for each of
his/her movies? As it turned out, Zingg was rapidly snapped up by
ex-Rock and Soul Revuer Boz Scaggs, who was about to tour to promote
his critically acclaimed Some Change album. The exParliament-Funkadelic
drummer had been the original choice for the
previous year's tour but had other commitments at the time.
The previous year's overture had now been remodelled to 'The Royal
Scam'/ 'Parker's Band'/'The Fez' and had been shifted towards the end or
the first half of the show. Rather inevitably, after the general critical
enthusiasm of the previous year, having Steely Dan back playing a very
similar live show again so soon was too much, and one critic likened it to
having a long-lost relative back after the initial reunion telling the same stories all over again. Another frequent criticism was the lack of 
showmanship and the soulless nature of the performance; 
Marc Weingarten called it "the most predictable oldies show to down the pike since the Eagles Monsters of Schlock" revue,
describing Becker and Fagen as "just not compelling enough performers."
It's true that Steely Dan's musical intricacies are much better suited to
recording studio, and theirs is not the sort of anthemic music that necessarily
translates well to a large venue, but the musicians' quality just
about carried them through; Dennis Chambers excelled on 'Bodhisattva', 'Sign In Stranger' boasted a sinuous, vibe-laden introduction and some new lyrics, and though the spunkily rearranged 'Reelin' In The Years' could never match the original version, it came close. Georg Wadenius also had the impossible task of trying to live up to Larry Carlton's perfect
1976 execution, but made a Herculean effort nonetheless.
When he was back on his avocado farm on Maui, a typical day for Walter Becker was to wake up, have a cup of tea, take his kids to school,
go to his studio, which was a 45-minute drive away from his house, and try to write some material for three or four hours, have another beverage and then go to the beach. This languorous and leisurely lifestyle was the
antithesis of Becker's earlier routines, which had been centred wholly
around his creative output, though he would never claim to be quite as
driven as his partner had been.
In September 1994, the result of those labours was released - his first solo album entitled Eleven Tracks Of Wack on Irving Azoff's Giant label just as Steely Dan were wrapping up their second successive summer tour
of the US. Having observed the way some of his production clients had
enjoyed making their albums, Becker originally intended to make an
instrumental album. As time went on he wrestled more and more with the
problem and even considered hiring a singer. Eventually he decided that
if the public weren't ready for his voice yet, then to hell with it.
Becker had started work on the album in between stints working on
Camakiriad, but found that his concept had drifted as he wrote more
songs. As with Fagen's The Nightfly in 1982, the album was mainly autographical,
based on his own experiences and immediate environs,
but he was able to add the inevitable twists to many of the tunes
by introducing various imaginary lowlifes and exotic characters such as
the ones that used to populate Steely Dan songs. As for the music, Becker
said : My original concept involved a very stripped-down sound
with a strong emphasis on melody and bass line and not too much in the
Way of chording."
becker had written a number of songs with friend and session musician 
Parks, but only 'Cringemaker' made it onto the final list. He
also experimented by recording all the tracks with The Lost Tribe
whose eponymous debut album Becker had produced in 1993. Becker
sent the band his tracks and they were able to familiarise themselves
with the material prior to going to Maui. They spent a month recording
at Hyperbolic Sound; his singing live as he was trying to get a real
band sound; his intention was to go with all the tracks, but eventually
he decided that only three of the "live" songs would make the final
album. Becker then decided to use his own sequenced demos for the
rest of the tracks as he felt that they contained the real heart of each
composition. He later confessed that he felt he was only partially successful
in achieving his intended goal. At one stage, Becker had 25 or 30
songs on tape and, by the time Fagen arrived, Becker was grappling
with all these songs and bits and pieces of tracks. With his uncluttered
and objective outlook, Fagen was able to help Becker whittle the surfeit
down to manageable proportions and get his partner back on track.
Becker said that by this time he was going around in circles and driving
himself nuts.
Describing his composing talents with typical blunt amusement,
Becker said, "Songwriting is a place for me to do some lashing out in a
mild sort of way." His partner was frequently asked about Becker's composing
skills and contrasted their respective solo writing styles thus: "It's
obvious that a lot of Walter's things are more the type of things a guitar
player would write -- more derived from folk music and folk rock,
although he also had a jazz background... like I did."
The album's back cover featured a photograph of a shattered windscreen
and a pool of blood with a baseball bat lying across it, which
perhaps gave a clue as to much of the quirky subject matter of the
songs. Becker also put a definition of the word "whack" on the album
sleeve as a first crude attempt, which he said "somehow seemed appropriate".
The album actually contained 12 songs and on that subject
Becker explained, "Just a joke really. Think of it as a clerical error in
your favour." (The Japanese pressing contained a further song entitled
'Medical Science', which contains the great line, "Wherein the angel
tangos with the infidel" and whose main characters wind up as yet
more drug-induced casualties in its second verse.) Becker and Fagen
have always enjoyed these word puzzles (the cryptic "Donald and Walter
are well aware that Aida is not joking with you" episode from The Royal
Scam period was another) and he exploited this deliberate "clerical
error" to its full extent, challenging interviewers and journalists to try
and crack it. 
The puzzle was eventually revealed to be nothing more
than 11 tracks of whack and then an unashamed sentimental paean to
his young son.
Giant issued a four-song sampler in advance of Eleven Tracks Of Whack to try and raise awareness of its existence. Product manager Connie Young
said, "We wanna make sure the music is out there since they'll be on tour.
The best visibility we can get with Walter is to have him out there on tour
with Steely Dan."
Once he had got used to the idea of singing, Becker enjoyed it, but he
was careful to lower expectations whenever the occasion arose and, as
with his live performances, critics were divided by Becker's efforts. Brad Bradley in Goldmine wrote that "his vocals are surprisingly good, though
not as resonant as Fagen. He hits every note on the money and often
injects a smirky lilt to his songs." However,Tom Moon in Musician called
it "a jagge-edged saw, a born irritant. A voice that stubbornly refuses to
stay within the confines of a given pitch", while John Bungey in Mojo was
wholeheartedly disappointed with the album full stop: "The dull funk of
'Hard Up Case' and 'Girlfriend' is feeble fare from the man who helped
create Aja and The Royal Scam'."
However, Eleven Tracks Of Whack opens with two of the most melodic
songs. Sporting the same title as a Willie Dixon song as recorded by
Howlin'Wolf, Becker opined that 'Down In The Bottom' was originally
going to be called 'The Dopest Cut'. He really liked the title but eventually
decided that the word "dopest" didn't look that good written down.
This drum-machine stompalong is the story of a friend of Becker's who
was involved in a relationship with a girl but "withheld a part of himself
in a really obnoxious way."
'Junkie Girl' is surely a homage to his one-time girlfriend, "nurse" and
"security" Karen Stanley. And what a homage. Becker seems to be articulating
the thought that in 1980 he would have wanted to die with her
-- then going on to celebrate the fact that he had come through his own
distasteful situation intact and was now able to enjoy his idyllic and
organic lifestyle in the Hawaiian sunshine. Becker's anger and sorrow is
palpable as he sings: "No foolin'/It's a fucked-up world" - a wonderful
song in terms of both structure and theme.
Surf And/Or Die' was based on a real event in which a young and
healthy acquaintance of Becker's was killed in a tragic hang-gliding accident.
At the memorial service for him, a group of Tibetan monks from
the Dorma Center in Paia where Becker lived spoke very movingly about life and death and their outlook on the afterlife. The Buddhist input made
the tragedy easier to endure. Becker initially wrote a poem about it, and

this eventually became the basis for the lyrics to the song. Later, Becker's
then-wife Elinor invited the monks to his recording studio to bless it, and
Becker realised that their chants were in the same key as the song he had
written and that the rhythms also suited. He utilised the chanting intermittently
throughout the song. Driven by Ben Perowsky's drumming, this
song without a chorus wraps itself around you like a hungry python.
'Cringemaker' features a 'Mustang Sally'-type groove and a guitar solo
that Becker admitted "was based on an old Chess record, where a guy
finds a good note on his guitar and just wails away on it from beginning
to end." Slim Harpo's 'I'm A King Bee' is the most likely suspect, and
indeed Becker even mutters "buzz awhile" over the guitar break at the
end. But Becker mocked his own guitar playing, saying, that "It's like
how they say people with Alzheimer's disease make new friends every
day."
'Book Of Liars' had been performed in the 1993 tour and provides a
welcome change of pace. It's an effervescent song that tells of a girl who
can't speak at all but for lapsing into untruths. 'Lucky Henry' features a
couple of really nice guitar solos: the first raw-boned but all-too-brief
one is by Dean Parks, and the second whirlwind effort is by Adam
Rogers. 'Hard Up Case' could hardly be more aptly titled - the malevolent
intro almost rivals 'Don't Take Me Alive' for the sheer personification
of evil. After the wallowing self-pity of'This Moody Bastard', the album
winds down towards its close, with traces of Becker's mordant sense of
humour on display, with 'Hat Too Flat' seemingly about extra-terrestrial
job hunting.
Never a man to wear his emotions on his sleeve, Becker said of'Little
Kawai': "It's hard for a person like me to incorporate in a work of art a
genuine expression of fondness for somebody without reservation, so I
figured it would be a good exercise to see if I had the courage to do this.
[My son] Kawai was delighted. It kind of confirmed what he had suspected
about himself all along. That he is, in fact, a star. That song became
so popular in the family and within the group of people that knew my
songs, I figured if I put it on the album I would get brownie points forever."
[The album failed to chart in the UK and the US.]
Steely Dan's first ever official live album, Alive In America, was released
in 1995 and was a single-CD representation of the 1993 and 1994 US
tours. Most of the chosen performances had been selected from the 1994
band with a heavy bias towards the Detroit show of August 27, which
provided four of the 11 songs. Roger Nichols had been on hand with a
Sony 48-track digital recorder and had taped all the 1993 and 1994

shows, and he and Donald Fagen ploughed through all the tapes and
used digital edits and cross fades to give the impression that it all happened
on one night. However, that night wasn't a particularly glorious
one by Steely Dan's very high standards and, the album was a grave disappointment.
The performances were sterile and, as Steely Dan went into
the recording studio later to do "some fixing-up", one hesitates to imagine
what it would have sounded like without said fix-ups. Even during
the band introductions and between-song patter, Becker and Fagen
sounded like they were merely reading a script and going through some
very boring motions. However, there was at least one lighter moment: in
his sleeve notes for the album, under the heading, "My most unforgettable
moment of the tour", Cornelius Bumpus illustrated how the set introductions
gave the horn players a chance to inject some humour into the
last show of the tour. At every show, Becker had been saying that there
were "no trumpets, no trombones, no kazoos, just saxophones", so for the
Cleveland show the horn players got hold of some trombones in advance
and stood there behind Becker, awaiting his usual intro while holding
their trombones. It was also a testament to the wonderful camaraderie
that existed between the players on both the '93 and '94 tours.
Considering their shows had been running at two-and-a-half hours
plus, the Alive In America CD ran to a very paltry hour. The live version
of'Josie' was nowhere near as funky as the recorded one;'Green Earrings'
had no fewer than five solos; on 'Kid Charlemagne' Fagen's phrasing
seemed rushed and his voice tremulous; and 'Third World Man' boasted
about as much emotion as a rusty nail. Even the cover image didn't inspire
much in the way of confidence: it was an extensively retouched patchwork
of some old Forties Universal Mummy movies, hence the reason for
no credit on the sleeve notes, as Universal guard the copyright of their
movies ferociously. 'The album reached only number 62 in the UK and
spent just a single week on the chart.
In 1994, Becker had quipped that "we're just bluffing" when asked the
inevitable question about the likelihood of another Steely Dan studio
album, but in an interview in The Independent newspaper with Giles
Smith a year or so later, Fagen and Becker were hinting at the possibility
of just such an album, saying: "We have a list of very amusing titles, but
thats about it. We also have tapes of discarded songs going back to the
seventies." Becker: "Maybe when we get around to trying to write new songs, those old songs will look very attractive."
After their year off, Becker and Fagen were willing to give the live circuit
yet another battering. Having adopted the custom of titling their

tours, they called the 1996 venture Steely Dan's Art Crimes, and the band
this time featured another three debutants: Ricky Lawson on drums,
Wayne Krantz on lead guitar and John Beasley on piano. 'The tour began
in Charleston, South Carolina on July 5 and wound its way through the
USA, ending at The Gorge in Washington on August 17. They also made
a quick hop across to Europe for gigs in Rotterdam, Hamburg, Frankfurt,
Brussels, London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Dublin, and a month later
headed back to Japan for another whistle-stop tour there.
Interestingly, Becker and Fagen previewed three new songs on the
tour, and Fagen usually made a point of announcing that "we're still
working on that". These were a very punchy, horn-driven Jack Of Speed'
with Walter Becker on lead vocals, the satirical but jubilant 'Wet Side
Story', and 'Cash Only Island', although the latter was dropped early on
during the dates, perhaps indicating its eventual fate in the studio. The
most interesting revelation, which would later emerge in a famMusic interview with John Sakamoto, was that Becker and Fagen had discussed
performing 'The Second Arrangement' on their various summer jaunts,
but had decided against it.They traded vocals on'Everyone's Gone To The
Movies', lead guitarist Krantz is obviously a fantastic player, but was a little
too ostentatious to complement Steely Dan, and as excellent a drummer
as Ricky Lawson is, two drum solos in the first four songs ('Do It
Again' and'Josie') was stretching even the Dansters'musical hipness to the
limit.
Very few people saw Steely Dan perform live on their only previous
visit to the UK in May 1974 as that tour was cancelled after only three
dates, so the expectation of Becker and Fagen returning to these shores
after 22 long years was positively tangible. Steely Dan were received
ecstatically by the fans, but the critics proved much, much harder to
please. Kevin Courtney in The Times, reviewing the Dublin gig at The
Point, was almost blasphemous in his damnation: "They seemed as dated
as a pair of old boots," he wrote. David Cheal in The Daily Telegraph echoed one or two of the US critics when he wrote that it was "a show
lacking in emotional impact and depth."
Oddly enough, Becker and Fagen have been quite heavily sampled
since De La Soul began the trend with their delightful, good-natured 'Eye
Know' (featuring a sample from 'Peg') in 1989. In 1996, Super Furry
Animals wanted to use an altogether less good-natured sample, the line,
"You know they don't give a fuck about anyone else" from 'Show Biz
Kids' in their tribute - "The Man Don't Give A Fuck" - to ex-Cardiff
City footballer and rebel Robin Friday. This was the man "who made
George Best look like a lightweight" and who was pictured on the cover
giving his trademark post-goal-scoring V sign to the camera. Initially,
Becker and Fagen refused permission, which meant that the group were
all set to go into the studio to record a replacement song as the line was
repeated over 50 times throughout and without it there was no song. But
after another approach from Creation (Super Furry Animals' label) in
which they stressed the great reaction the track was receiving, Steely Dan
relented and permitted its use. "It's the best thing we've ever recorded,"
SFA's lead singer Gruff said. His confidence was justified as the song
peaked at number 22 in December 1996 in the UK.
A few years later, Becker and Fagen were involved in a sampling controversy
when two New York rap artists called Lord Tariq and Peter
Gunz sampled the hook from 'Black Cow' without Steely Dan's permission
on their song 'DejaVu (Uptown Baby)'.This episode blew up into
full-scale hostilities, with Tariq and Gunz accusing Becker and Fagen of
having no respect for hip-hop music and indeed challenging them to
appear live on MTV playing the song while they rapped over the top of
it. Fagen later charged them with piracy. As the rappers had overlooked
the need to ask for permission to use the sample, Becker and Fagen then
demanded $105,000 for it (the industry standard was around $30,000),
and consequently Tariq and Gunz bemoaned the fact that they didn't
make a dime off the record, although it was a number one in the R&B
charts, and how the whole tawdry episode had turned Tariq and Gunz
off Steely Dan.
Steely Dan were nominated for the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in 1998
but failed to make it in, which provided Becker and Fagen with endless
ammunition to snipe at the institution. On their official website, they
joked that they had asked for $380,000 to play at the event and, although
they would be prepared to let former members of the band (namely Jeff
Baxter) participate, they would require him/them to be presented with
the award off-camera or backstage! Becker and Fagen were again nominated
in 2000, but once again the selection panel passed them by. [They
were finally inducted in 2001.]
After the debacle surrounding various poor-quality reissues of Steely
Dan CDs, in November 1998 MCA began once again reissuing them in
pairs in chronological order, this time with all the original artwork, all the
lyrics to the songs and with new liner notes by Becker and Fagen themselves.
These CDs will now surely be the definitive copies (unless, of
course, they reissue them again with previously unreleased songs, out
takes and alternative versions). Remastered by Roger Nichols, the sound

quality was somewhat better and Becker and Fagen took it upon themselves
to disseminate some useful background details (both real and
light-hearted) about the albums and about their personal circumstances at
the time. However, the trend did not continue and the notes for The
Royal Scam and Aja were most disappointing, with most of the latter
being comprised of a fictitious conference call in which ex-ABC
President Steve Diener andjournalist Michael Phalen are being lambasted
by Becker and Fagen with absolutely nothing about the recording of the
album.
Also in 1998, between sessions for the new Steely Dan album Two
Against Nature, Donald Fagen made a guest appearance on Ricky
Lawson's debut solo album First Things First, playing acoustic piano on a
song called 'Sweet Love' (not the Anita Baker classic, although Ricky
Lawson did play on that), and co-written with Phil Collins and Nathan
East. Upcoming Louisiana singer/songwriter Sean Holt sang lead vocals
on the track.
In order to take a break from the sessions for Two Against Nature, the
1999 Independence Day weekend found Becker and Fagen in a bar up
near Woodstock, New York, playing with a blues band led by former Band
drummer Levon Helm. Fagen took to the stage and did his versions of a
couple of Dylan songs -- the old chestnut 'Down Along The Cove' and a
dirty, bluesy version of 'Meet Me In The Morning' from Blood On The
Tracks.
The latter part of 1999 eventually saw the showing of Isis Productions' Classic Albums series, including among others Bob Marley's Catch A Fire, The Who's Who's Next, U2's The Joshua Tree and Steely Dan's Aja.The latter
was produced by Nick de Grunwald and was directed by Martin
Smith, who travelled to the US and spoke to many of the essential players
as well as Becker and Fagen themselves.The duo were interviewed sitting
at the recording console listening to each song and airing previously
unheard snippets, including a couple of the failed guitar solos for the infamous
'Peg'. Also aired was Jim Keltner's unusual percussion - a garbage
can lid on Josie', a minor gem that is lost in the mix of the album version.
The dearth of footage of check-shirted Becker and aviator-shaded Ajar-period Fagen meant that a reunion of some of the main players Chuck
Rainey, Bernard Purdie, Paul Griffin, together with Becker and
Fagen was held at River Sound in New York, where they played 'Josie',
'Peg' and 'Deacon Blues' to provide Smith with some much-needed
footage of the Dan in action. This was mixed with film of the band from
live concerts and constituted a very interesting 50 minutes, which was
expanded to 60 minutes with the inclusion of an additional River Sound
performance in the Eagle Rock Entertainment video.
The term "long-awaited" has often been used in rock circles for an
album, but surely few have justified it more than Steely Dan's Two
Against Nature. Becker and Fagen took the inspiration for their album
title from an obscure 19th-century comic French novel by Joris-Karl
Huysmans, which had originally been translated as Against The Grain but
later revised to Against Nature. After several lengthy delays, Gaucho had
hit the stores in November 1980; also after a couple of postponed release
dates, Two Against Nature finally saw daylight on February 29, 2000 - the
same day as Oasis's Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants. Becker and
Fagen waited fully 19 years between Steely Dan tours and they eventually
succeeded in spinning out their recording hiatus to a similar length
of time.
In an online interview with John Sakamoto, Becker and Fagen said
they began writing the album in 1997 and then spent five days a week,
eight hours a day over the course of the next two years in the studio. As
in their Seventies heyday, they recorded all the tunes with countless combinations
of players. During this time, they cut 15 or 16 songs, including
the two that were previewed on the 1996 tour,'Wet Side Story' and'Cash
Only Island'. When Steely Dan favourite Ricky Lawson wasn't able to
make the sessions, Becker and Fagen, who trust Tom Barney's judgement
unreservedly, asked him if he could recommend anyone. He suggested
Maze's Michael White, keyboardist Ted Baker and new lead guitarist Jon
Herington, as well as respected session player Vinnie Colaiuta. At the start
of the project, recording took place at Becker's Hyperbolic Sound in
Maui; after that, much of the tracking was done at Clinton Studios with
overdubs being recorded at Fagen's own River Sound on the Upper East
Side.
Becker and Fagen's official website had been pretty static throughout
1999 and had been easily outshone by some of the fan-based sites, but
in readiness for the release of Two Against Nature, they improved their
site with competitions, news and sound clips and are now updating
much more often and offering some tasty exclusives by way of compensation.
Two
Against Nature opens with a song called 'Gaslighting Abbie' which
sets the tone for the rest of the album. This breezy tale is the story
of a menage a trois and the difficulty the furtive lovers are experiencing
in disposing of the unwanted third party. Tom Barney and Ricky Lawson
drive the track along like an express train, while Becker's guitar noodles

spatter over their granite foundation. Becker and Fagen explained that
they had gleaned the verb "to gaslight" from the 1944 Charles Boyer,
Ingrid Bergman film of the same name in which a Victorian schizophrenic
tries to drive his wife insane. It had become an accepted New
York slang term for such an evil aspiration.
'What A Shame About Me' is a fine song about a classic underachiever
and substance abuser encountering a much more successful former colleague
and lover; it was quickly selected as a focus track. The song is very
reminiscent of'Springtime' from Kamakiriad and Becker does a great job
with both guitar and bass. Fagen said that Becker was playing so well that
they just kept recording and never got around to hiring the highly paid
studio players to which they usually resorted. The percussive title song is
almost more lyrically obtuse than 'Your Gold Teeth' and contains references
to voodoo (a subject they have tackled in the past). Walter Becker
told Barney Hoskyns in The Guardian: "It's about the songwriters' invocation
of their own powers to overcome the natural and supernatural
forces arrayed against them. They're offering to help their audience prevail
in the face of all sorts of mysterious and frightening beings." It was
selected as the title track because of the duo's perception that in their
middle age they are indeed fighting the passage of time both creatively
and physically.
The snappy 'Janie Runaway' finds a nubile Tampa teenager relocating
to Gramercy Park to become the darling of the New York set. Rather
amazingly, the song was rejected by an important US radio station as a
possible single because it features a saxophone solo - the station in question
adding that they only play songs with guitar solos! In a Mojo interview,
Donald Fagen joked that you could write a song about "fucking
your grandmother [and they would play it] as long as it featured a guitar
solo". 'Almost Gothic' is a fine melodic song about a girl of remarkable
contradictions; it has a doleful Michael Leonhart trumpet solo and
quickly became a favourite among fans. 'Jack Of Speed' underwent a
change of tempo and key compared to the 1996 live version, with Fagen
taking the lead vocal on the album cut; it contained the essence of a really
great song, but Becker and Fagen appear to have held back on it and
restrained themselves and the players. 'Cousin Dupree' is a rather interesting
and commercial rumination on the pros and cons of would-be
familial sexual relations, but still contains the funniest line on the album:
"I pretended to be readin' the National Probe/'As I was watchin' her wax
her skis." A Steely Dan album wouldn't be a Steely Dan album if Becker
and Fagen didn't sit out at least one track, and this time it is the detached
but lovely mood piece 'Negative Girl', which was recorded live on the
second take. The title character could almost be the twin sister of the
heroine in 'Almost Gothic'.The ninth and last song is a classic Steely Dan
title - West Of Hollywood, which Becker said contained "a Heart Of
Darkness thing going on there." Clocking in at eight-and-a-half minutes,
the last four minutes are basically composed of Chris Potter blowing his
brains out over countless modulations, almost as Pete Christlieb did on
'Deacon Blues'. Fragments of the song can be traced back to one of
Becker and Fagen's Eighties reunion songwriting stints. Originally a reggae-style
tune they had not yet set to lyrics, they then realised that the
snippets could fit with their idea for West Of Hollywood.
Fagen told Mojo magazine that the album was "crisp and self-reflexive
like our earlier work, but more sophisticated. I'm not really interested in
radical departures." However, they discussed the possibility of pursuing
just such a radical departure, but eventually elected to stick with their
tried and tested methods. Known as they are for their countless requests
for rerun after rerun of studio performances, Fagen admitted to asking
one engineer to execute him if he dared to ask for one more variation.
In a classic case of understatement, Fagen said, "We don't think of ourselves
as being perfectionists. To us, it's more like desperately trying to
have it sound more or less OK."
Steely Dan had plans to go on the road in the summer of 2000; beginning
with rehearsals in New York at the end of April. 'And the tour to
begin in May in Japan, coming back to the US in June and then winding
up in Europe.The rhythm section will consist ofTom Barney on bass,
Jon Herington on lead guitar, Ricky Lawson on drums and Ted Baker on
keyboards.
The summer also saw the release of a Bobby and Peter Farrelly film
featuring Steely Dan covers. Called Me, Myself And Irene and starring Jim Carrey, this comedy was the story of a Rhode Island State Trooper who
has a multiple personality, each of whom fall in love with the same girl.
At this time the list includes Wilco doing 'Any Major Dude',The Brian
Setzer Orchestra on 'Bodhisattva', Leon Redbone doing 'Chain
Lightning' and Ben Folds Five covering 'Barrytown'.
Becker and Fagen undertook more promotion for this album than ever
before, and on January 28 and 29 Steely Dan played a tight live set of 18
songs at Sony Studios in New York for satellite station PBS; it was broadcast
on March 1, 2000. They played five songs from the new album and,
of course included some of the old favourites such as 'Deacon Blues',
Peg','Kid Charlemagne' and 'Aja'. Fagen introduced the three girl

backing singers as the "bare midriff section". The band were especially
tight and the set went down extremely well with the limited numbers
lucky enough to be in the audience.
A few days later they recorded Storytellers forVH-1, in which a group
plays some of their songs and then answers questions about them from
the audience. Steely Dan played nine songs in total, including two from Two Against Nature: 'Cousin Dupree' and 'What A Shame About Me'.



Chapter XIV
Third Hand Rose


In June 2003, Everything Must Go, issued on the Reprise/Warner Bros
label, became Steely Dan's ninth official studio album. Although Two
Against Nature had been on the Giant label, this had been absorbed by the
Warner-Reprise conglomerate, and Giant boss Irving Azoff had decided
to go back to being a manager again. As usual, the security surrounding
the album was unheralded and its release was pushed back on at least a
couple of occasions. It was recorded mostly at Sear Sound - apart from the
inevitable two weeks in Hawaii, which gave Becker and Fagen a barely
needed excuse to escape the New York winter. Strangely enough, Sear
Sound was once the Hit Factory, where Becker and Fagen first experienced
the delights of a professional recording studio, working on Bard
College palTerence Boylan's Alias Boona album 34 years earlier. Sear Sound
was an old-style studio with a small control room and tight acoustics in
the playing room, with lots of vintage microphones and tube equipment.
The Alias Boona sessions had given them a mere two weeks' experience; Everything Must Go would entail at least a year's lack of sunlight.
Having gone into the studio to record a hitherto unreleased song for a
proposed Joni Mitchell tribute album -- they recorded a version of'Carey'
from Mitchell's Blue album -- Becker and Fagen were persuaded by Elliot
Schemer to try analogue recording again. When they heard the results,
they loved the incredible warmth of the sound and needed no further
persuasion to work in 24-track analogue for their next studio album.
Becker and Fagen were still at pains to point out that analogue did have
its problems, but it was experts such as Elliot Scheiner who ironed out
those problems. Indeed, Fagen joked that "digital sound loosens the fillings
in your teeth".
The drummer on that 'Carey' session was a young Mississippian called
Keith Carlock whom Becker and Fagen had discovered playing at the 55
Bar. He could handle everything they threw at him, and more often than
not by the end of the day they would have their track. Not just a great
groove drummer, Carlock played jazz well, too.

Becker and Fagen did discuss certain thematic possibilities for the
record, but the end product bore no resemblance to that discussion as the
songs took on their own identities and back stories. The duo produced
the album themselves and Scheiner mixed it at Westport Studios in
Connecticut. Their idea was for the musicians to rehearse a tune for a day
and attempt to get a complete performance by concentrating more on
the songs and the feel -- a different mindset from a typical Steely Dan
recording session.
Everything Must Go was a title that Becker and Fagen had been musing
over for years, albeit the song of the same name was one of the last to be
written for the album. They were blissfully unaware that Wales' very own
Manic Street Preachers had already used that title four years earlier.
The cover photo was a disappointing shot by Charles Gullung -- a
staged photo of a New York street trader with a briefcase full of dodgy
watches. It was therefore all the more surprising to learn that Walter
Becker was responsible for the design.
Recording began in August 2001 at Studio A in Sear Sound with
'Things I Miss The Most' and 'Lunch With Gina'. Becker and Fagen
would rehearse two or three tunes with the band somewhere, record
them live at Sear and do the overdubs and mixes soon after at Skyline
Studios or up in Connecticut. Later the same process would be repeated
for the next batch of material. Steely Dan stalwart Roger Nichols was
on board to engineer the overdubbing. A mere month after they had
started recording, terrorists perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on the World
Trade Center, which had an enormous effect on the psyche of Donald
Fagen. As work progressed he and Becker began to see how events
worldwide -- and other songs slated for the record -- would fit into the
developing theme.
Everything Must Go opens with 'The Last Mall', a fairly unremarkable
song about getting in some retail therapy before Armageddon hits. It
launched the album with the one of the lamest - albeit most ironic - lines
ever: "Attention all shoppers", and Fagen dubbed it "Apocalypse Wow".
Becker on his noodling guitar solo: "Donald can be very exacting
when he's producing one of my solos. I had a pretty good repertoire
of ideas for that one and it went down pretty easily... It's a hardgroovin',
hard-rockin' beginning of the end. I think that matters as
much as anything. If we're gonna go, let's go out rockin'." But 'The
Last Mall' is actually more of a gently-rollin' introduction than a hardrockin'
one; 'Kid Charlemagne' this ain't. The last chord is absent, a
standard blues ending.
Becker and Fagen disguised the meaning of'Things I Miss The Most'
with comments about yuppies and their "good copper pans" and
"comfy Eames chair", but surely it recalls Becker's divorce from his wife
Elinor, with whom he had lived in Maui during the Eighties and
Nineties. It contains a reference to his much-treasured 1954 Stratocaster
that was stolen, and he even intimated that wherever the stolen guitar
was one of the reels of missing master tape to Aja would be also.
Becker later indicated there would be a small reward for its return, no
questions asked.
The commercial-sounding 'Blues Beach' opens with a plinky-plonk
piano and was an early single from the album. Fagen disclosed: "To me it
had a lot more in common with 'Deacon Blues' and the idea of a sort of
bohemian Utopia. The guy definitely has mixed feelings about the place
once he gets there, hence the line, 'The long sad Sunday of the early
resigned.'"
Becker explained what most interviewers wanted to know: what on
earth is a paranymphic glider? "[It's] an imaginary vehicle on which you
would take an imaginary girl on an imaginary date." The vocal interplay
between Fagen and Carolyn Leonhart on the fadeout is great.
The fourth track is the iniquitous 'GodWhacker', in which the spectre
of 9/11 and Dubya looms large. Becker and Fagen vigorously denied that
Bush was the inspiration behind this tune but a clue remains in the midword
capital W Keith Carlock grooves away faultlessly, Becker's brawny
bass supports him the song is replete with a nice synth solo executed by
Fagen, with a melodica sound from a Korg Triton that is answered by
Becker's out-of-whack guitar solo. On the question-and-answer stuff,
Becker said: "I thought it was a cool idea." But on a much more alarming
note, Becker also said that he believed the then-current world situation
was now similar to the build-up to the First World War. "I fear that
it's the beginning of an era of real lawlessness. A lot of what is going on
now is beyond satire."
Walter Beckers first lead vocal on a Steely Dan studio song was 'Slang
Of Ages'. He joked that he had put it off for more than 30 years and could
do so no longer. Since that song was about talking anyway, it suited his
limited vocal range. Actually, Becker outdoes himself on this one with a
very precise bass, punctuated by Walt Weiskopf 's tenor sax and the delicious
background singers.
Next up, Carlock again goes into groove-mania on the film-noirish
'Green Book'. This wonderful song has everything: Ted Baker running
through some tasty Aja'-esque piano between the verses; an irrepressible

Becker guitar solo and his five-string bass played through an envelope filter;
a crafty-as-a-fox Fagen synth solo, and an enigmatic name-dropping
lyric that could allude to anything. Asked if it was about online pornography,
Becker explained, "We imagined a pornography beyond online
pornography -- a pornography involving some sort of magical remote
viewing. That flirts somewhere on the borderline between jealousy and
intense arousal."
The pace of the album hots up in 'Pixeleen', which seems to be a composite
of a character from a computer game/video/low-budget movie,
with sleek and soulful cyber queen Carolyn Leonhart's wonderful featured
background vocal enhancements. Becker plays his tastiest bass on
the album, the chink-chink rhythm guitar is wholly appropriate and Walt
Weiskopf's sax solo is both tense and terse. During recording, piano
player Bill Charlap had come up with something really surprising. "Every
once in a while we get something that falls apart in a nice way. That was
one of them." Becker said.
The penultimate song is about an unhinged femme fatale. 'Lunch
With Gina' is driven by Carlock's muscular snare and some rangy horn
interjections; it could be their frenzied, lunatic version of Fatal Attraction, as the song's protagonist cannot escape Gina's clutches. Fagen executes a
strident, deranged synth solo in the middle and on the fadeout.
The title song could be an allusion to the accounting and bankruptcy
scandal at Enron, whose top executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling
faced charges of fraud and money laundering and, indeed, had early links
with George W Bush. It's about fraud, false accounting, sexual shenanigans
and jobs-for-the-boys. Becker and Fagen unaffectedly described it as
"a song about losers". Their original idea was to have a piano introduction
that was actually the melody and chords of the bridge, but this was
changed for Weiskopf's cosmic free-jazz sound. Whereas in the Seventies
Steely Dan would not have hesitated to hire the reliable Don Grolnick
for the clavinet part, Fagen took up the challenge himself and handled it
very well.
As always the critics were divided, but some of the most loyal Steely
Dan reviewers stuck with Becker and Fagen through it all. Jon Pareles in The NewYork Times: "Steely Dan hasn't given up either its cleverness or its
control." In The Washington Post, Peter Kaufman in a very concise review
wrote that "the Dan abides", adding that Becker and Fagen were "at the
top of their snarky game", which pleased them enormously, because they
used his quote on the front page of their website in the publicity for the
record. Steve Morse in The Boston Globe reckoned Becker and Fagen had
reached "a happy-go-lucky curmudgeon level that many aspire to but few
attain. And they make it seem so easy."
However, Andy Gill in The Independent wasn't quite as keen. "There's
a shortfall in the kind of bravura flourishes and knock-you-dead melodies
you expect from Steely Dan," he wrote, adding, "If Gaucho presaged the
hedonistic influences of the Gordon Gekko Eighties, Everything Must Go sounds more like the herald of capitalist decline."
Robert Christgau hadn't remained true to the Steely Dan cause
either, and in Rolling Stone wrote that Everything Must Go is "well-turned
out but over familiar" and declaimed that its value "ultimately reduces to
textured dimensionality and tasty licks." Of the saxophone playing, he
also testily remarked that: "I can name many saxophonists I'd rather hear
100 seconds of than Walt Weiskopf, who plays the inflated intro to the
title tune."
Becker and Fagen s old Seventies West Coast journo pal Richard
Cromelin was given the task of reviewing the album in the Los Angeles
Times. He wrote: "Steely Dan largely fills out the album with light playful
trifles, indulging some film-noir and pulp fiction fantasies", going on
to term it "cerebral slapstick."
Although it is a very commendable album, the one slight problem with Everything Must Go is that Becker and Fagen could have sequenced it better.
Programming two of the weaker songs in the first three numbers was
a mistake. It would perhaps have been more prudent of them to stick to
the formula of the Seventies, when all their albums invariably opened
with superlative tracks: The Royal Scam roared in with 'Kid Charlemagne'; Countdown To Ecstasy stormed in with 'Bodhisattva'; the cool languid
tones of'Black Cow' kicked off Aja; and, of course, Gaucho opened with
the very spooky but brilliant 'Babylon Sisters'. 'The Last Mall' couldn't
hold a candle to any of those.
Everything Must Go didn't sell nearly as well as Two Against Nature despite Fagen's assertion that it was a stronger album. He realised, of
course, that the record company had an extravagant hook on which to
sell Two Against Nature in that it was Steely Dan's first album in almost 20
years, and there was nothing they could do to replicate that extraordinary
situation.
One of the promotional tools employed for Everything Must Go was the
release of a CD/DVD bonus edition entitled Confessions, which featured
a fun 20-minute Friday night cruise around Las Vegas in a yellow cab.
Their chosen destination was a furniture store with an Everything Must Go
sign in the window. A succession of hot chicks accompanied them on

their little cruise, sitting between Becker and Fagen and acting suitably
ditzy; there was the inevitable blonde, a Texan, and an "Essex girl" who
had to explain the meaning of the term to them. Walter Becker took the
opportunity to display the full breadth of his repartee while Fagen just
looked out of place and painfully uncomfortable, resembling a gargoyle
when he laughed.
They talked about the origin of the name Steely Dan, played songs
from the new record on a boom box, discussed the lyrics and gloated over
beating Eminem to the Grammy for their comeback album, Two Against
Nature.The third girl to get into the cab had a snake called Scooby coiled
around her shoulders, which she claimed she used as part of her magic
show. She confessed that she had once used Steely Dan's version of'East
St Louis Toodle-Oo' in her performance.
The Everything Must Go promotional tour commenced on July 23,
2003, at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, California and
wound its enormous two-leg way over 48 dates in 23 states -- plus
Ontario, Canada - to its climax at the Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu on
October 11.
Band-wise, Becker and Fagen were now reconciling themselves to a
pretty settled line-up. The group was pretty much the same as the Two
Against Nature tour from three years earlier: Ted Baker on keyboards, Tom
Barney on bass and Jon Herington on lead guitar, but the Everything Must
Go tour marked the beginning of Becker and Fagen's inclusion of drumming
prodigy Keith Carlock, who was drafted in to replace Ricky
Lawson. Walt Weiskopf came in on saxophone to join Cornelius Bumpus
and to replace Ari Ambrose, Chris Potter and Bob Sheppard in a
slimmed-down horn section. The three girl background singers were
Cindy Mazelle, Carolyn Leonhart and Cynthia Calhoun.
The Steely Dan band opened the gigs with a jazz tune called 'Cubano
Chant', written by Ray Bryant and covered by both Art Blakey and
Thelonious Monk, after which Becker and Fagen took to the stage and
launched into 'Aja'. Steely Dan drummers have always come in for some
very intense scrutiny and at this early stage Carlock was no exception, but
'Aja' soon dispelled any reservations Dan fans might have had about him,
matching Steve Gadd's monumental performance on the recorded version.
The
new songs played regularly during the tour were 'GodWhacker',
'Blues Beach', 'Slang Of Ages', 'Things I Miss The Most', 'Lunch With
Gina' and the title song of the new album, but they played only one song
(Janie Runaway') from Two Against Nature. The concerts were split into
two sets. Walter Becker sang versions of'Daddy Don't Live In That New
York City No More' and 'Haitian Divorce'. Unfortunately, the encores
were once again disappointingly predictable - 'FM' and 'My Old
School'.
In February 2004, Becker and Fagen were devastated to learn of the
premature death of Cornelius Bumpus, their friend and a stalwart of
Steely Dan touring bands since 1993. He died suddenly from a heart
attack on his way to California with his wife for a gig. Becker and
Fagen dedicated the opening website page to Cornelius, and Dan fans
worldwide sent many messages of sympathy to his wife Linda via the


site.
During March 2005, Fagen appeared at a concert in the Princeville
Hotel ballroom on the island of Kauai to raise funds for a small private
school called Kula Elementary. Ken Emerson, a Grammy-winning guitarist,
opened the gig, followed by Toni Childs, then Todd Rundgren clad
in a very loud Hawaiian shirt - who performed 'I Saw The Light',
'Hello It's Me', 'Soul Brother' from his 2005 Liars album, and a medley
of material from A Wizard A True Star. One of Rundgren's sons was a
pupil at the school and Fagen was doing him a favour. Fagen then came
out, sat at the piano and played 'Third World Man' and 'Black Friday'
before being joined by Rundgren et al for some classic rock'n'roll tunes. They closed the show with a version of'Bang On The Drum All Day',
with Childs taking the lead vocal and Fagen and Rundgren joining in
intermittently.
Around the same time, the Concord music group issued a CD of
highlights from the National Public Radio programme Piano Jazz, on
which Becker and Fagen had appeared in July 2002. The pair informed
the show's host, the octogenarian English woman Marian McPartland
(who introduced them as the "monsters of irony and erudition"), that
they were currently working on what would become Everything Must
Go. Becker and Fagen discussed their jazz influences, played a few jazz
standards and performed several stripped-down versions of Steely Dan
numbers with Keith Carlock on drums, Jay Leonhart on bass and
McPartland herself on a second grand piano.
Bearing in mind she was 84 years old at the time, Miss McPartland
could perhaps be forgiven her apparent lack of knowledge of Steely Dan's
early albums, her ponderous delivery, her forgetfulness and a slip-up when
she referred to 'Gaslighting Abbie' as 'Gaslighting Annie'! Donald Fagen
corrected her with as little fuss as possible and quickly moved on. In
truth, Becker and Fagen seemed more pleased to be there -- enjoying her

stories of meeting Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong and of how
'Things Ain't What They Used To Be' came to be written -- than she was
to have them, and Becker called her a "great hostess".
Steely Dan-wise, their "small, excellent band" performed 'Josie', 'Chain
Lightning' and 'Black Friday'-- which featured a bass solo by Jay Leonhart
- but Fagen seemed most at home singing a confident and dynamic version
ofWC. Handy s 'Hesitation Blues' from Satch Plays W.C. Handy.They also played a couple of other Fagen favourites, Duke Ellington's 'Mood
Indigo', which he knew from the Mingus Dynasty album, and the Charlie
Parker version of'Star Eyes'.

Donald Fagen's third solo album, Morph The Cat, was released in March
2006. It reached number 26 in the US Billboard charts and 35 in the UK. He had already been describing it as the third part of his solo album trilogy,
following 1982's The Nightfly and 1993's Kamakiriad. While The
Nightfly had essentially been from an adolescent's point of view and Kamakiriad had dealt with midlife and all its associated crises, Morph The
Cat explored old age, mortality and "endings, really".
Fagen said that although 20-plus years separated the various parts of
the trilogy, the final instalment had always been inevitable. "I operate
under Seventies rules no matter what time it is," he said. "It's a contract I
have with my mind. I just keep forging on no matter what, and reality
doesn't have much to do with it." Asked what comes after an album about
death and dying, Fagen quipped: "I'll let you know, when I find out. But
I'll be phoning it in."
Fagen had been writing material consistently during the long period
between albums -- even during his crippling writer's block in the Eighties
- but had been methodically stashing away the tunes he thought unsuitable
for Steely Dan. He would then play these more personal ones to
Becker to get an alternative opinion. The latter would tactfully confirm
this, saying: "I think that's more one of your things."
Explaining the somewhat morbid theme, Fagen said: "I was born into
paranoia. I grew up half expecting to see a mushroom cloud on the horizon."
He recalled the fear that was instilled into children back in the
Fifties and the ridiculous practise of air-raid drills that involved ducking
under school desks, which was supposed to offer protection from a
nuclear attack.
Donald's mother, Elinor Fagen, passed away in January 2003 in
Cleveland, having suffered from Alzheimer's disease in her later years. "It
was a horrible death, very agitated towards the end," he confided. It
affected him deeply and he dedicated the album to her memory.
Morph The Cat was mostly recorded at Avatar Studios on West 53rd
Street in New York. However, while on vacation in Kauai with his wife,
Fagen -- who has always admitted to "not being an outdoors guy" -- got
bored and rented a studio in order to put down some vocal tracks. The
album was also made available as both a CD and a CD/DVD in high resolution
audio and 5.1 surround sound.
In a rare, privacy-shedding move, Fagen was photographed by Danny
Clinch in his apartment on the Upper East Side posing languidly
between bookcases crammed with hardbacks, paperbacks, pamphlets and
ornaments. The atmospheric black-and-white cover shot showed him in
his work room, sitting pensively beside his desk with angle-poise lamp,
antique chair and desk, tattered rug and countless pens and pencils.
Having lived in New York for so long -- and almost five years after 9/11
- Fagen was still suffering from the aftershocks of that catastrophic day.
"This is my death album," he said. "It's about the death of culture, the
death of politics, the beginning of the end of my life."
Fagen explained how the idea for Morph The Cat came to him while
out walking one day in Manhattan. During a different interview, however,
he admitted that he had been reading the liner notes to an album of
Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit based on a poem by French symbolist
Aloysius Bertrand, in which a cat peered through people's windows in
18th-century Paris. Whatever the truth - and it was probably a mixture
of the two - he was clearly taken by the image of this phantom cat looking
into people's daily lives. "The ghostly feline was terrifying but at the
same time there was something nice about it, something that made you feel really good." He added that by the time he had finished writing it he
had "flipped it in my mind" and envisioned the cat as "something that has
a narcotic effect on the citizenry, a metaphor for something that keeps
them brain-dead."
The title song was actually the last one Fagen wrote, but it was also
the one that tied the project together rather tidily. Carlock creates a
cnsp, sliding groove, Jon Herington's guitar solo is a peach and
Weiskopf's tenor solo is subdued. 'Morph The Cat' is Donald Fagen
treating the listener to a brief aerial tour of New York City, but the lyrics
go from the sublime to the ridiculous; rhyming the "the Rabelaisian puff
smoke ' with "to make you feel all warm and cozy/like you heard a
good joke". One or two other lines in that song also left one wondering what had happened to Steely Dan's lyrical flair; had Walter Becker

assisted with the writing, he almost certainly would have added some
unorthodox bite to the story.
'H Gang' is ostensibly the somewhat trite and lightweight story of an
"orphan girl with crazy red hair" called Denise who is in prison, gets out,
and forms an incredible band. It then breaks up and she gets married and
goes off to live happily ever after in Kansas or the Dakotas. A hilariously
bad movie is then made of their story. It's a pleasant enough song but
once again Fagen is left stranded by some lyrically weak and corny
choices. It was the first single to be taken from the album and was available
two weeks before the album release as a digital download.
Fagen had heard Howard Levy play harmonica on the radio show A
Prairie Home Companion and made sure to write his name down. He
utilised him in the fantastic and funky Ray Charles tribute 'What I Do',
in which a callow Fagen is being given some advice on how to get girls
by the Professor of Desire. Fagen said: "It's about finally getting over that
Sixties attitude of not having to be good at anything in particular. He's a
great role model for doing what you do best. The way he moved his body
was so openly sexual and the relationship he seemed to have with The
Raelettes." Of course, Ray Charles' sex drive was legendary and it was said
that his backing singers got their name because they were expected to "let
Ray". Surprisingly, considering it's a tribute to his great hero -- and in a
throwback to Steely Dan albums -- Fagen doesn't even play on this song.
Fagen had already written one version of the tune before he started
working on Morph The Cat but had not been able to integrate it into anything.
When Ray Charles died in June 2004, it struck him that he could
address the sentiments to his great hero instead of the tune being about
himself. Fagen wrote a superb tribute to Charles on his website, too, lauding
'Georgia On My Mind' as the most beautiful three minutes and 39
seconds in all of 20th-century music. 'What I Do' was the second single,
released in May 2006.
'Brite Nitegown' was inspired by a biography ofW.C. Fields that Fagen
had read in which the great comedian was said to refer to death as "the
fellow in the bright nightgown". Fagen had cited It's A Gift as one of his
favourite films in a Musician interview as far back as 1981 and he is a particular
fan of movies that Fields wrote and directed himself. It's a great
groove but it does overstay its welcome a little, running to well over seven
minutes long. Also, Fagen, who was mugged near his Upper East Side
home by two very big men while making the record, admitted that he
thought Fields' fellow had indeed come for him, but at least it provided
him with the second verse for the song.
'The Great Pagoda Of Funn' was written after he saw sabotaged oil
pipelines and several beheadings in Iraq on the news. "You can thank Mr
Zarqawi for that song," Fagen said. His lead vocal is strong, the horn
arrangement is dreamy and Wayne Krantz's deft guitar solo drifts and
drives into the fade. It's also the longest song on the album. "I was trying
to come up with something that sounded exotic and yet safe at the same
time." Fagen liked the "Funn" spelled with two us; it reminded him of
Gilbert & Sullivan. "Sort of bogus Oriental," he said.
'Security Joan' is a fine, breezy pop song about an encounter with a
lovely guard at La Guardia airport. This is Morph The Cat's equivalent of
'Tomorrow's Girls' or 'Cousin Dupree'. Fagen imagined this little scenario
to guard against the boredom and anxiety he experiences waiting
around in departure lounges. It sports a vivid Ken Wessel guitar solo and
Ted Baker plays a whirly piano: "Since he [Becker] wasn't playing guitar
it gave me the chance to fill up some space and try some new equipment
that was lying around the studio", said Fagen.
'The Night Belongs To Mona' is another pleasant enough ditty about
a depressed, reclusive insomniac girl full of airy background vocals by
Fagen himself. This, however, is not the "Mad Mona bakin' gospel candy"
from 1993's 'Springtime'; the song has a direct reference to 9/11 and
Howard Levy reprises some nice harmonica interludes, and the song features
Marvin Stamm on trumpet.
The penultimate song, 'Mary Shut The Garden Door', was written
after the Republican Convention had been held in New York's Madison
Square Garden in August/September 2004, a location wildly at odds
with the overriding Democratic leanings of the city. It opens with
Freddie Washington's simple bass intro and wends its way to a squeaky
Fagen melodica solo - his only solo on the whole record -- which continues
to be underpinned by Washington's guttural bass and Carlock's
crisp snare.
Previously, Fagen had shied away from promoting his political views on
record, but since Everything Must Go he was much more inclined to talk
about the perceived follies of the Bush administration. He particularly
enjoyed the preposterous incident when Vice-President Dick Cheney
fired blindly into some bushes, inadvertently shooting and wounding a
friend while out on a hunting expedition.
No doubt spurred on by the opportunity to add his voice to those of
the protesters who besieged the Republicans throughout the week, Fagen
imbued this tune with some of the atmosphere of George Orwell's 1984.
american casualties continued to rise in Iraq and the American peoplefaced up to the possibility of another four years of George W. Bush's
government, Fagen seems to be saying that his fantasy of a coup d'etat
would be a blessing in disguise as the "thuggish cult" may well turn out
to be an improvement on the current incumbents. "I can't escape the
environment we have created for ourselves. I don't need a megaphone to
tell people that we are invading the wrong countries and shooting the
wrong people." And one quote he made seemed to take his anxiety
regarding the bible-thumping President even further: "I am afraid of religious
people in general."
But at the same time Fagen said he was feeling more relaxed musically
than he had ever done, and that he had regained his enthusiasm and
energy. By this time, he had been married for 15 years, and he was the
first to admit that marriage had been very good for him. Fagen explained
that he is more of a fantasist and a romantic than his partner who is more
of a realist.
Reviews of the album ranged from worship to worthless. John Kelman
on allaboutjazz.com loved it: "This is an album that deserves serious consideration for its topical lyrics, natural grooves, outstanding performances
and ultimately sheer humanity."
Bud Scoppa in Uncut called it a "true classic", adding that Fagen had
scored a direct hit on the Zeitgeist just as Steely Dan had with The Royal
Scam. "In 2006, as in 1976, pop music doesn't get any headier than this." Morph The Cat would later be included in the Uncut Top 100 albums of
the year. "Smart, sophisticated, noodly, what else would you expect?"
opined Peter Kane in Q magazine.
But the omnipresent Richard Cromelin in the LA Times expected
much, much more from the Steely Dan/Donald Fagen he had once
known. "You wish that Fagen's verbal ambition had been matched by an
eagerness to push the musical envelope equally hard." David Randall at
getreadytorock.com couldn't help thinking that Fagen existed in some
kind of perfect vortex: "Sometimes the songs can come over a tad clinical
and predictable." And Jonathan Casey at jazzpolice.com argued that although Morph wasn't "smooth jazz" it could be classified as adult contemporary,
saying that Fagen "straddles many intersecting lines" and was
"often just plain weird". But Jim Harrington didn't like it one bit:
"Almost totally bereft of memorable songs."
Fagen wasn't reacting to his reviews when he said, "The tragedies start
to threaten to overwhelm the joys sometimes." He also bemoaned technology
these days. "It's so complicated to just use the phone these days
that you figure the human lifespan is about right," he said. "You have to
memorize so many numbers and acronyms, why bother to go on? At this
point, technology is making life so difficult, but it's funny because people
don't seem to be aware of it - how much time it's taking out of their day.
But I'm acutely aware of it, to the point where I don't even want to make
a phone call any more."
A bonus track was made available on iTunes, a cover of an Al Green
song called 'Rhymes', which was produced by Todd Rundgren. It was a
cracker of a tune with Fagen delivering a soulful vocal. A year or so
before, Fagen and Rundgren had been planning on working together on
a Rock 'n' Soul Revue-type tour to include The O'Jays and Ray Davies
from The Kinks, but this idea fizzled out rather rapidly.
Fagen had never toured solo before, so the Morph The Cat tour was a
very significant moment for him. He set out a couple of weeks prior to
the release of the album, starting on March 1 on home territory at the
State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and played 20 dates
through the calendar month, winding it up at the Arlington Theatre in
Santa Barbara.
His nine-piece backing band consisted of most of the usual suspects:
the astoundingly energetic Keith Carlock on drums, Wayne Krantz and
Jon Herington on guitars, Freddie Washington on bass, keyboardist Jeff
Young, who also sang backgrounds, Michael Leonhart on trumpet and
Walt Weiskopf on sax.
Initially, he did an 18-song set of which five were Steely Dan tunes,
but this was gradually shaved down to three. The shows usually ran
about an hour and a half and kicked off with an intriguing speeded-up
version of'Here At The Western World', followed by a few songs from The Nightfly. Eager and expectant fans who thought they were going to
hear the entire new album were disappointed; only 'H Gang', 'What I
Do','Brite Nitegown','Morph The Cat' (in Washington DC) and'Mary
Shut The Garden Door' from the new record were premiered. Rather
surprisingly, at some gigs he played nothing whatsoever from Kamakiriad, (at others 'Snowbound' and 'Teahouse On The Tracks' would feature),
preferring instead to include tried-and-trusted Steely Dan tunes such as
Third World Man', 'FM' and 'Pretzel Logic'. A version of'Misery And Šthe Blues' by Jack Teagarden was slotted in and Chuck Berry's 'Viva
Viva Rock & Roll' - with a scorching guitar solo from Herington formed
one of the encores alongside 'Pretzel Logic', TGY' or 'Black
Friday'.
the first gig in New Brunswick, Fagen was struggling with his voice a he cut the evening short, excising three songs from the intended set

list and performing only two tracks from Morph The Cat. Six days later and
mid-show at the Beacon Theatre in New York, Fagen introduced a "special
guest", and there were no prizes for guessing who it might be. But
everyone was surprised when it turned out to be Martha Wainwright,
daughter of Loudon and sister of Rufus. She performed her own composition
'Year Of The Dragon' (Fagen called it a scary song), with Fagen
playing the melodica.The audience's lack of enthusiasm was palpable and,
after she had left the stage, an irritated Fagen lambasted them with a terse
"What?" There was subsequently considerable narrow-minded discussion
as to why Fagen fans would want to hear a Martha Wainwright song although
she was his guest and he thought that she was worthy of the
exposure - when they could have enjoyed another Fagen/Steely Dan
tune.

When the tour eventually hit the West Coast, Joel Selvin in the San
Francisco Chronicle observed Fagen's discomfiture. "[Fagen] hardly has an
act. He barely knew what to say to the audience, save for the introduction
of the band members." But he "offered one glistening groove after
another, each artfully decorated and meticulously arranged. This is probably
the funkiest touring band playing this spring".
One Chicago reviewer compared the "ectomorphic Fagen" hunched
over his piano with The Simpsons' bartender Moe Szyslak, but noted how
the audience gave him a terrific welcome when he appeared onstage.
The arrangements stuck pretty much to the originals, although Fagen's
vocals showed occasional strain and he has been known to forget the
words. He was still using the trademark raising of his right arm to signal
the end of the tune and swaying Ray Charles-style behind his keyboard.
Thomas Conner in the Chicago Sun Times compared and contrasted the
two guitarists. Krantz s solos often went too far afield of the melody, filling
the theatre with a dizzying number of notes. His delivery seemed
clumsy, too, as if his left fingers were bandaged. Herington, though he
didn't play as many solos, was superb -- clean, crisp and remarkably fluid.
The Denver show scheduled for March 21 had to be postponed for a
day when the tour trucks got stuck in a snowstorm in Nebraska, thus
offering Fagen the chance to do an appropriate intro to 'Snowbound' the
next night.
Jim Harrington, reviewing the Oakland show, titled his piece: "Riding
The Elevator With Donald Fagen." He impertinently suggested that
Fagen's voice was suitable for elevator music, and that's what Fagen delivered
at times that night. But the 58-year-old Fagen wasn't to be fazed by
such impudence. Faced with the elevator-music allegation and criticism

based on Steely Dan's music being played in supermarkets, he said he
wasn't bothered in the least. "They play Mozart in supermarkets, too;
there's nothing you can do about it!"
Towards the end of the tour, at Oakland's Paramount Theatre, Fagen
was performing only one song from Morph The Cat, 'Brite Nitegown'.
Having now produced a trilogy of solo albums, Fagen said he was considering
putting them all together as a box set "where they belong", and
was even looking back through the archives to see if any previously unreleased
songs, out-takes and alternate takes could be included. He admitted
he "didn't like that sort of thing", but as he knew fans wanted it he
was at least prepared to consider it. He was not unaware, of course, that
the inclusion of some rarities would have a significantly beneficial effect
on sales. A four-CD box set is due out sometime in 2007 but it's very
doubtful if any real rarities will be included. Most likely the fourth CD
will contain 'Century's End', 'Big Noise New York', 'Confide In Me',
'Shanghai Confidential', and other non-album but previously issued
tracks.

In May 2006, guitarist and producer Jeff Richman put together an album
entitled The Royal Dan, which was yet another tribute to Steely Dan. He
assembled an excellent band featuring drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, bassist
Jimmy Haslip and saxophonist Ernie Watts - himself a veteran of the Countdown To Ecstasy sessions, having appeared on 'My Old School'.
Richman had already recorded tributes to Miles Davis, John Coltrane and
the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The album featured 10 Steely Dan songs each
interpreted by a different guitarist: 'Peg' by Robben Ford, 'Pretzel Logic'
by Toto's Steve Lukather, 'Hey Nineteen' by Elliott Randall, 'Home At
Last' by Jay Graydon, 'Aja' by Al Di Meola and Richman himself attempting'Josie'.
A
couple of months later yet another tribute to Steely Dan appeared
called Maestros Of Cool on the ESC label. Featuring artists from all over
the globe, it was most notable for New Zealander Nathan Haines' version
of FM' featuring vocals by Blur's Damon Albarn. The late Cornelius
Bumpus blew his tenor on 'Chain Lightning' and Raw Stylus were featured
with their sampling of 'Josie'. Former Santana singer Alex
Ligertwood and keyboard player David Garfield also performed their
own interpretation of'Josie'.
in July 2006, Steely Dan went on the road for a 32-date summer tour
with Michael McDonald -- a tour that bore the ridiculously overblown
title of Steelyard "Sugartooth" McDan and the Fab Originees.com Band. If it was supposed to be funny, few people got the joke. They opened in
Milwaukee on July 7 at the Summerfest and wound up in September at
the UMB Bank Pavilion in St Louis, Missouri -- McDonald's home town.
Two Californian shows in the middle of the tour were exclusively Steely
Dan shows.
The band featured the same line-up as the Donald Fagen spring tour
minus Wayne Krantz and augmented by Jim Pugh on trombone and
Roger Rosenberg on baritone saxophone.
As has become Becker and Fagen's wont, they began by playing Stan
Kenton's 'TurtleTalk', after which the two principals would stride out and
launch into 'Bodhisattva'. Not a single tune from Two Against Nature or Everything Must Go was played on this tour, prompting accusations of
profiteering from nostalgia for their earlier work. Becker denied this.
"Our attitude is we're definitely sort of in the anti-nostalgic camp," he
said. "If we don't feel a tune that we're playing feels fresh to us, if it feels
like we're recreating something rather than creating something, we don't
do it."
McDonald played the first half of the set and then rejoined Steely Dan
for some of the more appropriate numbers ('Peg', 'Do It Again', 'Kid
Charlemagne' and 'My Old School') in the second half. The version of
'Show Biz Kids' was a James Brown-style funkathon with McDonald on
some vocals, and the encores were again totally predictable -- 'Reelin' In
TheYears' and 'My Old School'. It has to be said that Becker and Fagen
showed a distinct lack of imagination in the composition of their set lists.
As on the previous tour, Walter Becker took lead vocals on 'Monkey
In Your Soul'. During 'Hey Nineteen', Fagen had interminable fun substituting
a variety of names into the "Hey Nineteen, that's 'Retha
Franklin" slot of the lyric, this time including Madonna in the list. 'Any
World That I'm Welcome To' was done with a reggae feel, with Jeff
Young on vocals for the latter part of the song. And, on July 25, 2005, at
the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View near San Francisco,
Bonnie Raitt appeared as special guest and sang a decent version of
'Dirty Work'.
Early in the summer tour, Becker and Fagen became embroiled in a
minor controversy after penning a tongue-in-cheek "open letter" on
their website from a dump in Corpus Christi, Texas, to actor Luke
Wilson. They demanded that his brother Owen should attend their gig
at Irvine and apologise to Dan fans for the travesty that was his latest
movie, You, Me And Dupree, claiming that the idea had been stolen from
their song 'Cousin Dupree'. Taking the story seriously, newspapers and
magazines worldwide featured the demand for an apology, but Wilson
himself took it in good heart and responded by stating that he had not
encountered Mr Steely Dan and added that his next movie would be
called'Hey 19'.
Yet another compilation album -- no less than the ninth -- of Steely
Dan's greatest hits was issued in August 2006. Entitled The Definitive
Collection, it was promoted as the only career-spanning collection, which
was true, since it included 'Cousin Dupree' and 'Things I Miss The
Most' from their last two albums. The best thing about this compilation,
though, was a few previously unpublished Pretzel Logic/Royal Scam-era photographs of Becker and Fagen with flared jeans. They had even managed
a rare smile for photographers Ed Caraeff and Henry Diltz respectively.
In
October 2006, Fagen appeared at one of Levon Helm's regular
Saturday night Rambles held at his barn-cum-studio in Woodstock in
upstate New York. It reunited Fagen with Jimmy Vivino, who had been
involved in the early Nineties at the Lone Star Roadhouse. The Rambles
are turning out to be a veritable who's who of popular music; other guests
have included Elvis Costello, Dr John, Emmylou Harris and Rickie Lee
Jones.
At the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas on January 16, 2007, Steely
Dan played a gig for CBS Television at the National Association of
Television Executives. Amid rumours about this event - and just prior
to the date itself -- Donald Fagen's website gingerly announced that
Steely Dan would be trying out this enormously lucrative gig, and
seemingly blaming manager Irving Azoff, who has arranged similar
shows for The Eagles on this circuit for years. So it seems that Becker
and Fagen have also jumped on the corporate bandwagon and no one
can blame them for that. Every major artist from Bob Dylan to George
Michael to Paul McCartney now cashes in on this market, and lucrative
is definitely the word for it. As for the gig itself, it was simply a retread
of their 2006 summer dates with a set-list-by-numbers approach.
The following night, Steely Dan played at a Native American casino in
lantin the middle of nowhere in California, and that too was utterly
disappointing as far as song selection goes. A second casino gig on January
19 doubtless went the same way. A further show was added on May 12 in
Orlando at the Hard Rock Live. More dates may follow, although typically
Becker and Fagen are keeping everyone guessing at this point as to
how long and how far this "tour" might stretch.
And so what of the future? Walter Becker's follow-up to Eleven Tracks
Of Whack was set for release in 2007 and there is considerable expectation
as to what he will deliver 13 years after that intriguing solo debut.
Becker was given a songwriting credit on the opening 'I'm All Right'
from Madeleine Peyroux's 'Half The Perfect World', which was released
in September 2006. Her CD was produced by Larry Klein, who has also
produced Becker's solo effort.
It was announced that Fagen was to play a couple of dates in the intimate
setting of the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock in early February
2007, with Phoebe Snow and Ollabelle. The latter group, a roots-rock
band, features Fagen's stepdaughter Amy Helm. The intention is that
Ollabelle will open the show and then act as backing band for Fagen and
Snow.
Can they continue recording for another five or 10 years?
More to the point, would they want to? Whatever they decide to do
down the line, as Donald Fagen rapidly approaches his 60th birthday,
those first superlative seven Steely Dan studio albums ensure he and his
partner's exalted place in the pantheon of rock legends.
With the passing of the years, it's no secret that like so many of their contemporaries,
Steely Dan's record sales - both collectively and as individuals
-- have dwindled and will continue to do so. While it's relatively easy
for respected musicians of their vintage to sell out concerts, it's quite
another thing to persuade those brought up on their classic catalogue to
fork out for new, often inferior, albums. Everything Must Go didn't sell
anything like as well as Two Against Nature, and Fagen's Morph The Cat sold
even less. Intriguing as the prospect of Becker's new work may be, he cannot
seriously expect significant sales of his second solo release. Becker and
Fagen now appear to be faced with the harsh economic reality of augmenting
their declining royalties with increasingly frequent greatest hits
tours while facing allegations of corporate sell-out.
If they are to continue to do this, they need to look seriously at their
set lists; how much longer can they go on trotting out the tried-and
trusted numbers each time? While song selection is governed primarily
by Fagen's vocal limitations, the current Steely Dan live show has
become extremely well-worn, especially the unrelenting encores of'My
Old School' and 'FM'. There are plenty of interesting, eclectic compositions
in their back catalogue that have never been played live and that
offer the band the opportunity to deliver a spellbinding aural experience,
but that depends entirely on whether Donald Fagen has the mettle
for it.
Almost certainly, there will be another Steely Dan album in a few
years, though they may be forced to tighten their recording-budget belts
by record companies that can no longer see a guaranteed return on their Investment.


The End.