STEELWORKERS
Four players reminisce about what it was like to work with Steely Dan in the studio…
LARRY CARLTON
SoLo Spot: Kid CharLemagne – the royaL SCam “I’m so fortunate that the timing was right because the casting of my guitar playing on their songs was a great marriage. Harmonically, their songs are so sophisticated and maybe that is my forte, coming form a pop and jazz background. So I love listening to those records because the harmonies are so sophisticated – and there are no wrong notes on the guitar! [laughs] Honestly, my experiences were only positive.
“They are very diligent about what they want to do, but they also recognise when good things are happening and they let them happen. People have asked me over the years if I did a lot of takes on those solos, or did they hum licks to me and no, they let me play and if we got stuck in a section and I really wasn’t sure which approach to take, then sure, they’d have an idea and they would put it out and we’d do some more. But I enjoyed the process and never resented the fact that they wanted to do 30 takes a night… [laughs] That was all just part of the process.”
JEFF ‘SKUNK’ BAXTER SOLO SPOT: MY OLD SCHOOL – COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY
“Gary Katz, in Boston, told me there were these two guys, Walter and Donald, who were doing an album with a girl called Linda Hoover in New York and he wanted me to come down and do some playing with them. They were writing the tunes and, as soon as I started playing, Walter and Donald said, ‘Wow, man! You’re the only guy we’ve met that can play this stuff,’ and I said, ‘I’ve never heard anything like it, this is wonderful!’ So we decided we were going to form a band… The one thing I had in my favour was that I’d had a lot of classical training and there were times when I got the chance to work with Donald on certain melodies and stuff. But I was really more into playing solos; I really just wanted to play guitar on this music.”
RICK DERRINGER SOLO SPOT: CHAIN LIGHTNING – KATY LIED
“Well, I heard [//Rikki Don’t Lose
That Number//] and I’d worked with them a lot and I wondered if it had anything to do with me. I found out later that the title – but not necessarily the storyline – had been influenced by me, because in sessions they used to say, ‘Ricky, don’t lose that number…’ So they wrote a song which had nothing to do with me, but I was the inspiration for the title. They are incredible perfectionists. That’s the only way to explain it; it’s great being in that company. They used the best of the best musicians and it was great to be made to feel one of them. Something to be proud of. They have charts with pretty much everything written out and sometimes it’s challenging, but on the other hand, it’s always pretty much just a blues. So the challenge of those charts can put you off from the simple reality that exists there. But they are pretty ornate changes around the blues…”
ELLIOTT RANDALL SOLO SPOT: REELIN’ IN THE YEARS – CAN’T BUY A THRILL
“The world of music has lost a very special character with Walter’s passing. He was witty, intelligent, and musically a giant. And I lost a good friend and fellow adventurer. “I played on many of their early demos at Mayfair Sound Studios in NYC (produced by Kenny Vance). A short while later, when Donald and Walter migrated to California and became Steely Dan, they invited me to join the band. I graciously declined, but volunteered my guitar efforts for their recordings. It worked out well. Our friendships have lasted without interruption.”
the final two studio albums, he switched to guitar full time, both live and in the studio. How come it took so long?
WB: “Well, [laughs] in the 70s we were trying to do something a little bit different. We were concerned with more fiery virtuoso blowing and the intervening musical history has persuaded us to use solos as more structural elements in the music, rather than showcases. But the guitar has those extra two strings on it and that can be very tricky.”
Latterly, Walter could be seen sporting an array of Sadowsky guitars both live and in the studio and, on Everything Must Go at least, a semi-clean tone.
WB: “Yeah, just the amp with a little reverb. I usually spend about half an hour tweaking the amp and getting it to the point where it feels right for that particular tune on that particular day and then we’re ready to go. I like to get it going as quickly as possible. I’m basically always trying for roughly the same basic thing, y’know?”
We didn’t detect much in the way of effects, either.
WB: “Oh, on one song there was an analogue delay – you know, the MXR green box? And I used a chorus pedal of some kind, I can’t remember.”
DF: “I keep trying to get Walter to throw away those effects boxes, but…” What about live playing? At the time, Walter was using Mesa Boogie and
Bogner amps; were they both on at once or did he A/B between them?
WB: “They’re both on at the same time, or they have been in the past. It just gives you another part of the tone, so you can have one amp set a little cleaner and the other set a little hairier and that’s sometimes useful for the guy who’s mixing the house or for me.” We mentioned Rick Derringer’s comment about treating Steely songs like they were a blues and shrinking to fit – how did Donald and Walter feel about that? DF: “We figure that we’re just some kind of a blues band with some frills, really.” WB: “Blues band deluxe...” So intricate and interwoven are the songs of Steely Dan, it’s difficult to have an absolutely clear shot at what Walter Becker’s enduring influence will be as an individual. It’s possible to consider the solo albums of both Becker and Fagen as indications of style – Fagen demonstrating on albums like The
Nightfly that perhaps much of the intense harmonic structure inherent in the band’s output started life on his keyboard. Becker’s two solo releases, 1994’s 11
Tracks Of Whack and 2008’s Circus Money are more straightforward from a musical perspective, although it’s possible to see the shadow of Steely Dan via his enigmatic, wistfully poetic lyrics. But to say that the band’s working arrangement would be that simple and straightforward – the music coming from Fagen, the lyrics from Becker – would contradict everything we know about the band. Fagen insists that Becker was as accomplished a songwriter as anyone he knows, but it’s almost certainly safe to assume that it is the Nexus point where the two musical minds meet that made The Dan so unique, each influencing and nuancing the other at every stage.
As a guitarist, Becker’s contribution is easier to assess. Choosing to play bass in the band’s early years, he curated the procession of top studio talent that took the guitar chair in the studio. As he says in the interview above, the emphasis in the beginning was on virtuosic blowing and so players like Larry Carlton, Jeff Baxter and Elliot Randall all served their time, battling with Becker and Fagen’s renowned perfectionism. We had to wait until Two Against Nature and the subsequent tours before Becker’s guitar playing really took centre stage, freeflowing and masterfully toneful from his chosen Lollar-loaded Sadowsky guitars and series of boutique amps: Suhr, Bogner, 3 Monkeys, Satellite and Retro Channel. But his true musical epitaph will almost certainly be that of an infinitely capable musician who co-created one of the most singular bands of the past 50 years.