Original subtitles

The original Steely Dan Band was formed in 1971.

There were five of us, and Donald and I wrote the songs.

We toured for a while to support the first couple of albums, but we didn't

really like it, so we stopped in 1974 and didn't tour again for 19 years.

By the time we released Asia, the other members of the band were gone except for

Denny Dias, and we'd replaced them with session musicians and some of our

favorite soloists.

We started recording the Isha album in 1977 in California, and it took a little

over a year to finish.

Around the time we made Asia, we'd figured out what it was we sort of

do, you know, musically.

We realized we needed session musicians who had a larger palette of things they

could do, who were also good readers because they were coming in cold.

I think the Asia album has so much great playing in terms of what we were trying

to do with combining, you know,

session players and soloists and so on to produce these little ideal tracks for

our songs. It was sort of the best, the most consistent and most successful

example of that.

The songs started to become more sophisticated and individual to

so there'd be a particular piece that we felt X musician would really shine on.

And we wanted the opportunity to be able to utilize the musicians who were

available.

I kind of like

Josie because Josie sounds like a good rhythm and blues record.

You know, it has all the stuff I like about, you know, a good...

like a Junior Parker record or a Bobby Bland record or something.

It has a lot of that stuff in it, plus some other stuff.

tunes from this album. That's the one I like playing nowadays.

Sort of a minor blues based thing that has a lot of typical writing devices

and the way it's played I think is a sort of prototypical Stevie Dan record

it's just fun to play.

Josie is one of those songs that's right in the middle of everything. A perfect

fusion record. Good dance record.

It seems to be pretty funky or it seems to be pretty basic but Great players who

are revoicing certain chords. The bassline is a

lot of me and a lot of Walter.

Great bassline.

Chuck Rainey.

I remember you and him working that out.

Yeah. You had a basic thing and then you were a mess.

Well, it's another thing where the first date was a server written part that I

gave him and then Now this is That's just a regular kind of little

old funk groove that more or less would sound like We're basing guitars.

It's a straight ahead

Okay, that's very, very normal. But like his ideas were for the bass line were

things like the place, something like...

Which

was more or less his idea to try and do something like that. And if I recall, he

did hum those parts to me like... Not this way.

Guitar doubling the bass, common arranging tool of the Hollywood

generation.

Henry Mancini would have been proud.

Early detective, everything happening.

Okay, that's that.

I remember on the Asia album, we would have six -hour sessions.

two, three -hour sessions with a lunch break in between.

And we'd rehearse for the morning sessions.

And I would have the distinct feeling that we would never get a take with this

band. It would never happen.

The song would probably not end up on the album, and it was going to all be

failed. We'd go to lunch, come back, and everything was in place. And we got a

bunch of really good takes after lunch.

The amount of information that we processed to put the track together and,

know, and the various permutations, I have to say most of the scrutiny was on

the drummer.

What they really wanted was to get a great drum track.

And we got some drums here.

This was Jim Keltner on this one.

Here, check this thing here.

Harp string ensemble, a sort of primitive string simulator.

Sounds just as bad now as it did then.

But, of course, we listen to it ironically. How about this?

Overdub.

Garbage can lid. Garbage can lid. Jim Keltner.

Rage has got a sound that lifts your heart up, and it's the most consistently

upful, heartwarming, even though it is a classic L .A. kind of sound,

you wouldn't think it was recorded anywhere else in the world, I don't

It's got California through its blood, even though they're boys from New York.

And it's a record that sends my spirits up. And really, when I listen to music,

That's really what I want. I don't really want to hear people moaning, and

don't want to hear music that moans, you know?

We moved out to the West Coast in 71 or

72, and we got a job there and staff writing for ABC

Dunhill Records.

We were sort of these two English major type guys, you know, out in L .A. that

was a much more visual culture in a way. You know, I think the sort of cliched

illustration of that is, you know, Woody Allen movies where he's transported

out to Los Angeles and becomes very ill, you know, and feels very disoriented. I

think that probably is close to our experience as well.

We ended up working with bands that had New York and L .A. musicians because

there were elements we were finding in the L .A. session players that were

great, you know, the kind of precision and the savviness about recording

processes and so on.

Back when we started in New York, the drummer would show up with his trap

right, with a snare drum and his cymbals and his pedals or whatever and some

sticks.

In Los Angeles, when we got there, a drummer would show up, a truck would

up, and two guys would come out and set up a huge drum set.

And the guy had two more sets like that so that he could make the next date. It

was all set up when he got there. So we loved that about the L .A. players. At

the same time, a lot of the New York musicians had a musical style or a sort

hard -hitting attitude, or they took chances during their performances in a

that didn't happen on the West Coast.

Jazz rock was a fundamental part of the 70s musical landscape.

On the one hand, you've got groups which were basically rock bands with horn

sections, like Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears. On the other, you've got some

jazz musicians who, following Miles Davis's lead, were working in an area

was then called Fusion.

People like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Stanley Clark, and preeminently Weather

Report.

But Steely Dan were unlike either of those. It wasn't rock or pop music with

ideas above its station, and it wasn't jazzers slumming. It was a very

well -forged ally of the two. You couldn't separate the pop music from the

in their music.

I feel nothing but pride from that track. It was one of the best tracks I

played on.

As far as drums were going at that time, it was like if you had a club in your

right hand and a club in your left hand and clubs for feet, you could play.

I had just opened my eye, I had a hair.

Every couple of...

with what I was playing with my right hand on the hi -hat, and it created this

little sound.

Now, I've done that, but never ever heard it on the record that

I had done, because engineers and sound at the time, you know, it was one of

those things where it's a nuance, and those things didn't exist.

I remember this was kind of a written bass part, but he picked it up in his

Parts of it were written. This part was written, this verse part.

Just a great position.

Flapping and also fretting with his thumb.

Chuck had a really unique.

Here's the chorus, which was.

You have to ask Chuck about the thumb business.

They didn't want me to slap, I think, mainly because at that time, flapping

just becoming.

popular, and was on a lot of records.

However, my me being a player, I think there are some songs that slapping

good. And no matter who you are, you want to keep in the fold of what's

happening.

Peg, that bridge there just seemed to be a slapping thing for me.

They said, well, no, play with your fingers, you know, something like that.

And then you play these songs so many times that after a while, I remember

turning just a little bit.

either this way or this way, and putting up a petition.

And they were about that high.

Of course, sitting in a much lower chair.

And I remember, you know, slapping.

They never knew it went down. They never knew it. Except afterwards, you can

tell there was a difference in that bridge.

All right, and here they are.

Put in the keyboards again here.

Here's your little trio here.

I'll tell you one thing that's interesting that I'm listening to now is

don't really hear, in a lot of groups that you hear, there's a lot of doubling

between the bass and the kick drum. You can hear here that the kick drum is all

sort of syncopated. It's not really.

You know what I mean? It's not doubling so much the strong beats that the bass

is playing.

You've got to love them.

But it's not like you go in there and you're just really good friends and

play and you'll try to get into it and they'll say, yeah, that's really good.

And then the next day somebody else is doing it, a whole other band.

It wasn't like they played musical chairs with the guys in the band. They

musical bands. A whole band would go, and a whole incredible other band would

come in.

We never came up with a band of our own that we felt was the right combination

of guys, that it was stable.

It was just me and Walter.

You hear somebody in a record, and you say, wow, this guy's a great soloist.

Let's have him come in.

you know, what would he be good on, you know, what would suit his style, you

know, that's fun.

This tune, I think, is infamous among studio players in that we hired a couple

of guitar players, you know, to play the solo, and it wasn't quite what we were

looking for until we got through three or four, five.

Players. Six or seven, you know. Six or seven, eight players.

To me, it was sort of like, you know, some of it started getting foggy, right?

would come into the studio and go, okay, we've got another day of this that we

have to do.

And so some of it would just go by like, you know, days of the week. Here we go

again. Another guitar solo.

Something else soloed? Oh, there it is.

Let's check this out. Go back and let's hear it in the track.

There you go.

In other words... Beats itself, really.

Let's go see if we can find another one.

This is probably the last guy to try it before Jay did it.

Here's another one.

What is it? Some kind of little envelope filter thing he's got going there on

his guitar?

Didn't we hear that someone did this to you?

And then finally, Jay Graydon came in and did it with no difficulty

A Hawaiian.

Yeah, kind of a Polynesian. Pre -figured my own later residence in Hawaii.

I'd worked with them enough to kind of know what I was in for.

Certain words that they just wanted to hear a certain way.

Normally, under normal circumstances, people wouldn't.

This is the words, you hear the parts, you sing it, and that's the phrasing.

But for those guys...

Phrasing could have such nuance that singing a line like half as much as

you'd think, how many different ways can you say it in that phrasing

rhythmically? But it would come down to such fine points like pronunciation and

exact rhythmic vibrato, no vibrato, things like that.

So it was always real challenging.

He did a couple parts on top of himself.

Let's check if that is hard part just to embarrass him.

Sorry,

Mike. There it is.

Totally yours, too.

It doesn't sound like much of a part, but the harmonies were so close that

was a real learning experience for me to sing a chord, you know, part by part

with myself.

You know, when you're going back in to sing that next harmony, it's so close to

the note you're singing.

It was just real hard for me to discern that interval and keep it in pitch, you

know.

We had a pretty specific idea about how these background parts would work and

the sort of swing band rhythmic approach and how we wanted it phrased and so on.

Call me Deacon Blues, Deacon Blues

takes that affection to an almost philosophical level.

It brings a nobility to that kind of faded hipster attitude,

which I think has very deep roots in their own personalities.

They were both young kids, most influenced really by bohemian, beatnik

of the late 50s and early 60s.

Your guitar over here, Larry Carlton.

Tasty. Yeah.

Larry played live on a lot of these dates, and he was very good

on rhythm dates at really being a core pulse for tunes

and holding them from moving around too much rhythmically.

And he had usually done the charts on tunes that he was playing on.

I think of myself as the person that they wanted to be the liaison between

themselves and the studio musicians.

They would give me their demo tape, and it had those wonderful piano parts on

it, and many of the bass parts were on there also.

And I would be the person that would take those notes off of the tape, fill

the blanks where they weren't sure of what they wanted to be played, and then

would take that chart to the session.

And I would be the person who was familiar with the song out in the studio

the studio musicians.

So if Donald or Walter would say, Larry, when we go to the bridge at the such

and such, I would be able to tell the musicians that's bar 19, B flat 7 with a

raise 9.

You call me a fool, you say it's a crazy scheme.

This one for real.

You can sort of hear the bass just sort of floating along. You know, I was

overdubbing over an existing track. Usually a bass player has to work a

harder to drive the track, but it was already there for some reason. I kind of

like the idea of just floating along here at the first.

And here it goes to sort of a more conventional.

Now, later we added acoustic guitar.

Gene Clark's? Yeah.

Nice.

One interesting thing about Donal and Walter is that perfection is not what

they're after. They're after something that you want to listen to over and over

again. So we would work then past the perfection point until it became

until it sounded almost improvised in a way.

So it was like a two -step process. One was to get to perfection and then the

other is to get beyond it and to loosen it up a little bit so that it didn't

have to be the perfect squeaky clean goal.

It is quite an amalgamation, that's for sure.

And it's interesting to note that it can be a hit.

Deacon Blues is about as close to autobiography as our tunes get. We were

kids who grew up in the suburbs.

We both felt fairly alienated. Like a lot of kids in the 50s, we were looking

for some kind of alternative culture, some kind of escape, really, from where

found ourselves. And I think Deacon Blues is a nice kind of example of that.

The protagonist is not a musician.

He just sort of imagines that that would be one of the mythic forms of loserdom

to which he might aspire.

And, you know, who could say that he's not right?

Nothing like that.

There's a synthesizer pad on here somewhere.

What the hell is that all about?

Go roll back a second, Roger. There it is.

Department store, that's what I'm thinking of. It's like that bing, bing

What's the big toy store on 59th Street?

FAO Schwartz. FAO Schwartz. It's like they play that same song over and over

with those kinds of sounds in them. Kids like it because it has a Christmassy.

It's the audio equivalent of a primary color kind of thing, you know?

It's kind of a pheromone for tots to bring them in.

Why did we put that in there?

Because, you know why?

To fatten up the hair? I think maybe there was a flute part on the top in the

Munich trumpets that didn't cut.

So we wanted to put a little high end on the... To brighten and clarify.

Right, so then... Here's without the synthesizer. It goes like this.

Or maybe we couldn't find a flute player or something.

Okay, now let's play it again, and I'll put this guy in here.

It's sort of a flute simulation, really, wouldn't you say? Or it's marked here

as a celeste.

So maybe we were thinking of it for some reason as though it were like a bells

or something going along with that thing.

Although it doesn't sound the least bit like a celeste. I was always amazed that

they pretty much heard in their heads what it was going to be like completed.

So they knew right away when you get a bunch of musicians together and they're

cutting the tracks, and Donald Walter would be sitting in the control room

going, no, this is not it. It's not going to happen.

So maybe we'll try this other tune with these guys.

Then they'd get another band in to try the tunes that didn't work out.

And all through the project, they would know, nope, that's not it. That's not

working. This is what I want. And it was amazing that when the thing got done,

Finally, I could see what everything was going to be like.

But they knew from the very beginning.

It's beautiful.

Basic gospel response type of thing.

You put in the lead and we'll see.

Part of the reason I was driven toward jazz was when the radio stopped playing

Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

This was when I was quite young, but I still noticed that something was wrong

with the music after a while when they started playing white singers like

Frankie Avalon and that kind of thing. I like black music,

essentially, whether it be R &B or... gospel or jazz, you know.

My mom was a singer in the hotels in the Catskills when she was a little girl.

You could do it in the summers until she was a teenager.

And she used to sing around the house, so I'm familiar with the repertoire, you

know.

Both Walter and I have a background that includes songwriting from the 20s, 30s,

and 40s, and 50s, mostly in jazz versions.

Yeah, I mean, there are people who've read books and there's people who ain't

read books.

They've got a skill that can make images that aren't puro and don't make you

think you've heard it before.

Very Hollywood filmic, in a way. The imagery is very imaginable in a visual

sense.

Uptown, baby.

Uptown, baby. We get down, baby. Up on the crown, baby.

Uptown baby, uptown baby, we get down baby, for the crown baby. Now if it

for the Bronx, this rap probably never would be going on. So tell me where you

from. Uptown baby, uptown baby, we get down baby, for the crown baby.

It does sound familiar, doesn't it?

In the corner of my...

I saw you and Rudy. You were very high. You were high.

Crying disgrace.

Well,

it starts out, the guy's talking about this girl that he's involved with, and

she's sitting at a counter, and he describes her behavior and habits.

Out of that, you begin to see her character and their relationship.

Self -explanatory.

This tune really does speak for itself in a way.

It's daunting for the commentary. Black cow, an ice cream soda.

We're confused about this, actually. I thought it was a soda.

There seem to be regional variations on the formula, but it's... Root beer and

vanilla ice cream or... Soft drink.

Something like that.

Brothy soft drink. Very big in the soda fountains when we were kids.

Like a gangster on the run, you'll stagger

homeward to your precious one. I'm the one who

must make everything right. Talk it out till daylight.

Walter and I both grew up around in the New York area. Walter originally from

Westchester, and then I moved out to Queens, but went to school in Manhattan.

And I'm from New Jersey, maybe 20 minutes over the bridge. So, yeah, we

grew up in this area.

So I think New York life is what we most know about.

There's a solo by Victor, a very good solo by Victor Feldman. Live on the

tracking, Dave.

We answered an ad in the Village Boys that said, you know, must have jazz

Keyboard. No hang -ups. Right.

Keyboard.

Keyboard. Keyboard and bass player needed for working, you know, jazz rock

combo. Something like that.

You know, must have jazz chops.

No hang -ups. No hang -ups. So we answered the ad, and we called, and we

out to Hicksville, Long Island, which for us was quite a haul, you know,

we never left Manhattan.

We went out and we went in the basement, you know, it was like a kid with a

basement band, and we liked some of the material, it was kind of early fusion

type material.

Before there was jazz fusion in a way.

You know, like when they're in the same room at the same time, they're like one

person with two brains, you know, so it's the highbrow intellectual humor.

You know, you don't get any fart jokes or anything of the kind.

They can usually finish each other's sentences.

Well, I first met them when I put an ad in the Village Voice because I had a

band and we were looking for a bass player and a piano player.

And they answered the ad, so they joined my band at first.

And then one by one we realized that there was a deficiency in certain of the

players that, you know...

That wasn't quite up to this, you know, we started playing their songs right

away and I immediately saw that these were great songs and truth be told we

of took over his band we kind of erected towards the end of the other guys, you

know and that's in a way was the core of the Steely Dan crew later

because when we got a job out in LA we we sent for Danny

When we got to California, I don't know that we were nostalgic in a general sort

of way for New York so much as we were nostalgic as writers for this milieu

we left behind. We weren't finished writing songs with New York characters

them yet.

So we kept doing that, and by the time we were finished, we had moved back to

New York, at which point we immediately started writing lyrics about California.

A lot of her songs are about being homestead, I think, for New York. I've

noticed that, actually.

I guess it's just was our natural inclination to write these sort of

really.

Home at Last, the central metaphor was taken from Ulysses' big problem, you

know, trying to get back home, but we didn't take it that seriously. It's

essentially just the idea that...

Have you read a little blues about Ulysses?

There's a guitar riff, sort of a Chicago blues sort of

item. Larry Carlton.

Donald and Walter love sophisticated harmony, but they're rock and roll guys.

We're contemporaries as far as age, so we all were brought up listening to the

60s.

And I know that they love rock and roll, but they also have a passion for

harmony, which, as do I. All the players they use, we love great feeling rock

and roll music, but we love harmony.

When we did Preps -O -Logic, the first album we did with studio players, we had

done a couple of albums with our little band, and we had heard these players and

done overdubs and stuff with them.

But I found myself in the room with these guys, and I thought, like, wow,

really outclassed here, you know?

Rita Frank.

Nina Simone.

Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway, James Brown, Lloyd Price, Ray Charles,

Frank Donatra, Heinz, Heinz, and Ford, Barry Manlo, Dionne Warwick,

The Animals, The Mountains, The Beatles, B .B. King, Bobby Blue.

Now, they already told me that they didn't want a shuttle. They didn't want

Motown. They didn't want the Chicago.

But they weren't sure how and what they wanted, but they did want halftime. I

said, fine, then let me do the Purdy Shuffle.

And they said, well, what is that? I said, well, I'll show you where you can

feel comfortable with it and you'll end up getting exactly what you asked for.

Halftime, funky, laid back, without thinking that it's a shuffle.

And it goes something like this.

Let's isolate Bernard for a second because let's look into that beat.

Bernard, you know, this isn't easy. You'd come in with a tune

and have sort of something in mind, but the way Bernard played stuff was always,

he always had some unique stylistic thing that he did that you would never

imagine in advance and that nobody else would do.

This tune was...

good example of that a lot of bernard

hi -hat and this tune particularly a real driving kind of

you got the backbeat you got double time

and you have it almost shuffle

Bernard, you know, there's a famous story where he would come to a session

in the early 60s and he'd have two signs with him and he'd set up these signs

where on one side of the drums would say, you done it.

And then the sign on the other side would say, you done hired the hit maker,

Bernard Pretty Purdy.

So it's that kind of confidence that you need, you know, to get a good R &B

track, you know.

Up on the hill, people never stand.

They just don't care.

Asia starts out in a very peaceful way up on a hill, and it's kind of a trip,

really, to listen to it.

Yeah, a journey through space and time. Journey through space and time.

Asia's was a combination of a number of different tunes that we had that were

sewn together to make kind of a little sweet, if you will. And it was kind of

sweet, wasn't it?

We were feeling lucky that year, and we thought, you know, there wouldn't be any

problem with moving into a slightly more ambitious sort of extended

composition. But we immediately regrouped after that and went back to

You know, we wouldn't want too much of a good thing.

Asia is

the

name of a woman. I had a friend in high school, and he had an older brother.

And he went to Korea and married a Korean girl and brought her back, and

name was Asia.

And we thought that was a good name, just it was a very romantic sort of

the sort of tranquility that can come of a quiet relationship with a beautiful

woman.

Very existence is a contradiction. I mean, when have you ever heard a song on

rock and roll record that absolutely cannot be played on a guitar?

I think that's me playing the guitar there.

That's Walter playing the guitar.

Freshly released piece of outboard equipment.

Denny again.

There's clusters where the notes are so close together that you can't stretch

your fingers far enough to get all the notes out at the same time.

There's open voicings that are so wide apart that you can't reach the notes.

All you can do is pick a few and play them.

And even still, you don't quite get the flavor of the chord because it requires

that contrast of a cluster chord and then an open chord.

and the way it progresses.

Jazz is a dangerous, double -edged thing.

You mustn't do too much of it, and I don't think Steady Dan do do too much of

it. I think they use that knowledge and that love they've obviously got.

You know, Parker, Mingus, I can hear in there, I can hear lots of really, I can

hear Blakey, I can hear jazz messengers in there, I can hear lots and lots of

Bobby Timmons, I can hear in there. The subject matter doesn't matter.

It's the sound they're making.

And then we also added Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone.

We were very glad that he came in.

It took a while, as I recall, to persuade him to come down.

He didn't really beat dates.

And I think he felt that the chances were that we would be asking him to do

something that was not particularly appropriate, a reasonable

fear under the circumstances.

I was invited to play on the record.

It was quite a matter of fact, you know, I said, yes, you know.

And they asked me how I wanted to do it.

And I said, just roll the tape, just, you know, in the section where I'm

supposed to be playing, and I'll get a reference from what's going on, about

what's going on before and what comes after.

I listened to it, and then I started to perform.

I remember he was a little worried about playing the things, getting into how he

used to play with Miles, you know, and of course that didn't bother us at all.

I walked in the studio, they were sitting, they had the lights down, my

was to do what I'm going to do.

I'd sit down and say, hey, how are you, you know.

In fact, when we grew up, we thought that was corny in my neighborhood.

I said, don't wear your heart on your sleeve.

He said, don't give too much away.

Musicians were a key to, you know, the music that eventually, you know, got put

out.

I think Asia probably was a point, you know, a turning point where the music

really became another level of sophistication of writing and performing

Donald.

The most seamless joining of jazz and pop that there'd ever been.

There's nothing else quite as sophisticated as that in all of rock

When we first started, we were more writing pop songs at the time that maybe

an infusion of our interest in jazz and so on. But by the time we did Asia, I

think we knew more what we enjoyed doing, really.

Certainly through the Asia album, I think, you know, our stuff improved.

The Asia album was the most successful example of what we were trying to do

using studio bands.

And, you know, there's a very good possibility that something like that

fall flat on its face and then it won't work.

And that was just sort of a spectacular success, and we all knew it. And that's

what I hear when I look at that record.

If you ask songwriters from my generation, my and

Donald's generation, about who were

the important lyricists from their time, Bob Dylan

is always going to be mentioned.

And I don't think that what we do sounds much like Bob

Dylan,

He was the guy that sort of opened the door to a larger world of possibilities

and realized that by superimposing more interesting or more literate or more

obscure or more extravagant lyrics on rock and roll beats, you would end up

something intriguing.

We were sort of the first TV generation.

I was interested in TV music, movie soundtracks.

I could sometimes tell who wrote the score just from hearing the music, if it

was Elmer Bernstein or Dave Grusin or, you know, Alex

North or whoever.

And also, it was like sort of cheap music, like TV music or movie

music. By cheap, I simply mean...

Not really in a disparaging way, but it's written to support something else.

It's not pure music, but it's rather written to support visual information.

There was something also funny about that music.

There was something funny about the theme from The Twilight Zone.

Something funny about the jazz score for The

Sweet Smell of Success.

It was like fake jazz, essentially.

And so I both like real jazz and also fake jazz and also fake fake jazz, you

know.

You in your life, you're a march, you're a screamer. You know how to hustle.

I don't care.

Yeah, you got the muscle.

I got the...

Yes,

Bill, how did you know?

Can't you see love will grow?

You know, my favorite thing is when they come up and they say, hey.

are you that guy in Steely Dan?

And he'd say, yeah. And I'd say, no, you're not.

You're not him.

That's what I like.