Steely Dan - Gaucho

As a kid I most vividly remember Steely Dan as an inconvenience on the radio. There was a special place in hell reserved for "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" a song that would pop up at the most inconvenient times ... like when I was listening to the radio. Whatever they were was not rock and roll - how did this weird stuff even count as music? The only other song that bugged me more as a kid was "Midnight at the Oasis" by Maria Muldaur. They both seemed to be on at the same time, although that's probably not right but it's how I remember it.

As I got older I begrudgingly started to give Steely Dan their due. I was learning to reconcile how these nerdy jazz guys were welcomed with open arms into the fraternity of rock and roll. It was because they were so good. Yes, even "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" started to get under my skin ... Maria, not so much. Steely Dan records were technical marvels, they sounded almost perfect. The best musicians on the planet were put through their paces, and the results were often spectacular, and if they weren't they were still impeccably performed..

While I could appreciate them, I never really felt the need to buy any of their stuff. This almost changed in 1982 when Donald Fagen released The Nightfly ... man some of those songs were pretty good. I would finally breakdown and pick up Steely Dan's Gold a year or so later - at the time I had taken a shine to "Hey Nineteen" and I ended up really liking a lot of the songs on the record. Rock radio was still playing "I.G.Y." from Nightfly fairly often, and I grew to love that song, and so I bought the album. Oddly I never got around to picking up Steely Dan's back catalogue. Up until now I'd never heard an album in it's entirety.

When I went to put the record on I noticed the limited track list. 7 tracks, really? It was hardly cresting 38 minutes so there was space ... I suppose they just ran out of gas. Whatever. What there was sounds absolutely amazing.. It was a good day for me when I found this Masterphile Series edition that was part of the half speed master craze in the early '80s. It was under $20 bucks so how could I resist?

I suppose I'm now a grown up as man I love this album. Kicking off with the two songs I'm most familiar with, "Babylon Sisters" and continuing with "Hey Nineteen" it's a great one two punch. From there it was mostly greenfield, although I'm sure I've heard some of the tracks before. 

The band took a couple of years working on the songs trying to get them perfect. Depending on where you sit it was a good thing, or it made the whole experience an overproduced, over rehearsed and lifeless experience that bordered on elevator music. It was definitely a balancing act between the two and as you'd expect the scales would wobble a little.

One of the things I learned while reading up on the album was engineer Roger Nichols creation of WENDAL an early sample driven drum machine. Apparently Fagen and Becker were lamenting that they couldn't get a drummer with perfect timing. Roger said, "Hold my beer" and proceeded to develop the technology to deliver a drummer with perfect timing. Wendel as it would become later known actually got it's own platinum award from the RIAA for it's contribution to the record. You can hear Wendel on a number of tracks, most notably "Hey Nineteen." Coincidentally, from what I've read breakables and fills were all played by a real drummer.

Considering the drummers employed by Steely Dan were the likes of Bernard Purdie (of the famed Purdie Shuffle), Rick Marotta, Steve Gadd and Jeff Porcaro, it boggles the mind why they felt the need to suck the life out of the percussive heartbeat of the music. Then again, when I first heard "Hey Nineteen" I loved the drum sound, so go figure ... I am completely full of shit and have no idea what I'm talking about.

Since I'm on the subject of credits, man oh man, what a treasure of talent.  One of the names I wasn't familiar with was guitarist Steve Khan who seemed to lay down a lot of the rhythm guitar on the album, and played lead on "My Rival" a song I'll write more on in a bit. As usual though I was drawn to the soloists. I always assumed Walter Becker was the band's bass player, but boy howdy that dude could play a mean guitar. His solo on "Gaucho" was pretty bloody tasty. Then there were the usual gang that showed up here and there: Larry Carlton, Rick Derringer, Hugh McCracken and a surprise: Mark Knopfler who provided a generic nondescript solo to "Time Out of Mind" a song I played several times thinking I had missed the part where he played. For a guy with such a distinct voice when playing he was wasted on the track. 

The one song that really caught me by surprise was "My Rival" a track that starts out with some cheesy organ before dropping the hammer and suddenly it was like the band had lifted the riff and groove from David Bowie's "Fame" and created a mashup of a mid temp jazz song that would occasionally veer into borrowed territory. It was so jarring for me I tried to see if anyone else had noticed. Apparently it's just me. Dang it though, I can't unhear it. By the way, Steve Kahn rips it up on this one. It's not my favourite song, just one that caught my attention.

Overall, I have to say that Gaucho, which was essentially the end of Steely Dan's initial commercial run, was probably not my best introduction to the band. I know people who would argue the band's 1977 release Aja was as good as it got. Who knows, this is the album I have, and I haven't been living under a rock, I have over the years heard a lot of their stuff. However, it was finally being able to sit with an album and just listen that was such a treat. Make no mistake, this was a treat.

It's been over forty five years and I still found myself absorbed and in awe of the technical mastery of the assembled musicians. With Gaucho the band seemed to finally accomplish what they had set out to do. There was nothing else to be said. When they got back together twenty years later and released Two Against Nature, it would go platinum, picking up right where they left off.

Pretty cool for a couple of nerds.

For the record, Steely Dan is not Yacht Rock. For goodness sake knowing some jazz and diminished chords does not immediately mean you're yacht rock. As Garret Price, the director of the HBO documentary Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary found out when he called Donald Fagen to provide an interview.

PS Garret did make a really good documentary trying to give some context and definition to what started out as a joke. I suspect many of the artists who find themselves pigeon holed into the category are a little less than enthusiastic about the label.