Steely Dan - Gaucho (1980)

Steve:

As Steely Dan's final hurrah before their self-imposed hiatus in 1980, Gaucho is often underrated. Although Aja was a hard act to follow, and various personal problems (Becker was battling drug addiction) made Gaucho a difficult album to complete, song for song it stacks up pretty well next to Aja. It may still be slightly inferior, but it's a dazzling record for its time nonetheless.

As with most Steely Dan records, the glossy arrangements often mask some very clever lyrical themes, making for a collection of songs that can be enjoyed as either chillin' background or incisive social commentary. The opener "Babylon Sisters" shows Becker and Fagen growing weary of the decadent LA/superstar lifestyle, acknowledging that they just might be getting too old for that kind of fun. "Hey Nineteen", a top-10 hit single in the US, also addresses aging, as the protagonist makes himself look foolish trying to impress younger girls who don't even recognize an Aretha Franklin song. Musically, it's got a groove so cool it couldn't help but be a hit, and when the bridge section of "The Cuervo Gold / the fine Colombian / Make tonight a wonderful thing" comes in, it's a moment of melodic beauty. 

When "Hey Nineteen" was a hit, roller skating rinks were popular hangouts for kids, and I remember roller skating to this song. Just before the "Cuervo Gold" section, Fagen quietly says "skate a little lower now", and I used to try to comply with this request, although I was never a very good skater.

The title track is a humorous portrait of another guy looking foolish and out-of-place, in this case a "gaucho" (roughly translated as "cowboy") making a scene in an unfamiliar area and needing his friends to cover for/apologize for his behavior. Some interpretations of this song refer to Becker's drug-impaired state, turning up for recording sessions and being laughed at by the session musicians for his erratic behavior. The closing "Third World Man" is an extremely moving song with sad musical stylings. The lyrics seem to describe a Vietnam veteran whose traumatic experiences have left him in a constant state of paranoia and alarm as he tries to live a normal life back home after the war. Becker and Fagen's sensitive portrayal of this character makes it clear how much they sympathize and lament his sorry state.

In conclusion, if you enjoy the other 70s Steely Dan albums, there's no reason you can't enjoy this one too. Becker and Fagen were still on the songwriting roll that brought us The Royal Scam and Aja, but only a touch of weariness and personal strife (making the subsequent hiatus understandable, once known) keep this one from being among their best work. Still, that added dimension of strife makes for interesting art in itself.

Dan:

I'm always intrigued by the various interpretations of Steely Dan songs. They're intentionally opaque, of course, which requires more creativity on the listener's part. I still have no definite concept of who Dr. Wu might be from their Katy Lied album, and my personal interpretation of "Gaucho" is different from Steve's. So be it. I'm sure the songwriters had particular actors in mind based on their own experiences; most songwriters do. It's part of the fun (or frustration if you're a literal thinker) to imagine who these odd people might be. Best not to work too hard at it, though; music is meant to be fun, or so I think.

As was the Dan's usual practice, top-shelf musicians were hired, sometimes only to play a few bars. I like to name-check the guest artists on their albums. Gaucho is graced by Tom Scott, Randy Brecker, Mark Knopfler, Joe Sample, Steve Khan, Hiram Bullock, Rick Derringer, Anthony Jackson, Rick Marotta, Ronnie Cuber, Michael McDonald, Rob Mounsey, Victor Feldman, Don Grolnick, Chuck Rainey, Bernard Purdie, among others that I haven't heard of. If those cats were actually on stage all at the same time, it would be a hell of a band!

As for the underlying theme of aging, it's something that everyone needs to deal with sooner or later. Even hip iconoclasts like Fagan (now 75) turn old and lose a lot of their mojo. Becker didn't make it that far, dying in 2017 at age 67. The songs in Gaucho that portray pathetic elders attempting to relive their past youth as cool dudes probably strike a bare nerve in many people. 

I heard once that the past was prologue to the future, which is an old but meaningful adage for me. In music, many jazz artists continue to perform and develop younger talent well past their 70s. As I get older myself, I try to use my experience to make a positive difference in the lives of other people, especially rising academics. I suppose blogging about prog is another way for me and Steve to "pay it forward" by sharing our experiences with our vast Internet audience. 

Steely Dan - Aja (1977)

Dan:

Aja was my first foray into the music of Steely Dan, although I had probably heard songs like "Do It Again" and "Rikki Don't Lose that Number" on the radio before I plunged into their vinyl. From the very first notes of "Black Cow," I was hooked. The snide lyrics, accompanied by a chorus of background singers and premier musicians jelled into a song about breaking up such as I had never heard (and we all know how many songs are written about breakups). I even knew what a black cow was, although in my family we called them rootshakes. 

Then came the title piece, featuring Wayne Shorter's note-perfect tenor sax solo and the sustained chords of the outro. Of course, I knew who Wayne Shorter was because as a college freshman in 1962 I was listening to him play with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. I've studied Shorter's solo on "Aja" carefully in order to understand how those precious notes fit together so perfectly, and on a rock album no less! It's one of the best deployments of a real jazz artist into a rock number without a hint of pretentiousness or selling out. "Aja" is nothing like a jazz composition, and it's certainly not ordinary rock. It might be Donald Fagen and Walter Becker's most extraordinary musical accomplishment. 

"Deacon Blues," with its irresistible melody and sax parts played by another jazz luminary, Pete Christlieb, completes side 1. Christlieb and Shorter were not merely "session musicians;" they're more like top guns, especially Shorter (who died earlier this year after receiving every meaningful jazz award there is). "Deacon Blues" is a lot of people's favorite song (including my late brother and Steve's uncle). 

Before I ever turned the record over, I had the feeling that I had stumbled upon something special. Side 2 offers four briefer tunes, but each one is tight, punchy and full of great lines. "Home at Last" borrows from classical literature with Odysseus as its inspiration. "Peg" and "Josie" are portraits of admirable women. "I Got the News" is perhaps the only disappointing track, but it's got so much competition to vie with that I'll give it credit for making it onto the album.

A year after Aja's release, Becker and Fagen produced a real jazz album that paired Christlieb with tenorist Warne Marsh. The Steely Dan leaders included their composition "Rapunzel" on that album. They must have loved that project! 

Steve:

Few albums dominate my memories of the late 1970s like Aja. Once it entered our house, it played seemingly constantly, as did several other Steely Dan albums such as Katy Lied, Countdown to Ecstasy, and The Royal Scam. Despite my lifelong tendency to ignore lyrics (a tendency I've expressed regret for elsewhere in this blog), I knew the lyrics to all the songs, even if the slang terms and underlying meaning of the words was lost on me. The "remedies" on the counter by her keys in "Black Cow", one of which will "screen out the sorrow", were just cool sounding words to me back then.  

Aja was also, along with Dark Side of the Moon, a favorite album to test stereo equipment and speakers - something Dan and I did fairly often as we carried the record to Sound Advice, a stereo component store in Coral Gables. I don't recall how often he actually bought anything from that store, but I imagine he did it often enough to earn the trust of their staff. Once I brought in an LP of my own - a recently acquired Mobile Fidelity pressing of Queen's A Night at the Opera, which has some sonic marvels of its own.

If Aja is not my absolute favorite Steely Dan album (that honor would go to The Royal Scam), it's certainly not because of any flaws. I watched a documentary wherein Becker, Fagen and other participants (bassist Chuck Rainey and drummer Bernard "Purdie Shuffle" Purdie come to mind) talk about the making of Aja, and demonstrate the craft that went into the album by isolating certain tracks and talking about why this one three-bar phrase was attempted 82 times before the hired studio musician got it just right. It's well known as one of the most clinically-perfect albums out there, a distinction that actually turns off a lot of music fans. But what the record lacks in spontaneity and raw energy, it makes up for with its genuinely heartfelt songs (I still get a little misty-eyed during the suburban kid's dreams of becoming a tragic musical legend) and its stunning musicality.  

If Becker and Fagen were anal about getting THE perfect take, then it's to their credit that they only hired the best to do the job. A lot of labored-over albums are so treated because of egomania or a simple lack of good judgment; in the case of Aja, such decisions were based in knowledge about who would make it great and how to get the album to that level. [Dan Comment: Steely Dan might have learned the value of obsessing over recordings from none other than Elvis Presley, who was notorious for creating dozens of takes before the perfect one was realized.]

Steely Dan - The Royal Scam (1976)

Dan:

I suppose there might be skeptics who would not wish to include Steely Dan as prog artists. If there were an existing category for cynical, slick, American rock, that's where the Dan would belong. But there is no such category I know of, so the more logical classification is "sui generis" (which, of course is not really a category). With no precursors and no successors, Steely Dan remains an original. (Incidentally, I reject the pejorative classification of Steely Dan as "yacht rock" for reasons that should become obvious in our analysis of song content below).

The Royal Scam earns its way into our blog for two reasons. First, consider the program of songs, which serve up sly, oblique social critiques of the so-called "American Dream." The title track deals most directly with the false hopes of immigrants coming to America in search of opportunity while ending up on the streets like the homeless man in the cover photo. "Kid Charlemagne" traces the rise and fall of a drug dealer who ends up on the run. "Don't Take Me Alive" profiles an armed fugitive bent on self-destruction and possible collateral damage to "luckless pedestrians". "The Caves of Altamira" fantasizes about hiding in a secret cave. And so the stories continue - strange, creepy, and weird - good grist for the prog music mill.

Second, songs contain a variety of rhythmic foundations, many allowing instrumental solos that could easily belong on a jazz album. (The jazz inclinations appear on almost all Steely Dan albums, but most notably on the sublime Aja). The straightforward rock of "Kid Charlemagne" features a dynamite guitar solo by Larry Carlton, who is best known as a fusion jazz player. Carlton has claimed that this solo, although stitched together from many takes, is his absolute best. On other songs, the layers of studio tracking produce the sounds of a large ensemble that feels neither over- nor under-produced. The eclectic mixture of themes and musical styles is literally music to my prog-sensitive ears. 

Steely Dan is also unique because they shunned live performances for most of their career. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the only permanent members of the band, were experts at writing songs and assembling musicians like Carlton to play them or to sing background over Fagan's lead vocals. The key to their success was not improvisation or jamming on stage, but rather crafting hit albums in the comfort of L.A. studios.

Sporting a string of seven best-selling albums in the 1970s, Steely Dan joined in on the rising popularity of prog record albums. The time had finally come in the mid-70s for progressive rock to be fully accepted; albums by Genesis, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Yes, and Santana, among others, sold in huge numbers as did the Dan. Prog subcategories began to proliferate to accommodate the seemingly endless variety of rock. "Prog for the Masses" was now upon us and ready to be celebrated!

My Steely Dan LP collection began with Aja, which I bought when it first came out in 1977. I then worked backwards and forwards so that I owned all seven of the 1970s output. That was enough. I never sampled the live album or the reprised version of the band in the aughts. My albums were played frequently at home, provoking both glee and protest depending on the family members present. One memorable Steely Dan fest was the lip-syncing, tennis racquet-playing air band of Steve and his cousin Thad (aka Shade Bro). Thankfully, both have grown up to become perfectly normal adults!

Steve:

Perfectly normal, my foot. Any kid who grows up reading Steely Dan lyric sheets is bound to come out the other side a little bent - a fact of which I am proud. I do remember the tennis-racket-air-band sessions at our house, an activity I took quite seriously. While it may have been enough for others (such as "Shade Bro" or my dad) to simply hop around and loosely mime their performances (the fools!), I took special care to make my lip syncing, tennis racket fingerings and strumming as precise and as close to the music as possible. At the time I thought I must have been pretty impressive to watch, but in retrospect I probably could have gotten away with less. Such are the ways of the music business. 

I mention the lyric sheet first because I think that The Royal Scam has some of the best lyrics I've ever heard - so vivid, so grotesque and fanciful, and yet so human. To add to what Dan said above, each song is a look inside the life and soul of a different character - and although it's most likely not meant to be a concept album per se, one does get the feeling that all these little stories are taking place in the same city, the desperately oppressive urban dungeon depicted on the album cover. 

One of the most compelling scenarios occurs in "Haitian Divorce", in which a woman takes a temporary trip away from her husband with whom she's always fighting, has a drunken liaison in Haiti, and winds up getting pregnant, with the truth only coming out after the baby is born ("Tearful reunion in the USA / Day by day those memories fade away / Some babies grow in a peculiar way / It changed, it grew / And everybody knew"). 

Appropriately, the following song ("Everything You Did") is from the point of view of a man who suspects his wife of cheating on him, after finding clues lying around the house ("I never knew you were a roller skater / You're gonna show me later"). Adding a slice of realism to the argument, one of them realizes they might be overheard by their neighbors and tries to take corrective action: "Turn up the Eagles / the neighbors are listening" - my favorite lyric on the album. The Eagles returned the favor with a Steely Dan reference in their song "Hotel California" - "They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast", according to Glenn Frey in the liner notes to an Eagles best-of CD. 

Song after song The Royal Scam delivers amazingly vivid renderings of people in dark and desperate situations, but the clever and witty details help to turn it into a dark comedy rather than a bunch of depressing stories. Musically, The Royal Scam is Steely Dan's densest, darkest album, a trait that may turn off fans of the band's lighter material as on their more popular tracks like "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", "My Old School", or even "Do it Again". Like it or not, the dense atmosphere is appropriate for the subject matter of the songs. 

When pressed, I consider The Royal Scam as my favorite Steely Dan album, but all of the albums in their initial run are essential.