The Wiseacre Duos: Steely Dan, Part V

1978. Steely Dan had now reached an apex. A mountaintop of artistic, critical, and popular success had been achieved, all emodied in the stunning 1977 album, Aja. To put a fine point on this golden period, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker also composed the theme song to the ill-fated film, FM. It was a stellar track: commanding vocal performance, sublime horns, thundering piano and keyboard, tasty percussion. It was damned near perfect, and one of my SD Top 5, for sure. The song was another chart success; the movie bombed. It had the misfortune of being released at the same time as NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE and GREASE, both of which dominated that summer's box office. Even though FM is almost universally panned, it is actually a fun little picture, telling the story of a Los Angeles rock station which refuses to bow to the demands of its profit hungry parent company. A game cast brings to life a motley crew of eccentric DJs. It is a worth a look if you can ferret it out.

Meanwhile, L.A. itself had finally worn our duo down to their last grains of patience. Neither Fagen or Becker were ever really able to acclimate to the West Coast, with its laid back vibe and dearth of culture. Becker moaned to interviewers that unless one was willing to spend hours expounding on the correct wax to apply to your long board, Los Angeles wasn't exactly going to stimulate. The two decided to pack up and head back home, to New York City. Immediately, they were in their old element. No longer the penniless bohemians who once shilled every record producer in town, pleading for a mere 5 minutes to hear their golden compositions, Fagen & Becker now esconced themselves high above Central Park, enjoying some time away from Steely Dan. They even played on and produced other artists' records when they got bored.

After spending the 1970s writing songs about their beloved hometown, what did they do but.....begin writing songs about California! Yes, now firmly back on their urban turf, its streets filled with musicians, graffiti covered trains, and the smell of urine, they immediately began to pen tales of life back West. In 1979, Fagen and Becker started recording what would be their swan song, Gaucho, a painstakingly crafted album of thorny tales wrapped in the smoothest jams you were likely to hear this side of "a Holiday Inn jazz combo" as one critic rather curtly summated.

This new album wastes no time in its post mortem on California living, opening auspiciously with the spooky, often brilliant "Babylon Sisters." Bernard Purdie's highly recognizable shuffle is there, and so are the now more prominent backup singers, who eerily respond to Fagen's sad verses of wasted years, mispent relations, and crushing regret. In one song, Fagen and Becker sum up their lost decade-filled with astounding success, yes, but also hollow hearts and haunting memories. I can only imagine how the vacuousness of their experiences must invade their dreams. "Babylon Sisters" is not you prototypical SD hat trick. It is a serious, brooding lament that is as good as anything they've done.

The next track was also the biggest hit on Gaucho, "Hey 19." The boys had now entered their third decades, a bit surprised they had survived the excesses of the Me Decade. "Now that I'm 30, surprisingly I don't feel obliged to blow my brains out like I thought I would've 10 years ago," Becker told reporters. Of course, the admittedly more caustic half of SD was actually in a very bad place at this time, but more on that later. "Hey 19" is an early entry in the Licentious Older Man subgenre of Dan tunes. The lyrics relate the ramblings of an elder who eyes a barely legal coed, sighing as he realizes that the generation gap will doom any potential union. Even at 31, Fagen already felt out of touch with the youth culture, but then, he never really did feel connected to his contemporaries at any stage of his life. The song relays a few verses before the narrator hits upon the Great Equalizer, the thing(s) that will blur (quite literally) the imposed age-related boundaries.


The Cuervo Gold
The fine Columbian
Make tonight a wonderful thing


And hereto introduces a not-so-subtle theme of Gaucho. Intoxicants play into several songs on the record, quite likely since Walter Becker had found himself in an almost inescapable vortex of narcotics recreation-cum-abuse over the last several years. His situation became dire enough that he would disappear for weeks at a time, and when he did show up, he was not fit to lend his usual critical ear to the recording sessions. It seemed that Becker was telling of his otherworldly experiences through his lyrics. From "Time Out of Mind":

I am holding the mysterical sphere
It's direct from Lhasa
Where people are rolling in the snow
Far from the world we know


In its chorus, the song mentions "chasing the dragon", a slang phrase for what happens when a user inhales smoke from heated opium or heroin. The rippling effect of the smoke sometimes ressembles a dragon's tail. In "Glamour Profession", a rather lengthy track, we learn aboout one Hoops Mccann, a basketball star who receives a "special delivery", as well as some assorted drug dealers and "local boys (who) spend a quarter just to shine the silver bowl." Clearly, Los Angeles provided some very interesting fodder for Steely Dan. "Living hard will take its toll", the song continues. For Fagen & especially Becker, Art was now not only imitating Life, but prefacing and postscripting it as well, as we'll see.

The recording of Gaucho was an extremely long and painful experience for the entire crew. With all of the personal problems of the duo, who were for the first time begining to have serious disagreements, it is a miracle that the album was ever completed. One major setback was the accidental erasure of Fagen & Becker's favorite track, 'The Second Arrangement." A poignant tale of infidelity, jealousy, and wistful attempts at a fresh start, "Arragement" had the makings of another classic. I've heard the demo several times and even in a crude one channel piano and bass recording, I could tell that the potential for lightning in a bottle was there.

Uncharacteristically, the track fell together very quickly. Recording was a snap. Then, while an engineer was prepping the song for playback, he mistakenly belived he was at the tail leader of the tape (but was actually at the tail header at the beginning) and all 24 of the tracks were put on "record", causing the song to be erased. This mistake caused great grief to everyone, and was quite portentous of what lied ahead. Fagen & Becker quite unsuccessfully recorded the track again, but were unable to capture whatever magic that had been there originally. I've heard the redo, and it indeed reeks of chessy late 70s overproduction. A shame.

To me, Gaucho is SD's least successful venture. As usual, the composers spent hours on end trying to get precise performances from yet another battalion of the cream of L.A. and NYC musicians. As on Aja, carefully selected players would record a track, then another entire band would come in, and do it again. Often, Fagen & Becker would scrap everything in their peculiar attempts to find something that they felt was the right sound. Musicians, including Dire Straits leader/guiatrist mark Knopfler, would exit the studio scratching their heads, wondering what this duo could possibly want. Producer Gary Katz would assure the players that their work was excellent, stellar even, but just didn't fit the piece. The songwriters wanted to send their tunes "past perfection", to a point where the music was so exact and flawless that every last nuance was controlled, even the imperceptible tinniest increment of the opening of a high hat cymbal. And for this reason, I feel the album ultimately fails. The compositions are too clinical, too, clean. As much as I'm intrigued by this album, I agree with the critic who stated that with Gaucho, for all of its perfection, "the seams began to show."

Perhaps the material isn't to be faulted. The lyrics are as mysterious as ever, with my favorites coming from the two closing songs, "My Rival" (a guy is envious of his lover's new infant?) and "Third World Man" (an examination of civilians and terrorists, Patty Hearst and the SLA perhaps?). The horn arrangements by Rob Mounsey, the choice guitar licks by the aforementioned Knopfler and many others, and virtually every other musical element is sound. My theory is that the Method finally got the better of them. The Kubrickian ways of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had at last undermined their art, leaving in its wake an ambitious, technically astonishing, and yet hollow and soulless collection of songs, despite some flashes of genius. Perhaps this was their ultimate statement on Los Angeles life?

Maybe they were just tired. Becker's bad luck ran full tilt in '79/80-in addition to his own drug habit, that of his longtime girlfriend took her life, resulting in her mother suing Becker for enabling her downfall. In addition, Becker was hit by a taxi late one night after a session, resulting in several fractures in his right leg. So severe was his pain and rehabilitation that he was unable to work in the studio, leaving his collaborations to be done by phone.

Gaucho was delayed for release due to a whole host of contractural dilemmas between labels ABC and MCA, the latter of who had bought out the former. The summer after the album's release, Fagen and Becker called it quits. Fourteen years of collaboration were now over. The men were burnt out. It is arguable that the split should have occured three years earlier, after they peaked in every possible way with Aja. Instead, they soldiered on and created one last, yes, classic. I see that now. But a very flawed classic. And it nearly killed them. By 1981, Steely Dan was prounouced dead. But there was still some creative spark left, if for just one of them.......

to be continued........