Original subtitles

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "REELIN' IN THE YEARS"]

Your everlasting summer, you can see it fading fast.

So you grab a bit of something that you

think is going to last.

WALTER BECKER (VOICEOVER): The Original Steely

Dan band was formed in 1971.

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

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "REELIN' IN THE YEARS"]

Are you reelin' in the year?

Stowin' away the time?

Are you gathering up the tears?

Have you had enough of mine?

WALTER BECKER (VOICEOVER): 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.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN,"REELIN' IN THE YEARS"]

Are you gathering up the tears?

Have you had enough of mine?

WALTER BECKER (VOICEOVER): By the time we released "Aja,"

the other members of the band were

gone except for Denny Dyess.

And we had replaced them with session musicians and some

of our favorite soloists.

We started recording the "Aja" album in 1977 in California

and it took a little over a year to finish.

Around the time we made "Aja," we'd

figured out what it was we sort of wanted to do, you know,

musically.

We realized that we needed a 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 "Aja" album has so much great playing in terms

of what we are trying to do with combining you know, session

players and soloists and so on to produce

these little ideal tracks for a song.

It was sort of the best and most consistent and most successful

example of that.

The songs started to become more

sophisticated and individual to themselves.

And 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.

[music - steely dan, "josie"]

We're going to break out the hats and hooters

when Josie comes home.

We're gonna rev up the motor scooters when Josie comes home.

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, Junior Parker record or a Bobby

Bland record or something.

Has a lot of stuff in it plus some other stuff.

[music - steely dan, "josie"]

When Josie comes home, so good.

She's the pride of the neighborhood.

She's the raw flame, the live wire, prays like a Roman

with her eyes on fire.

Of the tunes from this album, that's

the one I like playing the most nowadays, sort of a minor blues

based thing, that has a lot of typical writing

devices in the way it's played I think

as a sort of prototypical Steely Dan record.

And 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 seems

to be pretty basic, but great players who

are revoicing certain chords.

The bass line is a lot of me and a lot of Walter.

Great bass line.

Chuck Rainey.

I remember you and him working that out.

Yeah.

You had a basic thing and then you were a mix.

Well there's another thing where

the first eight was a sort of a written part that I gave him

and then.

Now this is da, dah, dum.

That just a regular kind of little old funk groove that

more or less would sound like a bass guitar,

just a straight ahead.

OK, that's very, very normal.

But like his ideas were for the bass line were things

like that play something like.

Which was more or less his idea to try

and do something like that.

And if I recall, he hum those parts to me, like.

[humming]

This way.

Guitar doubling the bass, common arranging tool

of the [inaudible].

Generation.

Henry Mancini have been proud.

Early detective type of thing happening.

That's that/

[music - steely dan, "josie"]

When Josie comes home, so good, she's

the pride of the neighborhood.

She's the raw flame, the live wire.

She prays like a Roman, with her eyes on fire.

I remember on the "Aja" album we would have six hour

sessions, two three hour sessions

with a lunch break in between.

And we'd rehearse for the morning session.

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.

[music - steely dan, "josie"]

She's the raw flame, the live wire.

She prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire.

The amount of information we processed to put this track

together, and you know, and the various permutations,

so 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 big drops here.

This was Tim Keltner.

Tim Keltner on this one.

Check this thing out.

Heartstring ensemble of sort of primitive string simulator.

Sounds just as bad now as it did then.

But now of course we listen to it ironically.

How about this?

Over dub.

Over dub, garbage can lid.

Garbage can lid, Tim Keltner.

[inaudible] got sound that lifts your heart up.

And it's the most consistently upful, heartwarming,

even though it is a classic LA kind of sound,

you wouldn't think it was recorded anywhere else

in the world, I don't think.

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

[music - steely dan, "josie"]

She's the raw flame, the live wire.

She prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire.

We moved out to the West Coast in '71 or '72.

And we've got a job there, staff writing

for ABC Dunhill records.

And we're sort of these two English major type

guys, you know, out in LA that was a much

more visual culture in a way.

You know, I think the sort of cliched illustration of that

is 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 as close to our experience

as well.

We ended up working with bands that had New York and LA

musicians, because there were elements we were finding

in an LA session players that were great,

you know, that 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 case,

right, and with the snare drum and his symbols and his pedals

or whatever, and some sticks.

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

you know, a truck would show up and two guys would come out

and set up a huge drum set and you know,

and the guy had two more sets like that you know so that he

could make the next date that was

all set up when he got there.

So we loved that about the LA players.

At the same time, a lot of the New York musicians

had a musical style or a sort of hard hitting attitude

or they took chances during their performances

in a way that didn't happen on the West Coast.

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

On the one hand, you've got groups which are basically

rock bands with horn sections like Chicago,

Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

On the other, you've got some jazz musicians who, following

Miles Davis's lead were working in an area

which was then called fusion, people like Herbie Hancock.

Chick Corea, and Stanley Clark, and preeminently

Weather Report.

And Steely Dan were unlike either of those.

They weren't-- it wasn't rock music

with ideas above its station and it wasn't jazzers slumming.

It was a very well-forged alloy of the two.

You couldn't separate the pop music

from the jazz in their music.

[music - steely dan, "peg"]

I've seen your picture, your name in lights above it.

This is your big debut.

I feel nothing but pride from that track.

That was one of the best tracks I ever 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.

[music - steely dan, "peg"]

I keep it with your letter.

I had just opened my hi-hat a hair, every couple of beats.

With what I was playing with my right hand, on the hi-hat

I had created this little sound.

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

that I had done it because engineers and sounds

at the time, you know it was, it was one

of those things where it's a nuance

and those things didn't exist.

[music - steely dan, "peg"]

Shutter falls.

You see it all in 3D.

It's your favorite foreign movie.

As I remember, this was kind of a written bass part,

but he fixed it up in his own--

Parts of it were written.

This part was written, this first part.

Just a great musician, slapping, and also

fretting with his thumb.

Chuck had a really unique-- there's the chorus, which

was-- you'd have to ask Chuck about the thumb business,

you know.

They didn't want me to slap I think mainly

because at that time slapping, was just becoming popular

and it wasn't on a lot of records.

However, by me being a player, I think there's some songs

that slapping sounds 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 song so many times that after a while

I remember just turning just a little bit this way or this way

and putting up a partition, 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.

Right in here.

See how put in the keyboards again here till you

got right here's your little--

Rhythm section.

Little trio here.

That's Rick Maratta.

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

to now is that you don't really hear in a lot of groups

that you here, there's a lot of doubling between the bass

and the kick drum.

And 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 got to love them.

But it's not like, you go in there

and you're just really good friends

and you 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 played musical bands.

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 they say, wow, listen

to 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?

That's the fun.

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

hired a couple of guitar players to play the solo

and it wasn't quite what we were looking for.

So we got through three, four, five, players.

Six, six or seven.

Six or seven, eight players.

To me it was sort of like, you know, some of it

started getting boggy.

I would come into the studio and go, OK, we 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, or--

oh, there it is.

Let's check this out.

Go back and let's hear it in the track.

There you go.

Speaks for itself, really.

Let's 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 that, some kind of little envelope filter

thing he's got going there on his guitar?

Wouldn't you hate it if someone did this to you?

And then finally, Jay Graber came in and did it

with no difficulty whatsoever.

Kind of Hawaiian.

Yeah, kind of Polynesian.

Prefigured my own later residence in Hawaii.

(SINGING) Shutter fall all in 3D.

I had worked with them enough to kind of know

when I was in for, you know?

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

that you know normally under normal circumstances,

people wouldn't you know, they'd kind of, this is the words.

You hear the parts.

You sing it, and you know that's the phrasing.

But for those guys, phrasing could have such a nuance,

you know, that you know, 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, you know,

vibrato, no vibrato, you know things like that.

And so it was always real challenging.

He did a couple parts on top of himself.

(SINGING) All in 3D.

Foreign movie.

Let's check it out [inaudible] just to embarrass him.

(SINGING) Back to you.

Peg.

Back to you.

Sorry, Mike.

There it is.

(SINGING) All in 3D.

Favorite movie.

Peg.

Back to you.

Peg.

It doesn't sound like much of a part,

but the harmonies were so close but that

was a real learning experience for me to sing a chord

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.

(SINGING) Back to you.

Peg.

Back to you.

We had a pretty specific idea about this,

how these background parts would work

and the sort of swing band, rhythmic approach and how

we wanted it phrased and so on.

[music - steely dan, "peg"]

Peg, it will come back to you.

Then the shutter falls you see it all in 3D.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "DEACON BLUES"]

This is the day of the of the expanding man.

That shape is my shade there where I used to stand.

It seems like only yesterday I gazed through the glass

at ramblers, wild gambler.

That's all in the past.

You call me a fool.

You say it's a crazy scheme.

This one's for real.

I already bought the dream.

So useless to ask me why.

Throw a kiss and say goodbye.

I'll make it this time.

I'm ready to cross that fine line.

Learn to work the saxophone.

I'll play just what I feel.

Drink Scotch whiskey all night long.

And die behind the wheel.

I'm only hearing one of them.

That's when I was singing a little like Jerry Lewis,

remember that?

Yeah.

What can you do?

That was a very fertile period for you.

I need to check these out solo now.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "DEACON BLUES"]

Call me Deacon Blues.

Deacon Blues.

Deacon Blues is a great track.

They've always had an affection for these kind

of faded hipsters.

But I think Deacon Blues takes that affection to an almost

philosophical level.

It's become a-- 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 attitudes of the late '50s and early '60s.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "DEACON BLUES"]

Throw a kiss and say goodbye.

I'll make it this time.

Guitar.

There's our electric guitar over here.

Larry Carlton.

Tasty.

Yeah.

Larry played live on a lot of the tapes.

And he had a--

he was very good on rhythm dates at really holding, holding,

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 in the blanks where they weren't sure

what they wanted to be played, and then I would

take that chart to the session.

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

in the studio with 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 7th with a raised nine.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "DEACON BLUES"]

You call me a fool.

You say it's a crazy scheme.

This one's for real.

I already bought the dream.

You can 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 little harder

to drive the track.

But it was already there and for some reason

I kind of liked the idea of just floating

along here in the chorus.

And here it goes to sort of a more conventional--

Later we added--

- Rhythmic beat.

We added acoustic guitar in parts.

Yeah.

It's nice.

One interesting thing about Donald 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 natural, until it sounded almost improvised

in a way.

So it was like a 2-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.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "DEACON BLUES"]

This is for me the essence of true romance.

Deacon Blues is about as close to autobiography

as our tunes get.

You know we were both kids who grew up in the suburbs.

We both felt you know fairly alienated.

But like a lot of kids in the '50s,

we were looking for some kind of alternative culture,

some kind of escape really from where we 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 there would

be one of the mythic forms of loserdom

to which he might aspire.

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

a thing like that?

There's a synthesizer pad on here somewhere.

Yeah.

What the hell was that all about?

Roll back a second.

There it is.

Department store.

That's what I'm thinking of.

It's like that bing, bing.

It's like, you know, what's the big toy store on 59th Street?

FAO Schwartz.

FAO Schwartz.

It it's like you know, they play that same song

over and over with those kinds of sounds in them.

Kids like it because it's like Christmasy.

It's The equivalent of-- the audio equivalent of a primary

color kind of thing, you know.

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

We put that in-- why did we put that in there?

Because, you know why?

To fatten up the horns?

I think maybe there was a flute part on the top

and we needed trumpets that didn't cut.

We wanted to cover up.

So we wanted to put a little high end on the--

- To brighten and clarify. - Right.

So then here's this without the synthesizer.

It goes like this.

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

OK.

Now, play it again and I'll put this guy in here.

Sort of a flute simulation, wouldn't you say?

Or it's marked here as a [inaudible] So maybe we are

thinking of it reason as though it

were like a bell or something going along with that thing.

Although it doesn't sound the least bit like a [inaudible]

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 and 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's get another band in to try

the tunes that didn't work out.

And all through the project, they wouldn't

know no, 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.

(SINGING) I play just what I feel.

It's beautiful.

Basic Gospel, response, counterpoint.

(SINGING) Die behind the wheel.

Put in the lead and we'll see.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "DEACON BLUES"]

I want a name when I lose.

They call Alabama the Crimson Tide.

Call me Deacon Blues.

Deacon Blues.

Part of the reason I was driven towards jazz

was when the radio stopped playing

Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

And this when I was quite young.

But I still noticed that 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, Gospel, or jazz.

My mom was a singer in the hotels in the Catskills

when she was a little girl.

Used to 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

I mean there are people who have read books

and there's people who ain't read books.

They've got a skill that can make images

that aren't puerile and don't make you

think you've heard it before.

Very Hollywood filming in a way.

The imagery is very imaginable in a visual sense.

Uptown, baby.

uptown, baby, it gets down baby.

Find a crown, baby.

(RAPPING) Uptown baby, uptown, baby, we gets down, baby.

For the crown, baby.

Now if it wasn't for the Bronx, this rap probably

never would be going on.

So tell me where you from.

Upton, baby, uptown, baby, we gets down, baby.

For the crown, baby.

That does sound familiar, doesn't it?

Yeah.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "BLACK COW"]

In the corner of my eye, I saw you and Rudy.

I saw you and Rudy.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "BLACK COW"]

You were very high.

You were very high.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "BLACK COW"]

You were high. - You were high.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "BLACK COW"]

It was a crying disgrace.

Crying disgrace.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "BLACK COW"]

They saw your face.

On the counter by your keys--

Well, it starts out, this guy's talking about this girl

that he was involved with.

And she's sitting at a counter and he describes her behavior

and habits and out of that, you begin to see her character

their relationship.

I can't cry any more while you run around.

Self-explanatory.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "BLACK COW"]

Break away.

This tune really does speak for itself in a way that--

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "BLACK COW"]

--over now.

Drink your big black cow and get out of

Is black cow an ice cream soda or-- we were

confused about this, actually.

I thought it was a soda.

There seem to be regional, regional variations

on the formula.

But it's root beer and vanilla ice cream or soft drink.

Something like that.

Frothy soft drink.

Very big in the soda fountains when we were kids.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "BLACK COW"]

How all the pros play the game.

You change your name like a gangster.

Like a gangster on the run.

you'll stagger homeward to your precious one.

I'm doing everything right OK

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

Walter's originally from Westchester

and then moves out to Queens.

But Went to school in Manhattan.

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

So we both grew up in this area.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "BLACK COW"]

Drink your big black cow and get out of here.

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

There's just a sole but Victor, very good

solo by Victor Feldman.

Live on the tracking day.

We answered an ad in "The Village Voice" that said,

you know must have jazz chops.

- Keyboard. - No hangups.

Right.

Keyboard.

[laughter]

Keyboard, keyboard and bass player

needed for working, and working you know, jazz rock combo.

Something like that.

You know.

Must have jazz chops.

No hangups.

No hangups.

So we answered the ad and we called

and we went up to Hicksville Long Island, which

for us was quite a haul, you know,

because 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 it's like when they're

in the same room at the same time,

it's like one person with two brains,

you know some 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,

wasn't quite up to this.

You know.

We started playing their songs right away.

Then I immediately saw that these were great songs.

If truth be told, we kind of took over his band.

We kind of--

We wrecked it.

Towards the end of the first rehearsal--

Started throwing out the other guys and kept Denny.

And that's in a way it was the core of the Steely Dan group.

Because when we got a job out in LA, we sent for Denny.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "HOME AT LAST"]

When we got to California, I don't

know that we were nostalgic in general sort of way for New

York so much as we were nostalgic as writers

for this milieu that we had left behind

and we weren't finished writing songs with New

York characters in 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.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "HOME AT LAST"]

Who wrote that tired sea song set on this peaceful shore?

You think you've heard this one before.

A lot of our songs were about being

homesick I think for New York.

I've noticed that.

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

these sort of stories really.

Home at Last, the central metaphor

was taken from Ulysses big problem,

trying to get back home.

But we didn't take it that seriously.

It's essentially just the idea of it

and maybe write 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 in 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 "Pretzel Logic" it was first album we did

with studio players, we had done a couple of albums

with our little band.

And we had you know heard these players

and done overdubs and stuff with them.

But I found myself in a room with these guys

and I thought like, wow, I'm really outclassed here,

you know?

Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway,

James Brown, Lloyd Price , Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Hines,

Hines, and Ford, Barry Manilow Dionne Warwick,

The Animals, The Monkees, the Beatles,

BB King, Bobbie [inaudible].

Now they already told me that they didn't want a show.

They didn't want the 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 Purdie Shuffle.

And they said, well, what is that?

I said, well, I'll show you where you can feel comfortable

with it and you 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.

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "HOME AT LAST"]

Who wrote that tired sea song set on this peaceful shore.

Let's isolate Bernard for a second, because let's

listen to that beat.

Bernard, you know, this isn't easy.

You'd come in with they tune it and have

sort of something in mind.

But the way Bernard played stuff was always--

he always has some unique stylistic thing

that he did that you would never imagine in advance

and that nobody else would do.

This tune was a good example of that.

A lot of Bernard's hi-hat in this tune particularly,

a real driving kind of.

You got the back beat.

You got double time.

And you have an almost shuffle.

Bernard Harris, 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.

One side of drugs would say, you done it

and then the sign on the other side would say, you done

hired the hit maker, Bernard Prettie Purdie.

So it's that kind of confidence that you need,

you know, to get good R&B track.

[skat]

[music - steely dan, "aja"]

Up on the hill, people never stare.

They just don't care.

Aja starts in a very peaceful way, up on a hill.

And it's kind of a, kind of a trip really to listen to it.

It's--

Yeah, journey through space and time.

Journey through

[music - steely dan, "aja"]

Chinese music under banyan trees.

Here at the dude ranch--

Aja was a combination of a number of different tunes

that we had that were sewn together to make kind

of a little suite, 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 concise.

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

[music - steely dan, "aja"]

Double helix in the sky tonight.

Throw out the hardware.

Let's do it right.

Aja, when all my dime dancing is through, I run to you.

Aja is the name of a woman.

I had a friend in high school, he had an older brother who

went to Korea and married a Korean girl

and brought her back and her name was Aja.

And we thought that was a good name,

just it was a very romantic sort image, the sort of tranquility

that can come of a quiet relationship

with a beautiful woman.

Its very existence is a contradiction.

I mean, when have you ever heard a song

on a rock and roll record that absolutely

cannot be played on a guitar?

I think of me playing the guitar there.

That's Walter playing the guitar.

Freshly released piece of outboard equipment.

Denny again.

Those 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 these 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 in the way it progresses.

Jazz is a dangerous, double edged thing.

You mustn't take too much of it.

And I think Steely Dan do do too much of it.

I think I use that knowledge and that love they've obviously

got, you know, Parker, Mingus, I can hear in there,

lots of really--

I can hear Blake, 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,

that we were very glad that he came in.

It took a while as I recall.

To persuade him to come down.

And--

He didn't really do dates.

And I think he felt that the chances were that we would be

asking him to do something that is

not particularly appropriate.

Well, you know, a reasonable fear under the circumstances.

I was invited to play on the record.

It was quite 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, what's going on before

and what comes after.

I listened to it and then I started to perform.

He was a little worried about playing--

getting into how he used to play with Miles.

And of course, that didn't bother us at all.

I walk in the studio, they were sitting

and they had the lights down and everything like that.

My mission was to do what I'm going to do.

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

in fact, when we grew up, we thought that was

corny in my neighborhood.

You don't, you know, Miles said, don't

wear your heart on your sleeve.

He said, don't give too much away.

Musicians were a key to the music

that eventually got put out.

I think "Aja" probably was a point,

you know a turning point, where the music really

became another level of sophistication

of writing and performing for Donald and Walter.

It was the most seamless joining of jazz and pop

that there had ever been.

There's nothing else quite as sophisticated as that

in all of rock music.

When we first started, we were more

writing pop songs of the time that

maybe had an infusion of our interest in jazz and so on.

But by the time we did "Aja," I think we knew more

what we enjoyed doing really.

Certainly through the "Aja" album,

I think you know our stuff improved.

The "Aja" 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 will fall flat on its face

and that 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 listen to that record.

[music - steely dan, "peg"]

If you ask songwriters from my generation, my

and Donald's generation about who is, you know,

who were the important lyricists from their time, you know,

Bob Dylan is always going to be mentioned.

And if only, and you know I don't think that what we do we

do sound much like Bob Dylan.

But 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 with something you know, intriguing.

We were sort of the first TV generation.

I was interested in TV music, movie soundtracks.

You know, 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 there 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 rather written

to support visual information.

I kind of-- there was something funny about that music.

There was something funny about the theme

from "The Twilight Zone," you know,

something funny about the jazz score for "The Sweet

Smell of Success" you know, because it was like fake jazz

essentially.

And so I both like real jazz and also fake jazz

and also fake, fake jazz you know?

[music - steely dan,"peg"]

[MUSIC - STEELY DAN, "I GOT THE NEWS"]

You in your Lark, you're a mark, you're a screamer.

You know how to hustle.

Daddy is a rare millionaire.

I don't care.

Yeah, you've got the muscle.

I got the news.

Yes, dear.

How did you know?

Can't you see our love will grow?

You know what my favorite thing is, is when they come up

and they say, hey, are you that guy in Steely Dan?

And you say, yeah.

And they say, no, you're not.

You're not him.

That's what I like.