Original subtitles

The original Steely Dan Band was formed in 1971.

There were five of us and Tom 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 had replaced them with session musicians and some of our

favorite soloists.

We started recording the Asia 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

wanted to 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

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.

I kind of like

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

It has all the stuff I like about 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.

Of the tunes from this album, that's the one I like playing most 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.

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.

He 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.

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

Well, there's another thing where the first eight 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 with bass and

guitar just a straight ahead

okay that's very very normal but like uh his ideas were for the bass line were

things like um uh the place something like uh

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 all right not this way

Guitar doubling the bass, common arranging tool of the Hollywood

arrangers generation.

Henry Mancini would have been proud.

An early detective type of thing 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 session and i would have the distinct feeling that we will 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

She prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire.

The amount of information that we processed to put this track together 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? 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?

Over, Doug?

The garbage can lid. Garbage can lid. Jim Keltner.

Laser's 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

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?

We moved out to the West Coast in 71 or 72, and we got a job there and

staff writing for ABC Dunhill Records.

And 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 case

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

sticks In Los Angeles when we got there that 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. 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 of hard-hitting attitude or they took

chances during their performances in a way 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

which was then called Fusion.

People like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Stanley Clark, and pre-eminently,

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

jazz in their music.

I feel nothing but pride from that track. It 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.

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

and i created this little sound now i've done that but never ever heard it on the

record that i had done 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

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 verse part.

Just a great musician. Slapping and also fretting with his thumb.

Chuck had a really unique... Here's the chorus, which was... You'd have to ask

Chuck about the thumb business.

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

was just becoming...

popular, and was on a lot of records.

However, by me being a player, I think there are 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 songs so many times that after a while, I remember

just 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's the...

Put in the keyboards again here. So you got like here's your little rhythm

section little trio here

I'll tell you one thing.

It's interesting that I'm listening to now is that you 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 and you can hear here That the 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 gotta love them.

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

you'll 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. 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, 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, 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?

I would come into the studio and go, okay, 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? Oh, there it is.

Let's check this out put it go back and let's hear it in the track

There

you

go in other words 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 it? Some kind of little envelope filter thing he got going there on his

guitar?

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

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

whatsoever.

Sort of a Hawaiian.

Yeah, kind of a Polynesian. Sort of prefigured my own later residence in

Hawaii.

I'd worked with them enough to kind of know what 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, here's the parts, you sing it and, you know, that's the

phrasing. But for those guys...

phrasing could have such nuance, you know, that, you know, singing a line

like half as much as you'd think, you know, how many different ways can you

say it in that phrasing rhythmically, you know, but it would be, it would come

down to such fine points like pronunciation and exact rhythmic, you

know, vibrato, no vibrato, you know, things like that.

So it was always real challenging.

He did a couple parts on top of himself.

Let's check out his hard part just to embarrass him. Cool.

Sorry,

Mike. There it is.

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

that 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.

expanding man that shape is my shade

there where I used to stand it

seems like only yesterday I gazed to the glass

at ramblers wild gamblers that's all

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 rock the saxophone.

I play just what I feel.

Drink scotch whiskey all night long.

I'm only hearing one of them.

It was this when I was singing a little like Jerry Lewis.

Remember that? Yeah.

What can you do? That was a very fertile period for you.

Maybe you take these out of solo now.

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 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.

Guitar.

Here's our electric 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 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 of 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 raise 9.

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

This one's for real. I already bought the dream.

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

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

little harder to drive the track, but it was already there. And for some reason,

I kind of like the idea of just floating along here in the verse.

And here it goes to sort of a more conventional beat.

Rhythmic beat. We added acoustic guitar.

Dean Parks.

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 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.

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

We both felt, you know, 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 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 that 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?

Nothing like that.

I'll make it my home, sweet home.

Learn to work.

There's a synthesizer.

hat on here somewhere yeah 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 here okay it's like

you know what's the big toy store in 59th street

F.A.O. Schwartz. F.A.O. Schwartz. It's like, you know, they play that same song

over and over with those kinds of sounds in them. Yeah. Kids like it because it's

a Christmassy. It's the equivalent of an 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?

I think maybe the flute, there was a flute part on the top, and we needed

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. 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 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.

Play just what I feel.

It's beautiful.

Basic gospel response type of thing.

Put in the lead and we'll see.

I want a name when I lose.

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

Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and 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.

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.

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 pure-o 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, and find a crown, baby.

uptown baby uptown baby we gets down baby for the crown baby now if it wasn't

for the bronze this rap probably never would be going on so tell me where you

from uptown baby uptown baby we gets down baby for the crown baby it does

sound familiar yeah in the corner of my

I saw you and Rudy.

You were very high.

You were high.

It was a crying disgrace.

They saw your face.

On the counter.

By your keys.

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 chain really does speak for itself in a way.

Drink your big black cow.

It's daunting to the commentator. 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.

How will the pros play the game?

Like a gangster on the run You will

stagger homeward to your precious one I'm the one

who must make everything right Talk it out

till daylight Chorus

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

Walter's 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

both 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 day.

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

chops. Keyboard. No hangups. Right.

Keyboard.

Keyboard. keyboard and bass player needed for working working um 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 uh we called and uh we went out to hicksville

long island which for 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, they're just

like one person with two brains, you know, so 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 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, you know, and kept Danny sort of, you know.

And that, in a way, was the core of the Steely Dan group.

Later, because when we got a job out in L.A., 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

that we left behind. 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.

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

noticed that, actually.

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, you

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

essentially just the idea of it.

Have you read a little blues about Ulysses, you know?

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 Pretzelogic, which was the first album we did with studio players,

we had done a couple 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,

I'm really outclassed here, you know?

Aretha Franklin.

Nina Simone.

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

Frank Sinatra, Heinz, Heinz and Ford, Barry Manilow, Dionne Warwick,

The Animals, The Monkees, The Beatles, B.B. King, Bobby Blumenthal.

Now,

they already told me that they didn't want a shuffle. 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 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 just listen to that beat bernard

you know this isn't easy you'd come in with a uh a tune and

have sort of a 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 a good example of that.

A lot of Bernard's hi-hat and

this tune particularly is a real driving kind of

You've got the backbeat.

You've got double time.

And you have it almost shuffled.

Bernard,

you know, this is 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 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, 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 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 that.

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.

When all my dying dancing is through, I run to

you.

Asia is the name of a woman. I had a friend in high school, and he had an

older brother. He went to Korea and married a Korean girl and brought her

back, and her name was Asia.

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

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 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 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 do 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 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.

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

perform. I remember he was a little worried about playing those 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, rolling and everything like that. My mission was to

do what I'm going to do.

Not to 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 the music that eventually

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

for Donald War.

It was 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

music.

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

had 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

will 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 listen to 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

with 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, 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 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 so i both like real jazz and also fake

jazz and also fake fake jazz you know

You in your life, you're a mock, you're a screamer, didn't know how to hustle.

She's a rare millionaire, I don't care.

Yeah, you got the muscle.

I got the blues.

Yes, dear, how did you know?

Can't you see our 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 you say, yeah. And they say, no, you're not.

You're not him.

That's what I like.