All language subtitles for STEELY DAN - Aja (Classic Albums) (1997)

The original Stelly Dan band was formed
in 1971. There were five of us,

and Donald and l wrote the songs.

We toured a while to support the first
albums, but we didn't like it

so we stopped in 1974
and didn't tour again for 19 years.

By the time we released ''Aja''
the other band members were gone,

except for Denny Dias.

We'd replaced them with session
musicians and some favorite soloists .

We started recording the ''Aja'' album
in 1977 in California.

lt took a little over a year to finish.

When we were making ''Aja''

we'd figured out sort of
what we wanted to do musically.

We needed session musicians
who had a larger

pallet of abilities and who could read
well, because they were coming in cold.

lthink the ''Aja'' album
has so much great playing,

in terms of what we were trying to do
combining ...

session players and soloists

to produce these ideal tracks
for our songs.

lt was the best the most consistent
the most successful example of that

The songs started to become
more sophisticated and individual.

There would be a particular piece
we thought X musician would shine on .

And we wanted to be able to utilize
the musicians who were available.

l kinda like ''Josie,'' because it sounds
like a good rhythm and blues record .

lt has all the stuff l like
about a good Junior Parker record ,

or a Bobby Bland record .
lt has a lot of that stuff in it

Plus some other stuff.

Of the tunes from this album
thats the one l like playing most now .

Sort of a minor blues based thing

that has a lot of typical
writing devices in the way its played.

lts sort of a proto-typical Stelly Dan
record , and its just fun to play.

''Josie'' is a perfect fusion record ,
a good dance record .

lt seems to be pretty funky or 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.

l remember you and him working that out
- Yeah.

You had a basic thing, and then ...

lt was another thing where the first 8
was a server part l gave him.

This is just a regular funk groove
that more or less would sound like ...

With bass and guitar
its just straight ahead.

Okay, thats very normal, but his ideas
for the bass line were things like ...

They'd play something like ...

Which was more or less his idea
to do something like that

lf l recall, he did hum those parts
to me like ...

This went ...

Guitar doubling the bass,
common arranging tool of the ...

Hollywood arrangers ... generation .

Henry Mancini would have been proud.

Early detective kinda thing happening.

Okay, thats that

l remember on the ''Aja'' album
we would have 6-hour sessions,

two 3-hour sessions
with a lunch break in between.

And we 'd rehearse
for the morning session .

And l had the distinct feeling
we'd never get a take with this band .

The song would not end up on the album,
and it was gonna all fail.

We'd go to lunch and come back,
and everything was in place.

We got some great takes after lunch.

The amount of information we processed
to put this track together

and the various permutations ...

So l have to say,
most of the scrutiny was on the drummer.

What they really wanted
was to get a great drum track.

We got some drums here. This was ...

Jim Keltner.
- Jim Keltner on this one.

Check this thing here.

Harp string ensemble
of a primitive string simulator.

Sounds just as bad now as it did then,

but we listened to it ironically.
- How about this?

Overdub
- Overdub garbage can lid.

Garbage can lid, Jim Keltner.

''Aja's'' got sound
that lifts your heart up.

lts the most consistently
''upful'' heartwarming,

even though its a classic
LA kinda sound.

You wouldn't think it was recorded
anywhere else in the world.

lts got California through its blood,

even though those boys
are from New York .

lts a record that sends my spirits up.
Really. When l listen to music,

l don 't wanna hear people moaning.
And l don 't want music that moans.

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

We got a job there,

staff writing for A BC Dunhill Records.

We were these two English major type
guys out in LA.

that was a much more visual culture
in a way. l think

the clichéd illustration of that is

Woody Allen movies where
he's transported out to Los Angeles,

and he becomes very ill
and feels very disoriented .

lthink that probably is close
to our experience as well.

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

because there were great elements
we were finding in LA session players:

a kind of precision , the savviness
about recording processes and so on .

Back in New York , the drummer'd show up
with his trap case,

with the snare drum, cymbals,
his pedals and some sticks.

ln Los Angeles, a drummer would show up
with a truck,

and two guys would set up a huge drum
set and the guy had two more sets ,

so he could make the next dat
he'd already set up.

So we loved that about the LA players,
but ...

lots of New York musicians had a
certain style, a hard-hitting attitude.

They took chances during performances
in a way

that didn't happen on the West Coast

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

On the one hand, you got groups which
were rock bands with horn sections,

like Chicago and Blood Sweat And Tears.

On the other hand, you got jazz
musicians following Miles Davis' lead.

They were working in an area
called fusion .

People like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea,
Stanley Clarke

and preeminently Weather Report .

Stelly Dan weren't like any of those.

lt wasn't rock or pop
with ideas above its station .

And it wasn't jazz as slumming.

lt was a very well-forged allo
of the two

You couldn't separate the pop music
from the jazz in their music.

lfeel nothing but pride for that track,
one of the best l ever played on .

As far as drums were going at that time,

if you had a club in your right and one
in your left and clubs for feet

you could play.

l'd just open my high hat a hair
every couple of beats

with what l was playing
with my right hand,

and l created this little sound.
Now l'd done that

but never ever heard it on the record ,

because engineers and sounds
at the time ...

lt was a nuance,
and those things didn't exist

As l remember, this was
a written bass part he fixed up

on his own.
-This part was written.

This first part.
Just a great musician.

Slapping and fretting with his thumbs .
Chuck had a unique ...

There's the chorus.
- Ask Chuck about the thumb business.

They didn't want me to slap,
because slapping was becoming popular.

lt was on a lot of records.

Me being a player, there are some songs
where slapping sounds good.

No matter who you are, you wanna keep
in the fold of whats happening.

''Peg'' ... that bridge just seemed
to be a slapping thing for me.

They said,
''No play it with your fingers.''

Something like that
And then you played it so many times

that after a while l remember
turning just a little bit ...

either this way or this way ...

and putting up a partition .
They were about that high,

of course sitting in a much lower chair.
And l remember ... slapping.

They never knew it went down,

except afterwards you can tell
the difference in that bridge.

Alright here's the ...

l'll put in the keyboards here,
so you got ... - A rhythm section .

A little trio here.

Rick Marotta on drums.
- One thing l'm listening to now

that you don 't really hear ...

Lots of groups have lots of doubling
between the kick drum and the bass.

Here the kick drum is sort of
syncopated . lts not really ...

lts not doubling so much
the strong beats of the bass line.

You gotta love 'em,
but its not like ...

You 're just really good friends,
and you 'll play and try to get into it

and they'll say, ''Really good.''

And the next day a whole other band
is doing it

They didn't play musical chairs
with the guys in the band .

They played musical bands.
Awhole band would go

and a whole incredible other band
would come in.

We never came up with a band
we felt was the right combination .

lt was just me and Walter .

You 'd hear somebody on a record ,
and you 'd say, ''Wow !

This guy's a great soloist
Let's have him come in.

What would he be good on ?
What would suit his style?''

This tune is infamous
among studio players.

We hired some guitar players
to play the solo

but it wasn't what we were looking for

until we got through 3, 4 or 5 players.
- 6 or 7 . - 8 players.

To me, it was like ...
Some of us started getting foggy.

lwould come into the studio and go
''Okay, another day of this.''

Some of it would just go by like

days of the week.
Here we go again, another guitar solo

Oh, there it is.

Lets check this out Go back,

and lets hear it in the track.

There you go ln other words ...

lt speaks for itself
- Lets look for another one.

This is probably the last guy to try it
before Jay did it

There's another one.

Whats that? Some kind of
envelope filter he's got on his guitar?

Wouldn't you hate to have someone
do this to you ?

Then finally Jay Graydon came in and
did it with no difficulty whatsoever.

Kind of Hawaiian.
- Yeah, kind of Polynesian.

He prefigured my later residence
in Hawaii.

l'd worked with them enough
to know what l was in for

Certain words they just wanted to hear
a certain way.

Under normal circumstances,
people wouldn't ... They'd kind of ...

This is the words, here the parts,
you sing it ... thats the phrasing.

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

Singing a line like ''half as much as''
you 'd think,

how many different ways can you say it
in that phrasing?

But it would come down
to such fine points like pronunciation ,

exact rhythmic, vibrato , no vibrato ,
things like that

lt was always challenging.

He did a couple of parts
on top of himself

Lets check out his high part
just to embarrass him. - Cool.

Sorry , Mike. There it is.
Here he is, too

''Peg'' doesn't sound like much,
but the harmonies were so close.

that was a real learning experience
for me to sing a chord

part by part with myself

When you go in for that next harmony
its so close to what you 're singing.

lt was real hard to discern
that interval and keep it in pitch.

We had a pretty specific idea
about this ...

how these background parts would work,
the ''swing band '' rhythmic approach,

and how we wanted to phrase it

You 're only hearing one of them.

Those were the days when l was singing
like Jerry Lewis, remember? - Yeah.

that was a very fertile period for you .

l'm going to take this out of solo now .

''Deacon Blues'' is a great track.
They've always had an affection

for these faded hipsters.

But ''Deacon Blues'' takes that affection
to the almost philosophical level.

lt brings a nobility to that kind of
faded hipster attitude,

which l think has 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.

The electric guitar over here,
Larry Carlton.

Tasty.
- Yeah.

Larry played live
on a lot of these dates .

He was very good at rhythm dates
and 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 he was playing.

lthink of myself as the liaison
they wanted between themselves

and the studio musicians.

They would give me their demo tape
with those wonderful piano parts,

and many of the bass parts
were on there also And l was the one

who took those notes off the tape,

filled in the blanks where
they weren't sure what they wanted ,

and l took that chart to the session .

lwas the person who was familiar
with the song out in the studio

with the studio musicians,
so if Donald or W alter would say,

''Larry, when we go to the bridge ...''
l could tell the musicians,

''thats bar nineteen B flat a seventh
with a raised ninth .''

You can sort of hear the bass.
lts sort of floating along.

lwas overdubbing
over an existing track ...

Usually a bass player has to work harder
to drive the track,

but it was already there. l kinda liked
the idea of floating along in the verse.

Here it goes to a more conventional ...
- Later we added ... - Rhythmic beat

We added an acoustic guitar, Dean Parks.
- Yeah.

thats nice.

lts interesting that Donald and Walter
are not after perfection .

They're after something
you wanna listen to over and over again.

So we would work past the perfection
point until it became natural,

until it sounded almost improvised
in a way.

So it was a two-step process.
One, to get to perfection ,

and then to get beyond it
and loosen it up, so that

it didn't have to be the perfect
squeaky clean goal.

lt is quite an amalgamation , for sure.

And its interesting to note
that it can be a hit

''Deacon Blues'' is about as close
to autobiography as our tunes get

We were both kids from the suburbs .
We both felt fairly alienated ,

like a lot of kids in the 50s
out looking for an alternative culture,

some kind of escape
from where we found ourselves.

And l think ''Deacon Blues''
is a nice kind of example of that

The protagonist is not a musician.

He just imagines that it would be
one of the mythic f

of loserdom to which he might aspire.

Who' s to say that he's not right?

There's a synthesizer pad on here ...
- Yeah, here. - Whats it all about?

Go right back a second, Roger.
-There it is.

Department store is what l'm thinking.
lt has that bing bing.

lts like that big toy store on 58th .
- FAO Schwartz.

They keep playing the same song.
Kids like it 'cause its Christmassy.

lts the audio equivalent
of a primary colo

lts kind of a pheremone for tots,
bringing them in.

Why did we put that in there?

There was a flute part on top,
and we needed trumpets that didn't cut

To cover it up.
- l put a high end on it - To clarify.

Without the synthesizer
it goes like this.

Maybe we couldn't find a flute player.

Okay, now lets play it again,
and l'll put this guy in.

Sort of a flute simulation .

lts marked here as a celeste

So maybe we were thinking of bells
or something

going along with that thing, although
it doesn't sound like a celeste

lwas always amazed
that they heard in their heads

what it was going to be like completed .

So they knew right away. You 'd get
musicians together cutting the tracks

and Donald and Walter in the control
room saying, ''thats not it

So maybe we 'll try this other tune
with these guys.''

Then they'd get another band in
to try the tunes that didn't work out

And all through the project they'd say,
''No thats not it thats not working.

This is what l want ''

lt was amazing when it got done,
l could see

what everything was going to be like.

But they knew from the very beginning.

lts beautiful.

Basic gospel.

Response type of thing.

l'll put in the lead and we 'll see.

Part of the reason
lwas driven towards jazz

was that the radio stopped playing
Chuck Berry

and Little Richard
when l was still quite young,

but l still noticed
that something was wrong with the music

when they started playing white singers

like Frankie Avalon ...
and that kind of thing.

l like black music essentially
whether it be R & B or gospel or jazz.

My mom was a singer

in the hotels in the Catskills
when she was a little girl.

She did it every summer
until she became a teenager.

And she used to sing around the house,
so l'm familiar with the repertoire.

Walter and l have a background including
songwriting from the 20s to the 50s,

mostly in jazz versions.

There's people who' ve read books
and people who haven't

They've got a skill

to make images that aren't puerile.
You haven't heard them before .

Very Hollywood filmic. The imagery
is visually very imaginable.

lt does sound familiar, doesn't it?
- Yeah.

''l saw you in Rudy's.
You were very high.''

''You were high.
lt was a crying disgrace.''

lt starts out
the guy's talking about this girl

he's involved with ,

and she's sitting at a counter .

He describes her behavior and habits ,

so you begin to see her character

and their relationship.

Self explanatory.

This tune really does speak for itself
doesn't it?

Black Cow ,

an ice cream soda ...

We were confused about it actually.
lthought it was a soda.

There seem to be regional variations
on the formula.

Root beer and vanilla ice cream.
- A soft drink. - Something like that

Frothy soft drink.
- Very big

when we were kids.

''Like a gangster ... on the run,

you will stagger homeward
to your precious one.''

''l'm the one ...
who must make everything right ''

''Talk it out till daylight ''

Chorus.

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

Walter 's origina lly from Westchester ,
and they moved out to Queens,

but went to school in Manhattan.
And l'm from New Jersey,

maybe 20 minutes over the bridge.
We both grew up

in this area.

So l think New York life is

what we most know about Here's
a very good solo by Victor Feldman.

Live on the tracking day.

We answered an ad in the ''Village Voice''
that said ''must have jazz chops.''

''Keyboard ...''
- ''No hang ups.'' - ''Keyboard ...''

''Keyboard and bass player
needed for working ...

working jazz rock combo .''
- Something like that

''Must have jazz chops.''
- ''No hang ups.''

So we answered the ad
and went out to Hicksville, Long lsland,

which for us was quite a haul,
because we never left Manhattan.

We went out and into the basement

and it was a kid with a basement band .

We liked some of the material,
early fusion type material,

before there was jazz fusion in a way.

lts like when they're in the same room
at the same time,

they're like one person with two brains.

Highbrow intellectual humo

You don 't get any fart jokes
or anything of the kind.

They can usually finish
each other's sentences.

lfirst met them when l put an ad

in the ''Village Voice'', because my band
needed 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
some of the players had deficiencies.

We started playing their songs
right away,

and l immediately saw
that these were great songs.

lf truth be told,
we kinda took over his band .

We wrecked it - We threw out
the others guys and kept Denny.

And that was the core
of the Stelly Dan group,

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

When we got to California,
l don 't know that we were nostalgic f

New York so much as we were as writers
for the milieu we left behind.

We weren't finished writing songs
with New York characters in them yet

and by the time we were finished
we'd moved back to New York ,

at which point we immediately started
writing lyrics about California.

A lot of our songs were about
being homesick for New York .

l've noticed that actually.

l guess it was our natural inclination
to write these stories really.

''Home At Last ' ... the central metapho
was taken from Ulysses' big problem:

trying to get back home. We didn't take
it so seriously. lts just the idea:

Have you read a little blues
about Ulysses?

There's a guitar riff.

Chicago blues sort of ...

... item , Larry Carlton.

Donald and Walter loved
sophisticated harmony,

but they're rock 'n' roll guys.

We're contemporaries, so we were all
brought up listening to the 60s.

l know they love rock 'n' roll,
but they also have a passion

for harmony, as do l.
All the players they use ...

We love great-feeling rock 'n' roll,
but we love harmony.

''Pretzel Logic'' was the first album
we did with studio players.

We'd done some albums with our band ,
and we 'd heard these players

and done overdubs with them.

lfound myself in the room
with these guys, and l thought ''Wow !

l'm really outclassed here, you know .''

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

James Brown, Llod Price,
Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra,

Hines, Hines and Ford ,

Barry Manilow , Dionne Warwick,
The Animals, The Monkees, The Beatles,

B.B. King, Bobby Bluebird ...

Now they already told me
they didn't want a shuffle.

They didn't want the Motown
or the Chicago

They weren't sure what they wanted ,
but they wanted 1/2 time.

l said,
''Fine, let me do the Purdie shuffle.''

They said, ''Whats that? ''
And l said, ''Well, l'll show you

where you can feel comfortable with it

and you 'll end up getting exactly
what you asked for . .. 1/2 time,

funky, laid back,
without thinking that its a shuffle.''

And it goes something like this ...

Lets isolate Bernard for a second
and listen to that beat

Bernard, you know ...
-This isn't easy.

You 'd come in with a tune
and have something in mind,

but the way Bernard played stuff ...

He always had
some unique stylistic thing he did

that you 'd never imagine in advance
and nobody else would do

This tune was a good example of that

A lot of ...

Bernard's high hat in this tune,

particularly a real driving kinda ...

You 've got the backbeat
you 've got double time,

And you have it almost ... shuffle.

Bernard has, you know ...

There's the famous story where he'd come
to a session in the early 60s

with two signs.
On one side of the drums the sign said:

YOU DONE lT
And on the other side, it said:

YOU DONE HlRED THE HlT-MAKER
BERNARD ''PRETTY'' PURDIE.

lts that confidence you need ...
to get a good R & B track.

''Aja'' starts out very peacefully
up on a hill, and its ...

kind of a trip to listen to it

Yeah, a journey through space and time.

''Aja'' was a combination of
different tunes that were sewn together

to make a kind of suit
and it was kind of sweet wasn't it?

We felt lucky that year and thought
there wouldn't be any problem with ...

... moving into more ambitious
extended composition .

But we immediately regrouped
and went back to concise.

We didn't want too much of a good thing.

''Aja'' is the name of a woman.

l had a friend in high school,
and he had an older brother

who went to Korea, married a Korean girl
and brought her back.

Her name was Aja.

We thought that was a good name.
lt was a romantic sort of image,

a tranquility that comes of a quiet
relationship with a beautiful woman.

lts very existence is a contradiction .

When have you ever heard a song
on a rock 'n' roll record

that absolutely cannot be played
on a guitar?

lthink thats me playing the guitar.
-thats Walter .

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
to get all the notes at once.

There are open voicings so wide apart
that you can't reach the notes.

All you can do is pick a few
and play 'em.

But you can't quite get the flavo
of the chord ,

because it requires that contrast
of a cluster chord

and an open chord
in the way it progresses.

Jazz is a dangerous, double-edged thing.

You mustn 't do too much of it
and l don 't think Stelly Dan does.

lthink they use the knowledge and love
they've obviously got .

Parker and Mingus l can hear in there.
l can hear Blakey,

l can hear Jazz Messengers in there,
Bobby Timmons.

The subject doesn't matter,
its the sound they're making.

And then we also added Wayne Shorter
on tenor saxophone.

We were glad he came in.
- lt took a while to persuade him.

He didn't really do dates .
- And he felt the chances were ...

we would be asking him to do something
not particularly appropriat

Well, a reasonable fear
under the circumstances.

lwas invited to play on the record .
lt was quite matter of fact

l said, ''Yes.''

And they asked me how l wanted to do it

l said, ''Just roll the tape
in the section where l'll be playing,

and l'll get a reference
about whats going on before

and what comes after.''

l listened to it
and then l started to perform .

He was a little worried
about playing the thing,

since he used to play with Miles.

Of course that didn't bother us at all.

lwalked into the studio
and they were sitting.

They had the lights down low .

My mission was to do
what l'm gonna do

Not to sit down and say, ''Hey ...''

ln fact when we grew up
that was corny, in my neighborhood.

You know Miles said,
''Don't wear your heart on your sleeve.''

He said, ''Don't give too much away.''

The musicians were a key to the music
that eventually got put out

lthink ''Aja''
probably was a point

a turning point
where the music really became

uh ... another level of sophistication

of writing and performing
for Donald and Walter .

lt was the most seamless joining
of jazz and pop that had ever been.

There's nothing else as sophisticated
as that in all of rock music.

When we first started we were more
writing pop songs for the time

that maybe had an infusion
of our interest in jazz,

but by the time we did ''Aja''
we knew more

what we enjoed doing really.

Certainly through the ''Aja'' album

our stuff improves.
-The ''Aja'' album

was the most successful example

of what we were trying to do
using studio bands.

There's a good possibility
that it will fall flat on its face.

And that was a spectacular success,
and we all knew it

thats what l hear
when l listen to that record .

lf you ask
songwriters from my generation ,

my and Donald's generation ,

about who were the important lyricists
from their time,

you know Bob Dylan
will always be mentioned.

l don 't think what we do
sounds much like Bob Dylan, but ...

... he was the guy who opened the door
to a larger world of possibilities

and realized by superimposing
more interesting or more literat

or more obscure or more extravagant
lyrics on rock 'n' roll beats ,

you would end up
with something intriguing.

We were the first TV generation .

lwas interested in TV music,
movie soundtracks.

l could sometimes tell who wrote
the score just from hearing the music,

if it was Elmer Bernstein
or Dave Grusin ...

... or A lex North or whoever.

There was cheap music, like TV music
or movie music.

By ''cheap'' l don 't mean it
in a disparaging way.

lts not pure music. lts written
to support visual information .

There was something also funny
about that music.

There was something funny
about ''The Twilight Zone'' theme,

something funny
about the jazz score for . ..

''The Sweet Smell of Success.''

lt was like fake jazz essentially.

So l like real jazz and fake jazz
and also fake fake jazz.

My favorite thing is when they come up
and say, ''Hey!

Are you that guy in Stelly Dan?''
And l say, ''Yeah.''

And they say, ''No you 're not him.''
thats what l like.