Addiction, car crashes and studio disputes: the disastrous triumph of Steely Dan’s ‘Gaucho’
Any classic album takes a small miracle before it can be executed properly. For every song that comes together almost by magic, there will always be a few that will feel like pulling teeth trying to get right, with artists spending days trying to get the right drum sound. While Steely Dan were known to be perfectionists whenever they went into the studio, the road to getting the album Gaucho from the studio to the vinyl was ripped out of musical hell.
Given where they were at the time of recording, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were already still riding high as the reigning kings of the studio scene. While the punk movement was starting to come into its own in the late 1970s, Steely Dan was putting out albums that featured the best that the studio musician scene had to offer, making songs that were biting on The Royal Scam and turning in an immaculate production on Aja.
As the band forged ahead in the studio, Fagen’s need for perfection began to reach a fever pitch. Even with guitar virtuosos like Mark Knopfler at his disposal, the Dire Straits guitarist would later reveal how awkward it was trying to get the final takedown on tape, which made him feel like he wasn’t good enough to play on the session.
Outside of the melodic side, Fagen would also need perfection from the backbeat. After working with legends like Bernard Purdie on the past few records, Fagen would have a drum machine built to accommodate the sounds he heard in his head, coming with a price tag of £150,000.
Then again, Steely Dan was more than just Fagen, and his creative partnership with Becker would become strained when disagreeing on how any song should go. When putting together the fade-out on the track ‘Babylon Sisters’, for instance, the duo would go through 55 different versions of the section before finally settling on the one they liked, which came down to just under a minute’s worth of music.
The group weren’t even safe when they left the studio, either. Amid the professional tensions in the studio, Becker was also facing a low point in his personal life, as his girlfriend succumbed to a drug overdose and passed away shortly before the album was turned in. Even when walking back from one of the sessions in New York, Becker would be hit by a car when trying to cross the street back to his apartment.
For all of the literal blood, sweat, and tears that went into making the final record, it would become one of the most celebrated albums of The Dan’s career. Earning them some of their last accolades and the best production of 1980, the album would be nominated for ‘Album of The Year’ at the Grammys and walk away with the award for ‘Best Engineered Album’.
While the group could rest knowing that they had made a landmark recording, it would be one of the final times they would enter the studio together for years. In the years following Gaucho, Fagen and Becker worked on other creative ventures before reforming in the early 2000s for their comeback album Two Against Nature. The split may have been inevitable, but it may have been the steep price the duo had to pay for turning in an album this frayed.
