Five musicians rejected by Steely Dan
In the world of 1970s rock, Steely Dan were the ultimate studio lab rats.
From their smooth sounds in R&B to bringing jazz and fusion into the world of rock, both Donald Fagen and Walter Becker only settled for pitch-perfect. The results spoke for themselves, but that doesn’t get around the bruised egos they left along the way.
For every great success story that the band made in the studio, just as many musicians were left scarred by the end. Though artists like Steve Gadd and Larry Carlton had always had positive things to say about their time with the band, each of these artists mentioned the toxicity in the room when they went in and having to run the same track over and over until they got something halfway decent.
There are even a few giants who swore never to work with Steely Dan ever again. Although not everyone had the same idea in mind for these songs, Becker and Fagen’s iron hand always won out. That meant the band always had their unique Steely Dan sound, but it also led to session musicians getting up in arms when they heard the finished product.
Though not all of these relationships ended in the best way, you can’t fault Fagen and Becker for knowing what worked in the Steely Dan mould. From day one, these two puppet masters were going after a noise in the studio, and they would move the Earth if it meant getting it down on tape. Just don’t bring these sessions up to these musicians, though.
Five musicians rejected by Steely Dan:
Victor Feldman
Steely Dan has always been a mindset more than a proper rock and roll outfit. Throughout their time together, both Fagen and Becker were used to using musicians like instruments, getting just the right person in for the job and building a song around the perfect track. Then again, you can be one of the best in your field and still not have the right energy for the work at hand.
When working on The Royal Scam, pianist Victor Feldman had been called in to play on the song ‘Green Earrings’, having already earned his stripes as a session musician in jazz-rock. As the band peddled away at the song repeatedly, Feldman’s timing was never right for the song, with every improvisation not having the attitude that Fagen or Becker did.
To punish Feldman for not getting the feel they wanted, the band compromised by bringing in another keyboard player and having Feldman play the percussion with a salt shaker. Feldman might have gone on to work with legends like Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, but no amount of versatility is going to work when you have to make magic by the end of the day.
Mark Knopfler
Some guitarists can make an entire career living off the art of improvisation. Even though some of the best solos of all time are planned out in advance, it’s part of a guitarist’s trade to be able to make a musical solo off the top of your head as you’re jamming. Mark Knopfler was trained for that kind of playing, but that wasn’t going to fly with a band meant to keep things precise.
Knopfler felt like a fish out of water trying to get a good guitar sound for the record when working on the song’ Time Out of Mind’. Knopfler mentioned performing the song for hours and never getting anywhere, saying in Steely Dan: Reelin in the Years, “It was a strange experience like getting into a swimming pool with lead weights tied to your boot”.
To add insult to injury, the song’s final version didn’t even have Knopfler on it in any capacity. Despite his efforts, some of his playing can only be heard in the first 15 seconds of the song, with Becker and Fagen greatly preferring what the rest of the band brought to the table. Although Becker and Fagen always have something in mind for a song, there’s no room for throwing out ideas, even if you have ‘Sultans of Swing’ under your belt.
Every guitarist on ‘Peg’
Out of all of Steely Dan’s hits, ‘Peg’ is the most deceptively simple. Although many jazzy chords are sprinkled throughout the song, Fagen always compared the tune to a blues number, having the same lowdown attitude that he heard in his favourite songs as a child. It takes a lot for guitarists to play the blues well, and the duo put a handful of guitar gods through their paces during the session for this song.
Though jazz rock greats like Larry Carlton and Denny Diaz both contributed to the album Aja, Fagen and Becker were never satisfied with their work, kicking out six guitarists before Jay Gordon was brought in with the instruction ‘play the blues’, telling NewsWeek, “The whole thing probably took about four, five hours. Including taking some breaks. They knew they were onto something”.
According to one of Steely Dan’s engineers, going through a star-studded cast of guitarists wasn’t out of the question either, saying in the same interview that “A band would come in and record and two hours later Becker and Fagen would look at their producer, and say, ‘Fire this band. Let’s go with somebody else tomorrow night.’ It’d be different bands every night to get the same song”.
Human Drummers
The road to being in the studio with Steely Dan was never going to be easy. Although the band might be open to collaboration, Fagen and Becker never suffered fools and were always willing to push their musicians to their fullest potential. Sometimes the human element of drumming didn’t cut it, though, and The Dan’s best late-period songs ended up getting done without anyone behind the kit.
Going into the production of the album Gaucho, none of the drummers measured up to the standards the band was looking for. When cutting songs like ‘Hey Nineteen’, Fagen and Becker took to recording programmed drums that they nicknamed Wendel, bringing a loose feel to the song while still being locked on the grid. Wendel ended up costing thousands of dollars, but the algorithmic structure gave The Dan the sound they wanted.
Fagen had talked about not getting the most out of the drummers, saying (via Steely Dan: Reelin in the Years), “We found there were certain feels that we couldn’t get out of real drummers. They weren’t steady enough. So we had to design something that would do it perfectly, but with some human feeling, the right amount of layback. Wendel can play exactly what the drummer plays”.
John Lennon
Steely Dan never minced their words in any of their songs. As the ‘70s opened up, Becker and Fagen always gave their listeners a look at the sleazy side of life, whether that was the drug dealer in ‘Kid Charlemagne’ or the man condemned back to a world of sin on ‘Do It Again’. While the music was still as mellow as possible, both Becker and Fagen could pull off anger when they wanted to, and they aimed it at one of the biggest stars in the world.
Around the time the band were cutting their teeth, John Lennon was coming out with ‘Imagine’, which offered a message of a peaceful world to the masses. Since a wealthy man sang the song with a history of abuse under his belt, Becker and Fagen thought it’d be fun to poke the bear, writing ‘Only a Fool Would Say That’ as a direct retort to what the ‘Intellectual Beatle’ had to say.
After name-checking Lennon’s smash hit ‘Imagine’, Fagen takes the Beatle to task for ‘telling a lie’ and mentioning that he is a fool “talkin’ bout a world where all is free”. That wasn’t the last time that Steely Dan poked fun at the older generation, making songs that became a mockery of the hippy idealism that was going around in the ‘60s. The era of Flower Power was now over, and the rest of the rock scene had to wake up from the dream that the Summer of Love had planted in their brains. They may not have rejected his work in the studio, but they rejected the very notion he strived to represent.
