“He wasn’t kidding”: The Steely Dan song Steve Gadd didn’t remember recording
Any musician who has ever tried their hand at performing in a Steely Dan session has the emotional scars to prove it.
Even if their morale wasn’t damaged by working with Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, many of the group’s most famous songs involved a tremendous effort to get down on tape. Although Steve Gadd may have been able to work with any band that came his way, he had no memory of putting together one of his finest drumming feats.
Then again, Steely Dan never made records in order to become one of the biggest bands in the world. In an era dominated by stadium rock and bluesy riffs, Fagen and Becker were influenced by everything that was the antithesis of the mainstream, delving into the world of jazz and swing music to make songs that no one had ever heard of.
While Can’t Buy A Thrill marked the moment that the group settled in as a band effort, the duo knew that the lion’s share of the songs involved much more than the same musicians playing every single time. Progressing through the rest of their career, every track on a Steely Dan album would feature an entirely different lineup, with different session musicians enlisted to provide their own flavour.
Although players like Denny Diaz and Larry Carlton would become instrumental to their success on songs like ‘Do It Again’ and ‘Kid Charlemagne’, Gadd was a freak of nature whenever he stepped behind the kit. Coming from the world of fusion, Gadd could flex his musical chops whenever he wanted to, even giving legends like Bernard Purdie a run for their money behind the kit.
Working on various songs through the Steely Dan discography, Gadd would deliver a clinic in percussion when working on the title track of their seminal album, Aja. Towards the end of the piece, the entire band cut loose, culminating in Gadd delivering a powerhouse drum solo before returning to the final part.
Part of what made the performance so remarkable was how deceptively complex the arrangement actually was. ‘Aja’ shifts through multiple rhythmic feels, requiring the drummer to maintain a sense of swing while navigating subtle changes in tempo and phrasing. For most players, it would have taken several attempts to settle into the pocket, but Gadd approached the track with the kind of instinctive precision that only the very best session musicians possess.
That ability to lock into a groove without overthinking it was exactly what Becker and Fagen were looking for. Steely Dan’s music often demanded technical brilliance, but it also required restraint and musical sensitivity. Gadd managed to deliver both in a single take, creating a drum performance that many musicians still regard as one of the finest ever committed to tape.
While other session players like Jim Keltner had tried their hand at playing the song, Gadd nailed it on the first take, being so on time that the click of his sticks at the end of the solo fell in perfect time with the track. According to the players working on the session, Gadd wouldn’t even remember laying it down in the first place.
When discussing those days, producer Gary Katz remembered Gadd being dumbfounded by the final track, telling Ultimate Classic Rock, “I said, ‘Sit down, I want to play you something.’ We played him ‘Aja’, which was finished. He sat right between the Altec 604 Utility [speaker] cabinets. It was great sounding. The track ends, and he said, ‘Wow, who is playing drums?’ Donald, Walter and I, Roger Nichols and Elliot are just looking at each other. Because he wasn’t kidding.”
Looking at Gadd’s backlog, it’s easy to see how he got tripped up, having contributed to countless sessions from giants like Chick Corea, Herb Alpert and 10CC, to name just a few. Even though any drummer would probably remember that song as a highlight of their career, it was just another day at the office for Gadd.
