The 1979 Steely Dan song that was almost erased from history: “Naw… scrap it”
In 1980, the subversive rockers Steely Dan released their seventh studio album, Gaucho. The record modified their sound to be more sparse, often leaning on a drum machine. Building minimal grooves around with characteristically detailed string and brass sections, the record is far less complex than their earlier work.
This departure led Gaucho to rank fairly low in estimations of Steely Dan’s discography. Nonetheless, the album was met with critical acclaim, obtaining a Grammy for ‘Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical’ and even a nomination for ‘Album of the Year’.
The final album collated just seven tracks, but an eighth was actually missed out while recording. The band recorded a track titled ‘The Second Arrangement’, which combined smooth Gaucho grooves with bouncy vocals charting the story of a love triangle. But ‘The Second Arrangement’ would never make it onto Gaucho.
In fact, the finalised track has never been heard. The process of making Gaucho was continually problematic. Aside from the fight between MCA, Warner Bros, and the band themselves over who would release the record, Steely Dan also encountered problems with recording.
Steely Dan were recording before computers, before the option of making backups. Gaucho, accordingly, was recorded entirely on tape. After the band had recorded ‘The Second Arrangement’, an assistant engineer took over to get the tapes ready for the band, producer Gary Katz and engineer Roger Nichols to listen to.
However, the assistant engineer made a blunder when he accidentally recorded over the majority of the song, intending to just play it. Nichols, the engineer, had to tell lead vocalist Donald Fagen that the song was gone. Fagen simply left the studio, devastated by the loss of the track.
Conrad Reeder, the widow of engineer Nichols, recalled the night in an interview with Jake Malooley on the Expanding Dan substack. She recalls, “He walked in the door and looked ashen, as if somebody had died. I was like, ‘What happened?’ He told me an assistant engineer had erased the song – everything up to the fade.”
The band did attempt to re-record the track. Nichols explained the process in an EQ magazine forum: “We tried cutting the song again and finished it. Horns, backgrounds, lead vocal. We listened to it and Donald said, ‘Naw… scrap it!” The subversive Steely Dan were so detail oriented and fussy that they weren’t happy with any of the rerecordings of the track, so ‘The Second Arrangement’ was simply left out of the album.
The loss of the track only added to Gaucho’s already troubled mythology. During the album’s creation, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were battling label disputes, perfectionist recording standards and increasing personal strain, making the accidental erasure feel almost symbolic of the chaos surrounding the sessions. For a band famed for obsessing over microscopic sonic details, losing what many insiders believed was one of the strongest songs they had recorded was a devastating blow that seemed impossible to fully recover from creatively.
When the original recording finally resurfaced decades later, fans treated it almost like a lost artefact from rock history. Rather than sounding unfinished or dated, ‘The Second Arrangement’ revealed just how sophisticated Steely Dan remained during the Gaucho era, blending immaculate musicianship with the sleek melancholy that defined the album.
Its eventual release also offered a rare glimpse into the painstaking standards Becker and Fagen demanded from themselves, proving why they were unwilling to compromise with a rerecorded version they believed lacked the magic of the original performance.
Bootlegs of the song circulated online, but it wasn’t until 40 years later, during the pandemic, that the original track resurfaced. Nichols’ daughter Cimcie was rooting through her late father’s belongings and stumbled across the original tape and had a digital copy made. It also featured an instrumental version.
Now, ‘The Second Arrangement’ is available to listen to as Cimcie shared the track on YouTube. It’s accompanied by a video which shows how they transferred the tape and archived her father’s things. Cimcie even shares, “What I have personally been going through… was weirdly in line with what this song was about.”
Four decades on, ‘The Second Arrangement’ has been given a new life, and it’s just as detailed and distinctively Steely Dan as you’d hope.
