“He wanted to make perfect records”: The most skilled member of the Steely Dan duo, according to their session guitarist
Two-piece bands ought to be approached with caution; without anybody else there to mediate, this sibling-like approach to music making can quickly end in squabbling, but in the case of Steely Dan, it was the perfect setup, as these two musical misfits were unlikely to ever find another musician quite as particular as them.
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were indeed particular, but that’s no sleight. Ultimately, their attention to detail is what made them the beloved musicians they became, crafting textural rock songs that would exhibit what they would regard as artistic perfection.
But that level of perfection was only understood by Becker and Fagan, and so musical fate intervened, forcing them to be a two-piece and simply nothing else. In fact, the brief time they did experience branching out, by recruiting Geordie virtuoso Mark Knopfler for a session, it went so badly that the Dire Straits axe-man likened the experience to “getting into a swimming pool with lead weights tied to your boot”.
The pair rallied in their own self-made world of perfection, and that largely manifested in the comfort of the studio. The sheer unpredictability and spontaneity of the live show brought very little charm for Steely Dan and a whole lot more in the way of anxiety. So naturally, their live show presence was relatively minimal and instead, they hunkered down in the studio, obsessing over the small details.
Their session guitarist, Denny Dias, once explained why the band never expanded their members, stating, “They never wanted to have a band. They wanted to be able to hire great musicians. As Donald Fagen used to say, he wanted to make perfect records”.
Eventually, that was the perfect artistic pursuit for a band like Steely Dan. As skilled multi-instrumentalists, they could sweat over the musical minutia for hours without worrying about recruiting additional members with the same eye for detail.
However, while the pair were mostly carbon copies of one another, finishing each other’s creative sentences so that the song could exist in its purest form, Dias also confirmed that there was some subtle difference between the pair. While Fagen was a more faithful representation of the band’s effortless talent, Becker was the man who brought the fine-tuned detail to get it out on record.
“Walter was brilliant, “ he explained, “He wasn’t the musical talent that Donald Fagen was, but he sure knew how to get the production done. He spent a lot of time investigating sound quality. I mean, he brought his own speakers into the studio, and we recorded like the third and fourth records using Magneplanars. I don’t know if he ever heard of ’em, but they’re sort of like electrostatic speakers, but they’re electromagnetic, and they’re just these monolithic sheets, and they sounded crystal clear. You could hear things on those that you couldn’t hear with normal speakers.”
Fagen was the heart, and Becker was the head, creating this well-balanced two-piece band whose primary purpose was to achieve something close to perfection. Sure, it came at a cost in terms of relationships and a live show, but Steely Dan got pretty close to achieving it.
