‘Aja’: the Steely Dan song that Kenny Aronoff says is “one of the greatest drum performances”
As a musician, getting a credit on a Steely Dan song is golddust for the CV. The band straddled the boundary where jazz meets rock, creating a hybrid you had to have serious chops to fulfil. The recruitment policy of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen was as scrupulous as MI5’s, with the band often scrapping records and recasting midway through the process.
However, one drummer that they always had massive respect for was Steve Gadd. The sticksmith was perfect for their style, having played in an array of genres for the likes of Paul McCartney, Simon & Garfunkel, Chet Baker and even Toshiki Kadomatsu. This adaptability meant he could easily swing to Steely Dan’s in-song rhythm changes while maintaining a degree of rock thunderousness to compete with the instrumentation.
This garnered him huge respect from another top session musician, Kenny Aronoff, who himself had played on tracks by Stevie Nicks, Bob Dylan and Jerry Lee Lewis, to name but a few. However, in an interview with Songfacts, Aronoff singled out Gadd’s blistering performance on ‘Aja’ as one of the five greatest drumming takes of all time.
“Everybody knows that this was absolute genius,” he said, reflecting on the praise passed around for ‘Aja’ among elite drumming circles. “Steve Gadd, his musicality, his iconic drum fills, his feel, his delicacy, the balance on the drum kit. He did it in one take – every take they did was a full take with the whole band playing together. That was a performance,” he said.
Indeed, the band wanted the track to play out like a jam so that they could capture the sense of flow that made the jazz albums they loved so exultant. However, the title track of the 1977 album has a level of complexity that makes it particularly difficult. But Gadd has openly admitted that he spent so much time behind a kit in the studio that he loved a challenge. With ‘Aja’, he certainly rose to it, awing the other esteemed musicians in the studio.
But perhaps the pinnacle of his performance is that it even wowed the public thanks to its catchy accessibility. The shifting rhythms have now proved hugely influential on modern pop, in fact. However, by virtue of the complexity, the desire to create similar syncopation has led to a great use of technology because it’s easier for a machine to mimic Gadd than another human. As Aronoff continues, “Now in this day and age of Pro Tools, people are getting comfortable with fixing everything.”
“This was not those days,” he continues. “You had to be a great drummer, you had to have great equipment, you had to be able to play with great time, you had to be able to read, you had to be able to play with feel, you had to have musical ears, you had to be able to be perfect, basically. It was one of the greatest drum performances that made it on the radio, ever.”
