Who sang the female backing vocals on Steely Dan’s ‘Godwhacker’?
There are very few bands as committed to songwriting as Steely Dan are. This is a band that gave their everything to the art of creating great music.
When bands get in the studio and start writing songs, they will always try and push themselves creatively; however, when they do that, there is always a slight niggling feeling at the back of their brain. What is this feeling? Well, it’s one simple question, something which all bands need to ask themselves the moment they think they have a song finished: How the hell are we going to play this live?
If a band doesn’t need to worry about playing a song live, they are given a lot more freedom to make something special in the studio. A great example of this is the Beatles, as when they decided to stop playing live, they went on to make some of their more experimental and genre-pushing music, such as Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Another great example of a band who were able to engage a lot more with their creativity was Steely Dan after they decided to stop playing live. They were given more freedom to put songs together, which might have been impossible to play live, but they still wanted to release them to the public. The result is some of their most exciting work, and this came off the back of giving everything in the studio.
Of course, that choice didn’t come without some sacrifice. For instance, while Walter Becker and Donald Fagan were happy to put the majority of their effort into the studio, some people who played with the band weren’t. Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter was one of them, as he was so dedicated to live performance and playing on tour that when he found out Steely Dan were opting to move away from going on the road, he decided that was his time to call it a day with the band.
“The main reason I left was that Becker and Fagen decided that they didn’t want to tour any more, and I very much enjoyed playing live,” said Baxter. “I was playing with the Doobie Brothers at the time, as well as with Linda Ronstadt and a number of other bands, and I wanted to continue down that road. I have always felt that the combination of performing live as well as being a studio musician offered a unique and eclectic opportunity to be a better musician and guitarist: the idea being that I could bring all that knowledge to both genres.”
While the band might have missed having Baxter in the studio, they made up for it by using other great musicians. There were plenty of excellent artists who wanted to play with Steely Dan, and that included a group of female vocalists who were keen on providing the backing vocals on the track ‘Godwhacker’. Not enough people know who these women were, as while ‘Godwhacker’ is often criticised for being one of Steely Dan’s poorer offerings, the way these backing vocals elevate the track is truly something to be celebrated.
So, who provides female backing vocals on ‘Godwhacker’?
There are five women in total who provide the backing vocals on ‘Godwhacker’, each of whom brings something exciting to the song and helps take the track further than it would have gone without them. They give the song an angelic quality, which seems pretty appropriate, given it was written by Donald Fagen following the passing of his mother, as he dreamed of picking a fight with God.
“One more word about my mother: She died horribly of Alzheimer’s,” wrote Fagen in his book Eminent Hipster., “One time, after not seeing her for a while, I visited her in a nursing home in Ohio. As I walked towards her, she stared at me with great interest and then said, ‘You know, I’ve always liked you very much’. Not long after that, she was gone. How do you like that?”
He continued, “A couple of days later, I started writing a lyric for this song ‘Godwhacker’, which Walter and I completed and recorded for a Steely Dan CD. It’s about an elite squad of assassins whose sole assignment is to find a way into heaven and take out God. If the Deity actually existed, what sane person wouldn’t consider this to be justifiable homicide?”
