Why did Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter leave Steely Dan?
The group of musicians known as Steely Dan had never been tighter than after recording 1973’s Countdown to Ecstacy. After shedding auxiliary singer David Palmer (although he still sang backup vocals on the album), Steely Dan was now an efficient five-man band: guitarists Denny Dias and Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, drummer Jim Hodder, and the band’s main brain trust, bassist Walter Becker and keyboardist/singer Donald Fagen.
On Countdown to Ecstacy, the talents of Dias and Baxter were put at the forefront of the band’s sound. Whereas the band’s debut Can’t Buy A Thrill employed the lead guitar work of Elliott Randall, Dias and Baxter were solely responsible for the ripping solos that filled out tracks like ‘Bodhisattva’ and ‘My Old School’. The arrangements on Countdown to Ecstacy were crafted specifically to highlight the guitarists and the efficiency of the full band lineup, but that approach wouldn’t last long.
The band’s final tour of the 1970s in support of Countdown to Ecstacy featured an expanded band lineup. Even still, Becker and Fagen were unhappy with the limitations of the traditional band set-up. Seeking to refine their compositions, Becker and Fagen decided that “Steely Dan” only had to include themselves. But according to Baxter himself, he wasn’t pushed out as much as he was disheartened that the duo wanted to cease touring.
“I left Steely Dan because Mr. Becker and Mr. Fagen had decided they didn’t want to tour anymore,” Baxter said in an interview with Rock History Music. “And I really enjoyed playing live. It’s a dichotomy: being a session rat and being a live performer. I was actually on tour with [The Doobie Brothers], in the band. At the time I was playing with three different bands: Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers, and Linda Ronstadt, playing pedal steel [guitar].”
With plenty of other opportunities available to him, Baxter decided to permanently jump ship over to The Doobie Brothers in 1974. With his contributions to that year’s Pretzel Logic being reduced to mostly pedal steel guitar and hand drums, Baxter sensed that his time with Steely Dan was coming to an end. “I was at the Knebworth music festival with the Doobies, and when I hung up the phone, I said, ‘Well, that’s kind of it for me and Steely Dan.’ And they said, ‘Well, now you’re in The Doobie Brothers.”
Baxter spent the remainder of the 1970s with The Doobie Brothers and was the member who suggested bringing in vocalist Michael McDonald to first augment, then replace, Tom Johnston as one of the band’s lead vocalists. By the time 1979 rolled around, Baxter had decided to leave The Doobie Brothers to follow a different career path: military weapons expert.
