Why is ‘Deacon Blues’ by Steely Dan an audiophile’s dream?
You recognise it the second it comes in: the gentle cymbals, the buttery-smooth keyboards, the lush guitar chords. When Steely Dan kicks into ‘Deacon Blues’, everything seems so crystalline and perfect that it almost doesn’t seem real. Filled with nuance but never too complex for the average listener, ‘Deacon Blues’ is an easy entry point into the jazz-rock weirdness of Steely Dan.
“We’re both kids who grew up in the suburbs,” Becker explained in the Classic Albums episode on Aja. “We both felt fairly alienated. Like a lot of kids in the fifties, we were looking for some kind of alternative culture — some kind of escape, really — from where we found ourselves.” Becker adds that the song’s main character “just sort of imagines that would be one of the mythic forms of loserdom to which he might aspire. Who’s to say that he’s not right?”
But ‘Deacon Blues’, and the album Aja as a whole, has another legacy with audiophiles. Simply put, it’s one of the first albums that most geeks use to fine-tune their hi-fi systems. Steely Dan was always known for their meticulous attention to detail, but why is ‘Deacon Blues’ the standard by which most audio snobs will judge equipment?
The answer lies in the band’s pursuit of perfection. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen recruited the cream of the crop when it came to studio musicians for Aja. On ‘Deacon Blues’ alone, you can hear Bernard Purdie on drums, Larry Carlton on guitar, and the trio of Clydie King, Sherlie Matthews, and Venetta Fields on backing vocals. 11 different musicians contribute to the final mix of ‘Deacon Blues’, but each musician’s contributions come sparkling through with astounding clarity.
Even in the 1970s, when multi-track recordings began to expand to extremes, the standard procedure was to still record instruments live in the same room. The Dan were no different, but they paid special attention to microphone placement, eliminating bleed between tracks and honing in on the best takes. Along with producer Gary Katz and an army of engineers, Beker and Fagen worked on ‘Deacon Blues’ until it was up to their lofty standards.
“It’s the only time I remember mixing a record all day and, when the mix was done, feeling like I wanted to hear it over and over again,” Becker told The Wall Street Journal. “It was the comprehensive sound of the thing.” In the same interview, Fagen acknowledges “one thing we did right” in the making of the song: “We never tried to accommodate the mass market. We worked for ourselves and still do.”
Check out ‘Deacon Blues’, preferably with some high-quality equipment, down below.
