By Christopher Hoard
Jazziz
October 1991, Lower Manhattan just another gig at the Road House, featuring Walter Becker’s one-time songwriting partner sitting in on keyboards with guitarist Jimmy Vivino’s feisty blues rock and R&B house band. With the four-piece horn section, Vivino’s New York Nights renders tunes like “Deacon Blues” and “Green Earrings” with an accuracy and looseness that celebrates the timelessness of the original recordings. Shortly into a blistering, bumping set Vivino can not resist toying with history. “I understand Walter Becker is in the audience,” he advises an already primed crowd. Vivino insists on inviting Becker up take the stage proffering a guitar, and forcing a live reunion of American rock’s most diabolical songwriting duo after eons of not performing their material in public. Several hundred adoring aficionados erupt into ecstatic pandemonium.
Becker has no choice; it was play or be torn to shreds. His inventive guitar phrasings set over studio classics like “Josie” draws ecstatic cheers, their audience’s faith and
long wait is over; they can now boast to friends about how they happened on a momentous chance to see their favorite seventies rock band play live. The makeshift New York City reunion was all the more unlikely given that Walter Becker spends nearly all his time near family and home studio near Paea, Maui, working as a record producer. When Donald Fagen finally ended a decade-long hiatus from major album projects (after the extremely successful 1981 release of The Nightfly), he asked Becker to assist in producing and playing on Fagen’s recently released Kamakiriad. Before Becker began laying down lead guitar and bass parts on Fagen’s sequenced, pre-production demo, Becker had already decided to start writing songs again and record his own solo project. Becker took a much longer break away from songwriting
than Fagen, but by his accounts was the more eager of the pair in trying to revive their writing partnership. As Fagen put it in a May, 1993 Rockline radio broadcast, “I think we’re better friends now than ever. We always kept in touch throughout the eighties…”
Though Becker and Fagen both made several attempts to collaborate since announcing the end of Steely Dan in 1980, Fagen had difficulties writing songs he felt comfortable singing and recording until recently. Though the partnership had forged arguably the most successful non-touring rock unit since the later-era Beatles, both remained oblivious to fan and record industry prodding, though the demand for more music never subsided. In the aftermath of Steely Dan’s last release, Gaucho, Becker took time (out of mind?) to recover from a personal crises and diffuse the pressures that come with mega-success. After “a couple of years” Becker began a prolific career in record production and accumulated dozens of mostly jazz albums to his credit, including more recently Ricky Lee Jones’ 1989 release, Flying Cowboys (Geffen), Jeff Beal’s latest (Triloka), and the debut release from Lost Tribe on Windham Hill (that label’s least characteristic release to date). Lost Tribe is arguably one of the most technically accomplished, dynamic, and original fusion bands to emerge from the fray as of late, and Becker will be drawing upon their talents heavily in his forthcoming solo project. But involvements with Fagen have diverted Becker temporarily from making rapid progress on his own project.
Last summer (1992), Becker joined Fagen’s New York Rock and Soul Review for two weeks of live dates in the Eastern U.S., performing a handful of Steely Dan classics along with an assortment of other vintage rock and R&B material. The musical chemistry and audience response helped propel them to a month-long tour commitment as the resurrected Steely Dan (dates have been announced across the U.S. for August and September). Becker along with his partner seem poised again not merely to capitalize on it, but to celebrate their work in an optimum live setting.
Becker recently took a break from work on his upcoming album to talk to JAZZIZ via satellite about his latest career shifts, the weight of history, and forays back into the public spotlight. At summer’s end, Becker will return to his island home to complete his first solo effort (due to be released on Giant Records in early or mid-’94). The first question alludes to a letter Becker wrote to the LA Times in response to Richard Cromelin’s April, 1992 interview with Fagen. The piece dwelled on Fagen’s and Becker’s personal problems during the seventies and characterized Becker as a “sadist” who reveled in intimidating music critics. With the same eloquent sarcasm resonating in so many Steely Dan lyrics, Becker’s pen poked fun at Cromelin, berating him for dwelling on the negatives, and going on to describe a deal proposed by Cromelin that would pay Becker handsomely for an exclusive “tell all” Steely Dan expose for an Australian tabloid…
CH: Whatever happened to the “tell all exclusive” in the Outback Tattler?
WB: (deadpan) Actually it fell victim to the censors. See, the Australians came mostly from England, and they’re very repressed. The story in fact was deemed inappropriate for the Australian public…
CH: Looking back on your success in the seventies, how does it still affect you?
WB: I would say that basically I’m still resting on those laurels quite comfortably. It opens doors. When I meet people and players for the first time, they’re already on my side. It’s been just a very good and very positive influence on people I meet and work with… It always gets a smile out of the people down in Paea. I pass out those free CDs like it was going out of style and pretty much milk it for what it’s worth. We were lucky we had that bleak decade (laughs). It seems like the seventies must have been a lot shorter than some of the other decades.
CH: Because the sixties spilled over into it?
WB: Yeah it started late and spilled over. I’m only kidding… There was a lot of great music in the seventies. I felt that I was fortunate to be involved with Donald and Gary [Katz] and Roger [Nichols] and all of the people who were part of the Steely Dan band and the dates. Everybody made invaluable contributions to what we were doing and helped make it as successful as it was.
CH: What was significant in your finally deciding to go ahead with a solo project?
WB: I took a few years off and when I got back involved [in music] the easiest thing for me to do was production stuff. After I did that for a while I had some song ideas, and I wanted to get back into writing songs. A couple of the projects I did kind of got me back into it. I live in Hawaii and Donald is thousands and thousands of miles away, so there’s nobody to collaborate with conveniently. I had self-reliance imposed on me by my circumstances.
CH: How would you describe Maui as a music production environment?
WB: The comparison is in New York or L.A. you have large pool of talent to draw from and here, there’s a much smaller pool to draw from. Here, there’s no studio scene to support the usual sort of players I’m used to working with over the years, and again it dictates a level of self-sufficiency in what you do. I get people over to do stuff and they’re here for a certain period of time and what’s left I try to do myself. The big difference is you work in a much more open time frame here. People don’t have other gigs to pick up and go to. Usually they’re staying here, so they don’t have to think about their family obligations. It’s pretty good actually because they can stay focused on the music.
CH: How far has your album project come along? Are any other musicians involved?
WB: It’s hard to tell, I’m somewhere in the middle. Some of the songs I wrote are collaborations with Dean other three guys playing so far are Adam Rogers on guitar, Ben Perowski on drums, and Fima Efron on bass; those three guys are from a band I produced called Lost Tribe. As I go on there may be others involved as well.
CH: Rumor has it you’ll be the one singing this time around.
WB: I am, for better or for worse.
CH: So what should we expect?
WB: (Laughs) Well, I’d like to lower everybody’s expectations to the point where they’ll be pleasantly surprised, so I’ll leave that up to you.
CH: You’ve been particularly prolific in producing jazz acts as of late; how do you view the climate for jazz artists both with audiences and in the music industry at present?
WB: It would be hard to have frustrations with the audience at this point because I don’t really know who they are. Judging from some of the results we’ve had, there’s so few of them you wouldn’t want to discourage a single one. As far as the industry is concerned, it’s very difficult to get a fair hearing for new artists. Even the labels that think of themselves as jazz labels — with a couple of notable exceptions — are not really focused on jazz music. They seem to think if only they could get rid of these goddamn jazz musicians they’d have a great label, so that’s a bit frustrating. There are a lot of things that contribute to the economic difficulty of jazz music, it’s still basically not a broadly popular form of music; it never has been in my lifetime, and there are a lot of records coming out. Most of them are pretty stinky, and the one’s that are not are often hard to find. I empathize with the jazz fan who goes into Tower Records and confronting a vast array of jazz recordings, many of them new ones, and knowing that from bitter experience buying a new jazz record that you haven’t heard before is a low-percentage shot. At the same time you have little opportunity to hear jazz records because jazz radio is so limited. There’s so little of it, and you have difficulty trying to get them to play things. Jazz suffers from pigeonholing, categories, playlists, commercial considerations, and being dominated by a few large companies and all the things that contribute to the general dilemma. But it suffers more severely [than other music] because it’s already such a small slice of the pie.
CH: You successfully made a transition from studio composer/musician to producer, and if what your publicists say is true, you’re about to make another major career shift.
WB: Yeah, so it would seem. Part of what’s happened for me is wanting to make my career dovetail with wanting to spend time with my family. About the perfect day for me is waking up and having a cup of tea with my kids before I drive them to school, then I go into the studio and try and write some music for three or four hours and give up about noon, then have a refreshing beverage and hit the beach. Then I just kind of free-form from there on. I suppose the one thing that’s driven me into having a solo career and becoming a solo artist (whatever that is) is that it affords me the most control over my time and where I spend it. That at this stage in my life is as important a consideration as anything.
CH: And yet you and Donald are planning a major tour together…
WB: It’s just a few weeks out of the summer. It’s the exception that proves the rule, I guess.
CH: So it’s not as if a series of big time albums and tours are in the works?
WB: Oh no, nothing like that. Last summer we did a little two week tour and it was kind of fun, so we said, well, we’ll do a little four week tour this summer and it will be twice as much fun. We’re playing in what they call “the sheds,” kind of indoor/outdoor venues that seat about 5,000 people. There very nice places and it’s a very
satisfying kind of live venue all around, because you’re not inside in a bad sounding hall, the acoustics are relatively good, it feels intimate but they’re still big…
CH: Are there plans to record the tour?
WB: There’s been some loose talk about it, but I don’t really know if it will come to anything.
CH: Have any of the projects you’ve produced been particularly memorable?
WB: I’d have to say that with one or two exceptions, all the way that Ricky works is unique. It was so different than the way I had approached things in the past, so that was a great experience.
CH: I’ve heard from other players that working with her is… an experience.
WB: Oh yeah, as a writer what she does has a depth to it and it’s not very common to get to work with someone like that. The way she does things is so intuitive and so perfectly designed to fit her own set of talents, because she’s not a trained musician, she’s developed her own ways to do things. Which is not to say I would ever want to do things precisely the way she does, but at the same time it demonstrates how that [approach] may be used to one’s advantage. You know, I’m a similar musician kind of musician to her in terms of lacking certain kinds of technical skills and working with her encouraged me to find my own unique solutions, and to enable myself to get
the most out of what it is I do. She has a kind of ability to see through bullshit that is an important skill in record making, because a lot of what you’re doing is deciding what’s good and what’s not.
CH: The sound of Kamakariad is somewhat of a departure from the pristine productions of your work together; was that a conscious production decision?
WB: Donald and I are getting old an eccentric, right? Basically it was a completely new method of deriving the basic rhythm tracks. What was an approach that conformed as closely as possible to Donald’s writing. The groundwork of the track making process is now part of his writing process. It used to be writing a song was one stage, and then we’d go and start to record the record. Because he’s working with drum machines and so on, it doesn’t work that way anymore — for many people — not just Donald. That was the basic departure. And because the basis of the sound is this machine stuff, which is technically perfect and kind of mechanical, it allows you to loosen up in some other ways — and you try and offset that in a way. When we were working with people, we were always trying to get things as polished and seamless sounding as they could be. Donald spent a tremendous amount of time getting the rhythmic feel to sound as natural as they are. Donald basically evolved a technique to get the beats on
the machine to have a kind of loose, pocket kind of feel that you’d get if it were played by an incredibly steady soul drummer.
CH: Are other projects with Fagen in the works?
WB: Well the tour at this point is going to be the next thing. Donald I’m sure will be collaborating with me on my record in some way, although he’s been really busy finishing his record and tied up in doing the things one has to do when one’s record is finished — interviews, calls, video shoots. At some point I’m sure we’ll get together and he’ll work on this project. And that’s about as far as we’ve taken things. We’ve bandied about a few song titles now and then, but we’ve done that in the past and
it hasn’t necessarily amounted to anything.
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With the standards both Becker and Fagen demand from their writing and productions, and the new level of pop standards they created, a generation of musicians and audiences are no doubt relieved at the prospect of new era of Becker and Fagen recordings. If there’s any consistency with Fagen’s recent live dates in New York, and if good musicians can gain more insights with age, the new Steely Dan concerts will be the only reunion from the seventies that could answer a generation of waiting. Most of
us old enough to tune into a rock radio station in the seventies will be racing toward the ticket line, quicker than you can say Rumplestiltskin.
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