Seven Unplanned Steely Dan Moments

A veritable oxymoron, right? The Dan's notorious studio perfectionism would seem to negate the possibility of Messers Fagen & Becker ever releasing anything short of their customary stratospheric sheen. A keen ear, however, will detect a number of delightfully human (expensive humans, perhaps, but still human) musical moments that only serve to amp up the Steely Dan mystique.

1. “The Royal Scam”, The Royal Scam, 1976

This rags-to-riches saga features an embarrassment of riches, from Larry Carlton's subversive guitar work to some of the best orchestration on a Steely Dan record. Then, right in the middle of the guitar solo, Donald Fagen clears his throat. Not buried in the mix, as heard during the intro to Jimi Hendrix' “Purple Haze” - this one cuts right through, perfectly in time with the with the rhythm section. It sounds so aggressive that it actually dovetails with the grim narrative of the song. I bet it's not on the studio chart, though.

2. “Chain Lightning”, Katy Lied, 1975

Rick Derringer makes his second appearance on a Steely Dan record (the first was his slide work on “Show Biz Kids”), underscoring this creepy scenario of a couple of bystanders at a Nuremberg rally. As he digs into the second half of his bluesy 24-bar solo, he bends the 'B' string a minor third, but as it approaches its goal ('E'), it slips out from under his left hand and snaps back into its unbent state, blasting out an unintended staccato A9th chord on the open top strings. (Every guitarist here knows exactly what I'm talking about.) But it fits! A lot of guitarists punched in on 'Dan sessions (the process of resuming – on-the-fly – the recording of a track after the part you wish to keep), and it sure sounds like that's what Rick did here. As Pee Wee Herman might say after crashing his bike, “I meant to do that...”

3. “Black Friday”, Katy Lied

Before assuming his original role as Steely Dan's bassist, Walter Becker had spent years honing his guitar prowess (Donald thought he was black upon first hearing him soloing in another room at Bard College.) However, it wasn't until they recorded their cover of Duke Ellington's “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” that Walter resumed his six-string duties, spelling the wah-wah trumpet with his talk-box guitar. By the time of “Katy Lied”, Walter was seriously starting to exorcise his guitar demons, exemplified by his venomous solo work on “Black Friday”. After peppering the second verse with face-melting 11^th chords, he launches into a murderous 20 bar solo. At the 11^th bar he goes for the same 'C#'-to-'E' bend that Rick Derringer tackles on 'Chain Lightning', only, instead of the string escaping from his grasp, the note itself starts to die out. Refusing to accept defeat, Walter furiously grinds the bent 'B' string into the fret with a desperate blues vibrato, causing it to caterwaul back to life, actually increasing in volume. (This is the same technique Jimi Hendrix uses on the intro to “Foxy Lady”.) A heroic save indeed, but one not likely premeditated.

4. “Aja”, Aja, 1977

Steve Gadd's drum performance on this masterpiece is still a benchmark for aspiring drum virtuosos worldwide. What nobody was prepared for was for Gadd to deliver the final goods on the first take. Steely Dan sessions were notorious for hours of unused takes and rotating rhythm sections in search of that elusive pass, so Gadd's flawless delivery not only gave us a track for the ages, but doubtless saved many hundreds, even thousands, of dollars' worth of studio time.

5. “Your Gold Teeth”, Countdown to Ecstasy, 1973

The liner notes indicate that “(i)n this number, several members of the Dan get to "'Stretch Out'". This they proceed to do, starting off at the sedate tempo of 133 bpm, but before they hit the first chorus they've achieved 137 bpm. By Fagen's electric piano solo on the fadeout, they've ramped up to a manic 146 bpm. Given the Dan's later later insistence on click tracks and computer-quantized drum tracks (achieved with the aid of engineer Roger Nichols' WENDEL digital drum machine), this display of wanton rhythmic haste is a decided departure for our usually surgically precise heroes.

6. “Do It Again”, Can't Buy a Thrill, 1972

A clam on a Steely Dan single? The first one? (We won't count “Dallas”/”Sail the Waterway”, which was pulled by ABC on the grounds that the 'A' side sounded too “country”.) Well, it's not exactly a clunker, but it's still there. On the second chorus, when Fagen sings “You go back...”, the chord played is a Cm7, same as the other two choruses, but Walter (who may not have had enough lead vocal in his headphones) plays a G instead. So what? Well, on the other two choruses he lands on the chord root, playing a C. Fortunately, the stray note is harmonically compatible with the chord, and he proceeds to the regularly scheduled next note, unfazed. Apparently nobody noticed, or thought it important, but it remains to this day, a stark testament to the limited studio time and recording budgets that the Dan would gradually abandon in favor of records whose final cost would make the most extravagant record label accountant swallow his cigar.

7. “Third Word Man”, Gaucho, 1980

Another clam on a Steely Dan record? Gaucho's almost excessive polish would seem to exclude even the possibility of any flaw, but the classic era-Dan's last song, like its opening salvo, shares, amazingly enough, the exact same bass mistake heard in “Do It Again”, only this time it's session great Chuck Rainey running afoul of the chart. At 4:18, where the chord is a Bbm, Chuck inadvertently goes to F, the chord's 5^th. Just as Walter did eight years before, Chuck immediately corrects course and plays the chord's root (in this case Bb), continuing smoothly to the Eb with everyone else. How this insignificant slip escaped the baleful scrutiny of Donald and producer Gary Katz might be explained by Walter's absence from the studio, notably during the mixing phase. Having broken his leg in an accident (“The car and I were attempting to occupy the same place at the same time,” he explained), he was relegated to listening to mixes over the phone from his hospital bed. Telephones, whose poor bass response is the very essence of their sound, could not convey the low end information that might have caused Rainey to be called back to the studio to atone for this infinitesimal slip. However, by this time Steely Dan had become mired in their own perfectionism and Becker's personal problems. It seems possible that, had the stray note been, uh, noted, it would have been waved off as unworthy of further attention, given the writing on the studio walls by that time. Steely Dan would eventually rise from the ashes in a world better suited to their performing and recording needs, but it is the legacy of those first seven albums that confirms the true trajectory of that most subversive of partnerships, that of a Jew and a German set on infiltrating pop music with a musical and lyrical sophistication it never saw coming.