RIP Walter Becker (Steely Dan) FUCK!
- Thread starter woodchuck
- Start date
rest in peace
I remember when they tried to say that they were INTO young girls a little too much....
I was listening to some Steely Dan compilations and I noticed a trend in some of their later songs that got me wondering about this.
From Babylon Sisters:
Babylon sisters shake it
Babylon sisters shake it
So fine so young
Tell me I'm the only one
My friends say no don't go
For that cotton candy
Son you're playing with fire
The kid will live and learn
As he watches his bridges burn
From the point of no return
The obvious from Hey 19:
Hey Nineteen
No we got nothing in common
No we can't talk at all
Please take me along
When you slide on down
The Cuervo Gold
The fine Colombian
Make tonight a wonderful thing
...and maybe the creepiest, from Cousin Dupree:
Well I've kicked around a lot since high school
I've worked a lot of nowhere gigs
From keyboard man in a rock'n ska band
To haulin' boss crude in the big rigs
Now I've come back home to plan my next move
From the comfort of my Aunt Faye's couch
When I see my little cousin Janine walk in
All I could say was ow-ow-ouch
CHORUS:
Honey how you've grown
Like a rose
Well we used to play
When we were three
How about a kiss for your cousin Dupree
She turned my life into a living hell
In those little tops and tight capris
I pretended to be readin' the National Probe
As I was watchin' her wax her skis
On Saturday night she walked in with her date
And backs him up against the wall
I tumbled off the couch and heard myself sing
In a voice I never knew I had before
CHORUS
I'll teach you everything I know
If you teach me how to do that dance
Life is short and quid pro quo
And what's so strange about a down-home family romance?
One night we're playin' gin by a cracklin' fire
And I decided to make my play
I said babe with my boyish charm and good looks
How can you stand it for one more day
She said maybe its the skeevy look in your eyes
Or that your mind has turned to applesauce
The dreary architecture of your soul
I said - but what is it exactly turns you off?
I thought paper covered rock?
Nah, rock flies right through paper.
What beats rock?
Nothing beats rock.
I was listening to some Steely Dan compilations and I noticed a trend in some of their later songs that got me wondering about this.
From Babylon Sisters:
Babylon sisters shake it
Babylon sisters shake it
So fine so young
Tell me I'm the only one
My friends say no don't go
For that cotton candy
Son you're playing with fire
The kid will live and learn
As he watches his bridges burn
From the point of no return
The obvious from Hey 19:
Hey Nineteen
No we got nothing in common
No we can't talk at all
Please take me along
When you slide on down
The Cuervo Gold
The fine Colombian
Make tonight a wonderful thing
...and maybe the creepiest, from Cousin Dupree:
Well I've kicked around a lot since high school
I've worked a lot of nowhere gigs
From keyboard man in a rock'n ska band
To haulin' boss crude in the big rigs
Now I've come back home to plan my next move
From the comfort of my Aunt Faye's couch
When I see my little cousin Janine walk in
All I could say was ow-ow-ouch
CHORUS:
Honey how you've grown
Like a rose
Well we used to play
When we were three
How about a kiss for your cousin Dupree
She turned my life into a living hell
In those little tops and tight capris
I pretended to be readin' the National Probe
As I was watchin' her wax her skis
On Saturday night she walked in with her date
And backs him up against the wall
I tumbled off the couch and heard myself sing
In a voice I never knew I had before
CHORUS
I'll teach you everything I know
If you teach me how to do that dance
Life is short and quid pro quo
And what's so strange about a down-home family romance?
One night we're playin' gin by a cracklin' fire
And I decided to make my play
I said babe with my boyish charm and good looks
How can you stand it for one more day
She said maybe its the skeevy look in your eyes
Or that your mind has turned to applesauce
The dreary architecture of your soul
I said - but what is it exactly turns you off?
I thought paper covered rock?
Nah, rock flies right through paper.
What beats rock?
Nothing beats rock.
In college my history teacher lectured on how Steely Dan revolutionized the recording industry. I don't remember exactly what they did, but their recording quality is far and above almost every other album released in the 1970's.
Love him/them outstanding music.RIP
Fam, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Songs like "Pixeleen", "Janie Runaway", and "Gaslighting Abbey" continues that trend. They did it on purpose. Hell, they were named after a steam powered dildo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janie_Runaway
http://somethingelsereviews.com/2013/08/04/steely-dan-sunday-janie-runaway-2000/
It must have been my lucky Thursday
Your dad went on that spree
Before the crew could put out the fires
You hopped a bus for NYC
Down in Tampa the future looked desperate and dark
Now you're the wonderwaif of Gramercy Park
CHORUS:
Who makes the morning fabulous
Who says today's a fun day
Why do I feel like sailing again
Honey it's you - Janie Runaway
Let's grab some takeout from Dean and Deluca
A hearty gulping wine
You be the showgirl and I'll be Sinatra
Way back in '59
Sweetness in heels - look at you - in long black gloves
Come to old blue eyes tell me - who do you love
CHORUS:
Who makes the traffic interesting
Rescues a dreary Sunday
Who makes me feel like painting again
Honey it's you - Janie Runaway
Let's plan a weekend alone together
Drive out to Binky's place
The sugar shack in Pennsylvania
Or would that be a federal case?
We'll take the Big Red - the Blazer - it's nice inside
And guess who's coming along for the ride
CHORUS:
Who has a friend named Melanie
Who's not afraid to try new things
Who gets to spend her birthday in Spain
Possibly you - Janie Runaway
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This song is about an affair between a married man and his mistress, who are plotting a way to drive his wife insane. The term "Gaslighting" means to drive someone insane, and according to Walter Fagen and Donald Becker, it comes from the 1944 movie Gaslight, where a Victorian schizophrenic tries to drive his wife crazy using, among other methods, the gaslight.
One plush summer you come to me ripe and ready
And bad through and through
With that deep mystical soul synergy pumping steady
Between me and you
Lovin' all the beautiful work we've done, cara mia
And it's barely July
If we keep on boppin' until Labor Day
Li'l Ms Abbie - bye bye
What will it be - some soothing herb tea?
That might be just the thing
Let's say we spike it with Dilaudid
Or else - maybe tonight a hand of solitaire
CHORUS:
Flame is the game
The game we call Gaslighting Abbie
It's a luscious invention for three
One summer by the sea
With the long weekend that's comin' up fast
Let's get busy
There's just too much to do
That black mini looks just like the one she's been missin'
Feels good on you
There's a few items we need in town - allez-vous girl
There's no time to waste
Such as fresh cable and fifteen watt bulbs
Couple dozen - it's a big old place
Let's keep it light - we'll do a fright night
With blood and everything
Some punky laughter from the kitchen
And then - a nice relaxing hand of solitaire
CHORUS
You can choose the music
I'll set up my gear
Later on we'll chill and watch the fireworks from here
How can you knock this mighty spitelock
Check out the work itself
A mix of elegance and function
That's right - a tweak or two and then she's out of here
CHORUS
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/two-against-nature-20000316
Steely Dan: 10 Essential Songs
In honor of the late Walter Becker, we look back at some of the sly jazz-rockers' best
10
In honor of the late Walter Becker, we look back at 10 of Steely Dan's greatest songs. Getty
By Hank Shteamer
5 hours ago
More News
Read Donald Fagen's Moving Tribute to Steely Dan Partner Walter BeckerWalter Becker, Steely Dan Co-Founder, Dead at 67Donald Fagen on Right-Wing Paranoia, Steely Dan's FutureAll Stories
"It wouldn't bother me at all," Steely Dan's Walter Becker told Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe in 1977, "not to play on my own album." He was stating a fact – Steely Dan famously staffed their sessions with the finest studio musicians they could find – but he was also summing up the weird oblique approach to rock-stardom shared by him and his longtime songwriting partner Donald Fagen. From their earliest days as jazz-loving Bard College hipsters to their heyday as wry sophisto-pop aesthetes, the pair were always the strangest kind of hitmakers, cramming their tunes full of as many brainy chords, obscure references and off-color characterizations as possible. Yet, against all odds, they still carved out their own proud niche in the classic-rock canon. Following the sad news of Becker's passing at age 67, we round up some of the pair's most memorable oddball anthems.
1 / 10
"Reelin' in the Years" (1972)
Leave it to Steely Dan to sound nonplussed about the song they're maybe best known for. "It's dumb but effective," Donald Fagen told Rolling Stone in 2009of the Can't Buy a Thrill Single. "It's no fun," Walter Becker added, compounding the chill in the room. Still the track is a prime early example of what would become the Dan's trademark vibe, marrying a sardonic kiss-off to an ex ("The weekend at the college didn't turn out like you planned") to a bouncy shuffle groove and adding on some white-hot guitar dazzlement courtesy of Elliott Randall to bring the whole thing home.
2 / 10
"My Old School" (1973)
Becker and Fagen settled an old score with this rollicking rock-meets-R&B tune, inspired by a pot bust from their Bard College days that still left a bad taste with the two budding stars. "California tumbles into the sea/That'll be the day I go back to Annandale," Fagen sings ruefully of the institution's upstate locale, as a perfectly orchestrated horn line tumbles down behind him.
"Rikki Don't Lose That Number" (1974)
In classic Steely Dan fashion, the duo lifted a vamp from a classic Blue Note side – Horace Silver's "Song for My Father" – to kick off this snide account of a college romance that never was. As Fagen told it, he took a shot at seducing the then–married and pregnant Bard schoolmate Rikki Ducornet, but she never called. Like most Steely Dan love songs, this one comes with a twist of the knife: "You tell yourself you're not my kind/But you don't even know you're mine."
4 / 10
"Black Friday" (1975)
Drawing inspiration from the gold crash of 1869, Becker and Fagen portrayed a financial meltdown as an excuse for end-of-the-world revelry on this driving, devil-may-care Katy Liedopener. "Gonna do just what I please," the typically deluded narrator vows. "Gonna wear no socks and shoes/With nothing to do but feed/All the kangaroos."
"Kid Charlemagne" (1976)
Steely Dan led off their hardest-hitting album, The Royal Scam, with this supremely funky chronicle of the rise and fall of a countercultural legend, inspired by famed acid cooker Owsley Stanley III. "I think he was based on the idea of the outlaw-acid-chef of the '60s who had essentially outlived the social context of his specialty but of course he was still an outlaw," Becker once said of the song. Larry Carlton's consummately stylish guitar solo would become mythic among the band's muso fans, while Kanye West prevailed upon the band via handwritten letter for permission to sample the song in 2007's "Champion."
"Peg" (1977)
We can't help but mistrust the narrator of this snazzy funk tune, who seems to be making promises to an aspiring starlet that may or may not turn out to be bunk – a classic Steely Dan theme. "And when you smile for the camera," Fagen sings. "I know they're gonna love it." The pair worked their studio recruits to the bone trying to achieve this Aja standout's consummately breezy groove, famously veto-ing a series of guitar hotshots' passes at the solo, before settling on a gem of a lead from Jay Graydon.
"Deacon Blues" (1977)
In one of their more tender odes to middle-class pretension, Fagen and Becker pay tribute here to a dude from the suburbs who's dreaming of the freer, edgier life he might enjoy if he could only learn to play the saxophone. "The protagonist is not a musician," Becker explained in the Classic Albums doc on Aja. "He just sort of imagines that that would be one of the mythic forms of loserdom to which he might aspire. And who's to say that he's not right in a thing like that?" In the same doc, Fagen called the song "about as close to autobiography as our tunes get," maybe alluding to the way he and Becker had idolized jazz musicians when they were still suburban kids dreaming of escape. The Dan imagined the title as a sort of mascot for the would-be down and out: "If a college football team like the University of Alabama could have a grandiose name like the 'Crimson Tide' the nerds and losers should be entitled to a grandiose name as well," Fagen once explained.
8 / 10
"Babylon Sisters" (1980)
The perfect opener to Gaucho, the final album of the Dan's initial run and the one that represented the peak of their studio perfectionism, "Babylon Sisters" might be the band's single sleaziest song – not to mention their saddest. Our protagonist drives "west on Sunset" with a pair of hookers, chasing a dream of youthful Cali excess he knows is fading but can't give up. "Well, I should know by now that it's just a spasm," Fagen sings over the song's buttery-smooth lite-jazz groove, though it's clear that the narrator's midlife crisis might just be the death of him.
"Hey Nineteen" (1980)
Gaucho is essentially a concept record about staying too long at the fair, and this track is its skeevy centerpiece. Steely Dan protagonists don't come much more hilariously pathetic than the aging dude at the center of this leisurely funk tune, who's putting the moves on a 19-year-old. He brags about his frat exploits and tries to set the mood with some Aretha, only to find that his companion "don't remember the Queen of Soul." The song builds to perhaps the ultimate yacht-rock refrain, which many singing it back to the band live don't seem to realize is pure satire: "The Cuervo Gold/The fine Colombian/Make tonight a wonderful thing."
Cousin Dupree" (2000)
Becker and Fagen may have been all grown up when they returned with their multi-Grammy-winning 2000 comeback album, Two Against Nature, but they still couldn't keep their minds out of the gutter. Case in point: this tale of a deadbeat dude's futile attempts to seduce his younger cousin. As always, their portrayal of misguided middle-age lust was creepily spot-on: "Honey how you've grown/Like a rose/Well, we used to play/When we were three/How about a kiss for your cousin Dupree?" The song would later lead to a bizarre flap with Owen Wilson, when the pair claimed – facetiously or not, it was hard to say – that the premise for his 2006 movie You, Me and Dupree was lifted from the tune.
Steely Dan: 10 Essential Songs
In honor of the late Walter Becker, we look back at some of the sly jazz-rockers' best
10
In honor of the late Walter Becker, we look back at 10 of Steely Dan's greatest songs. Getty
By Hank Shteamer
5 hours ago
More News
Read Donald Fagen's Moving Tribute to Steely Dan Partner Walter BeckerWalter Becker, Steely Dan Co-Founder, Dead at 67Donald Fagen on Right-Wing Paranoia, Steely Dan's FutureAll Stories
"It wouldn't bother me at all," Steely Dan's Walter Becker told Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe in 1977, "not to play on my own album." He was stating a fact – Steely Dan famously staffed their sessions with the finest studio musicians they could find – but he was also summing up the weird oblique approach to rock-stardom shared by him and his longtime songwriting partner Donald Fagen. From their earliest days as jazz-loving Bard College hipsters to their heyday as wry sophisto-pop aesthetes, the pair were always the strangest kind of hitmakers, cramming their tunes full of as many brainy chords, obscure references and off-color characterizations as possible. Yet, against all odds, they still carved out their own proud niche in the classic-rock canon. Following the sad news of Becker's passing at age 67, we round up some of the pair's most memorable oddball anthems.
1 / 10
"Reelin' in the Years" (1972)
Leave it to Steely Dan to sound nonplussed about the song they're maybe best known for. "It's dumb but effective," Donald Fagen told Rolling Stone in 2009of the Can't Buy a Thrill Single. "It's no fun," Walter Becker added, compounding the chill in the room. Still the track is a prime early example of what would become the Dan's trademark vibe, marrying a sardonic kiss-off to an ex ("The weekend at the college didn't turn out like you planned") to a bouncy shuffle groove and adding on some white-hot guitar dazzlement courtesy of Elliott Randall to bring the whole thing home.
2 / 10
"My Old School" (1973)
Becker and Fagen settled an old score with this rollicking rock-meets-R&B tune, inspired by a pot bust from their Bard College days that still left a bad taste with the two budding stars. "California tumbles into the sea/That'll be the day I go back to Annandale," Fagen sings ruefully of the institution's upstate locale, as a perfectly orchestrated horn line tumbles down behind him.
"Rikki Don't Lose That Number" (1974)
In classic Steely Dan fashion, the duo lifted a vamp from a classic Blue Note side – Horace Silver's "Song for My Father" – to kick off this snide account of a college romance that never was. As Fagen told it, he took a shot at seducing the then–married and pregnant Bard schoolmate Rikki Ducornet, but she never called. Like most Steely Dan love songs, this one comes with a twist of the knife: "You tell yourself you're not my kind/But you don't even know you're mine."
4 / 10
"Black Friday" (1975)
Drawing inspiration from the gold crash of 1869, Becker and Fagen portrayed a financial meltdown as an excuse for end-of-the-world revelry on this driving, devil-may-care Katy Liedopener. "Gonna do just what I please," the typically deluded narrator vows. "Gonna wear no socks and shoes/With nothing to do but feed/All the kangaroos."
"Kid Charlemagne" (1976)
Steely Dan led off their hardest-hitting album, The Royal Scam, with this supremely funky chronicle of the rise and fall of a countercultural legend, inspired by famed acid cooker Owsley Stanley III. "I think he was based on the idea of the outlaw-acid-chef of the '60s who had essentially outlived the social context of his specialty but of course he was still an outlaw," Becker once said of the song. Larry Carlton's consummately stylish guitar solo would become mythic among the band's muso fans, while Kanye West prevailed upon the band via handwritten letter for permission to sample the song in 2007's "Champion."
"Peg" (1977)
We can't help but mistrust the narrator of this snazzy funk tune, who seems to be making promises to an aspiring starlet that may or may not turn out to be bunk – a classic Steely Dan theme. "And when you smile for the camera," Fagen sings. "I know they're gonna love it." The pair worked their studio recruits to the bone trying to achieve this Aja standout's consummately breezy groove, famously veto-ing a series of guitar hotshots' passes at the solo, before settling on a gem of a lead from Jay Graydon.
"Deacon Blues" (1977)
In one of their more tender odes to middle-class pretension, Fagen and Becker pay tribute here to a dude from the suburbs who's dreaming of the freer, edgier life he might enjoy if he could only learn to play the saxophone. "The protagonist is not a musician," Becker explained in the Classic Albums doc on Aja. "He just sort of imagines that that would be one of the mythic forms of loserdom to which he might aspire. And who's to say that he's not right in a thing like that?" In the same doc, Fagen called the song "about as close to autobiography as our tunes get," maybe alluding to the way he and Becker had idolized jazz musicians when they were still suburban kids dreaming of escape. The Dan imagined the title as a sort of mascot for the would-be down and out: "If a college football team like the University of Alabama could have a grandiose name like the 'Crimson Tide' the nerds and losers should be entitled to a grandiose name as well," Fagen once explained.
8 / 10
"Babylon Sisters" (1980)
The perfect opener to Gaucho, the final album of the Dan's initial run and the one that represented the peak of their studio perfectionism, "Babylon Sisters" might be the band's single sleaziest song – not to mention their saddest. Our protagonist drives "west on Sunset" with a pair of hookers, chasing a dream of youthful Cali excess he knows is fading but can't give up. "Well, I should know by now that it's just a spasm," Fagen sings over the song's buttery-smooth lite-jazz groove, though it's clear that the narrator's midlife crisis might just be the death of him.
"Hey Nineteen" (1980)
Gaucho is essentially a concept record about staying too long at the fair, and this track is its skeevy centerpiece. Steely Dan protagonists don't come much more hilariously pathetic than the aging dude at the center of this leisurely funk tune, who's putting the moves on a 19-year-old. He brags about his frat exploits and tries to set the mood with some Aretha, only to find that his companion "don't remember the Queen of Soul." The song builds to perhaps the ultimate yacht-rock refrain, which many singing it back to the band live don't seem to realize is pure satire: "The Cuervo Gold/The fine Colombian/Make tonight a wonderful thing."
Cousin Dupree" (2000)
Becker and Fagen may have been all grown up when they returned with their multi-Grammy-winning 2000 comeback album, Two Against Nature, but they still couldn't keep their minds out of the gutter. Case in point: this tale of a deadbeat dude's futile attempts to seduce his younger cousin. As always, their portrayal of misguided middle-age lust was creepily spot-on: "Honey how you've grown/Like a rose/Well, we used to play/When we were three/How about a kiss for your cousin Dupree?" The song would later lead to a bizarre flap with Owen Wilson, when the pair claimed – facetiously or not, it was hard to say – that the premise for his 2006 movie You, Me and Dupree was lifted from the tune.
Last edited:
The Grim Reaper lately has been visiting way too many of my favorites. 
I tell younger cats at my job all the time they have no idea.
Then most of them will constantly ask me about all the concerts I saw from the mid-70s to the 80s non-stop.
There was this young White Cat who would be annoying on this shit. LOL
There were artists mixing Pop with Jazz and Rock like it was no big deal in those days. And Steely Dan were one of the forerunners of that sound.
RIP Walter Becker
Man RIP.
BGOL first put me on years ago.
The way they composed their tracks was magical.
This was one of my favorites.
BGOL first put me on years ago.
The way they composed their tracks was magical. This was one of my favorites.
Edgar Rice Burrows wrote a novel called "Naked Lunch", and the main character had a steam powered dildo that she nicknamed "Steely Dan". That's where they got their name from.
Uncle Woodchuck>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"Naked Lunch" was written by William S. Burroughs.
"Walter Becker was my friend, my writing partner and my bandmate since we met as students at Bard College in 1967. We started writing nutty little tunes on an upright piano in a small sitting room in the lobby of Ward Manor, a mouldering old mansion on the Hudson River that the college used as a dorm.
We liked a lot of the same things: jazz (from the twenties through the mid-sixties), W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, science fiction, Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Berger, and Robert Altman films come to mind. Also soul music and Chicago blues.
Walter had a very rough childhood - I’ll spare you the details. Luckily, he was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. He was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny. Like a lot of kids from fractured families, he had the knack of creative mimicry, reading people’s hidden psychology and transforming what he saw into bubbly, incisive art. He used to write letters (never meant to be sent) in my wife Libby’s singular voice that made the three of us collapse with laughter.
His habits got the best of him by the end of the seventies, and we lost touch for a while. In the eighties, when I was putting together the NY Rock and Soul Review with Libby, we hooked up again, revived the Steely Dan concept and developed another terrific band.
I intend to keep the music we created together alive as long as I can with the Steely Dan band."
Donald Fagen
September 3 2017
Thank you!!! I guess I had "Tarzan" on my brain!!!
67 is not very old.
He made some good shit!
He made some good shit!
As a youngster falling in love with jazz, I think my brother said that Steely Dan stated that the only place they would perform live would be Carnegie Hall
because that is the only place that can acoustically reproduce their sound .
Carnegie Hall was known for having the best acoustics in the America,
so naturally I was curious to who would make such a bold claim.
RIP...
because that is the only place that can acoustically reproduce their sound .
Carnegie Hall was known for having the best acoustics in the America,
so naturally I was curious to who would make such a bold claim.
RIP...
You aint kidding.. That was the best era for music and concerts! My first concert I attended was When Bootsy Collins first came out, I was 12yrs old and had the time of my life! I still get a smile on my face thinking about that concert!! Your right on, those kats during that era were taking big ass chances mixing sounds!! Anyway, Im glad you got to experience the peak of music too!! It was fun, Huh??? Words cant even explain it, you had to be there to enjoy it!!
Not a big Steely Dan fan but I always liked the song "Throw Out Your Gold Teeth." Anyway RIP.
Patti Austin and Valerie Simpson
use to smoke plenty weed and play chess listening to this one....
6:05, outside the stadium
Special delivery for Hoops McCann
Brut and charisma
Poured from the shadow where he stood
Looking good
He's a crowd pleasing man
One on one
He's schoolyard Superman
Crashing the backboard
He's Jungle Jim, again
When it's all over, we'll make some calls from my car
We're a star
It's a glamour profession
The L.A. concession
Local boys will spend a quarter
Just to shine the silver bowl
Living hard will take its toll
Illegal fun
Under the sun, boy
All aboard
The Carib Cannibal
Off to Barbados
Just for the ride
Jack with his radar
Stalking the dread moray eel
At the wheel
With his Eurasian bride
On the town
We dress for action
Celluloid bikers
Is Friday's theme
I drove the Chrysler
Watched from the darkness while they danced
I'm the one
It's a glamour profession
The L.A. concession
Local boys will spend a quarter
Just to shine the silver bowl
Living hard will take its toll
Illegal fun
Under the sun
Hollywood
I know your middle name
Who inspires your fabled fools
That's my claim to fame
Jive Miguel
He's in from Bogota
Meet me at midnight
At Mr. Chow's
Szechuan dumplings
After the deal has been done
I'm the one
It's a glamour profession
The L.A. concession
Local boys will spend a quarter
Just to shine the silver bowl
Living hard will take its toll
Illegal fun
Under the sun
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RIP
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