WBecker Interview 1989

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r Becker is a mysterious guy for a number of reasons. As the nonsinging

be, of Becker and Fagen, the core of Steely Dan, his contributions to

songs were never certain. More than a decade now since the release of

ir last album,

G au cho

it's stil l difficult to go back over their' records and

mg u ish Becker's ideas from Fagen's.

This mystery was fortified by the fact that for many years, Steely Dan ex-

only in the studio, so fans had no way of seeing Becker in action. And

king at the album photos didn't help at all: Donald and Walter made a

t

of appearing as distant as possible by wearing shades and never smiling,

ndencv that led even Rickie Lee Jones to believe that they simply weren't

ni ce. (In fact, they were just trying to look cool, as Walter explains.)

Then there are the songs. Since they met at Bard College in New York,

ker and Fagen shared an enthusiasm for expanding the potential of the

ng both in terms of lyrical and harmonic content. Since Donald's nasal New

Irkvoice was better suited for irony than sincerity, they veered off the well-

den path of introspective songwriting others were taking in the seventies to

create brilliant oppositions of words and music: succinct, sardonic lyrics set to

the slickest, tightest jazz a pop song could hold. They shared a passion, border-

on obsession, to push the limits of what songs can do while s taying within

e realm of rock; they explored previously unexplored lyrical areas with a wit

d literate ingenuity few others possessed at the time. And they stretched the

W alte r B e cke r

North Hollywood, California 1989



430

SO NGWRITERS ON SONG

harmonic potential of the pop song (partially via the use of their Mu chord,

detailed herein) without ever abandoning the visceral rhythms of rock.

They also swam against the current of spontaneous, haphazard rock r o

cordings to set a new standard in terms of record productions. Disbanding th i r

original lineup after the third album, they evolved to the essential core

o f

Becker and Fagen only, surrounded by the brightest satellites of the rock and

jazz worlds.

Gaining a reputation as studio tyrants (which Walter dismisses as inaccu.

rate), Becker and Fagen cooked up tracks that are at once burn ing and pris-

tine; hot, sizzling jazz textures with the tightest, most precise rhythmic

foundations imaginable.

Steely Dan, whose name was derived from a sexual toy out of William

Burroughs' N ak e d L un ch started in 1972 and immediately established a sophis-

tication in their songwriting starting with their firs t album, C an t B uy a Th r i ll

and continuing through

C o u nt dow n t o E c st as y P r et ze l Log ic Ka ty Li e d Th e

R oya l Sc am and culminating with A ja the ir last a lbum of the seventies. Any.

one who ever decries the lack of good music in that decade need only read

that list to be silenced.

In 1980, their last album of original material, G auch o was released and the

Dan was done. Fagen released Nightfiy in 1982, a solo album that had the

sound of Steely Dan (since it featured Donald's distinctive voice and many of

the same musicians) but lacked a level of darkness and irony in the lyrics, a

possible clue to the Becker influence.

He was born in New York on February 20, 1950, and knew Donald Fagen

for a couple of years before they decided to become partners in 1969. Their

first collaborative effort was a score for the film Y ou G otta W alk It L ik e Y ou lk

It starring Richard Pryor. Attempting in vain to peddle their songs around New

York, they eventually landed jobs as support musicians for the band Jay And

The Americans, most famous for their hit Cara Mia Mi. They met producer

Gary Katz at the time as well as guitarist Jeff Skunk Baxter, and Katz used

his connections at L.A.'s Dunhill Records to get them a songwriting gig. Even

then, though, their songs proved to be too unique to sell to other artists, and

Katz interceded again to get them their own record deal. Along with Skunk,

they enlisted guitarist Denny Dias, drummer Jim Hodder and a lead vocalist-

David Palmer-who was eventually completely replaced as lead vocalist by

Fagen. Their debut album, C an t B uy a Th r i ll was a success, fueled by the hit

Do It Again, and Steely Dan was on its way.

. At the time of our interview, Becker mentioned that he didn't have the

luxury to wish he had a better singing voice, and openly contemplated record.

ing his own solo album. I saw how much fun Rick ie had making her album,

he said of Fl yin g C ow boy s the Rickie Lee Jones record he produced, and I 've

been wanting to do it myself

Since then, he carried through with that promise by recording the glorious

11 T r ac ks o f W h acks his first and only solo record, and it's shed a lot of light

into the mystery of Walter Becker. Since Steely Dan's songs were all projected

through the Fagan persona, it was easy to assume he was the guiding spirit of

their songwriting. This record proves them wrong; brilliantly inventive songs

BECKER

431

'Surf and/or Die and Book of Liars make it evident that Walter Becker

the goods to guide the Dan every bit as powerfully as Fagan.

These days he makes his home over the horizon in Hawaii, though he

a little office in North Hollywood, and it's there that we met. He's a

spoken, intellectual man who was willing to discuss Steely Dan at length,

ln g us a rare perspective into the interior of one of the world's greatest

Ids.

When working in Stee ly Dan, you said you would sugarcoat subversive

ents in your songs. Was that a conscious aim to mask the message of

songs?

Not so much messages, but using jazz harmonies in pop songs. At that

e the people in the rock audience, i f they were aware they were hearing

ething that sounded like jazz, weren't too happy about it. This is something

t Donald [Fagen] and I always had to struggle with, to incorporate some

onic elements tha t were more sophisticated than rock and roll and s till

Iveit sound like rock and roll.

So I don't think we were deliberately trying to hide things, but we were

. .gto combine disparate elements in a way that would make them work. So

,eof the things we would have to do was to make these little moments of

onic density more palatable, integrate them well into what was going on.

d also there were sometimes very strange lyrics for a pop song; rather than

ke the setting reflect the strangeness of the lyric, it would seem to work best

us if the setting was relatively polished and flowing.

When you began your col labora tion, did you ever discuss the kinds of

gs you wanted to accomplish in your songs?

Somet imes we'd have an idea for a bizarre thing we wanted to do ,in ad-

nee. I think we both knew we wanted to write smart, sophisticated, witty

. ds of songs.

Was there any artist the two of you were emulating at the time?

Not as writers, no. Looking back, the songs that we were writing were in-

uenced by the overall tenor of the times. Like everyone else, there was a Bob

Ian influence and there were some folky things we did, The Band was hap.

pening, that kind of stuff was influential.

Jazz was always a big influence because Donald and I were both jazz fans.

It' s surprising that you mention Dylan and The Band, whose recordings

em so spontaneous compared to the precise tightness of Steely Dan.

That's something that just evolved. Coming from a time when people just

rew things together and went into the studio and let things happen, that

seemed like a logical progression to us. To get some of the tightness and preci-

ion that certain kinds of jazz had.

That influenced us in that kind of perfectionism ... and then, you know,

pure neurotic drive took over at a certain point, and we ran on that pretty well

for a few years.

Is there any way of musically explaining how you achieved that tight.

ness? Does it mostly have to do with the lock between the bass and drums?



43

SONGWRITERS ON SONGWRITING

Yeah, we would spend many, many hours just trying to get things to be

rhythmically precise. And especial ly when you're overdubbing things, layer after

layer, that's very important. I would say that was a general trend in the seven-

ties in record production up to and culminating in drum machines, where you

have absolute and utter prec is ion , although in many cases you have absolutely

no groove because it's a machine.

Back before the days of drum machines, how did you communicate

your ideas to drummers?

I'm kind of a drum fteak myself so I would always have a pretty good vi-

sion of what I wanted. We would describe what we wanted to a drummer, listen

to what he did, and then take it from there. But in the case of Bernard Purdie

there was no point in having any ideas because he was going to do something

that you couldn't really imagine. And he was the kind of a guy who could look

at a chart and see a record in his mind's eye. He would put it together and

make it orderly, make the transitions work. If he found something he liked, he

would use that over and over and give i t s tructure in that way.

That 's a lso surpr is ing to hear , because you and Fagen have a reputation

for being studio tyrants and telling each musician exactly what to play.

Not at all. We would go in with a piano chart that showed Donald's chord

voicings, and Donald would usually go through the keyboard chart with the

keyboard player. The keyboard parts, in most cases, were so integral to what we

were doing that a lot of the ingredients had to be there in that way. But then

the keyboard p layer was f ree to articulate and add things to that, so there was

a lot of just blowing. And that's basically what was written. No bass parts were

written.

The guitar players had nothing written for them and they would come up

with their own parts. We would listen and suggest things but there certainly

wasn't any score.

Would you record bass, drums and keyboards simultaneously?

Yes, usually bass, drums, keyboards, guitar. Yeah.

You mentioned writing out the chord voicings for your songs. I've been

intrigued by what you and Fagen called, in your songbook, the Mu chord.

Yes, the Mu chord. Probably the less said about that, the better.

Why?

It was kind of a joke, tha t name. In the late sixties when we first started

writing together, we would write or play very s imple tunes and the way that we

came up with hopping up major triads was to add a second, usually right under

the third. This was one of the few alterations that you could do to a major

chord and still have it sound like a major chord and not a jazz chord.

I don't remember why the name [l aughs] Mu chord. I'm sure there was

some very importan t reason at the time.

It's much harder to play on guitar than piano. Would you do it on gui-

tar often?

That's something that I did where available on guitar. It's always available

on piano. We had Denny [Diaz] do it on the guitar because he had far greater

exteriry. But whole- tone d issonances like that are quite awkward on guitar ex-

cept in certain open chord positions.

When you started using that chord, did you make a decision that it

would be a signature chord for Steely Dan?

We just did it so much that it ended up that way. And as time went on,

we developed other chord alterations that became associated strongly with

what we did. And [Fagen] continues to explore the fringes of tonal organiza-

tion; harmonic stuff that still sounds tonal but is as expanded as it can be.

Are there other chords you can name that defined the Steely Dan

sound?

The particular chord that people have mentioned to me is a chord where

you have, in the key of C, an in the bass, a D, a and a C on top. It's an

extension of the M u chord, if you will, but you move the third, the E into

the bass. So it's a C-major chord with an

E

in the bass. [As well as the major

second. ] I've been told that in some circles this is known as the Steely Dan

chord. It's a chord we used over and over and now it's become kind of a ge-

neric fusion cliche harmony. There's a lot more sophisticated harmonic stuff

going on now than there used to be, so a lot of this stuff is in the public do-

main.

Do you see Steely Dan as being responsib le for tha t progression?

No, I think that was inevitable, and I think that the fact that keyboard

players are so important now is responsible for that, because those are all

things that are more likely to be outgrowths of keyboard structure than fret-

board structure, as you well know as a guitar player trying to deal with some of

these things. It's very hard.

You don't feel that Steely Dan set a higher standard than people were

trying to reach at the time?

I think we were trying to be as musically sophisticated as we could and

that wasn't really a priority for a lot of people and still isn't. A lot of people

want things to be as roo tsy and gutsy as possib le , which is very valid, too.

In most songwriter collaborations, it's clear who wrote what. With

Becker and Fagen, it' s a mystery who contributed what to each song. Why

is that?

We were wr it ing together for such a long time that we really adapted to

ne another. We had a tremendous rapport from the very beginning of our col-

boration, where we knew what we wanted to do and we weren't working at

oss-purposes. That became more and more the case. We developed a way of

orking together that really combined our sensibilities. There were a lot of

things that I never learned because Donald already knew how to do them. I

could manipulate elements of his technique without having to master the same

ings myself A lot of the themes that we developed, we developed together.

er the years, just bouncing things off of each other in ordinary conversations

,we'dbe having, and I still find th is when I talk to Donald; it's very stimulating.

so he and I will be thinking along similar lines and we'll start to talk about

omething and say, [sh outs] Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah.

43 3



43 4

SONGW RITERS ON SONGWRITIN

I think that our collaboration was so well integrated that we weren't sur

ourse lves where one guy's contribution ended and the next guy's picked up.

Did you usually work on words and music at the same time?

Usually we would get a melody first and then stretch it or do what we

needed to do to accommodate words.

You'd come up with a whole melody without any words?

No, typically we'd get a chorus together f irst with lyrics. Ideally. Not hav

ing a chorus was a real pain in the ass. Once you had the chorus, then yo

could construct the music for the verse, and then the melody for the verse,

and then actually write the verse. Try to make sense out of the chorus, i fa t

possible. [L augh s] Or otherwise illustrate it.

Did you two ever work separately on songs?

Yeah, we'd get little pieces and then bring the pieces in. And put them to-

gether.

You mentioned how the music will suggest the words, and yet with

Steely Dan the words and the music would often oppose each other or work

on different levels at the same time. When you were working on songs,

were you trying to achieve a marriage between the music and words or did

you try to have the two elements set each other off?

Even if they work together by opposing each other, that 's a marr iage too.

The one thing underscores the other. Either by making it sound funny or mak-

ing something that does sound funny sound serious, by ironically combining

things, which we did often enough, I think.

Often songwriters experience ideas simply arriving. Do you have an idea

where they come from?

No, but tha t is my experience. Maybe we're channeling Jeff Skunk Baxter

[Laughs]

Do you feel that ideas come from beyond you?

Yes, possibly.

Any advice as to how to get in touch with that 'source?

No, I think i t's a matter of paying attention and diligence. And practicing

at what you do and doing it and doing it until the moment of relaxation comes

when you can be in touch with something like that.

When it's not flowing, do you stay there and work or do you leave it

alone?

In the past when I was working with Donald I had the discipline to stay

there and keep going. Even on days when you get absolutely nothing, and there

are many of them, it's important to do it. You have to do that seemingly non-

productive work to get to the point

[sn aps fing e rs]

where things suddenly click

into place. You have to lay the groundwork for that.

And in your experience do the best melodies seem to be genera ted y

an instrument or separate from one?

Most of my ideas are when I am playing an instrument rather than, you

mean when I'm walking down the street? I have great ideas when I'm walking

down the street, but they're gone from moment to moment.

WALTER BECKER

435

If it's okay with you, I'd like to name a few of them and see what if

any, response you have to them Let's start with Th B t

Raz

I I h i k h . . e as on g•

.a ways t in t e nice thing about The Bos ton Rag wa thar k

place in New York S Th B R s at It too

L .. I' o. e oston ag was part of a state of mind. haven't

seen onme m a ong ttrne, wonder how he is. Hi, Lonnie

Aja.

Aja h,~d parts of another song in the middle of it that never made it that

kind called Stand by the Seawall. The little chunk in the middle A

m of a song with a little s~ite in the center of it, and some of ~hatJ~er~

~arts of tha~ so~g and oth~r miscellaneous bits and pieces that Donald had la _

~faround m

bl

h

d

lshh

ead

; things he was going to write and never did and it ju~t

a got assem e t at way.

Time Out of Mind.

. W~ll, we both wrote that lyric. I remember writing that at Donald's house

~ Ma~lbu. We wrote that before we moved back to New York, most of it. All

a It. we must have had that one sitting around for a while.

''An~ World (That I'm Welcome To).

Du I thm~ w.e wrote that, believe it or not, for Barbra Streisand. [L aughs] Or

s7 Sp~ngfield .. We had three or four songs that we wrote for some female

I

Viko

ca

1Stt da~dsomebody -:e knew was producing. The key change in it seemed

e a goo I ea at the time.

Rikki Don't Lose That Number.

.It .wasn't written for Ri~kie Lee Jones. Nobody had any idea that there

was

a Riche Lee Jones at that time. Well , obviously, some people did It was just a

pop song. .

Kid Charlemagne.

. It was kind of an Owsleyesque figure that existed in our mind's eel

think he was based on the idea of the outlaw-acid-chef of the sixties who had

es.sentlaIIy outlived the social context of his speciality but of co h

still an outlaw. ' urse, e was

Through with Buzz.

[L aug hter ]

The less said about that one, the better, I think.

Your Gold Teeth, Parts 1 and 2.

T~at seemed like enough, to do two versions of it. We couldn't think of

any ot er way to use that. [L aughs] I might add that the second version much

~ore c osely resembles the original version, which we never recorded It was

Just a SImple sort of waltz. .

My Old School.

Folk-rocky. Lots of fun.

''Any Major Dude.

I thkink that was the second take. That was great. It was almost over before

anyone new they were recording it.

Midnight Cruiser.

[L aughs] Jimmy Hodder's vocal. Old song.



436

SONGWRITERS ON SONGWRITING

Babylon Sisters.

Very spooky song. I still like that one a lot. Some of them I don't like.

That one I do.

Rickie Lee Jones told me that she was a little scared about meeting you

at first because you looked so tough in your photos and never smiled.

I think it was just that we were trying to look cool, you know?

[ Laughs] It seemed like a good idea not to smile. But as Rickie found out,

I'm actually a very jovial guy. We had a lot of laughs.

She said you turned out to be quite nice, but that you are simply too

intelligent for the rest of mankind.

[ Much laughter] That's very flattering.

But not true?

I think that's up to the rest of mankind to decide.

WBecker Interview 1989

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