The many sides of Walter Becker

Having just contributed to a podcast in memory of Steely Dan's Walter Becker, who passed away this week, I've compiled some examples of his work that casual listeners and readers may not be so familiar with.

The partnership between Becker and Donald Fagen was such that it is often difficult to know where an idea has stemmed from. They were so well-matched in terms of intellect and musical knowledge, they were in the habit of finishing each other's sentences. Nonetheless, it is fairly well accepted that Becker, with his rather more chequered background, contributed the darker, more surreal ideas to The Dan's music.

And there were plenty of them. The new identity fixer in Sign In Stranger; the 'man of science' mixing up his psychedelics in Kid Charlemagne; the ode to "the Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian" in Hey Nineteen and perhaps most personal of all, Any World (That I'm Welcome To).

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"Whenever I recorded with Walter and Donald, right before the engineer pushed the red button, Walt would shimmy over to me and in a stage whisper, would say: 

“Just play the blues Elliott… just play the blues”.

- Elliott Randall, session guitarist on Steely Dan's albums 

and most famous for his soloing on Reelin' In The Years

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We don't know too much about Becker's early years, apart from the fact his parents separated, but we do know he had his demons and, as Fagen noted, his "habits". The song 'Time Out Of Mind' from Gaucho would have been very close to home at that point in his life. The heroin halted his friendship with Fagen at the end of the 1970s and Becker retreated to Hawaii to recover from his addiction.

He re-emerged in the 80s handling production for the band China Crisis (the story of how he was attracted to the British band because he'd misheard their name as Vagina Crisis seems fitting somehow). He produced their album 'Flaunt The Imperfection', which contains the track 'You Did Cut Me', released as a single in 1985. It could easily be a Steely Dan song.

In 1989, he met up with Rickie Lee Jones and the two collaborated on her fourth album 'Flying Cowboys', which contained a lovely song 'The Horses'. Co-written with Becker, a cover version of the song by Daryl Braithwaite made No 1 in Australia.

and this song, Satellites, which shows traces of Becker's influence

Rickie Lee Jones wrote a touching tribute to Walter this week for Rolling Stone magazine. She said Steely Dan made it OK to be educated: "It was the idea that intelligent music was cool".

"I was brought up, you might say, on writing thick with imagery and subtle implication and I loved it. I loved the innuendo, the humor, the sting. The genius was as much in the part we filled in, the lines they didn't write. That was where the sticky stuff of memory made their music a part of our own personal history."

Of Becker, she wrote, "I have often said that so much of what we write seems to be prophetic. Walter lost too many people to drugs. He found too many people laying on the floor. The bed. Too many heartbreaks."

Becker and Fagen were able to move forward with their unique musical partnership in the 1990s, initially working together on Fagen's second solo album Kamakiriad, where Becker was the co-producer, and co-writer of the song Snowbound. He is listed as the bassist/guitarist on the album too.

 

In 1994, the year after the Steely Dan reunion tour, Walter produced his first solo album '11 Tracks of Whack', which was well received but not as commercially successful as his partner's solo records. Becker's sound was less polished and without the rounded melodies of The Nightfly or Kamakiriad. But it did contain some great compositions, demonstrating Becker's vivid imagination and a lyricism few could match.

This, for example, from the track Surf and/or Die, about a friend of his who died in a hang-glider accident:

Earthbound to Johnny boy just picked up your message
‘Bout those Balinese ikats you thought I might buy
Now your voice on my machine is more alive than what you are
Since your daredevil hang glider fell out of the sky
Now Armand’s looked all over but he can’t find your car keys
Were they under the tire? Were they under the seat?
Because as it stands now your beloved white Aires
Is fair game for the vandals up on Makapuu Street
And your grandmother’s number, we know it’s here somewhere
But Suze can’t seem to find it, now she’s losing control
And so what about her, and little Eldon and Layla
And that hypothetical spectre, your gilt-edged soul
Which defied many perils, in the face of all reason
And in so many settings and for all your young years
Insisting on pure freedom for its too-short season
Riding high on its ration of enchantment and fear
Over the hill and into the next meadow and on and on and on
In a near random universe there are still certain combinations
Picked out from all other possible ones
Which, when given some time and the just-right circumstances
Not too far from the earth or too close to the sun
They will dance and they’ll spin in the embrace of the trade winds
Playing havoc with the hearts and the upturned faces down below
Until the laws of curved spacetime, suspended without warning
Kick back in with a vengeance for the last act of the show
Going too far too fast in that final wing over
As your glider comes tumbling out of the clouds
And you clutch at your chest but the chute never opens
And they find you there tangled in that white nylon shroud
When we get Grandma’s number I think I’ll just say to her
Your Johnny’s home for Christmas, it was a hell of a ride
And I know that some day you’ll be showing me those blankets
All covered in glory on the hereafter side, saying
There was never any question, it was always all or nothing
Surf and/or die

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"My inner Steely Dan geek was extremely anxious to get answers to the many questions I had since the age of 14. What guitar did you use on the solo (perhaps my favorite of his) on “Pretzel Logic”? Answer: an old Epiphone solid body. What is a “squonk”? (now, of course, you can wiki it). Who were some of the others on the legendarily large list of guitarists who took a stab at the solo to “Peg”? (He told me that Robben Ford had recorded an especially awesome solo.)"

- Drew Zingg, lead guitarist on the reunion tour, and heard to best effect on Third World Man from the 'Alive in America' album

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Becker didn't produce his second solo album, 'Circus Money' until 2008 and many Dan fans are probably unfamiliar with it, as it received no promotion and virtually no airplay. But it has better production values than the first album and hangs together as a good collection of songs.

 

In the last 10 years, he also collaborated on a couple of albums with Madeleine Peyroux, notably on the 2009 album Bare Bones. One of the co-writes on the album is the song 'You Can't Do Me' which has an undeniable Becker stamp on it.

To round off this review of Walter Becker's musical legacy, if you want to enjoy more of the man's writing and his sense of humour, check out the stories and tour notes he wrote for the Steely Dan website. The site was set up when they first started touring again and many of the early stories are still up on the site - www.steelydan.com - here's one random example. All this stuff is made up, it's just him riffing on an idea: https://www.steelydan.com/fugue07.html

And while they took songwriting to another place, and made it OK to be intelligent in popular music, Becker and Fagen never took themselves too seriously. As here, where they cruise around New York, picking up seemingly random girls to discuss their music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dimyNC1BytY 

Not that you'd know it from that clip, but Walter was the quiet one of the two, and would have been a rather intimidating presence at times I'm sure, as the wittiest and most urbane guy in the room oft times. But his wit and intellect added much of the spice within the complex flavours of Steely Dan. He was a one off, and he's left a wonderful musical legacy.

Here's what his daughter had to say in memory of her dad:
http://walterbecker.com/daughters.html

RIP Walt.

Further reading and listening:
New York Times: Listen to 13 Essential Walker Becker Songs
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/arts/music/walter-becker-steely-dan-best-songs.html?mcubz=3
Pitchfork: 8 Songs That Show Walter Becker's Brilliance
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/8-songs-that-show-walter-beckers-brilliance/
Washington Post: Walter Becker was the cynical one, hiding behind the guitar
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/celebrities/walter-becker-was-the-cynical-one-hiding-behind-the-guitar/2017/09/03/4cd7d4e8-90d1-11e7-8754-d478688d23b4_story.html?utm_term=.467dbd3c5c9e

If you're looking for a thoughtful and perhaps unusual Steely Dan playlist, may I suggest this one?
https://thevinylfactory.com/news/ed-motta-tribute-walter-becker-steely-dan-playlist/

And someone has thoughtfully packaged the out-takes from the Gaucho Sessions into a 'lost' album compilation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g21SnPXOTg

Reviewing Pink Floyd at the V&A: Their Mortal Remains

We don't need no Edu-cayshun

The enduring nature of classic rock music and its connection with popular culture is reassuring for an aging hippy like me. While my kids may mock a lot of the Dad Rock I still listen to, they do actually listen to it of their own accord and with open ears. That's what brings us to London's Victoria & Albert Museum to see the exhibition Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains. It was my daughter's idea, so I'm curious to know what she will make of it, especially the early stuff. 

As we enter the exhibition, headphones up high, we are transported into the world of the 1960s, passing into a psychedelic subterranean scene, with exhibits from the band's earliest days, including examples of Syd Barrett's art and writing. Even for a seasoned Floyd fan such as I, there are some fascinating exhibits and each phase of the band's career (especially the classic period) is brought to life with dramatic set-pieces, interviews and live footage.

Syd Barrett's guitars from 1967

Nick Mason's drumkit from 1974

Throughout, we get to see the actual instruments used during their career, including Syd's mirrored Telecaster, Rick Wright's various primitive electric pianos and Nick Mason's tsunami double bass drum kit. Naturally, Dave Gilmour's guitar playing features prominently throughout the exhibition, including the finale.

If you weren't familiar with the arc of their career, you might miss the significance of the developments that led to The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here. The demise of Syd due to his over-indulgence in LSD and the band's fragmented journey to their second wind in the 1970s are rather glossed over, which is a shame because these are important aspects of the story. But there are illuminating interviews with Waters and Gilmour scattered around to keep the narrative going.

The role of Hipgnosis is highlighted through their cover art, with an infinity mirror used to particularly good effect to accentuate the impact of the Ummagumma cover image from 1969.

Ummagumma to infinity

Since Dark Side is such a pivotal album, and an image that resonates even for my daughter's generation, the making of the record is at the centre of the exhibition. Again, the technology they used is on show and the band members describe how the recording developed. There are also candid photos from the sessions. We then pass into a room with a 3-D depiction of the pyramid prism image, while The Great Gig In The Sky plays through the 'phones.

The increasingly dark nature of the Floyd's album concepts and lyrics around the time of Animals and The Wall is explained in the context of the social and cultural changes that occurred in the 1970s, particularly in the UK with punk rock and the economic blight that ushered in Thatcherism. The set pieces include giant stage-size versions of the Gerald Scarfe characters from the Wall, a recreation of Battersea Power Station and the flying pig, plus various other props from the Animals tour.

A contact sheet from the Animals cover shoot at Battersea Power Station

For me, post The Wall, there is little of the Floyd's music that grabs me in the same way their classic 1960s and 70s albums and shows did. I was lucky enough to see them playing Dark Side, Wish You Were Here and Animals live in the 70s, topped off typically by an encore of Echoes from Meddle. Nonetheless, the Gilmour-led Floyd era is handled well and there is a touching section just before the end dedicated to the Rick Wright tribute album, The Endless River, which is my daughter's favourite.

The final room is an immersive 3-D effect experience with screens on all four walls showing the reformed original band's last performance together at Live-8. You are welcome to sit, lie down or just stand and watch as the band plays Comfortably Numb. It's a fitting way to end an absorbing show. (if you find this clip is unavailable for copyright reasons, there are other similar ones to be found on youtube).

It's difficult for me to assess what a young person or someone unfamiliar with the Floyd would make of it. I would like to have seen them go into more detail on the early phases and explore the music in more depth. But I'm pleased to say my daughter wasn't overawed by it. Even though I'm sure a lot of the earlier experimental stuff was not to her taste, she picked up a lot of cultural references from the exhibition. She seemed genuinely interested in the Floyd's story and eager to understand their place in the history of classic rock music.

Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains at the V&A in London, is open until 15 October.

ALSO ON THIS BLOG:

Pink Floyd - On tour in 1974 and 1977

March 1973 - 'Dark Side of the Moon' enters the charts

Vegetable Man - Syd Barrett's last Floyd recordings