The story of Gaucho is unprecedented. Recording began in 1978 and over the course of a two year span, the band used at least 42 different musicians, spent over a year in the studio and went way over the original money advance given by the record label. But is that accurate? But they don't, so they're wrong. The creative genii behind Steely Dan (Walter Becker and Donald Fagen) have long been fond of peppering their lyrics with arcane literary and cultural references, the meaning of which can be murky at best (given the duo's legendary reticence). The lyrics of "Hey Nineteen" are about an aging hipster attempting to pick up a girl who is so young that she does not recognize "'Retha Franklin" playing on the stereo. Are those the trumpets of angels near the end of the title tune? Try as I might, I cannot decide which album is my favourite and/or Steely Dan’s best. In January of '80, Walter Becker had arrived to his Manhattan apartment to find his girlfriend, Karen Stanley, dead of a drug overdose. Although the record doesn’t have a core theme, it represents the rare unflustered times of the world’s population in 1980, when people were just ... My goodness is Gaucho white as fuck. Howard Wright has done a nice analysis on Steely Dan. After days of reconciling with the unfortunate news, Fagen eventually returned to the studio. But when that bridge was to be crossed, things didn’t work out as such. What should have been a great start to the momentum of the recording process, Fagen saw, instead, a multitude of valuable time, money, and, above all, music - wiped away in a matter of minutes. Steely Dan - The Lost Gaucho (1980) This bootleg of out-takes from the 'Gaucho' sessions is fairly freely available online, but I was listening to it again recently, and though that it was just so good that I had to post it here for Steely Dan fans who haven't yet heard these songs. After some number crunching, they had found that the Dan were owed several million dollars in royalties. ---> Howard's Steely Dan Page. The Dan would see a return to touring in addition to two more studio albums until Walter Becker's untimely death in 2017. To Fagen, there were no words to speak. He headed Steely Dan in collaboration with guitarist Walter Becker from 1972-1981. Gaucho always sounded like a mid-life crisis in L.A. scenario to me, with a few unrelated mischievous songs in between (as usual). Ciao. Becker,, on the other hand, wanted to get away from it all and became an avocado farmer in Maui. However, my favourite track … Upon release, Gaucho sold at $9.98 retail, which was a rather sharp increase in price at the time given that minimum wage was $3.10. It seemed that fate would stop at nothing to prevent its release. When Walter Becker passed away in September 2017, it marked the end of one of the most quixotic music partnerships in modern American popular music. All he could do was stand up and leave the studio. Steely Dan has a lot of shock value in this album in terms of lyrics (Hey Nineteen is obviously about an old man and his young teenage lover) and they love drugs. Very worthwhile. However, Gaucho is frequently as deep and resonant emotionally in its own different way as anything on Aja - yes, including Deacon Blues. ABC proceeded to bring the issue to MCA. The result was a fractured right leg which had rendered him immobile. Like most Steely Dan songs, it isn't as simple as it seems and a lot of the references are obscure even in the age of the internet. Finally. Trying to put the incident behind them, they had moved on to recording new songs. A yacht rock enthusiast, Michael is an avid listener and student of popular rock music of the 20th century. Recording had proceeded under typical Steely Dan conditions; a revolving door of studio musicians, endless takes, and countless hours in the studio in a pursuit to achieve nothing short of absolute perfection. Things only went from bad to worse three months later when Becker was struck by a taxi cab stepping off a curb. The haters will call all of Steely Dan's work overly slick, limp dick jazz-rock for dads with 50 polo jackets in their wardrobes, and if everything they made sounded like the final album of their original era then the haters would be right. It had followed the Aja formula of a seven song format, although not initially intended to do so. But the Dan saw the cards start to stack against them before recording had even commenced. When Fagen was given the news, not a word was spoken. “Gaucho” is the best Steely Dan album, and the best collection of bachelor-pad jams ever created. Steely Dan was that "underground" or FM sound that was almost mysterious, that out of body experience that people had never experienced before, their so to speak "first high". "It's an album of despair" he said, and understandably so. Steely Dan ’s 37-minute album Gaucho took two years to record and was the most expensive record ever made when it came out on November 21, … For weeks, the only way that Becker could communicate with Fagen and the engineers was through telephone, which proved less than efficient as it only served as one more reason the record would inevitably be delayed. What began as a promising follow-up to their highly successful and critically acclaimed album Aja, soon seemed destined to implode. Steely Dan have perfected the aesthetic of the tease. They had decided to move to New York City on Central Park West in 1979 where they would record the new record. Brian Sweet’s ‘Reelin’ In The Years’ was uncritical but biographically exhaustive; Don Breithaupt’s Aja book was excellent on The Dan’s musical methods, while Ian MacDonald wrote briefly but evocatively about Gaucho (probably my favourite album of the 1980s). In addition to the internal tensions and setbacks, Fagen had blamed the result of Gaucho on a string of bad luck mixed with the combination of their extremely high standards and a creative dry spell. It wouldn’t be logical for it to be otherwise. The stresses of Gaucho proved to be the final nail in the coffin of Steely Dan's heyday. It seemed that fate would stop at nothing to prevent its release. Gaucho was riddled with problems from the start. Elliot Scheiner recently used LA's new Cups 'N' Strings Studios for preparation of the original Steely Dan Gaucho (1979-80) multitrack analogue masters for release this year in 5.1 surround. Other articles where Gaucho is discussed: Steely Dan: Difficulties in completing Gaucho (1980) persuaded Becker and Fagen to give the group a rest, and they pursued separate careers for many years. Steely Dan The Lost Gaucho and Outtakes Studio outtakes, very good quality mp3 @ 320 For many years, this was considered the holy grail of Steely Dan bootlegs, as it features a complete alternative Gaucho album including several unreleased songs from the Gaucho sessions that were not included on the eventual album. After a rigorous court battle, it was decided that Steely Dan were to be awarded their royalties from MCA in the merger, but were to go and record the new album under MCA Records. In 2004, Walter Everett, famous for his musical analysis of Beatles songs, wrote "A Royal Scam: The Abstruse and Ironic Bop-Rock Harmony of Steely Dan… They continue their consistent streak of quality with another 7 tracks of jazz-rock grooves, and while it doesn't have a lot of the progressive edge their last two albums have and feels like their least rock-centric album to date, it's still ... A lovely recording that I have blown off for years and years. Although we were gifted an album of consistent and valued Yacht Rock songs, we are left to wonder what could have been if not for all the setbacks, tragedy, and turbulence. Glamour Profession is about the misadventures of … Whatever the listener may be doing whilst listening, most of the time this record would fit and enhance the mood with its jazzy chord progressions, funky instrumentation, uncompromising subject matter, and pure bliss in its tone. Steely Dan song meanings and interpretations with user discussion. Michael Sarno is a former history major who has spent most of his life studying the history of music. And, well, it's more of the same I'd say. By 1993, enough time had passed for Steely Dan front man Donald Fagen to digest and put into perspective what had happened over his career. On Gaucho, the melodies are questions, too — long-winded, probing, unresolved. This song is without a doubt about a gay couple, but here's the wrinkle that most people are getting wrong. It was officially announced in June of 1981 that Becker and Fagen were to split. One of my favorite things about Steely Dan lyrics is the way they make the listener feel like an outsider to the story by using lots of obtuse and personal references. Nevertheless, Steely Dan persisted, but at a high cost: the end of Steely Dan. They had attempted to recreate the sound they had lost on the recording, but ultimately were never satisfied and shelved the song entirely never to be released. Not only did MCA feel that they were not responsible for the previously owed royalties, but also felt that the next album to be released was now theirs. Dan peeps all know how Fagin and Becker obsessed for fucking ever over the making of Gaucho, ultimately driving the two apart. So are we. Becker and Fagen, living in LA, felt they had needed a change of pace after reaching the conclusion that the lavish west coast lifestyle was not for them. Fagen eventually would get his Warner Brothers record deal and release his first solo album, The Nightfly, in 1982. It wasn't uncommon for the hired studio musicians to become increasingly unhappy with Becker and Fagen as time went by. Becker and Fagen did not share the same sentiments. I was only twelve when Goucho was released and to this day their music has defined what music styles I find of interest to me. The initial reception had mainly consisted of positive reviews and commercial success. Like old masters, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had refined every aspect of their art — from color palette to shading — and now they could create images with maximum focus and minimum clutter. Initially, Donald Fagen had planned that he and Becker could push through the making of Gaucho and then have the troubles between them work themselves out afterwards. After assembling an ensemble of studio musicians from the local New York scene, along with Steely Dan favorites such as Michael McDonald and Larry Carlton, recording was underway. Whatever the listener may be doing whilst listening, most of the time this record would fit and enhance the mood with its jazzy chord progressions, funky instrumentation, uncompromising subject matter, and pure bliss in its tone. In addition, there are a good amount of transcriptions out there of Steely Dan material. It had found its way to Platinum status, selling over a million records. The Dan would see a return to touring in addition to two more studio albums until Walter Becker's untimely death in 2017. Aja was cool, relaxed, and controlled; it sounded deceptively easy. Both would drift in and out of various musical circles until reuniting in 1993. Fagen’s first solo album, The Nightfly (1982), recaptured many of Steely Dan’s strengths; Becker produced albums for various artists. Aja, released a year earlier, had The Dan riding a wave of success and prominence. Its follow-up, Gaucho, while sonically similar, is its polar opposite: a precise and studied record, where all of the seams show. They were contractually obligated to release one more album on their label, ABC Records. Give a copy to your Pops or crazy Uncle Joe. Preparing for playback, an assistant engineer to Roger Nichols had accidentally deleted 3/4ths of the tape while transferring it to master tape. They had successfully fused jazz and rock to a mainstream audience, the likes of which nobody had done before, and became one of the first cornerstones in the Yacht Rock movement, with staples like “Peg” and "Black Cow.” It was only a matter of time before Steely Dan would go back into the studio and record their highly anticipated follow up album. The third single, "Babylon Sisters", completely failed to chart in either the US or UK charts. On the verge of reuniting with his former partner Walter Becker for the first time since 1981, Fagen was reflecting on his career and asked about Gaucho, the last Steely Dan album released less than a year before he and Becker had parted ways. The general consensus seems to be that there’s relatively little published analysis of Steely’s work. Steely Dan – Gaucho Gaucho found the band returning from the success of Aja and life in Los Angeles, but a number of issues bubbled to the surface during their long time in the studio. Whatever the listener may be doing whilst listening, most of the time this record would fit and enhance the mood with its jazzy chord progressions, funky instrumentation, uncompromising subject matter, and pure bliss in its tone. One of the first recorded songs for the new album, “The Second Arrangement”, was to pick up right where Aja had left off. We should embrace Gaucho for what it is: Yacht Rock masterpiece we might have never gotten to hear. Album Review: Steely Dan - Gaucho Speaking about Steely Dan’s sixth album Aja, guitarist Dean Parks said of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, “perfection is not what they’re after, they’re after something that you wanna listen to.”No other quote encapsulates the music of Steely Dan better. To deepen the wound, Stanley's family then sued Becker for a whopping $17.5 million claiming he was the reason for her death on the grounds that he had introduced to heroin and cocaine and encouraged her to live his exuberant lifestyle with him. 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