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Steely Dan’s Original ABC/Dunhill Reissue Notes, Part 2: Countdown to Ecstasy

17 Apr 2022 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: countdown to ecstasy, steely dan

Reprinted–nay, stolen from the band’s website whole cloth, out of fear it will be taken down there. (Hopefully they won’t force it to be taken down here. This is Dan Fan gold.)

In the 90s, Andy Mckay of ABC/Dunhill Records asked Donald and Walter if they’d write liner notes for a reissue of the their Dunhill albums. The notes appeared in sequence on each album as it was released. They are now collected here:

THE ORIGINAL ABC/DUNHILL REISSUE NOTES by Walter Becker & Donald Fagen

COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY

Thought + Feeling = Action – Dr. Eric G. Page

And how. Countdown to Ecstasy is unique amongst the Steely Dan albums in that it’s the only one written and arranged for a working ensemble. For this reason, the arrangements were influenced for the better by the known instrumental textures and musical personalities of the band itself, and for the worse by the raw horror and prolonged ennui of the odious weekend outings forced on us by our new manager (a schmendrick foisted on us by the record company) during the very recording process itself.

So, for example, the period charm of Jeff Baxter’s cunning Echoplex work was somewhat offset by the damage done to his amplifier (and nervous system) from last weekend’s debacle in, say, Tucson, or maybe Seattle, where we opened for the James Gang (Joe Walsh had already left the group and been replaced by our old NYC session mate Dom Troiano). As was typical in those days, we were blasted off the stage by a more practiced, experienced band, e.g, the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, the Doobie Brothers, Elton John, Rare Earth, Chuck Berry (yes, even old, apathetic Chuck), Cheech and Chong and the Kinks, just to name a few (actually, the Kinks were so shitfaced that they weren’t that much of a threat).

In any case, the pleasing stretched-out quality of some of the charts was diminished by the fact that the lyrics were not written until the last moment, and then by a songwriting duo who were now certain that a steroidal Hellhound was on their trail. The public humiliation we were subjected to as a result of some of our appearances during this period – let’s say most or even all of our appearances in those days – while in the long run perhaps a powerful character-building element in the young lives of the authors – proved in the short term disruptive and generally detrimental to the creative process. Even our all-too-infrequent rounds of Percodan Scrabble™were increasingly useless in dispelling the unrelieved existential angst that surrounded our little excursions and the days and nights of shame and terror which preceded and followed them.

Nor was there any solace in the realization that our bandmates were having the time of their lives, up to their necks in weed, alcohol and “poozle”, as they called it. It’s a pity that there’s no textual sign available to us now which would be the equivalent of that plangent sound which Harvey Keitel made towards the end of The Bad Lieutenant – because that, o loyal fandom, would go a long way towards clueing you in on how we felt about touring in that long, heinous year.

Nonetheless, the recording process was not completely unrewarding. In truth, there’s a substantial body of opinion that would rank Countdown as one of our best albums. Generally speaking, the type of person who typically holds this position is not the sort of individual you want sitting across the table from you at a dinner party, especially one where hard liquor is being served. Nor would you be well advised to give one of these guys your email address or (gasp) your phone number. Should it happen that such a fan gets a hold of your street address or place of employment, caution would dictate that you inform the police, pronto, before the situation deteriorates any further. You get the general idea.

Having established that the Countdown album is not without its admirers, perhaps we should spend a few moments wondering why. Well do we recall our chagrin during the mastering sessions, when listening to the introductory drum beats on Bodhisattva. Mastering engineer Doug Sax certainly noticed, as we did, that, about halfway through, there was a slight, unwanted ritard. Did he not concur with us that the reverse tape echo effect in King of the World was a questionable idea, imperfectly executed? And what about that drum loop we used for Show Biz Kids? Was that the stroke of genius we originally thought it was, or just another regrettable miscalculation?

As a matter of fact, the loop itself was quite a tricky bit of business to put into practice. We were using four inch tape in those days running at 180 ips, and to make a thirty-two bar loop at that tempo required the construction of a special apparatus to accommodate the 1200-plus feet of tape which ran from one end of Studio A to the other, out the fucking door, into the hall, through the door of Ed Michel’s space-jazz production headquarters and back out into the entrance area where Spooky, our favorite receptionist, was ordering grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches for the gang.

Alright, actually two inch tape, 30 ips, four bars, 30 feet, out into the hall and back, that’s all. These notes are meant to be of a certain length, and we were encouraged to give the whole thing a folksy, mythic strain. Nevertheless, the loop still took a bit of doing.

One miserable weekend, we were forced to leave town for a gig in Phoenix where we’d been booked into some sort of outdoor venue at an amusement park which featured a huge saltwater pool with hydraulically generated waves. With the ambient temperature hovering at about 116 degrees, some band members undertook enthusiastic but misguided attempts to stay hydrated in these harsh conditions by imbibing large quantities of the local beer.

These factors and the Carnival of Souls-like quality of the gig itself conspired to produce a bizarre and dissatisfying performance, marked by some unintentional quarter-tone tuning effects as well as other anomalies. The upshot of this core-rattling experience was that the six-man configuration inaugurated towards the end of the recording of Can’t Buy A Thrill was deemed obsolete: the band reverted to its original five man lineup, with Dave Palmer departing for greener pastures without having sung a note on the actual Countdown recording.

Towards the end of the project, we were working on the intro theme of a tune, The Boston Rag. No matter how many times we punched in on the only available track, the same three notes of Denny’s guitar line would not record.. Finally, Roger made a spiffy little window edit (look it up), and we were able to punch in the missing notes. Curiosity (and a perverse sense of fun) demanded that we send the little piece of defective tape back to 3M for analysis.

Months later, they sent us their report. The piece of tape had a tiny blister where the oxide had bubbled up from the backing. Inside this little blister was a drop of dried mustard. Obviously, some ass-crack minion up in Minnesota had taken his disgusting hoagie or whatever into the room where the huge sheets of mylar were coated with oxide and dribbled a tiny drop of yellow mustard onto the mylar on the exact spot where we were going to put Denny’s guitar part. In effect, our efforts had been sabotaged in advance by a careless employee. This sort of thing was to haunt us over and over in the years to come.

Listening back to Countdown now (something we haven’t actually done ourselves), who could know that the track Razor Boy originally had a reggae-ish drum part that was replaced after all the other stuff was almost done? Or that Denny’s meticulous all-night-long mix of King of the World had to be scrapped because it was “too perfect”? Or that several figures were added to Dotty White’s original cover painting at the insistence of Dunhill’s cheroot-huffing president Jay Lasker, who found the discrepancy between five band members and three figures on the cover unacceptable?

When the album was finally completed and mastered, a playback was arranged for the executives and promotion staff. The idea was to get everybody excited about the new “product” and send the radio guys running out into the streets foaming at the mouths. Folding chairs were set up in the little studio upstairs and the big boys filed in, Hawaiian shirts, cigars and all. They listened in silence to the playback and at the end offered up some tepid congratulations. The confusion and disappointment that filled the room was as thick as a horny mother. Coming on the heels of a commercially successful first album, the company had been hoping for a second album blockbuster that would zoom to the top of the charts and stay there for weeks, months, years. Instead they found themselves with what must have sounded to them like some sort of strange, neo-Weimar art music, or worse. Later, when they found out that we’d fired our suave Daltryesque lead singer, stolen the proofs for the album cover during the dispute over the final layout and perversely insisted on choosing a tune that had a lyric containing the F-word as our choice for a “single” – this was a major taboo at the time – they were not really surprised. They’d seen this kind of spitework before. We were forced to edit out the offending line, leaving the setup line intact – a third-rate joke without a punchline.

Steely Dan’s Original ABC/Dunhill Reissue Notes, Part 1: Can’t Buy a Thrill

17 Apr 2022 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: can't buy a thrill, steely dan

Reprinted–nay, stolen from the band’s website whole cloth, out of fear it will be taken down there. (Hopefully they won’t force it to be taken down here. This is Dan Fan gold.)

In the 90s, Andy Mckay of ABC/Dunhill Records asked Donald and Walter if they’d write liner notes for a reissue of the their Dunhill albums. The notes appeared in sequence on each album as it was released. They are now collected here:

THE ORIGINAL ABC/DUNHILL REISSUE NOTES by Walter Becker & Donald Fagen

CAN’T BUY A THRILL

“Hebbel, in a surprising entry in his diary, asks what takes away ‘life’s magic in later years. It is because, in all the brightly colored contoured marionettes, we see the revolving cylinder that sets them in motion and, because for this very reason, a captivating variety of life is reduced to wooden monotony.’”

So says Ted Adorno, and in spite of the indisputable veracity of this dire pronouncement, or perhaps because of it, neither one of us is able to remember exactly what we were doing when the long-awaited phone call from Los Angeles finally came.

DF: Who did he call first? You or me?

WB: You mean Gary?

DF: Who else?

WB: Maybe we were together when the call came…

DF: Working on a song?

WB: Possible. So, as it happened, we were working on a song when we got the call about a job in California…

Now that Can’t Buy A Thrill is finally being released in its original 1972 packaging, complete with all notes, texts, photos, illustrations, etc., appropriately miniaturized for today’s digital medium, we would like to avail ourselves of this opportunity to set the “record” straight on a few important points:

1. The original members of the band were Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Realizing that this ensemble was a bit thin, we decided to import to Los Angeles a few musicians of our acquaintance. Our producer Gary Katz (AKA Gary Kannon in compliance with the old show biz tradition of de-Semitizing Jewish names) suggested Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, whom we had actually met and played with back in New York, and Jim Hodder, whom we had not met but had only seen at a recording session, through a glass, darkly. Jeff’s credentials included a brief stint with a Boston band called “Ultimate Spinach” although, to his credit, he was not an original member of that outfit. Long Islander Hodder was a member of a Katz-produced band called The Bead Game, named for the illustrious but unreadable Hesse novel. Once these two potent talents had been added to the mix, the ensemble was still found wanting in several areas. So the call went out to Denny Dias, also from Long Island. Denny was a jazz guitarist with whom we had once tried and failed to start a “jazz-rock” band. Hicksville’s loss was Steely Dan’s gain, and for the next several months we thought we had everything we needed. More on this point, later.

2. As for material, no problem. We had touched down in Los Angeles with a fat notebook crammed with what Kenny Vance used to call “The Dyno” (short for dynamite). It was our best hope that the lyrics and music in this notebook, our life’s work to date, would somehow be transmuted into classic albums, the proceeds of which would supply swank, lifetime careers, juicy bank accounts, opulent houses with heated pools, powerful mid-engine sports cars, happiness, security, girls, girls, girls – in short, everything we needed to get by. In fact, it turned out later that only half the songs on the first Steely Dan album were already in the book. The rest were written in California, in a style that had been modified to take into account the new musical environment in which we found ourselves; and also to reflect our belated understanding of the aesthetic shortcomings of some of our less-than-accessible, more doggedly surrealist efforts.

3. Our pal Gary Katz had preceded us in the move from New York to Encino and secured us work as “staff writers” at ABC Dunhill Records on the basis of some stinky demos we recorded at the tiny Peer-Southern studio in the Brill Building. Yes, it was Gary Katz who convinced Jay Lasker, the big. fat, scary cigar-in-mouth president of ABC Dunhill to hire us sight unseen. This was a good thing for us, because, as has been previously documented in story and song, New York in the early 1970s was a broke-ass, smut-ridden, crime-laden garbage planet. Gary picked us up at the L.A. airport and drove us to the terrible, dinky apartments he had rented for us in Encino. He had leased a nice Buick for himself on Dunhill’s dime – tobacco brown, same model that Kojak drove on TV. Because neither of us had cars or drivers licenses at that time. We drove to work with Gary in the morning, and back with him at night. It was during these drives that we became acquainted with the following record business concepts: “a buck-three-eighty” (that meant bupkis), “pick and roll” (from basketball strategy) and “keppelectomy” (don’t ask). Also: “Harvey you’re fired”; “I got a guy and the guy is good” (always followed about a year later by “That guy, he fucked me”); “power rotation”; the corrupt practice called “shlocking”; “mo’ kick, mo’ hat”; and “show business heaven.”

4. Skunk Baxter had a theory that one of the secretaries at the ABC offices had several sets of interchangeable breasts which she would alternate wearing from day to day. This turned out to be incorrect.

5. During our visits to the smallish but excellent recording studio adjoining the Dunhill offices, we were surprised and frightened to see a fellow dressed in an American flag shirt and matching pants working behind the console from time to time. This was recording engineer Roger Nichols. Later we found out that he drove a tiny yellow Lotus sports car which he referred to as the Screaming Yellow Zonker. Roger, who looked like an extra in Beach Blanket Bingo and who claimed never to have seen a Jew till he moved to Los Angeles, couldn’t help peppering his conversation with odd, disturbing Borscht Belt jokes. If you said, “Are you kidding”?, he’d say, “No, it’s just the way my shirt hangs”.

6. When our careers as staff writers didn’t take off, we naturally reverted to our original dream, a cozy but wildly optimistic projection: When our album became a runaway hit, it would insure us unlimited funding for future albums. All of this would take place without it becoming necessary for us to leave Los Angeles, where we could lead our modest but comfy lifestyles indefinitely. Our career template was modeled on the likes of stay-at-home studio moles like Stan Freberg, Ken Nordine (of Word Jazz fame) and, more recently, The Beatles.

So, when certain executives at ABC started pestering us about “the tour” – we were only halfway through with the recording of the first album – the idea that we were now expected to go out and perform in public came as a total surprise. This was not a nice surprise, especially for Donald, who had reluctantly agreed to be the band’s lead vocalist for the purposes of recording but who was horrified when confronted with the idea of singing in public and extremely reluctant to be pressed into service as the frontman for a touring rock band. That’s when Skunk called his buddy David Palmer, and Dave came out from New Jersey to try out for the job. Luckily, the remaining tracks -Dirty Work and Brooklyn – were in his key, more or less.

7. We had worked with guitarist Elliot Randall in New York City. Elliot was a big-time studio cat at the time, as far as we could tell. We had done a few sessions with him in NYC and noticed that, aside from his elegant playing style, he looked really good holding a guitar. When we found out he was in town, it was only natural for us to ask Elliot to “fall by”. His solo on one of our tunes sounded so good that we asked him to join the band, even though we already had two or three guitarists. He demurred.

Other people who turned us down: Joe Gordon, Loudon Wainwright III, Dom Troiano, Hank Medress (who used to be in the Tokens), Rick Derringer (who we knew as Ricky Zehringer back in NYC), Chevy Chase, we think maybe Nils Lofgren, and Janice Baker from college (a couple of times).

8. When we first met Denny out in Hicksville, he was playing a Gibson Barney Kessel hollow-body guitar through a Kustom amplifier. The guitar was a sunburst with double Neo-Venetian cutaways, an offense to the eyes and the ears alike. We prevailed upon him to find something a bit more, er, modern-sounding and he ended up trading in the Kessel for a Dan Armstrong guitar with a clear plexiglas body. This was okay for a while but by the time Denny came out to California we were hankering, on Denny’s behalf, for another sonic upgrade. So Denny went down to Sound City where Jeff Baxter was then employed as a guitar repairman and picked himself out a honey of a Fender Telecaster with a rosewood neck. Fitted with the appropriate humbuckers in neck and bridge position and amplified by a beefy Marshall 100 watt amp head and short stack cabinet, Denny was ready to rock.

Of course, for the occasion of Denny’s solo on Do It Again, we rented a Coral Electric Sitar. This novel instrument, replete with dual lipstick tube pickups, sympathetic strings and a special bridge that produced the sitar-like buzzing sound, added that extra something the tune called for. For the same track, Donald rented for himself a sad Yamaha organ that had, amongst other things, a felt strip for producing glissandos that was heretofore only available on their Electone living room models.

9. Because of our current location (an undistinguished Italian restaurant on Madison Ave.), we are unable to reacquaint ourselves with the Can’t Buy A Thrill album at this time. However, we do seem to recall a few highlights, which include the aforementioned Do It Again, begun in Encino, polished in our Dunhill writing dungeon and soon to be come a big hit. To say that the lyrics somehow expressed the desperate career gamble on which we were embarking, to say that would be more than a bit precious; let today’s listener draw his own conclusions. But it most definitely solidified what became a long and satisfying collaboration with percussionist/vibist/pianist Victor Feldman, known to and venerated by us for his work with Miles Davis. The aforementioned Elliot Randall solo on Reeling in the Years, also a huge hit, that was a helluva thing, wasn’t it? And lastly, the Veal Bird Special at Dolores’ Restaurant, a regular Thursday night favorite for the gang in Studio A, should not go unmentioned.

THE FABULOUS ALBUM COVER ART OF PLAYWRIGHT JOHN ‘PATRICK’ BYRNE

14 Apr 2022 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: donovan, gerry rafferty, patrick, stealer's wheel

(via Dangerous Minds) by Paul Gallagher

You may not know the name John Byrne, but you will have certainly seen his art work on the covers of albums by artists as diverse as The Beatles, The Humblebums, Stealer’s Wheel, Donovan, Gerry Rafferty and Billy Connolly…

Original album art concept for The Beatles’ ‘A Doll’s House’, later released as ‘The Beatles’ (“The White Album”).

The Many Lives of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”

03 Apr 2022 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: hallelujah, leonard cohen

**Leonard Cohen in London in June 1974. / Michael Putland/Getty Images**

(via Mental Floss) By Kenneth Partridge

In the late 1970s, Leonard Cohen sat down to write a song about god, sex, love, and other mysteries of human existence that bring us to our knees for one reason or another. The legendary singer-songwriter, who was in his early forties at the time, knew how to write a hit: He had penned “Suzanne,” “Bird on the Wire,” “Lover, Lover, Lover,” and dozens of other songs for both himself and other popular artists of the time. But from the very beginning, there was something different about what would become “Hallelujah”—a song that took five years and an estimated 80 drafts for Cohen to complete.

In the 35 years since it was originally released, “Hallelujah” has been covered by more than 300 other artists in virtually every genre. Willie Nelson, k.d. lang, Justin Timberlake, Bono, Brandi Carlile, Bon Jovi, Susan Boyle, Pentatonix, and Alexandra Burke—the 2008 winner of the UK version of The X Factor—are just a few of the individuals who have attempted to put their own stamp on the song. After Burke’s soulful version was downloaded 105,000 times in its first day, setting a new European record, “Hallelujah” soon became a staple of TV singing shows…

A Tale of Two Bands: Steely Dan’s “The Royal Scam”

02 Apr 2022 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: steely dan, the royal scam

(via CultureSonar) BY CAMERON GUNNOE

Hindsight bias is fascinating, particularly with students of a culture as opposed to those who experienced cultural events firsthand. Today, Steely Dan is regarded as two master craftsmen of studio sophistication – cynical jazz-heads with little patience for all but the cream of the musical crop.

The early-to-mid 1970s were a slightly different story, however. With the emergence of progressive bands like Genesis, Yes, and Jethro Tull, those not paying attention might have lumped Steely Dan in with any number of pedestrian rock bands of the day.

Sure, preemptive moves had been made to suggest the ultimate direction of the outfit. But as far as heady chords and swearing off the road, The Beatles had beaten them to the punch a decade earlier.

Today, listeners generally glean their interpretation of the Steely Dan “sound” from the group’s sixth LP, the high watermark, Aja. But during the first half of their career, a general pop audience may have been more likely to associate the group with their 1972 debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill…

The Best of “Unchained Melody”–A Love Song For the Ages

27 Mar 2022 Leave a comment

by Ed Cyphers in General Posts Tags: unchained melody

(via Goldmine) by Bill Bronk

Bring together and meld a powerful, hauntingly beautiful melody with a lyric that touches the soul…and you have “Unchained Melody,” an honest, tender and unapologetic ode to love and longing.

Adapted from composer Alex North’s film score for the 1955 movie Unchained, the lyrics were written by Tin Pan Alley lyricist and composer Hy Zaret. Burdened with an inauspicious beginning in a mostly unknown black and white “B” movie, “Unchained Melody” went on to become an iconic and timeless love song for the ages.

Verse

Oh, my love, my darling, I’ve hungered for your touch, a long, lonely time.

And time goes by so slowly and time can do so much, Are You Still Mine?

I need your love,__ I need your love,__God speed your love__ to me.

Refrain/Chorus

Lonely rivers flow__to the sea,__to the sea, To the open arms__of the sea

Lonely rivers sigh,__”Wait for me__wait for me!, I’ll be coming home,__wait for me”!

Lyric by Hy Zaret

There’s a story behind every song… and this one is fascinating. Beloved around the world, “Unchained Melody” began its heralded journey in 1954. As reported in The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California) on June 28, 1954: “Hall Bartlett, producer of ‘Unchained’, which will start filming July 6 at the California Institute for Men, will have Alex North as the composer and conductor of the film”.

Every Moment Has A Song

Steely Dan’s Original ABC/Dunhill Reissue Notes, Part 2: Countdown to Ecstasy

In the 90s, Andy Mckay of ABC/Dunhill Records asked Donald and Walter if they’d write liner notes for a reissue of the their Dunhill albums. The notes appeared in sequence on each album as it was released. They are now collected here: