Who Played the Guitar Solo on Do It Again?
Steely Dan already had a very skilful conga role player already in the band, guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter worked percussion on this vocal in a alive setting merely Walter Becker and Donald Fagen thought information technology best to track in Feldman, an English session thespian famous for his piece of work on Miles Davis' 'Seven Steps to Sky' LP.
Songwriters Becker and Fagen weren't ducking this twist, the get-go hit. The first vocal on Steely Dan's debut anthology, the kickoff single off 'Tin't Buy a Thrill.'
After the demoing years charged him with supplying the lines necessary for the listener to identify the more than orthodox harmonic structures in the duo'south driving songs, bassist Becker was finally freed to float with headphones on. Recorded within the months of earnest attempts to supercede himself as his ring's lead singer, Fagen lives confidently within his double-tracks.
Donald's non finished, if the temperature volition e'er let him tune up. Somewhere in the middle of the song, simply after the radio said "enough," lurks a deliciously inappropriate "plastic" combo organ solo no doubt egged on with Walter'southward snorting encouragement.
Information technology's the type of musical instrument – never used once more by the ring – that would afterward sneer its way to swell acclaim later on in the 1970s, powering Elvis Costello's Attractions and other lightly lads. Hither, on Side One (Rail One), information technology'due south just a matter that sounds weird enough to be left on the side of the road after the carful was done with it.
Becker and Fagen spent the final fits of New York'south 1960s in Park Slope trying to make rent with pop tunes spun equally earnestly every bit their souls at the time would let. They backed Jay and the Americans on alive dates and were paid in whatever was left over after the beaks did their worst. Steely Dan was pulling down on calculated gambles long before Encino saved its thumbs from the freeze.
After moving to Los Angeles the pair scored a tune on a Streisand album, they considered Denny Doherty and they wrote for John Kay. Becker and Fagen penned and later fifty-fifty performed 'Modify of the Baby-sit' in full view of Dias and his rosary beads, stating that they intended it for release.
'Dallas,' a country-pop soft release single sung by the tawny yet contained Jim Hodder, the ring's drummer, was hesitantly considered as Steely Dan's initial offering. David Palmer was brought in to hit the Laura Nyro notes and to look a little like Roger Daltrey to the overserved.
Concessions were attempted, picks were rolled with. This was a duo that was not going to turn downwards subversively sporty cars (licenses had to come kickoff), interesting girlfriends, and better gear – future accommodations had to exist considered, and swiftly.
And they led everything off with, I don't know, a bossa nova?
It'south six minutes long and Donald Fagen sings it with that voice and it's a massive hit. If the admitted aesthete to launch for was midway between Word Jazz and Condom Soul, then the Dan was well on its way.
The tagger at this bespeak reads only in the 1970s! and information technology'southward a osculation-off that I've listened to Becker, Fagen and Baxter all conclude with. To at-home insistent interviewers and re-charm themselves at the wickedness of how wondrously daffy it is that a vocal like this could become a chart-topper in 1972.
When anyone else of a certain age spits that line out, information technology falls a footling flatter in its nod to an imagined decade where Richard Dreyfuss was the only male sex symbol, where One thousand Funk never happened.
Like, at some point information technology'south got to become a Steely Dan thing, right? Information technology's not every bit if the rest of the meridian x was filled with this strain of slyly-sung succor.
Denny Dias' easily until recently had been playing a Barney Kessel-styled jazzbo log, the sort of wood you lot could endanger a Tiger Stadium transformer with. Dissatisfied with the setup, "an offense to eyes and ears akin," Becker and Fagen peeled off enough accelerate to outfit Denny with a Telecaster and Marshall half-stack aimed at teaching jazz slides to the previously unaware.
Before Denny could play with his new toys, though, Becker and Fagen decided to strap him to a Coral Electric Sitar.
Not to be cool, that would have worked amend in 1967.
Not to be accurate, because this song is a bossa nova, and that instrument doesn't sound the to the lowest degree bit like a sitar.
Not because it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, because electrical sitars are impossible to ready up and even tougher to tape, only shitty AM radio producers have the patience for their typical sonic output.
And not considering Denny Dias, otherwise confident in both his abased studies and the Billy Bauer Technique, had ever played an electric sitar in his life. Kustom payback for the guy that understood Becker and Fagen'south changes better than anyone in the shop.
The handle spun cherries. In an era where sonic enhancement merely meant stacking more speaker cones on peak of the concluding ones y'all bought, Becker and Fagen knew when to leave the table.
Information technology just lays down the scent, doesn't information technology? Have a mind:
Jeffrey Baxter cocky-identifies as "Skunk" after a couple of adept runs to begin the tune, giving his baffle less than a infinitesimal earlier saluting Chuck Drupe. You're never too far away from some spiny vibrato from this guy, Skunk usually won't let up until y'all leave the room and luckily it took Donald and Walter a few years to correctly read the joint.
Dias' solo is amazing, and it would accept been comparatively lost on his new Dan Armstrong or his newer, eventually humbucker-outfitted, Telecaster. It would have been mush on the Kessel guitar, and 1972 wasn't confident enough to tape a Les Paul or ES-335 in a way that didn't track equally tacky to Don and Walt's, and then you're left with what's hanging around the shop.
Yous don't hear those notes on annihilation but an electric sitar, and I don't know if y'all'd phone call what comes out of Fagen's Yamaha organ notes.
We're one song in and Donald's already clapping back to 7th grade, winter suspension, and whatsoever spacey sounds he could hear from the TV in the other room. 
The song is Traditional, an expert takedown by two guys that shouldn't know better, simply do. Becker and Fagen were somehow advanced experience, slid underneath the door at night when the air was thick with shit pot and, we're told, calamine lotion.
The lyric would get a Steely Dan staple. An unhurried presentation, delivered by two guys who really want to go out of in that location.
Miniaturization tin can give y'all the bends, and that's where a partner comes in. Someone to tell you that a graphic symbol named 'Jack' – a weakass hotel allonym given in lieu of this drastic, petty man'southward bodily proper noun – is the way to get.
When you submit the draft with conviction, you're allowed to merits credit to a playing carte all your own. This is what separates Donald Fagen and Walter Becker from the sorts of people that want to write in the vox of Oliver Barrett IV, or the Dalton Gang.
Debut track. Information technology's growing.
Source: https://tsa.substack.com/p/every-steely-dan-song-do-it-again
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