However, the pair's working relationship began to strain, largely because of Becker's increasing drug use.ĭuring the course of the Gaucho sessions, Becker was hit by a car late one Saturday night while walking home to his apartment on the Upper West Side. By 1978, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had established themselves as the only two permanent members of Steely Dan, using a revolving cast of session musicians to record the songs they wrote together. Gaucho proved to be Steely Dan's final studio album before a 20-year hiatus from the recording industry.Įxceptional difficulties plagued the album's production. The harmonically complex chord changes that were a distinctive mark of earlier Steely Dan songs are less prominent on Gaucho, with the record's songs tending to revolve around a single rhythm or mood, although complex chord progressions were still present particularly in "Babylon Sisters" and "Glamour Profession". Gaucho marked a significant stylistic change for the band, introducing a more minimal, groove- and atmosphere-based format. After it was released, jazz musician Keith Jarrett was given a co-writing credit on the title track after threatening legal action over plagiarism of Jarrett's song "Long As You Know You're Living Yours". and Steely Dan had a three-way legal battle over the rights to release the album.
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During the two-year span in which the album was recorded, the band was plagued by a number of creative, personal and professional problems. In 1982, the album won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording and received Grammy nominations for Album of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. To record the album, the band used at least 42 different musicians, spent over a year in the studio, and far exceeded the original monetary advance given by the record label. The sessions for Gaucho represent the band's typical penchant for studio perfectionism and obsessive recording technique. Sixty-six pieces and not a dud in sight - few have ever had a better run.Gaucho is the seventh studio album by the American rock band Steely Dan, released on November 21, 1980, by MCA Records. They can be dark and cerebral but because the music is so warm and well crafted, it goes down like Scotch spiked with maple syrup. These songs are peculiar snapshots of modern life, filled with strange characters, bizarre food and drink, and exotic, often seedy, locales.
Ultimately, what really sets Dan apart from dozens of ‘70s soundalikes is the lyrical content. Then there’s Fagen and Becker’s impeccable taste in collaborators, and their unerring determination to seamlessly blend elements of jazz, rock and pure pop music. No other pop band has paid such attention to the details of its sound design, and “Do It Again,” “Hey Nineteen” and “Black Cow” are still the standard by which hi-fi systems are tested. Above all, these songs are exemplars of the art of studio recording. Steely Dan started the ‘70s as long-haired stoners and ended the decade as jazz-pop ironists, but through it all their music retained its essential qualities. Between 19 Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had one of the most spectacularly unusual winning streaks in modern pop history, and Citizen Steely Dan collects the entire run.
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