The most disastrous recording of all time

Steely Dan's album Gaucho is sonic perfection. Every note is perfectly arranged, performed, recorded and mixed. But the success of this album is not due to everything going well, this is a tale of many problems and setbacks.

[eyesopen]

Im 66 years old, my children grew up listening to Steely Dan. They had no choice and they love me for it.

[biggybg]

There's a point where you have to question their sanity. Jeff Porcaro was legitimately one of the best drummers in the world at the time.

[jimrogers]

In the late 1990s I had the pleasure of working with Roger Nichols. He had a degree in nuclear engineering. He told me that both he and Roger Linn took a machine code programming class together, both with the idea of making a drum machine… Linn for commercial release, and Nichols for high fidelity. Hard drives were slow at the time. He told me that he had Seagate build him a custom hard drive assembly… 16 hard drives with one common spindle so he could store one bit of each 16 bit word on each drive… $70 grand. He needed a large amount of RAM… another massive expenditure. Roger remembered not only the year, month, and day, but the hour, minute, and second when he first recorded drums from Wendell. He also told me, “and remember, this was BEFORE MIDI so we had to record our trigger pulses first. One of the most intelligent men I’ve ever met who also had some of the BEST stories ever! Cheers!

[louiegallardo]

Coincidence, I listened to every Dan studio album last week just to clear my head. Becker and Fagen and the cats they surrounded themselves with are absolute perfection. Thank you for the post. Aja is my favorite too. I have always described it as music for grown ups. Cheers!

[michaelbaucom]

Mark Knopfler played on " Time Out Of Mind ", and said of Walter and Donald's attitude(paraphrase): And I thought I was a perfectionist...

[laurahagey]

I got married in 78 and I married someone who loved music like I did. He introduced me to
Steely Dan and their music accompanied us through our whole lives. Now, my husband is
gone but he lives loud and clear in me through the Dan's music..I still feel what I felt back then.

[br-cq]

I'm 66yrs. old and have seen them live three times, that was very hard to achieve...
Thanks for your excellent work.

[fernandoaguilar]

This is my favorite Steely Dan album simply because nothing else can make me feel as mesmerized as ‘Glamour Profession’ does. I believe it’s one of the best songs ever recorded and composed — the peak of these guys’ imagination.

[marin_real_estate_photography]

To be honest, I think most all Steely Dan albums would still be brilliant if Fagen and Becker had settled for less. I mean, Fagen's voice is far from perfect and he never really had much range. Yet it was good enough. Becker was never a GREAT guitarist (especially when compared to the guitarists who played on SD records), but his solo on Josie is SO GOOD!!! The fact that when somewhat competent cover bands paly SD songs, and they still sound terrific, pretty much means it's less technical perfection and more composition and lyrics that really carry the weight. Call me crazy, but I think SD were great DESPITE their musical perfectionism, not because of it.

[TarkMcCoy]

If only we all had such perfectionism. Then nothing would ever get done!

[phnigra]

Donald Fagen, the Stanley Kubrick of music.

[davidstewart]

As a recording engineer from the 24-track days, all this sounds borderline crazy. Yes, I've sat on countless sessions where we faffed about all day trying to achieve some kind of perfection, but there was never the unlimited budget described here ("give me $150, 000 and I'll build you a drum machine", etc). I think I'd have gone mad, but no-one can question the amazing music Fagen & co produced. I once recorded an album for Manfred Mann. He was a fascinating experimentalist and a very nice man, and had an address book bulging with the phone numbers of the world's top session musicians. In the very first hour he said, "Record everything! If any music is being played at any time in this studio, I want the tape rolling." That way, we never missed those magic moments often found in the spontaneity of a run-through or familiarisation; quite the opposite approach to Fagen's. It was quite quick work because all the musicians he brought in were so damn good. Happy days! The story of recording test tones over the multitrack master makes my blood run cold!

[JC]

Walter was involved in Kamikiriad. Walter produced the album, played bass and guitar on it and co-wrote Snowbound on it. In addition, Walter put out a second album called Circus Monkey not just one.

[scandalmusicuk]

Thank you for making this video. I absolutely loved all the interesting stories about an album I must have listened to 1000 times. Next time I hear it, it will be from a whole different perspective.

[room]

I'm enough of a Steely Dan fanatic that I probably knew every detail in this video and had even heard a bunch of the quotes, but it was still fascinating to watch. Very well put together, and a great overview of the challenges of producing Gaucho. Nice job!

[canalanalogue]

Great video. I knew some stories, but the way you tell 'em is both relaxed and informative, David. Keep up the good work. Pleasure to watch & listen.

[EddieG]

The first Steely Dan album I heard 35 years ago as a 15-year old, the album that made me a lifelong obsessive, and Glamour Profession is the song that did it. By the end of Babylon Sisters I was interested, after Hey Nineteen I knew I would like this band.
After Glamour Profession faded out, I was a rabid fan.
I became a musician who has played at large festivals, and done sessions for and with some of the musicians who influenced me, all because of Steely Dan.

[soundacresstudio]

This is by far the greatest documentary I’ve seen on the subject. Thank you for taking the time to put this together.

[jamesmack]

Saw the reunion tour in 93( and 94) after playing their albums throughout high school, especially The Royal scam and Aja….to hear all those songs live was absolutely incredible and utterly enjoyable.

[cprhyne]

In 1980 I was working (playing keyboards) at Village Recorder in West LA on an album with Jean Luc Ponty at the same time Fagen and Becker were working on Gaucho. One sunny morning I walked into the studio excited to start recording but the vibe was like someone had just died. The staff was unusually quiet and appeared to be in a state of shock. I asked the front desk what had happened and was told that a second engineer had mistakenly erased a really important master recording. I can’t even imagine the shock that engineer must have felt when he realized what he had done. Poor guy!