Becker and Fagen had long wanted tocreate an album like Aja, Beckerexplains, but it wasn’t until 1977 that the duo was able to assemble the rightroster of backing musicians to bring it to life.
“Through the years we found differentways to accommodate different elements of jazz into what we were doing, to agreater or lesser extent,” Becker says. “But Aja was the point when we suddenly had everything we needed to makea record like that happenin particular, the right musicians. We had becomeaware of enough players who were fundamentally jazz players but had expandedtheir musical vocabulary to really understand playing over other kinds of beatsother than the jazz and Latin beats they were used to.
“We knew about [drummer] Steve Gadd,for example,” Becker continues. “So we could write the song ‘Aja,’ and imagineas we were writing it, ‘OK, here’s the section where Steve Gadd would play hisass off,’ and lo and behold, that’s what he did. And we could imagine that we’dget somebody like [saxophonist] Wayne Shorter to blow over this, and we wereable to.”
Ajawas Steely Dan’s last album of the ’70s, and capped an intense six-year periodduring which the group released six albums.
“For us as songwriters, it was veryimportant for us to write and write in the ’70s in order to get better at itand to change and grow,” Becker says. “We wrote many more songs than werecorded, and we recorded many more tracks than we used or finished, so wecould really have a developmental process.”
It was that drive to keep writing andrecording that kept the band off the road during their commercial and creativeprimethough the financial cost of touring at the time was also a disincentive.
“Most bands at the same level we wereat the time were losing money touring,” Becker explains. “The record labelwould lend you money for the tour, then they would take that money out of theroyalties that they weren’t paying you anyway. That’s the record business foryou.”
It was ironic, then, that when SteelyDan reformed in 1993 after a 12-year hiatus, they became primarily a touringoutfit (though they did release two unexpectedly well-received reunion albumsearly this decade, the first of which, 2000’s Two Against Nature, won an improbable Grammy Award for album of theyear.)
“I still don’t love the traveling andthe lifestyle that touring gives you, but there are some things I like abouttouring now,” Becker explains. “We can have a much wider choice of musicians;we have much more freedom as to what material we play, and much more controlover the environment and the sound and other things that are important to us.”
The group has no concrete plans to recordnew material, but the duo is as selective about their touring backing band asthey were about their studio players, continually scouting a mix of veterancollaborators and newer jazz players like saxophonist Walt Weiskopf, trombonistJim Pugh and guitarist Jon Herington.
“Just like in the ’70s, we’re alwaystrying to find the most original voices on different instruments, finding waysto fit them in to what we do,” Becker says.
SteelyDan plays two nights at the Riverside Theater this weekend. On Friday, Nov. 13,they’ll play Aja in its entirety,then on Saturday, Nov. 14, they’ll do the same for their 1976 album, TheRoyal Scam.
