Walter becker 1950 – 2017

the steely Dan guitarist died on 3 september 2017, aged 67. His work in the pioneering jazz-rock band leaves behind a legacy of studio perfection and a string of beloved albums

At the time of going to press no cause had been attributed to the death of Walter Becker on 3 September. The news broke initially on Becker’s website, sending shockwaves across social media, many believing that the lack of any accompanying information indicated a hoax. Sadly, this was not the case as his bandmate and friend, Donald Fagen, issued a heartfelt statement confirming the news later the same day.

“Walter Becker was my friend, my writing partner and my bandmate since we met as students at Bard College in 1967,” he said, referring to the facility at Annandale which features in the Steely Dan song, My Old School.

After leaving college in 1969 and moving to Brooklyn to try their hands at songwriting in the famous Brill Building in Manhattan, whilst playing in bands together in the locale, the pair decided that their joint futures lay in relocating to LA in 1971, which is where the nucleus of Steely Dan was formed.

Initially, the band featured Denny Dias and Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter on guitars with Jim Hodder on drums, David Palmer as second lead vocalist with Becker and Fagen playing bass and keyboards/lead vocals respectively. The first album, 1972’s Can’t Buy A Thrill yielded two hit singles, Do It Again and Reelin’ In

The Years, both becoming FM radio favourites, the die being cast for future success. Countdown To Ecstasy followed in 1973, Becker and Fagen gradually introducing session musicians into the band’s studio lineup, giving them a reputation as principally a ‘studio band’, something that became firmly fixed when the decision was made to cease touring in 1974. Around the same time, Becker switched to playing guitar with the band,

Pretzel Logic being the first album to feature his six string contribution.

Becker and Fagen became renowned for their perfectionism in the studio, which saw session players occasionally being asked to do around 40 takes. The radical finessing certainly paid off, with fans generally agreeing that 1977’s

Aja was The Dan’s masterpiece. The follow-up, Gaucho, released in 1980, marked Becker’s descent into drug addiction and shortly afterwards the band split. “His habits got the best of him by the end of the 70s, and we lost touch for a while,” Fagen remembers.

A subsequent move to Hawaii saw Becker stop using drugs and he and Fagen embarked on a number of projects, including Becker taking on production duties for Fagen’s second solo album,

Kamakiriad in 1993, Fagen returning the favour in 1994 by co-producing Becker’s first solo album, 11 Tracks Of Whack. Steely Dan began touring again, releasing

Live In America in 1995, but the event that fans really wanted to see occurred in 2000, with the release of Two Against

Nature, their first studio album in 20 years, followed by Everything Must Go three years later. Years of intense touring followed, Becker missing this summer’s gigs in the US, having undergone what Fagen referred to as a “small procedure”.

A renowned gear head, Becker could be seen with a number of guitars over the years, latterly preferring Sadowsky solid bodies. On Two Against Nature, he played several Sadowskys, sporting DiMarzio single coils and Sadowsky’s own homebrewed humbuckers. His choice of amplification for the album was similarly elitist, comprising Bogner, Top Hat and Bruno heads with various 4 x 12, 2 x 12 and 1 x 12 cabs loaded with Celestion speakers, plus a Mesa/Boogie Maverick combo. He’d come a long way since playing the solo to Black Friday where he used Denny Dias’s Telecaster and an Ampeg V4 amp!

In his touching salute to his old friend, Donald Fagen has vowed to keep Steely Dan’s music alive and, as far as we know, the October dates in Dublin and London will still go ahead. We will be featuring a tribute to Walter in the next issue.