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The Crazy Story of the Making of Steely Dan’s Gaucho
Drugs, perfectionism taken to the extreme, and the world’s first drum machine.
After three years in the making and at a cost of a million dollars, The Dan’s 1980 release would be their last for twenty years. It’s really a wonder the album was completed, much less that it was arguably one of their best works.
In 1977, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, a.k.a. Steely Dan, were basking in the afterglow of the success of their sixth studio album, the Grammy Award-winning Aja. Widely regarded as their masterpiece, the album included the hits “Deacon Blues,” “Peg,” and “Josie.” Recorded with the finest session players Los Angeles had to offer, Aja broke the top five on the album chart within three weeks, topping out at number three and selling more than two million copies.
Aja was a departure for Fagen and Becker, but it was an album that had been in the works since the band's formation. In an interview, Fagen noted that the jazz/blues/rock fusion of Aja was his goal when forming the group in the early 1970s, but he knew that he needed to record pop hits first to build the credit to do what he wanted.
Indeed, some of their previous works hinted at this transition; “Bad Sneakers” from 1975’s Katy Lied and “The Caves Of Altamira” from 1976’s The Royal Scam come to mind. But the sound on Aja and Gaucho is distinct and different from the Can’t Buy A Thrill hits “Do It Again” and “Reelin’ In The Years.”
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A significant factor is that after 1974’s Pretzel Logic, Fagen and Becker decided to quit touring and focus on studio albums. They said farewell to their band, which included lead guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, who would join The Doobie Brothers the same year. Guitarist Dennis Dias continued to record on Steely Dan records through Aja, and drummer Jim Hodder worked as a session player until he died in 1990, recording with artists like Linda Ronstadt and Sammy Hagar.
By the time Fagen and Becker went into the studio to record Aja, their cred was so solid that their record company, ABC Records, gave them carte blanche. Upon the album’s release, ABC spent a reported $275,000 on television ads alone, which leads us to the first…
