aja

Steely Dan enlisted a hoard of jazz musicians to polish their fusion sound to a smooth, sophisticated, radio-friendly sheen and achieved their greatest commercial success.  'Aja' was produced by Gary Katz at Village Recorders in West Los Angeles; Producer's Workshop in Hollywood; Warner Brothers North Hollywood Recording Studios; ABC Recording Studios in Los Angeles; Sound Labs, Hollywood; and A & R Studios in New York.  By this point the band had finished with touring and was down to co-founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.   

Fagen remembers:  "We were interested in a kind of hybrid music that included all the music we'd ever listened to.  So there was always a lot of TV music and things in there. It was very eclectic, and it used to make us laugh: we knew something was good if we would really laugh at it when we played it back. We liked the sort of faux-luxe sound of the '50s, there was just something very funny about it. I grew up in a faux-luxe household, and it was a very alienating world, so for me it has the opposite effect: muzak is supposed to relax you, but it makes me very anxious. So in a way, I think I get it out of me by putting some of it in my songs. Then I start to laugh at it when I hear it."

Walter Becker considers:  "In some ways, the early, rougher ones sound better now than the later ones, whereas at the time it seemed like we were ever rising towards the light. I think because of the kind of music we were doing, it seemed to us that it should be real seamlessly put together and have a high level of polish to make it work. We didn't want it to sound like kids trying to play jazz - which I think it did pretty much sound like sometimes, and which now I kind of like the sound of. But at the time we thought what we were doing was so different to other things that were going on, and our own harsh appraisals of our talents dictated to us that we work harder to make it really smooth and flawless.  A lot of times we didn't know what we wanted. Donald and I would write a song on piano, or piano and guitar, and sometimes we'd have a very primitive demo, but often as not we'd go in the studio and we'd be hearing the song played by a band for the very first time. And sometimes it didn't sound like what you'd thought it would sound like, and you had to try and figure out why that was, whether your conception of the song was wrong, or who could change their part, or how to rethink what you were doing to make it work. So a lot of times we didn't know exactly what it was we needed to do at a given moment to get things to be the way we wanted them to be.  Other times, we just wanted it to be better, so we'd keep trying for another take. We kept adjusting our standards higher and higher, so many days we'd make guys do thirty or forty takes and never listen to any of them again, because we knew none of them were any good: but we just kept hoping that somehow it was just going to miraculously get good."

The sessions included Fagen on synthesizer, keyboards, vocals, background vocals, and whistle; and Becker on bass and guitar; with Chuck Rainey on bass; Timothy B. Schmit on background vocals; Paul Griffin on keyboards, electric piano, vocals, and background vocals; Don Grolnick on keyboards and clavinet; Michael Omartian on piano and keyboards; Joe Sample on keyboards, electric piano, and clavinet; Victor Feldman on percussion, piano, keyboards, electric piano, and vibraphone; and Larry Carlton, Denny Dias, Jay Graydon, Steve Khan, Dean Parks, and Lee Ritenour on guitar; as well as Pete Christlieb and Wayne Shorter on flute and tenor saxophone; Richard "Slyde" Hyde on trombone; Lou McCreary on brass; Chuck Findley on horn and brass; Jim Horn and Plas Johnson on flute and saxophone; Jackie Kelso and Bill Perkins on flute, horn, and saxophone; Tom Scott on conducting, flute, tenor saxophone, and lyricon; Bernard Purdie, Steve Gadd, Ed Greene, Paul Humphrey, and Rick Marotta on drums; Jim Keltner on percussion and drums; Gary Coleman on percussion; and Venetta Fields, Clydie King, Rebecca Louis, Sherlie Matthews, Michael McDonald on background vocals. Hideki Fujii did the cover photo featuring Japanese model Sayoko Yamaguchi. 

Becker confesses: "To me, the most difficult guys - without getting down to specific names - would be jazz players who, if it wasn't a jazz date, would treat it just like another gig. They'd have a kind of contemptuous attitude, and they didn't like the fact that these young kids were running these sessions and trying to tell them what to do."
Fagen adds: "It only happened a few times: guy wanted the gig for the bread, but didn't like the music, essentially. 'Specially in the early '70s, 'cos there was still a lot of deep snobbism about rock 'n roll..."
Becker inserts:  "...and we assumed that because we had these chord changes and everything that we'd be able to impress these guys, and in some cases that didn't turn out to be so. It was all still bullshit as far as they were concerned."

'Aja' went to thirty-five in Sweden, ten in Norway, nine in Australia and the Netherlands, five in the UK, and number three in New Zealand and the US.  The album went platinum and won a Grammy for Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording.  The album had three top forty singles:  'Peg' peaked at number eleven, 'Deacon Blues' went to number nineteen, and 'Josie' hit number twenty-six.  







http://www.steelydan.com/










"Peg" peaked at eleven in the US and seven in Canada.










'Aja'
full album:



https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsivMY0UPVaHFDMekqDSx2th2FRVPwN6e




01   00:00 "Black Cow"
02   05:05 "Aja"
03   12:59 "Deacon Blues"
04   20:29 "Peg"
05   24:21 "Home at Last"
06   29:51 "I Got the News"
07   34:51 "Josie"







'Classic Albums'
http://www.veoh.com/watch/v242044pCWxESzH