AP: Steely Dan had to do some homework for tour
Posted: August 6, 2009 Filed under: Artists, Concerts | Tags: Donald Fagen, Steely Dan, Walter Becker 1 Comment »By MARGIE SZAROLETA, Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO – To prepare for their current tour, Steely Dan had to relearn their own music.
The band will perform one of three albums — “Aja,” “Gaucho” or “The Royal Scam” — in its entirety on select dates of their Rent Party tour. On other dates, they will play requests that fans submit through their Web site. That means Steely Dan had to do some homework.
“We had to learn a lot a whole bunch of stuff we haven’t been doing, just trying to guess what people might vote for,” said singer Donald Fagen.
Guitarist Walter Becker found the idea intriguing because some of the songs they had never performed live.
“We had stopped performing in the ’70s when we recorded these three albums, so we never really went out to perform the tunes from these three albums,” said Becker.
Full story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090806/ap_en_mu/us_music_steely_dan
It amazes me how few of the players in Steely Dan were actually members of the band. Don’t get me wrong, I love Steely Dan’s work for the first eight years of their career. But this group was dependent on outside talent to give flavor to their best songs.
http://eightrackmind.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/a-band-of-session-players-steely-dans-catalog-p-1/