Walter Becker(1950-2017)

Steely Dan, named after a William Burroughs term for a marital aid in his book "Naked Lunch," was formed in the early '70s, years after Becker and Fagen met at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. . The act was known for heady songs full of unexpected sonic detours and the band's ornately and painstakingly produced albums, such as 1974's "Pretzel Logic" and 1977's "Aja," are today considered signature works of the decade. "Pretzel Logic" became the band's first album to reach the top 10 in the U.S., its success fueled heavily by the single "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," a tune that documents an overly confident, arguably delusional and likely ill-advised romantic pursuit. The song broadcast Steely Dan's love of jazz, as it pulled its riff from pianist Horace Silver's light-stepping, Brazilian-tinged staple "Song for My Father." Becker and Fagen were essentially the only constants of Steely Dan, which by the mid-'70s had ceased touring and increasingly relied upon a revolving cast of ace musicians. For 1975's "Katy Lied," for instance, the act underwent significant lineup shifts and the work was the first to high-light Michael McDonald, who would later go on to fame with the Doobie Brothers, as a vocalist on a Steely Dan album. Becker and Fagen were often a study in contrasts themselves. "Fagen," wrote former Times music writer Richard Cromelin, "always seemed the more human half of Steely Dan - his sarcasm was downright benign next to Walter Becker, a baby-faced sadist who delighted in turning interviews into whimpering wrecks." The Steely Dan creation myth often notes that Becker and Fagen were drawn to each other via a mutual disdain of hippie culture as well as an adoration for jazz, comedy, science fiction and writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Kurt Vonnegut. In the late '60s, the two worked with pop act "Jay and the Americans" before heading to Los Angeles to work as song-writers and eventually embarking on a career with themselves as the forefront as Steely Dan. Early on, Becker largely played bass, and he said he was encouraged to focus on the guitar by Fagen. In time, Becker developed a languid and loose style that could seamlessly drift among jazz, blues and rock - a proficient and reassuring sound that tempered his off-stage or between song satirical incisiveness. "Donald wanted me to play guitar because he felt that we'd end up with some-thing weirder and more interesting if I did it," Becker told The L. A. Times in 1994. "A lot of times, we'd get somebody to come in and try something and we'd listen to it, and it would be too ordinary or (the guitarist) wouldn't understand it in any unusual tonal way. That was the problem we had a lot of the time back then." The band drifted after the release of 1980's "Gaucho," regularly citing fatigue, personal disagreements and drug abuse, but reunited in 1993. In 2000, the band act released its first studio album in two decades with "Two Against Nature." The albums would win the Grammy Award for album of the year and help Steely Dan remain a touring force well into its fifth decade.

I'm not interested in a rock/jazz fusion. That kind of marriage has so far only come up with ponderous results. We play rock & roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz. I learned music from a book on piano theory. I was only interested in knowing about chords. From that, and from the Harvard Dictionary of Music, I learned everything I wanted to know. [from a 1974 interview with Rolling Stone magazine]