10.
Steely Dan – Aja
What do records represent? It’s not just about music, because you have music everywhere. Records are artefacts and they remind you of things or people. So I for the remaining four, I’ll probably just pick things that remind me of places or people.
This is more about what the record represents to me than it is about the music itself – this just reminds me of being a kid, and specifically of car journeys with my family. My dad had a compilation of what I think of as the big Steely Dan records – Aja, Katie Lied, Gaucho and The Royal Scam. I’ve bought all of those four records now, and it feels like I know them back-to-front. They’re an interesting band. Donald Fagen’s lyrics are pretty bizarre and sometimes quite nasty. It’s quite naff, a lot of it, but it’s interesting enough harmonically, rhythmically, lyrically, to keep coming back to. It’s very pleasant music on the face of it, but it has this bite, and the lyrics have these very bleak and depressive overtones.
[Aja] is an amazing record, phenomenal drumming in particular. There’s two really big drummers on this, Bernard Purdie and Steve Gadd. Drummers like that introduced me to the importance of a really good rhythm section, and I’ve got tons of records that feature Steve Gadd on drums. It’s pretty amazing hearing how adaptable he was as a drummer, and how he could drive different records in different directions – he’s a really sensitive player but still forceful enough to drive a record like a good drummer needs to.
I went to see them with my dad at Wembley Arena later on, I must have been around 10 or something, and they were touring another record. It was an alright record I think, I can’t remember. I remember it being a big experience at the time, and being excited about going to this concert, but I can’t remember anything much about it at all other than being really far away from where the music was, and thinking it didn’t sound either loud or good. I remember talking to my dad about how it had felt strange being so disconnected from the music even though it was this really big musical event.
I feel like someone’s attacking me when they say Steely Dan are shit. [laughs] I feel like someone’s stabbing me in the heart. It feels accusatory, because it feels so inextricably a part of me.
