(Credits: Far Out / Spotify)
As a band, Steely Dan is a lot like craft beer; sure, it’s not for everybody, but those people who are into it are really into it. Progenitors of jazz-rock fusion, Steely Dan have endeared themselves towards an incredibly dedicated following, but they struggled to achieve the same levels of mainstream success and critical acclaim as many of their contemporaries. It is strange, then, that the group took so much inspiration from the music industry colossus that was The Beatles.
The Beatles changed the lineage of popular music indefinitely, blazing a path for countless future artists to follow in their footsteps. Led by incredible songwriting and innovative music-making techniques, it should come as no real surprise that the Fab Four had an influence on everything that followed them. However, upon listening to the jazz-rock of Steely Dan, you would be forgiven for thinking that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were not all that concerned with records like Sgt. Pepper or Let It Be.
In actuality, Becker and Fagen borrowed a great deal from The Beatles, especially during the early days of Steely Dan. After all, the pair could point to the Merseyside rockers as a prime example of a group who regularly employed session musicians – even though many artists looked down upon that practice – and largely abandoned live performances in favour of studio work. Without the pioneering quality of The Beatles, it is unlikely that Steely Dan would have existed in the same capacity as they did.
Understandably, then, the band were all pretty star-struck upon finding out that they were recording an album in the same building as the iconic Beatles producer, George Martin. Often dubbed ‘the fifth Beatle’, Martin is the gold standard of music producers, having worked on some of the most legendary records throughout rock and pop history. So, you can imagine the joy of Steely Dan finding out that Martin was recording in the same studio as them in 1977.
Working on their sixth studio album, Aja, Fagen and Becker were keen to get Martin’s take on their work. However, the Beatles producer was less than complimentary about the band’s unique jazz fusion sound. Fellow producer Elliott Scheiner, who was working as a sound engineer during the Aja sessions, later recounted, “We found George [Martin] next door. We wanted to play him the song. George came in and, you know, I was very proud of this song, and George listened to it, and he had no comment.”
Seemingly, his indifference to the music was worse than an insult. According to Scheiner, Martin did not say anything, leaving the sound engineer and band to wonder, “Did we fuck up? Did I fuck up? I can’t imagine.” Disappointingly, the producer never gave Steely Dan the answers they desired, spending as little time in the studio as was necessary. “You know, and then he just left”, Scheiner remembered, before adding: “I was really disappointed George didn’t say anything, but it was a great story to tell.”
Luckily, not everybody agreed with Martin’s lacklustre reception to Aja, as it became one of Steely Dan’s most successful records. Reaching the top five in the UK album charts and number three in the US, perhaps it is for the best that Martin didn’t get any feedback, as it turned out pretty good anyway.
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