A couple of real cool guys. I so wanted to be like them!
Posted on 09/03/2017 4:35:49 PM PDT by Rockitz
Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker has died at home aged 67, according to the legendary bands official website.
Becker along with fellow bandmate Donald Fagen wrote some of the 1970s biggest hits, including 'Rikki Don't Lose that Number', 'Do It Again' and 'Reelin' in the Years'.
No cause of death has been announced, but Becker underwent surgery last month and missed Steely Dan's Classic East and West concerts in July as he recovered from the unspecified ailment.
Fagan had told Billboard, 'Walter's recovering from a procedure and hopefully he'll be fine very soon.'
According to Rolling Stone, Becker's doctor had advised him not to leave his Malibu home during his post-operative period.
Fagen paid tribute to his bandmate as 'an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter.'
'Walter Becker was my friend, my writing partner and my bandmate since we met as students at Bard College in 1967,' he wrote in a lengthy statement.
'Walter had a very rough childhood — I'll spare you the details. Luckily, he was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter.
'His habits got the best of him by the end of the seventies, and we lost touch for a while. In the eighties, when I was putting together the NY Rock and Soul Review with Libby, we hooked up again, revived the Steely Dan concept and developed another terrific band.
'I intend to keep the music we created together alive as long as I can with the Steely Dan band.'
Becker and Fagen began collaborating as students at New York's Bard College, writing hits for other artists, including Barbra Streisand's 'I Mean to Shine', before the pair moved to California in the early Seventies to form Steely Dan - named after a sex toy in cult classic Naked Lunch...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Hat's off to the passing of a great guitarist. d:^)
One of the great bands of my generation.
Steely Dan was a unique sound of our generation.
RIP and prayers.
We continue to lose our youth to the Grim Reaper. And they all are so danged YOUNG!
I only have one CD (A Decade of Steely Dan), but I love the songs and I feel their music, which has a bit of a mystical quality, has held up quite well over time. RIP
I caught Steely Dan once in 1993 at the Greek Theatre. Always perfection whether in concert or on vinyl. I have everything through “Two Against Nature” (2000) plus a couple Fagan solo efforts. I would have seen them last summer at the Hollywood Bowl, but had already purchased tickets to go back east to see family.
Of course I love his work, and he and Fagen shaped my high school career.
But I saw them live a few times, and it seems the older Becker got, the less he played. From lead guitar to rhythm and then to bass - they were bringing ASCAP musicians to play Walter’s parts.
During the intermission, when he played his solo stuff people walked out and waited in the halls to come back.
No.
I can tell you exactly where I bought the LP Pretzel Logic when it came out. There was a K Mart on 436 near hwy 50 in Orlando at that time. I was moving out of a house I rented nearby and stopped in there to buy a record to raise my spirits.
Intelligent rock
Kid Charlemagne
I was in college
We knew right off what it was about
Can’t Buy a Thrill was epic
Like EOMS or TRAFOZS or CTTE or Smokin or Argus or Slider or DP: MIJ
GOOD YEAR
Exile is arguably best album ever made for so much material
Yes, he and Fagan did solo albums. Good stuff.
From https://www.thewrap.com/donald-fagan-steely-dan-fans-pay-tribute-to-walter-becker/
Donald Fagen’s tribute:
Walter Becker was my friend, my writing partner and my bandmate since we met as students at Bard College in 1967. We started writing nutty little tunes on an upright piano in a small sitting room in the lobby of Ward Manor, a mouldering old mansion on the Hudson River that the college used as a dorm.
We liked a lot of the same things: jazz (from the twenties through the mid-sixties), W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, science fiction, Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Berger, and Robert Altman films come to mind. Also soul music and Chicago blues.
Walter had a very rough childhood – I’ll spare you the details. Luckily, he was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. He was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny. Like a lot of kids from fractured families, he had the knack of creative mimicry, reading people’s hidden psychology and transforming what he saw into bubbly, incisive art. He used to write letters (never meant to be sent) in my wife Libby’s singular voice that made the three of us collapse with laughter.
His habits got the best of him by the end of the seventies, and we lost touch for a while. In the eighties, when I was putting together the NY Rock and Soul Review with Libby, we hooked up again, revived the Steely Dan concept and developed another terrific band.
I intend to keep the music we created together alive as long as I can with the Steely Dan band.
Donald Fagen
September 3 2017
The Steely Dan boys wrote and performed some of the best 1970s-80s pop music and it still sounds great today. A salute to Walter Becker, you are missed.
62 here and lost two HS classmates recently to chronic illness (MS & kidney disease) so this death in the music world that gave us the sound of our lives just seems more impactful.
Wow I can’t believe I didn’t know the titles to more of their hits. LOL couldn’t match a tune to the titles - Rikki is the only one that is clear what it is!
Good stuff.
I am still mourning Keith Emerson and Greg Lake.
Cletus removes his 10-gallon hat and looks at his Justins. RIP, Walter.
The Dan’s music was always so crisp and clean. Always my favorite.
Call me Deacon Blues...
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