Walter Becker

Walter Becker was the silent partner in Steely Dan. Though he seldom sang or stepped forward as a player, the band hinged on the writing/arranging partnership between Becker and his lifelong musical partner Donald Fagen. Becker and Bard College classmate Fagen began working together in 1968, pitching songs wherever they could; Barbra Streisand recorded one and for a time they even joined the '60s pop band Jay & the Americans. But their music proved too idiosyncratic for anyone but themselves, and by 1971 they had the first version of their band, named Steely Dan after the sex toy in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch. The band initially had a steady lineup, with Becker on bass and Fagen on vocals and keyboards, but by the fourth album Katy Lied it was down to the two founders and an increasingly jazz-based crew of studio players. Like few rock bands before them, Steely Dan embodied jazz sophistication and hipster cool, and no self-respecting college dorm would be without an album. The new version of Steely Dan didn't play live, and their perfectionistic studio techniques were part of their mystique. Becker's heroin addiction was one reason Steely Dan originally split in 1981; the last original album Gaucho was lyrically steeped in drugs and decadence. Becker moved to Hawaii where he cleaned up, farmed avocados, and got into record production, overseeing albums for Rickie Lee Jones, Michael Franks and the British band China Crisis (which he briefly joined as a synthesizer player). More notably he produced and played on Fagen's 1993 album Kamerikad; Fagen returned the favor the following year on Becker's solo debut 11 Tracks of Whack, the first album to feature his vocals. In 1993 Becker and Fagen revived Steely Dan as a live band, which much of their later material being played live for the first time. To fans' surprise, they became a fixture on the concert circuit over the next two decades and produced two new studio albums 2000's Two Against Nature and 2003's Everything Must Go. Becker's second and final solo album 2008's Circus Money, continued the interest in reggae that had first surfaced on Steely Dan's album The Royal Scam. Becker had now moved to guitar, and his spoken addresses-where he'd dispense bits of cynical wit, usually during "Hey Nineteen"-became a fixture of Steely Dan shows. Fans however were concerned when Becker failed to appear at Steely Dan's last two shows, at the Classic East and West Festivals in July 2017; Fagen announced only that Becker was ill and recovering. Unfortunately the latter was not to be, and Becker died of unspecified causes on September 3, 2017.