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Walter Becker
Posted on 3/27/23 at 9:13 am
Posted on 3/27/23 at 9:13 am
Where would y’all rate him with all the time great guitarist? Guy was a great songwriter and a hell of a guitarist.
8
Posted on 3/27/23 at 9:53 am to lsuson
Very good
Very, very good.
Great songwriter as well.
Very, very good.
Great songwriter as well.
Posted on 3/27/23 at 10:54 am to lsuson
Asking out of ignorance, but having casually watched a documentary on the "band", how often did he play the guitar parts on the studio albums?
Posted on 3/27/23 at 11:43 am to AlxTgr
quote:early on (when they were an actual band with regular band members) very often. later (when it was him & fagen + studio musicians) not very much. he became the composer/arranger at that point
how often did he play the guitar parts on the studio albums?
Posted on 3/27/23 at 1:08 pm to cgrand
Posted on 3/27/23 at 1:41 pm to lsuson
Walter Becker was an excellent musician, producer and songwriter.
Posted on 3/27/23 at 3:05 pm to lsuson
My opinion is that Walter Becker was a really, really good guitar player, a great songwriter when teamed with Donald Fagan, and smart enough to know his limitations and to know when he wasn't good enough for the song or the part that he was writing that needed someone either better or different than him. He was also, in my opinion, better than he would give himself credit for being.
Posted on 3/27/23 at 3:30 pm to lsuson
His strength was as a composer and coproducer. The reason they used so many session guys over the years was that he knew what he wanted for each song and knew he couldn't do it in a reasonable amount of time. In fact, no single guitarist could have. That's the genius of peak Steely Dan, just different and fantastic "first call" session guys all over those records.
This post was edited on 3/27/23 at 3:31 pm
Posted on 3/28/23 at 11:48 am to lsuson
I'm a giant SD fan but I never really thought much of Becker as a guitarist. Great songwriter however.
Posted on 3/28/23 at 3:00 pm to lsuson
quote:
Where would y’all rate him with all the time great guitarist?
I have trouble ranking guys but I would say he is a great guitar player simply from the perspective of what I hear and having no real understanding of actually playing the instrument (I am musically challenged when it comes to actually producing music instrumentally or vocally).
And I think he is an even better songwriter, one of the very best IMO.
Posted on 3/28/23 at 4:22 pm to AlxTgr
quote:
how often did he play the guitar parts on the studio albums?
They had Skunk and Dias for the first 3 albums and Walter didn't receive any 6-string credits for Can't Buy a Thrill or Countdown to Ecstasy. I may be wrong, but I doubt we hear his guitar playing on either of those.
Now, for the third (the last with both Dias and Skunk in the band), Pretzel Logic, that's definitely Becker on the solo of the title track. He played some other guitar parts on the record, but for Rikki, that's Skunk on lead (with Dean Parks rhythm). In just reviewing these, my goodness they could assemble talent. Gordon played all the drums on Pretzel Logic except for Night by Night (Porcaro) and some parts of Parker's Band (also Porcaro). Tim Schmit did the high backing vocals. Other than Fagan, you had Omartian and Paich on keys/piano. Other than Becker, you had Wilton Felder and Chuck Rainey on bass.
#AllStars
Posted on 3/28/23 at 11:22 pm to lsuson
He was a superb rhythm guitarist who possessed an incredible talent for playing and writing intricate parts.
IMO, he was an average soloist at best and in the shows I saw SD live, he tended to do more “noodling” versus playing blues riffs.
The final time I saw him live with SD he noodled constantly throughout the songs, seldom playing rhythm and stepping all over Fagan’s vocals. It was a departure from the more solid rhythm he played in the prior shows I’d seen.
In the studio he came up with some brilliant stuff, including the bass line on Josie. However I recently listened to a podcast with Fagan where he talked about how little Becker actually played on the albums. This verifies what Chuck Rainey said about Becker, that he would write bass parts but instead of playing them himself, he would show Rainey his idea and then allow Chuck to expand on the original idea and lay the actual track down when it came time to record.
IMO, he was an average soloist at best and in the shows I saw SD live, he tended to do more “noodling” versus playing blues riffs.
The final time I saw him live with SD he noodled constantly throughout the songs, seldom playing rhythm and stepping all over Fagan’s vocals. It was a departure from the more solid rhythm he played in the prior shows I’d seen.
In the studio he came up with some brilliant stuff, including the bass line on Josie. However I recently listened to a podcast with Fagan where he talked about how little Becker actually played on the albums. This verifies what Chuck Rainey said about Becker, that he would write bass parts but instead of playing them himself, he would show Rainey his idea and then allow Chuck to expand on the original idea and lay the actual track down when it came time to record.
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