Vevoのインスタグラム(vevo) - 9月5日 00時52分

Remembering Steely Dan's Walter Becker
As half of one of pop music's great songwriting duos, Steely Dan co-founder #WalterBecker, who died on September 3 at age 67, camouflaged black humor in catchy melodies, sophisticated harmonies, and crystalline production.
Picking up in 1972, Becker and singer-keyboardist Donald Fagen stormed the pop charts with subtly subversive, and often deeply ironic, jazz-influenced singles – from "Do It Again" to "Hey Nineteen" – and a half-dozen somewhat cryptic, utterly cohesive albums. After a 1981 split, the Dan reunited in 1993, released two albums ('Two Against Nature' won the 2001 Grammy Award for Album of the Year), and toured extensively – in striking contrast to their '70s aversion to life on the road.
As fellow students at Bard College during the late '60s, Becker and Fagen experimented with drugs, literature, and songwriting as they evolved into the sort of "eminent hipsters" referenced by the title of Fagen's 2013 memoir. For a time they backed Jay Black (who called them the "Manson and Starkweather of pop") in Jay and the Americans. The self-taught Becker played bass on Steely Dan's first two albums before moving to guitar, which he continued to play with increasing funk-flavored proficiency throughout his career.
With Fagen as the band's frontman, Becker became its tech head, obsessed with using the recording studio as an instrument itself. Steely Dan's most popular albums are intricate constructions involving instrumental aces working to realize the pair’s perfectionist visions. Its music is simultaneously nostalgic and modern, with B-movie imagery, obscure cultural references, and silky jazz chords. Yacht rock? These cats were piloting the Queen Mary.
Becker took Steely Dan's downbeat vibe even further on his 1994 solo debut, '11 Tracks of Whack,' which deploys cagey rhythmic switch-ups in songs about junkies, immigrants, and a wife from hell. 'Circus Money' (2008) served as a vehicle for his deep love of reggae. With or without its nihilist edge, Becker's visionary sound survives in the detail-obsessed music of Kanye West, Pharrell Williams and many other connoisseurs of cool. - Richard Gehr

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