As a child of the eighties, I grew up on Eddie and Yngwie, Lynch etc... and as consequence My undeveloped brain thought faster = better. I had heard the odd Steely Dan song here and there on the radio but never really listened and I never had any friends that were into them.
I basically learned how to play out of guitar magazines which at the time had just started printing tablature, and I was surprised at the number of steely dan songs that were published that I had never heard of...yes, I knew "reeling in the years".....but "my old school, Bohdisattva, Kid Charlemenge...I was unaware of.
Fast forward to last year and my drummer say's it's time to make a trip to Colorado so you can understand what you have been missing all these years. Never once had I tried what is legal in Colorado and not in my home state, But I figured the kids were grown and I have been responsible for the most part...so why not. We get there and once I get acclimated with the "higher" elevation, he says "now for what you've been missing... and in my elevated state I say " no , I get it, this is awesome" he say's no, not that, this! And hits play on his phone and we spend hours listening to the entire Steely Dan catalog...and suddenly, it all made sense, I got it. Then I thought about all those guitar magazines I had with Steely dan transcriptions (I still have every guitar magazine I ever got going back to the early 80's) As A kid I would look at all those notes and get intimidated by it and on top of that, I really didn't know what it was supposed to sound like. And unlike today where I have anything at my fingertips, back then no one I knew had any steely dan records and these songs were not played on the radio. I can't imagine how I went into my late 40's without listening to this.... Luckily, I' am making up for lost time and listen to them nearly daily... Absolutely phenomenal, on so many levels (performing , writing, recording, mixing, lyrically ), We then turned our bass player on to them and he is 25...but he got it right away. Now we have steely dan playing before we play and for whatever reason we seem to play off each other better.
As I started reading the backstory, I learned that Becker had been Ill recently, so it didn't come as complete shock. They are playing near here next month, but sadly my first Steely dan experience won't include a huge part of the band....I really wish I had been more open minded as a kid. Certainly sad he's gone so early ...but what a legacy to leave behind!