So much has been written about Steely Dan that it’s like trying to write about the Beatles. What can I add? I’d venture that 99 percent of Copper readers know about the extraordinary significance and musical accomplishments of the band, especially since the words “Steely Dan” and “audiophile” are so often associated, thanks to the band’s meticulous attention to production and sound quality (along with every other aspect of their music).
In fact, when reading reviews about Steely Dan in audio publications, the focus on sound quality can outweigh the attention paid to the music. This is especially true of Aja, an album that has earned legendary audiophile status for its stunning sound, even outside our insulated audio-geek world – live sound engineers use it as a reference for balancing concert audio systems.
But if I had to pick one Steely Dan album as my favorite I would choose 1975’s Katy Lied. Thank goodness I don’t have to pick just one, because this leaves out so many essential songs from other albums, like “Dirty Work,” “Midnite Cruiser,” “Pearl of the Quarter,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” “Charlie Freak,” “Kid Charlemagne,” “Babylon Sisters,” “West of Hollywood,” and so many more, including, yes, “Aja.”
Yet Katy Lied has such an excellent and varied selection of melodic, distinctive, and perfectly-arranged songs that I would recommend it as the ideal starter album for sentients who have never heard Steely Dan. (Hard to imagine such a thing, but then again, radio signals from Earth from March 1, 1975 have only just reached galaxies more than 50 light years away.) The hit “Black Friday” alone earns the album a place in the rock and roll pantheon. Songs like the sublime “Rose Darling,” the gritty funk of “Daddy Don’t Live in That New York City No More,” the inimitable “Bad Sneakers,” and…I’ll get to them…are the Dan at their height. And if I had to pick the one Steely Dan song I could not possibly live without, that’s actually an easy one: “Doctor Wu.”
If I may digress: Katy Lied is my favorite, though, for personal as well as musical reasons. In 1975 I was halfway through college and thinking of quitting. I was perpetually broke. I was self-conscious and insecure about my appearance, since I was covered with psoriasis. I was hardly a charmer with the ladies. Though I had some great times at my old school, as graduation time drew ever closer I became more and more stressed out, especially since employment opportunities for graduates at the time were bleak.
When I first heard Katy Lied’s “Any World That I’m Welcome To,” I felt like Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were speaking directly to me. “Any world that I’m welcome to/is better than the one I come from.” How could they have possibly known? Yet it was a song of hope, not cynicism: “I can see your hand/reaching out through a shining daydream/where the days and nights are not the same/captured happy in a picture frame.” I’m getting choked up writing this. The song became my anthem.
So I perked up when Analogue Productions reissued Katy Lied as part of its Ultra High Quality Records UHQR series. As the name indicates, this is an ultimate-quality effort: it was mastered by Bernie Grundman from the original analog master tape and pressed as a two-LP set at 45 RPM on 200-gram Clarity vinyl. When I opened the sumptuous slipcase, I was surprised to see the vinyl lived up to its name – the discs are clear, not black. The set comes with a four-page insert with album information including notes by Donald Fagen, and another four-pager with detailed information about the UHQR process (which is exacting and elaborate), along with a gorgeous glossy fold-out album cover with the lyrics printed on the inside. UHQR editions are limited to 20,000 copies.
Steely Dan, Katy Lied, Analogue Productions UHQR slipcase.
Let’s get the dbx thing out of the way, a subject of some discussion online and among Dan aficionados. The production of Katy Lied initially involved a then-new dbx noise-reduction unit, and much has been said about it messing up the sound. But this happened on the initial mixdowns, and not with the 24-track masters, and Fagen, Becker and the engineers were later able to remix the album using Dolby. Engineer Roger “The Immortal” Nichols discusses it in this interview. Wikipedia states, “The damage was mostly repaired after consulting with the engineers at dbx,” and for decades I assumed that the dbx issue affected the final sound of the album, but I checked with Analogue Productions’ Chad Kassem and he stated that this UHQR pressing was made from the original master tape, which was not dbx-encoded.
To the point: the new UHQR remastering beats my original ABC Records (ABCD-846) and later MCA Records (MCA 37043) LPs decisively. I hadn’t listened to the ABC original in a while and it sounded better than I’d remembered it, but it’s spatially flat and dynamically somewhat lifeless. The MCA pressing was worse, with the acoustic pianos sounding like muffled facsimiles of themselves. (Curiously, the ABC LP sounds at least twice as loud as the other two. I also did some digital listening, and what I sampled on Qobuz and Tidal ranged from listenable to you've got to be kidding me.) On both the ABC and MCA pressings, the instruments and vocals are homogenized. Neither are bad, though, and you and I would be OK with them, but there’s no magic.
On the Analogue Productions reissue, there’s magic. There’s more depth, and the various instruments are way more distinct. You can easily tell there are multiple electric and acoustic pianos on the tracks, not just one or two. The guitars have more body. Fagen’s vocals sound more present and nuanced. In fact, the nuances are what set the UHQR reissue apart. That said, the leadoff track, "Black Friday," sounds harsher and flatter than the rest of the album, so you'll need to get past that until the soothing electric sitar ushers in "Bad Sneakers." There's also some track-to-track sonic variation among the songs.
Since this was Steely Dan’s first studio album after they’d decided to call it quits on the road, Katy Lied marked the beginning of Steely Dan’s extensive use of studio musicians and a move towards a jazzier, more orchestrated sound. While original guitarist Denny Dias stayed on, guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and drummer Jim Hodder had left. On my ABC and MCA LPs and many digital reissues I’ve heard, the players get kind of mushed together. Not here. The UHQR sounds livelier and more like real musicians playing, and this is where the magic comes in. The details matter, in this case literally.
Drummer Jeff Porcaro is revealed to be the glue that holds the album’s production together and drives the album’s overall rhythmic feel. What formerly might have been mistaken as an artifact of indifferent mastering proves to be a deliberate production and sonic choice, as Porcaro’s drums, particularly the damped snare drum, sound tight, not ringy. There’s also more “whack” to the snare and toms.
Pianist Michael Omartian and singer Michael McDonald are heard to be the album’s unsung heroes. Omartian’s distinctive acoustic piano touch and melodic flourishes in large part define Katy Lied’s harmonic feel to a larger degree than I had noticed, though Donald Fagen and David Paich make major contributions on electric and acoustic keyboards. Michael McDonald’s vocals, previously heard more in the background, are now heard as an essential aspect of the album’s overall sound and vocal colors. It wouldn’t be a Steely Dan album without killer and I mean killer guitar though, and Katy Lied doesn’t disappoint. There’s so much additional nuance to be heard that the guitar players now sound like human beings and not “guitar tracks.” On “Chain Lightning,” for example, Rick Derringer pulls his fingers off the strings at the end of the second bar of the second chorus of the solo, making a “whap!” sound. On the UHQR reissue, it’s not just a flourish, it’s startling.
I guess Dan stans (thank you Wayne for the term) will want details on each track, and who am I to say no?
“Black Friday”: right off, there’s more detail. You notice that there are multiple pianos, not just the signature phase shifted electric one that does the intro. Everything is deeper, more present. You can hear the care that Fagen, Becker and the musicians put into the arrangements and making all the instruments complement each other sonically, a characteristic trait of the album (well, of all Steely Dan albums).
“Bad Sneakers”: McDonald really shines on this one. This song needed him. The music has air and space. The drum mix is really nice here. You can hear how carefully the bass and piano worked out their parts. The vibraphone (I think; it’s a mallet percussion instrument) at the end is much more obvious.
“Rose Darling”: it hits you once again that, boy are these guys and gals incredible musicians. I’d bet my life that’s Larry Carlton playing those gorgeous double-stop guitar fills. Hey, there’s a synth back there doubling the riff before the chorus. And I can hear Dean Parks’ fingers sliding, on the guitar solo!
“Daddy Don’t Live in That New York City No More”: this mutated blues has real drive and propulsion. It has weight and wallop. Dare I say it, for a Steely Dan track it almost sounds loose and relaxed. Either that or they made everyone redo the hand claps in the right channel 50 times.
“Doctor Wu”: One of the most sublime songs in recorded history sounds simply captivating here, though the mix is a little mellower-sounding than some of the other tracks. It breathes. Walter Becker’s understated yet creative bass playing is wonderful. Bet you never noticed. Neither did I, until now. And for the first time, hearing all the little nuances in Jeff Porcaro’s drumming, especially on the outro, make me wonder if this was inspiration for Steve Gadd’s playing on “Aja.” Of course, Phil Woods’ sax solo is legendary.
“Everyone’s Gone to the Movies”: We’re not perverts, but admit it, this is every Dan fan’s guilty pleasure. (Look up the lyrics and I think you’ll know what I mean.) Now you can clearly and distinctly hear every hit of the conga, and pick out all the background vocals and the nuances of Fagen’s lead vocals. Did you ever hear that little “whoo!” before when he sings, “oh baby come on – whoo! – come on?” Me neither. The ensemble playing of the pianos and mallet percussion is sublime, and perhaps the ironic juxtaposition of the lush sound and the jarring lyrics was not unintentional. The faded in and faded out saxophone sounds like it’s leering.
“Your Gold Teeth II”: I have a bootleg cassette of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker listening to a playback of Katy Lied and making comments. (I have no memory of where I got this tape that someone gave me.) As serious Dan fans know, Denny Dias’ guitar solo on “Your Gold Teeth II” is superhuman. It’s one of those “impossible” solos, like Amos Garrett’s on Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight at the Oasis,” one that mere mortals will never be able to hope to play. At the end of the solo on the cassette, Fagen shouts out, “holy f*ck!” You might too. Fagen’s voice is so expressively real-sounding it’s scary.
“Chain Lightning”: I’ve already mentioned Rick Derringer’s startling guitar solo. The doubled piano and bass sound funkier than ever. They’re so tight! And then it might hit you: a huge part of the “Steely Dan Sound” are the meticulously-voiced “Steely Dan chords,” those added major seconds and other open-sounding and polytonal chords (think Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage”) that are a Steely Dan signature. Those voicings are precisely worked out between the guitars and keyboards on this song and all of Katy Lied. No simple I-IV-V progressions for these guys.
“Any World That I’m Welcome To”: I have to take off my reviewer’s hat here and just revel in the wonderfulness.
“Throw Back the Little Ones”: Nice dynamics, with a strong presence on the acoustic pianos (you can distinctly hear that there’s more than one of them), and a real dynamic “push” and groove, heard to greater effect on this UHQR than I’ve ever experienced before. What used to sound like a wimpy piano fadeout is now the prefect coda not just to this playful song, but to the entire dazzling album.
