Steely Dan – Gaucho (CD)

Steely Dan’s 37-minute album Gaucho took two years to record and was the most expensive record ever made when it came out on November 21, 1980.

The band’s seventh studio album, which followed the triumph of 1977’s Aja, was fraught with major tragedies during production. During the Gaucho sessions, guitarist Walter Becker was hit by a car late one night while walking home to his New York apartment. It took him six months to recover. Then Becker’s girlfriend, Karen Roberta Stanley, died of a drug overdose at his home while the record was being made.

The recording process itself was problematic. Becker and Steely Dan’s co-founder Donald Fagen were pleased with the song “The Second Arrangement,” but the finished track was inadvertently erased by an assistant engineer, wiping out weeks of work. Becker and Fagen decided that subsequent versions were inferior and abandoned the song. It is no surprise that Becker later said that making Gaucho “wasn’t fun at all, really.”

Nevertheless, the hard work paid off and the album’s seven tracks – “Babylon Sisters,” “Hey Nineteen,” “Glamour Profession,” “Gaucho,” “Time Out Of Mind,” “My Rival” and “Third World Man” – proved hugely popular with fans.

Format : CD (Compact Disc)

1 CD