feature photo: David Corio/Redferns
Walter Becker was a private person and his vital contributions to the greatness of Steely Dan are typically only appreciated by the Dan faithful. But even die-hard fans had little idea of the sheer volume of quality work left behind by the self-effacing half of the duo that he put on a shelf never to be brought over the finish line and released.
That all changed following his September 2017 passing, and it’s given us an opportunity here to more or less extend the Steely Dan Sunday series because these unfinished songs are a rare glimpse inside the artistry of a man by looking at his work while it was in progress.
I guess this semi-long-assed windup is just to say…wow. We’re still getting previously unknown tracks dropped on us generously provided by the official Walter Becker Media site and this is (I think) the twelfth post-mortem Becker track being covered here. It turns out, that guy was a songwriting machine.
Like the large majority of the prior eleven, “War Baby” comes from what we now understand was a particularly fertile period in the early-mid 90s during which he was knocking around ideas and sifting through dozens of candidates for his solo debut Eleven Tracks of Whack album. This particular prospect never came close to the tracking phase, as it’s just Walter Becker on a synth with a rhythm track and his closely mic’d vocal.
The title might suggest this is an anti-war screed, but it ain’t. It’s just one of several examples where he used metaphor to describe a relationship as a game of contention. But using metaphors is something he was very good at, and it was clear he largely had his wit-rich prose in order at this stage.
If there is any other nugget that might be gleaned from the song, it is Walter Becker’s synth bass line. Sure, he’s not playing a bass guitar but it’s still pretty advanced given he hadn’t yet invested a lot into the song’s arrangement this early in the process. As the author of so many precisely grooved bass lines on Steely Dan songs — including many he had others play — should we be surprised by that?
- Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock + Paul Motian – ‘The Old Country’ (1992; 2024 release) - November 7, 2024
- Devin Gray – ‘Melt All The Guns II’ (2024) - November 5, 2024
- David Cain – ‘Variations’ (2024) - November 1, 2024
