RIP Walter Becker

Funkfingers

Three threads. What a guy.

guitarmangler

Ah, so sad . RIP. 

dindude

Very sad, one of my fav bands, what an absolute legend. RIP.

Skipped

Steve Lukather's tweet has captured exactly how I feel.

Really sad to hear Walter Becker has passed...
Steely Dan music touched me deep. My desert Island music.
RIP Walter.
Condolences Donald..

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/7950045/musicians-react-steely-dan-walter-becker-death-social-media-donald-fagen

axisus

Sad sad stuff. I love Steely Dan's music, so perfectly crafted. RIP Walter

Jez6345789

So much a part of my youth and still love it today such great tunes.
I think Larry Carlton summed it up when he politely said Walter was never a really good guitarist by his own admission he got by. 
But if I could write songs as great as he did why would you bother.

Gods house band needs some decent tunes RIP

monkey42

RIP Walter

equalsql

Wow, I'm stunned by this sad news. Steely Dan were the soundtrack to my late teenage years and the major contributor to my own personal musical education. Learning to play along with their albums trained my ears and brain. WB was a great player and composer.  

guitars4you

Jez6345789 said:

So much a part of my youth and still love it today such great tunes.
I think Larry Carlton summed it up when he politely said Walter was never a really good guitarist by his own admission he got by. 
But if I could write songs as great as he did why would you bother.

Gods house band needs some decent tunes RIP

very valid comment regarding WB as a writer and guitarist - so many great guitar players inc Larry, IMO are mediocre song writers but awesome players - You need the likes of WB and others to write such songs with such a groove

Kebabkid

dindude said:

Very sad, one of my fav bands, what an absolute legend. RIP.

Same Dan. The Nearly Dan gig next month will take on a different meaning for us.

west

As steve lukather said , the Dan have been / are my desert island band without hesitation , and if you knew my penchant for indecision , its signifcant to be able to say that lol ...

i played in brums tribute to SD , "the danny steel orchestra"  it was tough to learn a 2hr set at short notice ( 2 weeks )  but mostly enjoyable except for the usuals ... i might treck up to stoke to see the nearly boys as tribute .....

goodbye  major Dude ... x

joneve

Skipped said:

Steve Lukather's tweet has captured exactly how I feel.

Really sad to hear Walter Becker has passed...
Steely Dan music touched me deep. My desert Island music.
RIP Walter.
Condolences Donald..

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/7950045/musicians-react-steely-dan-walter-becker-death-social-media-donald-fagen

Yep this about sums it up for me. Some of my fondest memories are from spending time with my Dad listening to or watching Steely Dan live. He was absolutely gutted, as am I. An incredible talent. 

Megii

Frizer

I believe Walter coined the term gas. So, in a sense he lives on through music forums everywhere.

dindude

Frizer said:

I believe Walter coined the term gas. So, in a sense he lives on through music forums everywhere.

Is there gas in car? Yes there's gas in the caaaar...

west

From donalds fb page .....

Walter Becker was my friend, my writing partner and my bandmate since we met as students at Bard College in 1967. We started writing nutty little tunes on an upright piano in a small sitting room in the lobby of Ward Manor, a mouldering old mansion on the Hudson River that the college used as a dorm.

We liked a lot of the same things: jazz (from the twenties through the mid-sixties), W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, science fiction, Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Berger, and Robert Altman films come to mind. Also soul music and Chicago blues.

Walter had a very rough childhood - I’ll spare you the details. Luckily, he was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. He was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny. Like a lot of kids from fractured families, he had the knack of creative mimicry, reading people’s hidden psychology and transforming what he saw into bubbly, incisive art. He used to write letters (never meant to be sent) in my wife Libby’s singular voice that made the three of us collapse with laughter.

His habits got the best of him by the end of the seventies, and we lost touch for a while. In the eighties, when I was putting together the NY Rock and Soul Review with Libby, we hooked up again, revived the Steely Dan concept and developed another terrific band.
I intend to keep the music we created together alive as long as I can, both with the Steely Dan band. We’ll miss him forever.

Donald Fagen
September 3 2017

EricTheWeary

Frizer said:

I believe Walter coined the term gas. So, in a sense he lives on through music forums everywhere.

Ancient Guitar Player interview which seems to be the source ( it's on the Steely Dan website which seems to be crashing at the moment); forgotten it was him, always think it was an Eagle for some reason.
RIP Walter. 

Bellycaster

Very sad loss of a huge musical talent. It's always inspiring to hear Steely Dan's music, he'll be remembered by many.

west

"Living hard will take its toll......"  

Kebabkid

I've been listening to the SD collection all day while decorating and then threw on 11 tracks of Whack. Becker's solo stuff was more poppy, quirky and angular in comparison to Fagen's solo offerings, yet meld them together and you have the beauty and the genius that's Steely Dan.

Anyone here like Becker's voice? That was a pleasant surprise when I first heard it.

It's so hard to pick a favourite track and where do you start with Hey Nineteen, Babylon Sisters, Haitian Divorce, Josie, Peg, Reelin' and Kid Charlemagne etc but today, "My Old School" really did it for me featuring lovely guitar work by Jeff "Skunk" Baxter who was also lucky enough to also play in The Doobies.

I often wonder if we would've had some of the artists that emerged and were inspired by them and there's 2 guitarists who I know love their work but never graced any of their albums - Steve Lukather and Robben Ford.