In the publishing industry at the turn of the 21st century, the guitar tablature for Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” was a cover-line-worthy selling point for a magazine whose newsstand sale price was $4.95. The shelves of Waldenbooks inside every bustling local mall brimmed with mags aimed at the aspirational shred-meister: Guitar, Guitar Player, Guitar One, Guitar World, Acoustic Guitar. The first Guitar Hero video game was a few years off on the horizon, and so learning to play “Eruption” on an actual six-string still seemed like one apex of human achievement, the teenage dirtbag’s version of summiting Everest.
It was in this milieu that the journalist Vic Garbarini was writing a regular column for Guitar World called “60 Minutes.” The concept was simple: get a high-profile musician to curate about an hour’s worth of their favorite music and offer commentary on each track. Over the years, he interviewed the likes of Lindsey Buckingham, Rick Nielsen, Geddy Lee, and Robert Pollard. In a 1996 issue, Joni Mitchell, ever the Steely Dan fan, praised “Deacon Blues” for, “The arrangement. The melody. The wit.”
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were promoting Two Against Nature, their Steely Dan comeback album, when Garbarini landed them for the March 2000 issue. “Walter and I were jazz fans from a very early age,” Fagen says. “We later discovered blues and rock as teenagers, so we’re attracted to rock and R&B that has kind of a jazz structure and swing to it.” The songs they selected reflect their range of influences: Brubeck and Mingus, Delta blues and Motown, the Beatles and Stones.
Garbarini tells me he’s planning to compile his “60 Minutes” columns into a book, an exciting proposition in part because precious few of the pieces are available online. In the meantime, please sit back and enjoy Becker and Fagen’s essential mix.
