In their quest to capture perfection and grace on tape, Steely Dan famously recorded the same song multiple times with various personnel. The method allowed Walter Becker and Donald Fagen to keep only those performances that perfectly suited a particular track. It also led to some disappointment among the players and vocalists who found themselves, at the end of the game of musical chairs, without a seat.
The fraternity of castoffs includes the guitarist Robben Ford, whose solo on “Peg” was among those scrapped before Jay Graydon nailed it. On the same song, the backing vocal part Eagles singer Don Henley attempted would eventually go to Michael McDonald.
The drummer Chris Parker was also one of the poor, unfortunate souls. Hired for “Time Out of Mind” during the recording of what would become Gaucho, he did a vigorous daylong tracking session at A & R in New York only to discover, upon the record’s release, that he had not made the cut. Scanning the album’s liner notes, he saw the name of his close friend, Rick Marotta, listed as drummer.
“It was kind of a disaster for me,” recalls Parker, who would go on to be the first drummer of Bob Dylan’s Never Ending Tour and a member of the Saturday Night Live band.
But this tale has a happy ending. More than a decade after the rejection, Parker appeared on four of the eight songs on Donald Fagen’s 1993 solo album, Kamakiriad: “Trans-Island Skyway,” “Countermoon,” “Florida Room,” and “On the Dunes.”
As you’ll hear in this audio piece, Parker now sees his journey as a story of redemption.
