Double helix: the oral history of "Aja"
Double helix: the oral history of "Aja"
How Steve Gadd and Wayne Shorter launched the title track of Steely Dan's 1977 masterpiece into outer space
Today, on what would have been Wayne Shorter’s 90th birthday, Amazon Prime released Wayne Shorter: Zero Gravity, a poignant three-part portrait of the jazz giant who passed away in March.
Amid the sprawl of Shorter’s exceptional life, a handful of personal tragedies, and his earthshaking work with the likes of Miles Davis, Weather Report, and Joni Mitchell, his cameo on Steely Dan’s song “Aja,” however memorable, understandably goes unmentioned in the documentary. As the Zen-like Shorter himself might say, “What’s one recording session in the eyes of eternity?”
Though Shorter’s appearance on “Aja” is brief, the otherworldly greatness of the saxophonist’s blazing tenor solo is difficult to overstate. Coupled with Steve Gadd’s explosive drumming, Shorter’s playing propels the nearly eight-minute suite into another dimension. Today “Aja” stands as one of the most purely exhilarating, goosebump-raising listening experiences in the whole of Steely Dan’s catalog.
Here is the story of making “Aja,” as told by some of the people who were in the room where it happened.
Gary Katz (producer): When we were working on the song “Aja,” none of the drummers we would regularly use could play “Aja” in the way we wanted. For some inexplicable reason, we had never hired Steve Gadd before. We said, “Let’s call Gadd. This is up his alley.”
Steve Gadd (drums): Donald and Walter weren’t happy with what they had gotten from other guys. They wanted the improvisational sections to get pretty raucous, which went against what most drummers back then were used to doing on pop records.