Steely Dan's Quiet Hero

Walter Becker was a wry perfectionist behind one of rock’s most eccentric bands – even if he preferred life in the shadows

- David Browne

FOR YEARS, ANYONE WHO WANTED TO USE the bathroom while visiting Walter Becker’s studio in the countryside of Maui was directed outside. There, on one of the walls of a primitive, woodslatted outhouse, they’d find a gold-record plaque for Steely Dan’s Aja – which, over time, began oxidizing and tarnishing in the ocean air.

It was a prime example of the irreverence, unflashiness and dark humor that Becker, who died at 67 on September 3rd, displayed his whole life. There were few, if any, rock stars like him. He looked and acted like a droll college professor, and in conversation he could expound on Samuel Beckett’s plays, delve into the details of the Manhattan Project or rattle off the names of sidemen on obscure jazz records.

Becker was as much an architect of Steely Dan’s airtight sound and skewed sensibility as his friend, singer keyboardist Donald Fagen. The two co-wrote the Dan’s songs, oversaw their legendarily persnickety recording sessions, and shared a love of Beat writing, sci-fiand other topics that resulted in the parade of freaks and geeks who inhabited their songs. A behind-the-scenes maestro, Becker often let others play his parts on record, and few fans knew the dramatic arc of his life – his painful childhood, and the addiction, seclusion and rebirth he endured as an adult. “Any kind of desire for validation or worldly applause was so well-hidden, if it was there at all,” says producer and friend Larry Klein.