Q&A: Steely Dan's Walter Becker

And you've got Muscatel in there again [a reference to a sweet and fortified wine Steely Dan referred to in their rare single "Dallas"].
Muscatel, sure. You've gotta have Muscatel. Well, I remember using it myself in the Sixties occasionally, for a headache — that I didn't have yet.

Is another Walter Becker show in the works?
Oh, I don't actually know, because we're gonna go out and do the Steely Dan tour and that's gonna pretty much occupy a big chunk of time for me, and energy. At some point, it might be nice to do something, although at that point, I'll probably want to do something slightly different. I don't know if I would aspire to actually re-create the stuff I recorded. It might be more fun to play live with a slightly different format, with more blowing and stuff like that. Maybe.

And the Steely Dan tour ? What have you guys thought up for that?
Well, we're revamping our show to change the pace and the flow of the show and to include songs that we haven't been doing as much recently. We haven't really started rehearsing yet, so I don't really know how it's gonna turn out. We just want to make sure it has a fresh energy for people that have come in previous years, even though they'll still get to hear basically what they wanna hear: the Steely Dan songs played more or less how they were recorded. In some cases, we'll do rewrites, segues and stuff, make it a different live experience. There's a couple songs that I'd like to do that we'll maybe get to do this year. But I hate to say in advance, in case it doesn't happen. And then fans are coming to the shows with signs and stuff, throwing rotten tomatoes at us if we don't do certain songs.

I'm still waiting for you to bust out the bass, man.
Well, Freddie's over there ["Ready" Freddie Washington, Steely bassist for the last two tours]. I'm not gonna be bustin' out any bass as long as he's around. It'll be virtually the same band as last year.

And any talk of writing with Donald?
Sure, anytime. I think that's always a possibility. We've written so many songs together, and I think we're probably both writing all the time. For me, and I think Donald might agree, it's more fun to just play live, get out there and do it, play a song once, and not agonize over a record. We sort of fell into this trap of feeling that we had to record definitive versions of our songs, because probably nobody else would ever record them again, which may be true. But I think there's something about playing a song once the best you can, and then moving on and playing another song — that's how playing live always is. That's good for us. So we ended up doing that instead of recording and writing. And it's also lucrative, it's fun, it gets us out of the house, get a little exercise, a little sweat. Get to do different jobs. I get to play the guitar all night long, which is just fun.