Aja (song)

"Aja" is a song by the American rock band Steely Dan, from their sixth studio album Aja, released in 1977. It is a jazz rock song with elements of jazz fusion, progressive rock and jazz. Writers Walter Becker and Donald Fagen play guitar and synthesizer, respectively, with session musicians playing the other parts. Fagen sings lead vocals. Production duties were handled by Gary Katz; the album was released through ABC Records.

Musically, it is tonally sophisticated and a structurally complex work that was praised upon release as the most ambitious track the duo had ever attempted. The song's lyrics voice the interior monologue of a man who runs to the title character to escape the stresses of his life "up on the hill." Fagen claimed that it was inspired by the relative of an acquaintance, who had married a Korean woman named Aja. He has described the song as being about the "tranquility that can come of a quiet relationship with a beautiful woman."

Despite its complexity, and unlike most of the other tracks on the album, it took less than a day to record the basic rhythm track for "Aja", which Steely Dan credited to the musicians' quick learning, without long rehearsals. Denny Dias' guitar work, including a solo, marked the last appearance on a Steely Dan record by any other founding member of the group. On the other hand, it marked the first appearances of saxophonist Wayne Shorter and drummer Steve Gadd with Steely Dan. Both played solos during the instrumental break which came to be considered among their finest work; Gadd's, the first drum solo in a Steely Dan song, was recorded in just two takes. Jazz critic Ben Sidran later called the recording session "a moment when ... pop music suddenly took a turn left."

"Aja" is the longest song the band recorded before they disbanded in 1981, running approximately eight minutes. Fagen and Becker performed it in concert after they reunited late in the 20th century and began touring again. They released one live version on the album Alive in America. Many artists, including Woody Herman, have covered it on Steely Dan tribute albums.

Background

Songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen had formed Steely Dan in 1972 as a rock quintet, with Becker playing bass and Fagen on keyboards. Even on the group's first album, Can't Buy a Thrill, the two had been willing to feature contributions from outside session musicians such as guitarist Elliott Randall. After their third album, 1974's Pretzel Logic, they decided to stop touring to focus on songwriting; the other three members were dismissed, although guitarist Denny Dias continued working with Becker and Fagen on occasional tracks. The following album, Katy Lied, relied largely on various assortments of studio musicians, and showed more of the influence of the jazz the two had listened to during their formative years.

By the time Becker and Fagen began writing and recording the sixth Steely Dan album, Aja, in 1977, they felt comfortable enough to focus on their songwriting. "We were feeling really lucky that year," Becker said in the 1999 Classic Albums documentary on the album, "and wanted to try something longer." He describes "Aja" as a suite that combined several other songs they were working on,Lewens, at 42:30 including an early demo song called "Stand by the Seawall".

During the same interview, Fagen called the song "a journey in time and space." He has long claimed it was named after a South Korean woman a high school friend's brother married after serving in the Army in that country. He is not sure about the spelling, however. "We thought that was a good name, a very romantic sort of image," Fagen said, "the sort of tranquility that can come of a quiet relationship with a beautiful woman."

Recording

The song was recorded during the early 1977 Aja sessions at The Village Recorder in Los Angeles. Gary Katz produced the song, as he had for every Steely Dan song. Roger Nichols and three other recording engineers were present, work for which they would share that year's Grammy Award for Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording.

Aja was Steely Dan's first album to give credit to the musicians on each individual track. There were three guitarists on the track: Larry Carlton, Becker, and Dias.Breithaupt, 102 Carlton had played some guitar solos on the band's previous album, The Royal Scam, and done arrangements for Aja; Dias had played in bands with them before becoming one of the founding members of Steely Dan. Parts of performances by all three were edited together into the final mix. In the 1999 Classic Albums segment on Aja, Dias recalled the song as being particularly challenging for the guitarists, claiming that "its very existence is a contradiction. I mean, when have you ever heard a song on a rock'n'roll record that absolutely cannot be played on a guitar?" Specifically, he cited "clusters where the notes are so close together that you can't stretch your fingers far enough to get all the notes out at the same time ... [and] open voicings that are so wide apart that you can't reach the notes."Lewens, at 43:53 The final recording used much of his work, including the long solo during the song's instrumental break; it was his last appearance with Steely Dan, and thus the last appearance of any of the group's original members besides Becker and Fagen on their records. Becker's blues phrases are used over the next statement of the main theme.

Fagen sang "Aja"'s lead vocals, with Timothy B. Schmit, who had just left Poco to join the Eagles, backing him up. Fagen also played the minimal synthesizer parts the song required, as well as some toots of a police whistle during the instrumental break. He left the bulk of the keyboard parts to others; Joe Sample played the electric piano while Michael Omartian, who was amazed that Becker and Fagen had abandoned the "totally cool" "Stand by the Seawall", handled acoustic piano. Chuck Rainey played bass guitar. Becker and Fagen had reportedly hoped to get Tony Williams, a member of Miles Davis' Second Great Quintet, to play drums, but settled instead for Steve Gadd. Percussionist and pianist Victor Feldman, who would join Becker and Fagen in contributing to every song on the album, provided marimba parts.

Three music stands were required to hold the chart for each player in the rhythm section;Breithaupt, 96 despite that complexity, the song took very little time to record, in contrast to the other songs on Aja, all of which were simpler. Originally, they planned to rehearse for a day before beginning to record, but changed their mind after one performance. "Steve Gadd, being a fantastic drummer, is a fantastic sight reader and didn't really need to rehearse; neither did the rest of the band," Becker told Steely Dan historian Brian Sweet in 2007. Michael Omartian, who played piano on the session, remembers things differently, describing three hours of rehearsals before recording started. Bill Schnee, the engineer on the album, commented about the basic tracking sessions that "We rehearsed this song more than any other song".

Drum solo

Gadd, whose part had designated sections where he was to improvise, took two takes to record his part (including the first drum solos on a Steely Dan recordBreithaupt, 52 ), not one as is sometimes claimed; they were edited together in the final mix. "[His] part was not written. We discussed the tune a little bit and by virtue of his musicianship he just knew what to do," said Becker. He recalls "telling him just to play like hell" through the part that became the saxophone solo.

"The session went real smooth," Gadd told jazz critic Ben Sidran in 1995. "Everyone had their head into it like probably it was going to take a long time to get it, if we ever would get it. And, that day, it just seemed to fall into place." Ten years later, he elaborated further that he had heard of Becker and Fagen's difficulties and "[a] lot of the musicians weren't very optimistic that they were ever going to get these things done."

According to Sweet, Gadd's playing was so visually appealing that some of the other players became distracted and had to rerecord portions of their parts later.

Saxophone solo

With everything else laid down, only the tenor saxophone solo remained. As part of their conscious effort to expand the range of musicians they worked with, Becker and Fagen hoped to have it played by Wayne Shorter, who had also been a member of Davis' Second Great Quintet and later backed him on the pioneering fusion albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. At the time, Shorter had worked only on jazz records.Breithaupt, 50

Katz asked Shorter on Becker and Fagen's behalf if he would play the solo, and he declined. They then asked Dick LaPalm, then manager of the Village Recorder, who knew Shorter from when Weather Report, the prominent fusion band he had co-founded with Joe Zawinul, recorded there. LaPalm agreed, and according to Fagen "vouched for us" to Shorter. They sent the saxophonist a chart. When Shorter came to the studio, he prepared by playing scales on the piano for a half hour, then doing three or four takes. "We were very glad that he came in," Fagen said in 1999.Lewens, at 45:30. "I think he felt the chances were that we would be asking him to do something that was not particularly appropriate [for him], which was, well, a reasonable fear under those circumstances," Becker added.Lewens, at 45:39.

Shorter recalled his decision to play the solo as "quite matter-of-fact". When he came in, he simply asked to hear the sections before and after the portion he would be soloing over so he would have a reference point.Lewens, at 45:55. "He was a little worried, getting into how he would play with Miles," Fagen said. "Of course that didn't bother us at all." Shorter explained that the lesson he had taken from Davis was to focus on his performance and "don't give too much away."Lewens, at 46:28.

Shorter "play[ed] to the homonymic meaning of the tune's title ... with a certain chant-like quality resonant of the Orient," wrote his biographer Michelle Mercer. "But mostly he related to the music itself." She quotes Becker:

Mercer notes that there wasn't much of that "bebop language" in the music underneath, despite the richness of the underlying chord. "Even so," she concludes, "Wayne managed to tell a blockbuster story in just one minute". She credits Gadd for inspiring him much as Tony Williams had when he and Shorter played in Davis's band. "It was majestic and stately, tracing a mountainous arc with cleverly displaced references back to the vocal melody."

Missing master tape

In the late 1990s, when Becker and Fagen were putting together a remastered version of the album as part of a series of reissues on compact disc, they found that the original two-inch multitrack master tapes of "Aja" and "Black Cow" were both missing, precluding a version of either song in 5.1 surround sound. In the confusion after the completion of the album, those masters were not stored with the others, they wrote in the liner notes that accompanied the reissue. They offered a $600 reward to anyone who found them and contacted their management: "This is not a joke. Happy hunting."

Composition

Canadian studio musician Don Breithaupt, who wrote the 2007 volume on Aja for Bloomsbury Publishing's 33 1/3 series, breaks the song down into 24 separate parts.Breithaupt, 91–92 "It conforms more to sonata form than Sinatra form," he writes.Breithaupt, 95 This complex musical structure is in contrast to the lyrics—three short verses, all beginning with the same line, and with the same chorus.

Lyrics