Walter had some personal problems in the early part of the Eighties. He said if he hadn't got out of New York when he did he'd be dead by now.
He said that about Los Angeles when we first met him. When he was flying across country he tried at the time not to fly via Los Angeles, he always tried to get a flight via San Francisco. He said if I do get into Los Angeles and there's a bit of a stopover I try not to leave the airport. It was a dangerous place, he thought.
Donald and Walter always professed to hate living in L.A. It's funny, when we were working with him in Sussex he didn't really drink alcohol, and we went out one night to Brighton to see Durutti Column, and it was really strange because I went over and got a bottle of Newcastle Brown, and he looked at it and went "Newcastle Brown, my favorite" and he got a bottle too. I didn't think he drank anything at all. He wasn't a fanatic about it or whatever, he'd just have one bottle, maybe two bottles and that'd be it, he'd be perfectly happy and stay out. We went to a club afterwards and we were really drunk and he was quite happy standing there talking and listening to us talking complete rubbish. A good bloke.
Has he ever said anything to you about the real reasons why he and Donald split up?
No, he didn't really talk about it. You get a little bit more about it when he's with Roger. I mean Roger's that kind of a guy, Roger's always the one for the storytelling.
Does Roger still teach scuba diving?
Yeah, he taught all of us. We all qualified as divers. Roger would take us out in the mornings before we started work. He's a bit of a case, a complete one-off is Roger.
Eddie made a comment recently about your disappointment at the lack of singles success and he said your time will come. Have you set yourself a timespan within which to achieve that success?
Not really. The whole thing about it is when we finished the last album we were a bit disappointed about Arizona Sky not doing the business, and there were a couple of other songs on there that we thought could have done a bit more, but the encouraging thing was we got bigger in America. The last album did quite well in the States and we've just had a really favorable response to Diary of a Hollow Horse in Billboard, which is really good.
Have you found that since working with Walter, especially in America, that there have been more people listening to your stuff because of the Steely Dan connection?
It's funny actually, 'cause they don't make so much of it over there. The one disappointment was we were with Warner's when Flaunt came out -- we're with A&M now -- and Warner's, despite it being their idea to work with Water, in the end just couldn't find a peg to hang the record on. We spoke to Walter about it and he said he was disappointed with Warner's because they had just done a crap job on the album. In America the record company people make very little of the Steely Dan thing.
What is your following like in America?
The problem that we had beforehand was that Warner's weren't too keen, didn't know what to make of us really. Because they signed us as part of a package and their original publicity photo said that we were Scottish. They knew that much about us; I think they bought us in a great big bargain bin with The Smiths and a couple of others. We turned up and there was five of us and they were really shocked, they thought there was only two. So that's the only way we can judge it, because we only feel like we started to get a fair crack of the whip on the last album with A&M, you see. A lot of people we spoke to said that Flaunt the Imperfection was only really available on import half the time, because Warner's weren't following it up.
Are you planning on going to America and touring?
Oh, yeah. You tend to find that you do well in certain mediums just because it's based on radio play, so you'll get to Kansas City and there'll be maybe 150 people there, then you go up the road to Minneapolis and there'll be perhaps 2,000. We get to New York and we're always good for a lot of tickets in New York. It's one thing that we notice is that people tend to be more interested in the Steely Dan thing here in England, you don't get asked that much about it in the States. I think, that with them being American and all that, they like what they perceive to be a little pop group from Liverpool, who suddenly start taking on this strange pseudo-American kind of thing. Whereas in the States, that's what they're used to -- we're actually seen in a different light, 'cause they didn't go through the Christian, Wishful Thinking thing. We're seen as a new band over there.
Does that concern you that they pick up on the Steely Dan thing more over here? One or two reviews I've read of the LP mention that if you take away the vocals then it sounds just like Steely Dan, which I don't agree with.
I can't hear that at all. The only thing is a lot of producers tend to put layer upon layer upon layer, whereas what Walter tends to do, and one thing that we learned from him -- which maybe was why he didn't have to do so much arranging on this album -- is that before you actually put anything on tape... pay a great deal of attention to the drums and the bass and make sure it's right, then you don't need layer upon layer, and that's why there's a distinctiveness between the Mike Thorne stuff and the Walter stuff on the album.
Does he start with the drums and the bass, get the rhythm track down?
No, he gets everybody playing together.
That's surprising, I thought Steely Dan used to do it track by track.
No, they used to work with bands. They used to get a full line-up there, that's what we were talking to him about -- they used to get a full group in and they'd sit there and would work out who they wanted and then they'd ring up the people -- usually the rhythm section, bring a guitarist in, a piano player, bass player and drummer and sit there and work at it and see if they were happy with the rhythm track and then get to the end of that. If it worked, great, if it didn't they'd just go and get a whole new rhythm section and they'd come in and do it, but they used to do it one song at a time.
They used to write with specific players in mind, so for instance, they'd write a song with Steve Gadd in mind for the drums or Tom Scott for the sax...
That's what he told us. We were talking about Aja one day, 'cause we had this drummer who had this apocryphal story about if you sat close enough you could hear Steve Gadd dropping his stick during the middle of the drum break of Aja. Walter said, "Look, he doesn't even miss a beat" and he nearly fell off his chair; he said it was complete rubbish, he said if he'd done that they would have stopped it...
Aja was a second take, I think, wasn't it?
It was actually a cross-cut, but you can't hear it. It's two different takes put together, but it's something like the first and second or second and third. Kevin's the only drummer ever to have a complete first take accepted. It was on Strength of Character, and Walter had to listen to it for five days first before accepting it! He said if it ever got out, people in Los Angeles would think he was going soft.
After Flaunt the Imperfection, Musician magazine dubbed China Crisis "an intriguing, upbeat hybrid of Dire Straits and Haircut 100." Have you ever heard that one before?
(laughing) No, it's really strange the way anybody'll go to incredible lengths to pigeonhole you.
We noticed you haven't been doing any promotional interviews in the British music press. Is that because you won't talk to them or because they don't ask?
They haven't asked. I think the thing is with the MM and NME is they tend to have editorial policies. I remember we did an interview for Sounds a few years ago, and he took all these photos and because it was Sounds we really hammed it up. And Eddie did this photograph with a double-barrelled shotgun and when we saw the photographer a few weeks later, he thought it was brilliant, he thought this is the last thing anybody'll expect, really good. When we saw him again about three months later we said why hadn't you used the photograph, 'cause they just used the stock promo photos. He said the editor just said we can't put them in the paper. Nobody'll believe it's them. So that's what they did. They do have a fixed editorial policy...
If they don't like you, it doesn't matter what you do they're gonna take you apart.
That was the biggest surprise -- that we actually got a really good review in the NME -- we were just sort of poook!
Walter said that he considered that Steely Dan developed such a perfectionist attitude in the studio that it became more of a problem than a solution. Is that something that you want to guard against?
We don't actually guard against it, we just work different ways. It's like with Stranger By Nature, that was actually started by Walter. We did the bass and drums and Tim did some guitar and we had that as a backing track, but it became a bit of a thorn in Walter's side and he just didn't want to finish it. We took it back and maybe just because we've got a more open attitude we put everything else on it in about two days and we were perfectly happy with it. So you know sometimes Walter would drive himself like a dog chasing his tail to find something he's happy with. Whereas we've got more of an open attitude, so as ourselves, I don't think we could have that same addiction to perfection.
Walter said after Flaunt the Imperfection that he thought the songs were good but would benefit from being enriched a little; "adding a little dissonance" as he put it. Has he offered you songwriting advice?
Well, if anything Garry might have benefited a bit from it, 'cause at the time of Flaunt, Garry was doing all the keyboards, 'cause we didn't have a keyboard player and we got a session player in. Walter said he came into a room and "there were these people playing songs with three-note chords, so what I did was just went over and put the fourth finger in." That's maybe what he's done more, but we've got Brian playing keyboards now. Garry'll come up with simple chordal arrangements and we'll just work around it.
Another one he mentioned was Gift of Freedom, which he said sounded like Miles Davis from his '60s' Kind of Blue period, and he said he added some synth figures at the end of it. Does Garry listen to Miles Davis?
He does now. He never used to then. You see the actual whole thing with the song was originally me and Ed, and it was just like a riff that we did in Ed's bedroom one day. Ed had a guitar, so we just doubled it with the bass then started putting chords over the top and did a little bit of guitar over the top, so that was one of the ones that went into Flaunt with the bare bones of its structure, not a completed song. The main thing that Walter did with that was the brass and chord voicings and then they keyboard player that we were using came in and put a little bit more rhythm into the keyboard parts. I remember he had the brass people down -- the Kick Horns -- and they all turned up and were all really excited about working with Walter. They all naturally went to their first instruments and went through all the arrangements that Ed had worked out. Walter didn't like any of them at all. He said they were too predictable and the first thing he did was find out what each of the four of them played as a second instrument, which meant that the trombonist would play a flute and the trumpeter went onto flugelhorn. They found it a real education, because they'd never ever thought of a different voicing at all -- they just usually went for the straight two saxes, a trumpet and trombone.
Are you all self-taught musically?
Yeah, well Brian got a basic classical education, that's all.
Does Walter need a lot of prompting to talk about Steely Dan?
Yeah. When we were doing Flaunt I used to go swimming with Walter 'cause I used to get up earlier in the morning and I used to go down into Hastings to the pool, then go for something to eat and he'd drive back and I'd just sit there picking his brains and rabbiting away, trying to get bits and pieces out of him. But there's certain areas that he doesn't really go into. If you talk to him about specific things hell come up with things, but mainly it's a helluva lot easier with Roger around, 'cause Roger'll bring it up. Him and Roger'll just sit there and say "Remember when..." and that's just the way that they do it, but it's sort of funny. They just sit there, the two of them, behind the desk and you can actually sit there earwigging.
Can you recall any stories?
I don't know, there's so many of them. Tons of them.
What are Walter's ambitions now? He seems to be just coasting along and doing the odd production project.
I think that's very symptomatic of the island of Maui, though. He's got a great house over there, he's really happy with his family...
He's financially secure; hasn't he got anything that's driving him on?
I think he just sees it in terms of projects. I think the whole idea of any kind of world domination is completely gone now. As he said compact disc has been very, very knd to him. As I say, it's very symptomatic of the whole of the island of Maui, it's an unbelievably laid-back lifestyle.
He said that in the Musician article. I've got my "groovy lifestyle" as he put it on the island, but I wondered if after four years the urge was returning?
Maybe. He was perfectly happy working with us, but one day he was saying he makes sure he gets at least one month a year, or two months, off Maui. He said if he has one or two projects a year he's quite happy. Because he's more interested in leisure and free time. I don't think he wants to go back full-tilt into music.
What does he do for relaxation?
Boogie board surfing. He gave us a couple of boogie boards.
It's hard to imagine the Walter Becker of old boogie board surfing.
That's one of the things that he said that Donald hated about Hawaii. You get out into the water and all that.
I think this is perhaps where they diverge.
Apparently, Donald's a real New York freak. Walter doesn't like the idea of being in New York, and Donald doesn't like the idea of being over there.
So the Steely Dan reformation is unlikely to happen, then. Probably. One great thing ... when Donald turned up on the island with his girlfriend, Walter said he had these big chests full of books and records 'cause they thought they were turning up on some desert island. "So just in case they brought their culture with them."
There's another funny thing I remember that happened. Last time we played in Los Angeles, Ed and Brian met Jeff Baxter and he walked into the gig and came down for the soundcheck. He was really strange, 'cause he had long ponytails and he was wearing a policeman's uniform. Apparently he's an ace marksman and he teaches L.A. policemen sharp-shooting. But when he found out Walter was coming to the gig he said he didn't want to be around, so he buggered off and Walter said if he'd thought that Jeff Baxter was coming to the gig he wouldn't have come down.
What was the reason for that?
I don't know. It's really strange, because the first time Walter came over we were looking for studios and we went down to Ridge Farm. Box of Frogs were there and Walter said, "I'm not too sure about this studio." Ed said Box of Frogs are in here. Jeff Baxter's with them, isn't he?" And Walter turned around and said, "Jeff Baxter's here?" He listed his head, sniffed the air and shook his head, "Jeff Baxter's not here."
Final question, on Gaucho there was this infamous story about this track which was accidentally erased. An engineer erased a finished track at the time and ...
Oh year, Roger started laughing and Walter started holding his head and going "Oh, no, no, no" -- it was like don't talk about the war. But once it had been erased they tried to redo it, but they never could, and they just decided that God moves in mysterious ways.
They were gutted because both Gary Katz and Roger said it was everyone's favorite tune on the album at the time. In one article they said it would have been the title track. That's what he said -- it was one of those ones that went like a dream, no problems, they just through it.
Walter seems to be a great believer in fate. That song was not supposed to be on the album because it was accidentally erased and you mentioned about the brass earlier. Is he superstitious?
I think he just -- for all his thing about perfectionism -- thinks it's as well leaving some things to chance. Sort of keeping an open mind.
By then our time was up and all that was left was to thank Gazza for talking to us and wish him well for the gig later that night.