Rick Marotta | Greg Phillinganes | Mike Baird
In the September 1987 issue of "Modern Drummer," Robyn Flans conducted an indepth interview with drummer Rick Marotta. We've reprinted some highlights of the discussion where Marotta talks about his Steely Dan sessions and also his recent work with Fagen's own stuff.
Robyn Flans: You were arguing with engineers and producers, yet they called you all the time. Wasn't that a contradiction?
Rick Marotta: It was -- to say the least -- a contradiction. It made my life miserable, and because it made my life miserable, I made other people's life misserable. But it worked. So many times people said, "That is the most amazing drum sound." I just worked; that's why they called. If it hadn't sounded great, they wouldn't have called. Producers and engineers loved to take credit for stuff like that, but I didn't care. There were a lot of people who wouldn't use me because it just got too crazy.
The musicians who were real demanding, knew what they wanted, and always would experiment, even if they did it laughingly, were Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan. I would get my drum sound, and those guys would go crazy. They would say, "This is the worst sounding thing." We would go back and forth. I remember one time Donald, Walter and Elliot Scheiner came up to me, laughing. They said "Rick, when you hit your bass drum, the toms ring louder than the bass drum does."
RF: What was your response?
RM: "Trust me." So we would always compromise. Those guys were so good, and the records sounded so good.
RF: You must have made Fagen and Becker crazy with their thing of everything being perfect.
RM: Everybody made everybody else crazy.
RF: That's what people say about working with Steely Dan anyway.
RM: Not anymore. I love working with them, especially now. Last year, I worked on Fagen's solo album, which didn't come out because Steely Dan is thinking about getting back together. I worked on four tracks at Jeff Porcaro's house, and Donald has a new way of recording, which is great.
RF: Do you remember how you did "Time Out Of Mind" and "Hey Nineteen"?
RM: When we did those tunes from the "Gaucho" album, we went in -- just Donald and I and a click track -- and it worked. The first thing I ever did for them was a long time ago, and the whole band was in the room. They would cut six different hands for one song.
RF: That's lunacy.
RM: It sure worked for them because they made the best records I ever heard at that time. They were great guys to work with, but they would make the band crazy. And they'd make themselves crazy, too. Donald Fagen is one of the funniest guys in the world to work with. He'll concentrate for six or seven hours, and then he's gone. There are so many funny stories, but you probably had to be there.
RF: Tell me about "Peg."
RM: "'Peg" was one of the great tracks of all time. They had cut that track with a bunch of people. I walked in, and it was just Chuck Rainey and I. We had done stuff with them before and we knew what to expect, so we just started playing. Chuck and I had played together so much that we got into a groove. I don't remember everything about it exactly, but I remember I was very sick, and Don Grolnick had to take me to the hospital in the middle of the night during a rainstorm to get a shot. Anyway, once Chuck and I started playing, you could have 'hung your coat up on the groove.
RF: Was there another drummer on the track when you came in?
RM: They never played us the tracks. Donald would sit down at the piano, and sing and play. When that guy plays and sings, it dictates what's going to happen. They don't walk around saying "Play this note, that note, and this feel, and play this with the snare drum." Walter is always hovering around somewhere saying, "That's great! Do that. Yes." If you do something they like, they'll say, "Do that." Chuck and I just happened to fall into this amazing groove, and we started doing takes.
RF: You said it was easier working with Fagen recently.
RM: When I work with Donald, he just plays and sings, and I play with him -- no bass, nothing. He puts the bass on afterwards. He'll either show it to me on paper, or he'll play it, or sometimes he'll play just the left hand and Greg Phillinganes will play the right hand part. I have to say a lot of people don't like to do these things the way I do them. My taste is different from other people's tastes. I know where my groove is going to be. If you want the time and the feel to happen, I can do it alone. If I play and then the bass player puts himself on top, it works. It will never not work.
RF: But it doesn't matter one way or the other to you?
RM: Don't get me wrong: I like it a lot of times when the bass is there, but if it's just a straight-ahead groove thing where there's not a lot of interaction, I don't mind doing it alone. On "Peg," that thing was so much Chuck and I that you couldn't take one away without losing the other. That was the basis for the whole tune. He and I did little nuance things on there. What kills me is that Walter called me up and said, "Man, the difference between the verse and chorus is that you opened your hi-hat about a billionth of an inch every couple of beats." He called to ask me if I did it on purpose. It was just for a little lift. I am really proud of that record. A lot of times when people see me, they'll say, "Rick Marotta: 'Peg."' Porcaro gave me the best compliment I ever got. He told me that he made a loop of "Peg" and rode around in his car listening to the groove for hours. Then Larry Carlton wrote "Room 335," a track on his solo album that was an exact rip-off of it -- every note and every instrument. I didn't play on it; Jeff did, and he copped the part perfectly. When we do it live, Larry will say, "This is a tune I stole from Steely Dan." He didn't actually steal it; he called Donald and asked if they'd mind if he used the changes. It's a real compliment to them, and it's a compliment to me, too.
Greg Phillinganes, the keyboardist noted for his work with Stevie Wonder and Eric Clapton also brought some nice touches to "The Nightfly'.' In fact, Greg's solo album "Pulse" featured the catchy Fagen composition "Lazy Nina.'' Greg recently talked to Robert L. Doerschuk in the August issue of "Keyboard.'' In the following excerpt, Phillinganes discusses some studio tricks he used and learned during "The Nightfly" sessions with Fagen.
Robert Doerschuk: Is there an example of a tune on which you recorded a solo that you developed from a melodic motif?
Greg Phillinganes: Well, there's the solo I did for Donald Fagen on "Ruby Baby." I started it off by playing "You Really Got Me" from the Kinks, and developed it from that.
RD: That came from the lyrics, with Fagen singing about this girl?
GP: Yeah. You've got to give it some meaning. That's a trick I learned from listening to a lot of soloists, like Charlie Parker: They would steal from other tunes, take melodies and put 'em anywhere. (Saxophonist) James Moody is brilliant for that too.
RD: Did you do the solo in one take?
GP: It was in two takes. The first time I played it, I had the basic idea. But I messed up at the end, so I did another take and fixed the second part.
RD: Fagen's harmonies and chord changes are usually rather complex.
GP: Yeah. He writes it all out to every breath. He is intense, but he's a sweetheart.
RD: If you were doing "Ruby Baby" with Fagen at a live gig, how would you get into that solo? Since its beginning is so familiar to so many people...
GP: That's why I would probably play it at the beginning the way I recorded it.
RD: Can you think of a keyboard bass line you've played that might fool listeners into thinking they were hearing a bass guitar?
GP: "Walk Between The Raindrops," from Donald Fagen's "Nightfly" album. Don showed me a hip trick. I was elongating the notes a bit too much for him, so he said, "Put some space between them." You breathe after every note. That makes it sound more like an upright bass. To this day, I take that approach when the concept calls for that.
RD: What else did you get from Fagen?
GP: Just how to be really intense (laughs). He's very meticulous. I do things for him that I wouldn't do for anybody else, just because he's so bad. He believes in the highest possible quality.
RD: Were his sessions tough because they're so exacting?
GP: They were, but I don't care. After the first couple of songs, he felt more comfortable with me and let me get away with a little more stuff. And I was thrilled to be working one-on-one with him. The first song we did was "I.G.Y.," and I loved playing that opening keyboard riff so much that I kept making mistakes on purpose so I could start it over (laughs). He writes everything exactly. Everything. All the chords, the voicings, the rests, when to press the sustain pedal. He wants you to do it all verbatim. But I was still able to put my personality in there.
In the November 1990 issue of "Modern Drummer," seven studio drummers took part in a roundtable discussion on the pleasures andpains of session work. In this excerpt, Mike Baird talks with Jeff Porcaro about the importance of playing "good" all the time.
Jeff Porcaro: There's a time when you have to keep artistic license. I've had it with playing stuff that I would otherwise never play. That is not good for the soul.
Mike Baird: That worked against me once. Whenever you show up in a situation, that artistic license is really important. There was a situation during the time that Steely Dan was really hot. Larry Carlton recommended me to those cats to play on a track. There had been a date that I had done three years prior to that recommendation, where it was some schlocky. music and I said, "Ya know, I don't really want to play this," and I just played very mediocre. The "one thing" Fagen and Becker happened to have heard me play on was a tape of that one track. They told Carlton, "We've heard this cat; he's not happening." Carlton told me the story afterwards. So it doesn't pay in the long run to do that.