Steely Dan producer Gary Katz had a great personal and working relationship with Jeff Porcaro for 18 years. Even though Steely Dan broke up in 1980, Gary continued to use Jeff on almost every project he was involved with. The following excerpts were taken from "Modern Drummer" and "Musician Magazine":
"Every moment I spent with him, I had a smile on my face. I met him in '74 at Cherokee Ranch when I was working on Steely Dan's "Pretzel Logic"; Donald and Walter had a song called "Night By Night" that wanted more precision and exactness than they were able to give, which for them is saying something. Late one night, Denny (Dias) recommend Jeff; Donald said we'd give it another day and told Denny to make the call and see if we could get the guy out here. Denny hung up the phone and said, 'They're on their way'. Cherokee Ranch was a studio built in a barn, and had above its doorway an ornamental rope with a noose attached. Forty-five minutes later, Jeff arrived and saw the noose; Denny introduced us and Jeff's first words were, 'I know you guys have a rough reputation on musicians, but this is way out of line!' "
"When Jeff was working, especially with Donald and Walter, his sense of
devotion was unmatched. If he'd feel he wasn't doing exactly what Donald wanted,
Jeff -- being the huge fan and the man that he was -- would throw his sticks
at the wall in frustration and say, 'Get someone who knows how to play a shuffle!
Call Purdie!' A few minutes would pass, he'd collect himself and do another
take, and on those occasions he always brought to my face another smile.' Jeff's
formidable efforts on behalf of "Gaucho" rescued the track from being
scrapped."
"We were recording tracks for Steely Dan's "Gaucho" album at
A&R. It was Jeffrey and three other musicians. In those days, we would record
tracks forty, fifty, sixty times until Donald felt he had a track that was steady
enough. In those days ('79), we didn't use click tracks, and the kind of click
track that was available, Jeffrey hated. We played the track for quite a long
time that night, and at about 11:00 or so, Donald said it wasn't working for
him. When that happened, it was usually the kiss of death; we never tried the
track again and the song would be lost. So at 11:00 he and Walter felt they
had exhausted that track and were going to call it a night. Jeffrey and I were
upset about that, because it was definitely going to hit the can, and we loved
the song. Donald said, 'Okay, you guys stay, and if you cut a track that you
like, call us and we'll come back.'
"We stayed there most of the night. I had a chart, and Jeffrey would play
a take, and I would hear eight good bars -- not that all the bars weren't good
-- but I tried to think like Donald. But I would mark those bars, and then the
next four good bars... we did about seventy takes. We finally left at about
5:00 in the morning, and the next day I went to the studio with Roger Nichols
and Jeff, and we literally edited this track bar by bar. I had all these markings
on my chart... it was a fluke that I made a track that felt good. We called
Donald, and they came over late in the afternoon and couldn't find anything
wrong with it. And as nonchalantly as he had left the night before, he said,
`There's another track.' "
"The style of music that I liked was compatible with Jeff. I never found
myself in a room thinking, 'This isn't Jeffrey's thing,' although he would say
that on a couple of occasions, mainly about shuffles. Having done a TV show,
as he did when he was so young, and having to read charts for these various
people -- if you could put it out there, he could play it. I was never in the
studio with Jeffrey where it didn't work. Part of the style of records I make
was Jeffrey. Now I've got to figure out something else."
"When we met in '73 and started making the many records that we made. I've
made more with Jeff that weren't Steely Dan than that were -- I never went to
the studio feeling anything but, 'I know I'll get this track.' It's funny, the
only record I didn't work with him on in years was the one I recently finished
with Laura Nyro -- and that was because Jeffrey told me I should hire Purdie."
The following article was written in 1977, a year in which Porcaro was surfacing as the best studio drummer on the West Coast. As Jeff's profile was really starting to rise, he gave Ron Cohen some of his first public impressions on playing with Steely Dan.
The bespectacled young drummer taps his hi-hat as the band skips gently into
a new tune. Soon both his hands are fluttering between the hi-hat and the snare.
He bares his teeth smiling, almost. Quickly, like magic, his hand is hovering
over the bell of his ride cymbal as he drops his stick upon it. The music is
growing louder. The hi-hat is driven by his foot now, up and down very fast.
His arms are churn-ing around the drum set, filling gaps in the music with thundering
rolls. A guitar screams, another follows. The energy of the music and the musicians
continues to rise. The drummer is pushing the music even harder, he jumps from
his seat as he reaches for his cymbals. One crashes, then another and another,
then two cymbals and he's standing; he looks as if he's going crazy.
The drummer is Jeff Porcaro (pronounced poor-car-o) who besides owning one of
the most-frequently misspelled and mispronounced names in the music business,
also owns a very impressive list of credits. At the age of 23 he is already
an experienced and very successful studio musician. Over the last four years,
he has recorded with artists such as Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely
Dan, Boz Scaggs, Seals and Crofts, Barbra Streisand, Jackson Browne, and most
recently with Daryl Hall and John Oates. Jeff has played some jazz with Hampton
Hawes, and the Larry Carlton/Robben Ford Band of which he says, "I get
nervous, but it's a challenge."
"Steely Dan was my favorite group even before I knew who they were. I thought
they were a bunch of bikers from up north (California). They looked so mean
and bad on the inside jacket of their album, "Can't Buy A Thrill".
But I thought they were it... harmonically, the lyrics, man, Becker and Fagen
blow my mind. And still to this day, they are it, they are what should be happening
now."
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Last modified on 1/20/2003