Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were notorious for demanding perfection from their studio musicians, particulalry when it came to guitar solos. With a number of crème de la crème A-list session guitarists at their beck and call, the duo would push their hired guns to breaking point.
One example that typifies the Dan’s meticulous approach involves the sessions for the 26-second guitar solo in their jazz-pop hit single “Peg,” from the 1977 album Aja.
During the course of a week’s sessions, seven guitarists were called upon to deliver a blues-inspired solo that was both technically competent and memorable. The list of guitarists included session supremo Larry Carlton, whose solo on Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne” is among the most celebrated in the group’s catalog, and Elliott Randall, who nailed his work on “Reelin’ in the Years,” from Dan’s debut in one take.
One of the often-cited names listed as one of the seven has been jazz virtuoso Steve Khan. Yet Khan categorically disputes this fact.
“I was never asked to take a shot at the solo section for that song,” he tells Guitar Player.
Khan was, however, responsible for putting to tape that funky rhythm guitar groove on “Peg,” using a Fender Telecaster Custom through an old Fender Amp with a clean sound.
“When Donald and Walter asked me if I could come-up with something for the intro, I wasn’t sure what they were looking for,” he recalls. “But I tried playing the long, held chords with an MXR Flanger, with the regeneration knob turned all the way up. This is something that I would never do, because it is a rather tasteless and highly juvenile sound.
“But for some crazy reason they really liked it, and it stayed. It reappears later in the song. No one was more surprised than me.”
As it happened, the first guitarist to attempt the solo for “Peg” was Becker himself. When his effort failed, he and Fagen went scouting for a session player who could contribute the type of blues-tinged solo they were seeking.
“This tune is, I think, infamous among studio players in that we hired a couple guitar players to play the solo,” Fagen said in the documentary about the making of Aja. “And it wasn’t quite what we were looking for till we got through three or four… five…”
“Six or seven,” offered Becker.
“Six or seven… eight players,” Fagen continued.
The first call went out to Robben Ford, whose style combines blues, jazz and rock in a stylistic singular fusion. Once again, the results weren’t to the duo’s satisfaction. Becker made another unsuccessful attempt before calls were made to Carlton, Randall, Rick Derringer and two others whose names have been lost to the mists of time. Still nothing.
“And then finally Jay Graydon came in,” Becker said, “and did it with no difficulty whatsoever.”
Session guitar ace Graydon had been working as an arranger and guitarist on another project helmed by Steely Dan engineer Roger Nichols.
“Roger mentioned that Donald and Walter had gone through many players regarding a solo on one song and were not happy with the results,” Graydon tells Guitar Player. Graydon expressed interest in giving it a shot. “So Roger said he would ask the guys to hire me.”
Once at the session, Graydon says he spent a marathon five hours setting up his gear and dialing in the sound. His meticulous preparation allowed him to focus his attention fully on the task before him once it was time to work on his solo.
“Within the first hour, I mostly played my standard pop/pop jazz solo vocabulary of the era, hunting for melodic connections,” he recalls. “Some of the passes were better than average, but not what was needed to really jump out as a quality solo.
“We took a break and when getting back to work, Donald mentioned the key factor regarding the approach. He said something like, ‘Think blues from time to time.’ “That was the key to the concept.”
Graydon explains that the chord changes in “Peg” bounce back and forth between “a major 7th chord and an add 2 chord, with the third in the bass,” specifically C major 7th to G2/B.
“With Donald’s suggestion in mind, the key was to think melodic stuff — major scale sweet notes — over the major 7th shapes and try to incorporate occasional blues ideas — flatted 7th and flatted 3rd — over the add-2 shapes when possible.” After a few attempts, Graydon hit upon the Hawaiian guitar–style double-stops that open the solo. “I fell into the double-stop thing, which is a perfect example of the concept mentioned — bending strings between major and dominant. The guys dug it.
“The next section also kind of falls into the same concept. I switched thinking between melodic major and dominant while walking my way down. The same applies regarding the open string pull offs.”
With just four bars left to go, Fagen suggested Graydon play a fast lick. “I did so within a D major scale, and then wandered my way down the neck, grabbing notes that would set up a nice transition regarding the return of the vocal.”
For gear, Graydon used the 1963 Gibson ES-335 semi-hollow that was his go-to electric guitar for all his session work. “The amp was a Fender Deluxe highly modified by Paul Rivera,” he adds.
“I also used a (And Armstrong) Orange Squeezer compressor and volume pedal. The Orange Squeezer was plugged into the 335’s output jack, a six-foot guitar cable was plugged between the Orange Squeezer output and volume pedal input, and a 30-foot cable was plugged between the volume pedal output and amp input.”
Graydon says the volume pedal was there simply to eliminate amp noise before and after the solo and save the engineer from having to mute the track. “Since I was using a distortion gain structure, the noise level was quite high,” he says.
Like the other guitarists before him, Graydon didn’t know if his contribution had made the cut.
“When I walked out of the studio at the end of the night, I didn’t know it was a keeper,” he says. “But I turned the radio on one day, and there it was! I thought, ‘Hey, I made it!’”
As for how he succeeded where so many guitar aces had failed, Graydon makes no claim to greatness.
“I just played what I felt would be good for the track,” he says. “To me, it wasn’t difficult. I just went for it! I didn’t care if I’d crashed into a musical brick wall. I thought my performance was just sideways enough to make it on the record.”
It was certainly enough to please pair of task masters like Fagen and Becker who, long after Aja was released, continued to marvel at the ease with which Graydon gave them what they wanted.
Says the guitarist, “Donald once told an interviewer, ‘We’d never heard of Graydon. He came in and essentially knocked it off.’”
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