(Credit: Elliott Randall Spotify)
Steely Dan were the last band anyone would accuse of flying by the seat of their pants. This was, whether you’d say famously or infamously, a pair of musicians who ran an insanely tight ship, obsessively driven to perfect sounds and arrangements to their desired results. According to legend, it took 55 takes just to record the 50-second fadeout of the 1980 song, ‘Babylon Sisters’.
Even at the outset of their career in the early ‘70s, Steely Dan co-founders, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, were already known to be more than a tad persnickety, which is why it’s a little surprising to discover that one of the most famous parts on a signature hit of the band was outsourced to a guest musician.
We’re talking about the highly revered guitar solo on ‘Reelin’ in the Years’, from Steely Dan’s 1972 debut LP, Can’t Buy a Thrill. It’s been praised by the likes of Jimmy Page and rated among the 30 greatest guitar solos of all time by Guitar World magazine. Yet even many longtime Steely Dan fans aren’t aware of the man who actually played it: a session guitarist by the name of Elliott Randall.
Randall wasn’t a hired gun off the street, mind you. He had an established friendship and working relationship with Fagen and Becker, having played with them in the backing band for Jay and the Americans, as well as some early Dan demos. Still, the task before him was a demanding one. The duo were at their wits’ end trying to tie together ‘Reelin’, likely aware that it had the potential to be a standout track on the record. They went to Randall with the hope that he could effectively complete the song. What he ended up doing was raising it to a much higher level, adding a crackling sound and spontaneity that defined the track more than it complemented it.
“They were having trouble finding the right ‘flavor’ solo for ‘Reelin’, and asked me to give it a go,” Randall recalled to Guitar World in 2013. “Most of the song was already complete, so I had the good fortune of having a very clear picture of what the solo was laying on top of. They played it for me without much dialogue about what I should play.”
If that level of trust from Fagen and Becker is surprising, it’s downright mind-blowing to learn that Randall worked his magic in a matter of minutes—no extra takes, no tweaks, and no notes from the band.
“We did it in one take and nothing was written,” Randall said. “Jeff Baxter played the harmony parts, but my entire lead—intro, answers, solo, and end solo—was one continuous take played through a very simple setup: my old Strat, the same one I’ve been using since 1965, plugged directly into an Ampeg SVT amp and miked with a single AKG 414. The whole solo just came to me, and I feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to play it.”
It wasn’t necessarily unusual for Steely Dan to bring in specialist session players to help perfect a song from time to time—Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Denny Dias, and many others have made their marks—but Randall’s solo on ‘Reelin’ in the Years’ remains one of the most instantly recognisable guitar moments not just in the band’s history but in the totality of ‘70s rock.
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