Babylon Sisters

Hey there Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew's got this one spinning for you right now, Babylon Sisters off Steely Dan's Gaucho album, and it's one of those tracks that sneaks up on you with that smooth, dark groove. Those hippie and rock n roll biker DJs over at THE ZOO know a good deep cut when they hear it, and this opener from 1980 has stories packed into every note and lyric. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were absolute perfectionists in the studio, and this song shows it more than most. Word is they mixed the thing two hundred and seventy-four times before Fagen finally signed off. After the two hundred and fiftieth mix, the crew even presented him with a fake platinum disc as a joke, but he kept going another couple dozen times. Then he took the mix home, heard a bass note he didn't like, and came back a week later to fix it. That kind of obsession defined the Gaucho sessions, which stretched out over years with session players cycling through while Becker and Fagen chased the exact sound in their heads.

Neither Fagen nor Becker played a single instrument on Babylon Sisters. Fagen handled the lead vocals, but the music came from the best players they could find for the job. Drummer Bernard Purdie laid down his signature Purdie Shuffle, that half-time feel that gives the track its hypnotic pulse, while Chuck Rainey held down the bass. Steve Khan added guitar, and Randy Brecker brought in the muted trumpet that dances around the edges. The whole thing has a reggae-tinged edge with skank guitar patterns and off-beat phrasing, fitting for lyrics that drop the word Babylon, which in Rastafari talk means the Western world of excess. Fagen once described the inspiration as coming from walks he took from a beachfront place toward the end of the sand, where two fetching girls lived in a house. He called them quite welcoming, but he was in a relationship at the time and never went too far. Still, he said it was a particularly treacherous period for him. That fits the song's narrator, a middle-aged guy driving west on Sunset to the sea with young company, asking them to turn that jungle music down just until they're out of town, chasing some perfect day while knowing deep down it's cheap but not free, and love's not a game for three.

Becker summed up the vibe in the Alive in America liner notes as late-seventies L.A. noir, apocalyptic and burned out, with the question of whether the guy is sliding into decadence or some kind of healing regression. Fagen echoed that in remaster notes, calling it an agonizing bottom-out, heading toward a hook-up with sketchy beach girls while friends warn him off that cotton candy. The lyrics paint Santa Ana winds, jogging with show folk on the sand, drinking Kirschwasser from a shell, and that self-aware line about not being what he used to be. It's classic Steely Dan cynicism, wrapping dark observations about aging, delusion, and hedonism in a polished jazz-rock sheen. Gaucho itself came after the band moved back to New York, heart-sick from the excesses of Los Angeles, and it marked a peak of their studio isolation before they stepped away for years.

Speaking of how these two got started, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker met as students at Bard College in upstate New York back in 1967. Fagen was walking by the Red Balloon cafe when he heard Becker practicing guitar, and it sounded so professional and contemporary that he introduced himself and asked if he wanted to be in a band. They shared a love for jazz from the twenties through the mid-sixties, Chicago blues, soul, literature like Nabokov and Vonnegut, and a dry, sarcastic humor. They began writing nutty little tunes on an upright piano in a small sitting room at Ward Manor, one of the college dorms. Fagen had taught himself jazz piano in high school, while Becker handled bass and guitar. After Fagen graduated, they headed to Brooklyn, tried peddling songs around the Brill Building, and ended up touring as part of the backup band for Jay and the Americans under pseudonyms. That led to work on a low-budget soundtrack, and eventually producer Gary Katz brought them to Los Angeles as staff songwriters for ABC/Dunhill.

They were supposed to write pop hits for acts aimed at the teen market, but instead they secretly assembled their own band to play their more complex material. With help from Katz, they brought in players from the east coast, rehearsing after hours in an unfinished wing of the ABC building. The original lineup included guitarists Denny Dias and Jeff Baxter, drummer Jim Hodder, and later vocalist David Palmer. They named the group Steely Dan after a dildo in William Burroughs' novel Naked Lunch, figuring it was an in-joke and the band might not last long anyway. Their debut album Can't Buy a Thrill came out in 1972, and from there the hits and the cult following grew as they refined that blend of jazz, rock, funk, and literate lyrics. By the time of Gaucho, they had long since become a studio duo using revolving session musicians, focused entirely on crafting those immaculate records.

If you want more on the band, check out Steely Dan's official website, which has the full discography, bio, and notes that dig into Gaucho and Babylon Sisters specifically. They're also on Facebook and Instagram. For fans who like to dig deeper into interviews and history, there's the Steely Dan Reader site, and active groups like the Steely Dan Fans on Facebook where people share stories and tracks. Those Zoo Crew biker DJs will keep the deep cuts coming for you Freaks, so stay tuned for whatever spins next on the station.