With "THE BLUE MAN" not selling as well as "TIGHTROPE,"
Dr. George Butler
requested that I have a co-producer for the next CD. I was
lucky to be able to land the engineering/production talents
of my old and dear friend, Elliot Scheiner. Elliot and I
had recorded together on countless sessions,
but perhaps most people link us together because it was
Elliot who recommended me to Donald Fagen and Walter Becker
for "AJA," which, of course, led to "GAUCHO." Like "THE
BLUE MAN," the focus was the same, keep the core group of
players intact and feature original tunes. In addition to
the Telecaster, I decided to include my Fender Stratocaster,
and it's heard on "City Monsters" as well as the Hendrix-influenced
"Candles." Some highlights would have to include: The horn
section work on "City Monsters"; Michael Brecker's solo
on "City Monsters"; Don Grolnick's organ solo on "Some Arrows";
Steve Gadd's drumming on the "City Suite" and "Daily Village";
Rick Marotta's drumming on "Some Arrows" and "Candles";
the accompaniment of Don Grolnick and Will Lee throughout,
but especially on "Daily Village." Though they haven't been
seen since, the "ARROWS" LP featured some pretty
zany liner notes by Donald Fagen:
| Donald
Fagen Liner Notes: The kid from Westwood, after
years of study and sacrifice, can now do just about
everything he wants with an electric guitar. He has
now begun to branch out into other areas. To this
I can testify. I was there on that sticky afternoon
at Mediasound Studios in Manhattan when Khan, obviously
an intense, driven man, gave the go-ahead sign to
his two enormous roadies, a pair of titans in "Inspector
Fuseau" T-shirts. Four huge rectangular slabs of limestone
were carted into Studio A and, while engineers and
musicians alike looked on in horror, were carefully
positioned in an igloo-like configuration in the center
of the floor. Each dolmen had been meticulously decorated
in a surreal, rather gallic style. In the shadow of
this makeshift shrine, Khan began to rehearse the
tunes with the other musicians. Before each run-through,
Khan would stare at the structure from a different
angle, as if trying to discern the answer to a hopelessly
cosmic question, and then burn through the take as
if he were possessed. The rest of the band seemed
to respond to his blazing energy and were soon playing
with unheard of fire and precision. During a union
break, when Khan began to refer casually to the four
tablets as "the brine, the salta, the awn and the
alder," even the usually staid Will Lee almost choked
on his eggplant frappé.
Some people think they know all there is to know about Steve Khan. Sure, he does a great Ed Sullivan; O.K., he's got an almost Teutonic fascination with little machines. But don't let anyone tell you he's just another guitar player. |
|
[1] City Suite(11:48) Part 1: City Monsters(Steve Khan)(5:32) Part 2: Dream City(Steve Khan)(6:10) [2] Candles(Steve Khan)(6:57) [3] Daily Village(Steve Khan(6:42) [4] Some Arrows(Steve Khan)(5:48) [5] Calling(Steve Khan)(6:30) |
Photo: Steve and Jean-Michel Folon by James Houghton
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