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Go back, Jack, do it again: The Steely Dan reissue campaign rolls on with the December 1 return of Gaucho, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker's final album before putting the Dan on a two-decade hiatus. Gaucho follows the previous vinyl reissues of Can't Buy a Thrill (1972), Countdown to Ecstasy (1973), Pretzel Logic (1974), and, most recently, Aja (1977). In addition to the 180-gram vinyl series from Geffen/UMe, a concurrent program from Analogue Productions is reissuing each record on SACD and in a deluxe 200-gram Ultra-High Quality Vinyl (UHQR) box set.
Steely Dan's seventh studio album, Gaucho in many ways was an extension of Aja. Like that seminal record, it was a highly polished studio affair. (Sessions spanned over a two-year period in various studios.) It also continued the sophisticated jazz-rock sound of Aja with sleek brass and soulful background vocals from a variety of singers including Michael McDonald, Patti Austin, Valerie Simpson, Lesley Miller, and Toni Wine. Yet the road to Gaucho was a bumpy one, with Becker suffering injuries in a car accident and weathering the death of his girlfriend, and Steely Dan falling victim to various studio mishaps, including one which rendered the song "The Second Arrangement" lost. (A final, complete recording of the outtake has never been released to this date.)
Upon its release in November 1980, however, listeners took to the slick sound and indelible songs which introduced such characters as the dirty old man in "Hey Nineteen," the well-to-do cocaine dealer of "Glamour Profession," and the narrator of the title track who's greeted at home by a most unwelcome surprise. Decadence was a central theme of the album, echoed on "Babylon Sisters" and in the druggy milieu of "Time Out of Mind." The music's hypnotic shimmer both contrasted and complemented the darkly impressionistic lyrics. Gaucho might not have been a world in which you'd want to live, but it sure made for an intriguing visit.
"Hey Nineteen" scored the band a top ten hit, with "Time Out of Mind" (featuring Knopfler on the guitar solo) peaked just out of the top twenty. Both hit the top fifteen of the AC chart, and "Hey Nineteen" climbed to No. 3 in the U.K., tying "Rikki, Don't Lose That Number" for the band's highest-charting single there. In 1982, Gaucho took home the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Recording - Non-Classical. It was also nominated for Album of the Year and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.
For this reissue on 180-gram vinyl, Gaucho has been freshly remastered by Bernie Grundman from a 1980 analog tape copy, originally EQ'd by Bob Ludwig. (The press release states "there's no evidence the original tapes containing the flat mixes of [Aja and Gaucho] were delivered to the record label and it's presumed the tapes no longer exist.") Lacquers for the standard 33 1/3 RPM 180-gram version will be cut by Alex Abrash at his AA Mastering studio from high-resolution digital files of Grundman's new masters and pressed at Precision. They will be housed in reproductions of the original artwork.
Additionally, Gaucho, like all of the titles in this series, will be released as a limited edition 45 RPM version on 200-gram Ultra High-Quality Vinyl (UHQR) from Analogue Productions. A hybrid stereo SACD playable on all CD players will also be released (date TBD).
You'll find the track listing and pre-order links for Gaucho below. The vinyl reissue from Geffen/UMe is due on December 1. Katy Lied and The Royal Scam will conclude the Steely Dan reissue program; watch this space for news on both titles.
Steely Dan, Gaucho (MCA Records MCA-6102, reissued Geffen/UMe, 2023)
LP: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
UHQR Box: Acoustic Sounds
SACD: Acoustic Sounds
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Side A
- Babylon Sisters
- Hey Nineteen
- Glamour Profession
Side B
- Gaucho
- Time Out of Mind
- My Rival
- Third World Man
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Great album but as with all Dan reissues no extras!
We SACD buyers are currently two albums behind (no release of Pretzel Logic or Aja yet), and if this comes out as scheduled, we'll be THREE albums behind. Sigh. And frankly, the SACD of Countdown to Ecstasy (my favorite Dan album) had disappointing sound quality, so my enthusiasm for these releases isn't what it should be. I've had all the SACDs on pre-order since September 2022, even ordering the three albums I already have on DVD-A surround (Gaucho, Two Against Nature, Everything Must Go) to support the effort.
You said it all!
I’m with you regarding sole interest in the SACDs. It seems that Analogue Productions is at the mercy of the manufacturing plant where the SACDs are made, and there must presumably be delays in getting these made. I’m guessing the rest of them will come out throughout 2024.
FYI, the Pretzel Logic SACD came today. The sound quality was pretty good, especially compared to the original album which always seemed a bit lo-fi to me. So we're only TWO albums behind now.
How could someone or some company "lose" the original master tapes? If they were "not delivered" to MCA or ABC records, then perhaps Donald Fagan or the estate of Walter Becker may have them. Somehow, with their obsession over the music and then entire recording process, it would make sense that the original master tapes would have been looked after with similar attention.
I have a feeling the tapes weren't erased or lost. The Dan just thought the song wasn't good enough and decided it didn't fit the album (and it doesn't).
They were always good at making up stories and this one may have been for the benefit of the people who had already heard the song in the studio.
When I first heard it I thought it was great, but it doesn't lend itself to repeated listens, like the rest of the album.
I wish they'd fix the flawed "mastered for streaming" versions that are on platforms like Spotify. There are a number of glitches on them, most noticeably on the songs Black Cow and Gaucho. They have a couple of what sounds like digital distortion glitches almost certainly caused by the intersample peaks you get if you don't master for streaming correctly. Like about 30 seconds into Black Cow there's a cymbal crash with this glitch.