Steely Dan’s Aja is often treated as the moment when Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s studio perfectionism crystallised into something sleek, ambitious and unmistakably theirs. By the time the album arrived in September 1977, they had already shifted from a touring band to a studio-only project built around rotating line-ups of elite session musicians.
Aja pushed that approach further than ever, with Larry Carlton shaping written parts from Becker and Fagen’s demos, Chuck Rainey handling bass with complete freedom, and a roster of drummers arriving one by one for specific songs. What is less widely known is that almost all the core tracking took place not at the Village Recorders, as often claimed, but at a smaller room on Hollywood Boulevard called Producers’ Workshop. Only the overdubs were done at the Village, with Roger Nichols in his usual role there.
The bulk of the tracking was engineered by Bill Schnee. Katz had asked him onboard and Schnee insisted on working at Producers’ Workshop, a slightly rough-looking studio he trusted because of how it sounded. Its home-built console used Langevin AM16 discrete transistor preamps and Langevin EQ251 passive equalisers, and its 24-track machine was the Stephens two-inch recorder, running at 30ips without Dolby. Schnee always felt the Stephens design was the best sounding multitrack ever made due to its simplicity and its capstan-less tape transport, and for Aja they used Scotch tape and had no breakdowns at all, which was rare for that machine. Monitoring was on Altec 604 coaxial monitors.
Although Steely Dan had a reputation for endless retakes, Schnee’s experience on Aja was surprisingly disciplined. Tracking sessions began at 14:00 and followed union hours. The band worked in sections, tightening transitions, adjusting arrangements and only repeating parts when necessary. Piano came through stereo miking, the Rhodes through stereo DI boxes, Carlton’s Fender 5C3 Tweed Deluxe was captured with a single mic and baffled from the drums, and Rainey’s Fender Precision with flatwounds ran straight into an LA-2A. Another LA-2A sat on Carlton’s amp. Schnee used no drum compression at all, preferring clean capture.
The drum setup was minimal but deliberate. The kit had individual mics for kick, snare, hi hat and all toms, with cymbals taken from overheads, and everything apart from kick, snare and hat was submixed to a stereo pair. There were no room mics because everyone was performing in the room at the same time. Headphones were essential, and the musicians shared one mix for the entire band, which Schnee refined by walking into the live room to adjust balances from their perspective.
Steve Gadd appears in the mythology of Aja for good reason. Brought in for two days, he tracked four songs, but only the title track made the album. When he arrived, Schnee was immediately impressed, having already loved Gadd’s work on Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover. The first day produced two complete songs in very little time. Fagen and Becker, however, felt Gadd’s snare sat too far on top of the beat for their taste, favouring Jeff Porcaro or Jim Keltner’s looser backbeat style, yet Schnee insisted they listen to what Gadd was actually playing.
The title track was cut on the second day. Larry Carlton’s handwritten parts filled multiple music stands and were extremely demanding. Even with a strong rhythm section of Rainey, Carlton, Michael Omartian on acoustic piano and Joe Sample on Rhodes, it took about three hours to rehearse. Once ready, the full take came together in two passes. Gadd’s improvised drum feature was recorded without knowing that Wayne Shorter would later overdub his saxophone solo to it. The famous stick click is present in the raw tracking and was simply part of Gadd’s live improvisation. Schnee is certain that he did not edit the multitrack, so any splice was done later at the Village by Roger Nichols.
Although many multitracks from Aja are missing, monitor mixes from the tracking days survive. These reveal the rough versions of Josie, I Got The News, Stand By The Seawall (never completed), Peg with Gadd, and Aja itself. In these tapes the tone of the kit, Carlton’s neck pickup on the Gibson 335, the Rhodes voicings and Rainey’s slap lines are already almost identical to the final record. Peg was later redone at the Village with Rick Marotta because Gadd’s feel did not blend naturally with Rainey’s bass part in the chorus, where Marotta’s tighter hi hat proved a better fit.
After the tracking, Becker and Fagen moved to overdubs at the Village. Victor Feldman contributed percussion and keyboards, Wayne Shorter added saxophone to Aja, and Becker, Fagen, Tim Schmit and Denny Dias added their respective parts. Donald sometimes provided a rough guide vocal during tracking, but he disliked hearing his voice too loud during playback.
When the overdubs were done, Becker and Fagen asked Schnee to mix the album. After a day together it became clear that their slow, detail heavy approach did not suit Schnee’s preference for full pass performance mixes without automation. They parted amicably and the album was mixed by Elliot Scheiner using the NECAM moving fader system, which allowed Becker and Fagen to attempt countless passes until every nuance matched their expectations.
Aja went on to become Steely Dan’s first platinum record. It reached number three in the United States, number five in the United Kingdom, delivered three charting singles and won the 1978 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non Classical. The track Aja in particular became known as one of the most sophisticated pieces of studio rock of the era, even if Becker and Fagen cheerfully dismissed most attempts to analyse it. Schnee received a Grammy for his engineering work, and the earlier Aja outtake Were You Blind That Day? was retitled and reused on Gaucho as Third World Man.
The making of that next album was notoriously fraught and pushed the band towards their custom built sampling system Wendell. For many listeners and for a fair number of those who worked on it, Aja remained the high point: a moment when Steely Dan’s ideals, Los Angeles session culture and the best players of the period aligned perfectly, even with all the pressure and precision behind the scenes.