Larry Carlton

And of course, the guitar solo had its own saga.

Becker and Fagen reportedly cycled through at least seven first-call studio guitarists, names like Larry Carlton or Robben Ford, all chasing the exact phrase they'd heard in their heads.

But in the end, Jay Graydon finally nailed it.

Took six hours of work to find the keeper, though, and when it came time to add backup voices, even the incidental moments mattered.

And then I...

Went up, you know, from there, Weather Report, Mahavishnu, Jeff Beck, Larry Carlton, you know, Chick Corea and all those, Return to Forever and all that stuff.

And, you know, it's...

Aldimiola.

It included the songs Kid Charlemagne, The Fez, and The Caves of Altamira.

Larry Carlton's guitar work on Kid Charlemagne is legendary, and his guitar solo on the song was ranked number 8 in Rolling Stone's 2026 list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos.

Carlton played the blazing solo in the middle of the song and also the guitar work during the fade out.

Let's listen to Carlton's excellent guitar work in the middle of Steely Dan's version of Kid Charlemagne.

And he's great.

He's played with Larry Carlton and the Winans and a whole bunch of people.

He is so good.

And then we got a...

It does feel, even though it's got some of the same musicians who've been playing with Steely Dan, you know, regularly in the latter part of their career.

So Jeff Porcaro's on there and on drums, although he's on practically every great American record ever made, isn't he? Larry Carlton is on guitar.

So people who've been there and the same producer, Gary Katz, and Donald Fagan writing all the songs, but write them on his own as opposed to co-writing with Becker, although he'd always been pretty much the lyricist.

I think Becker didn't write the lyrics.

We hear these stories, like when Steely Dan would take two years to do a record, and they'd use a whole rhythm section in LA with the best guys, and then a different rhythm section in New York, or a third one in New York.

And they would, for the most part, I understand, I wasn't there, but... you know they would do they'd cut most or if not all of the songs by all of the rhythm sections and then listen and pick the one they like the best that's why you see so many there's three or four or five different drummers different songs and because they want not them you know when larry carlton or or jay graydon do a solo and walter becker decides i'm not going to do this solo

okay my understanding is they don't know that they're on the album until the album is released exactly and i think they go out and buy it themselves

exactly yeah yeah yeah i mean bernard purdy pretty much knew he was going to be on it because nobody could do a shuffle like that but you know but yeah

That was the recommendation system, people.

and going back to steely dan's asia album is a great record for this because donald fagan and walter becker surrounded these songs with musicians chosen for very specific jobs you start reading the names and suddenly this one album points in a dozen directions steve gadd wayne shorter chuck rainey larry carlton And that's only part of the trail.

If I follow even one of those names, my record collection gets bigger.

And here's how I like to do this.