Gaucho (album)

Exceptional difficulties plagued the album's production. By 1978, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had established themselves as the only two permanent members of Steely Dan, using a revolving cast of session musicians to record the songs they wrote together. However, the pair's working relationship began to strain, largely because of Becker's increasing drug use.[4]

During the course of the Gaucho sessions, Becker was hit by a car late one Saturday night while walking home to his apartment on the Upper West Side.[5][6] Becker managed to push the woman he was with out of harm's way, but sustained multiple fractures in one leg, a sprain in the other leg, and other injuries.[5][6] During his six-month recovery,[7] he suffered from secondary infections.[5] While Becker was in the hospital, he and Fagen continued their musical collaborations via telephone.[6]

Becker's personal problems continued to mount when his girlfriend, Karen Roberta Stanley, died of a drug overdose at his home on January 30, 1980.[8][9] Her family sued him for $17.5 million in January 1981, claiming that he had introduced the woman to cocaine, morphine, barbiturates, and heroin.[9] The court later ruled in Becker's favor.

According to Stylus Magazine's Mike Powell, Gaucho combines "bitter, poetic cynicism with freewheeling jazz-rock",[10] while Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic says it "essentially replicates the smooth jazz-pop of Aja, but with none of that record's dark, seductive romance or elegant aura".[11] Similarly, rock historian Joe Stuessy suggests it is one in a series of Steely Dan albums that showed a progression of jazz influences in the band's sound, which was often described as "jazz-rock fusion".[12] Music journalist and broadcaster Paul Sexton writes that, while Aja had "announced their ever-greater exploration of jazz influences", Gaucho is "their yacht rock masterpiece".[13] In connection with the latter genre, Timothy Malcolm from Houstonia magazine says the album features "a number of yachty delights",[14] while Erlewine highlights the title track as exemplary of the genre.[15] Patrick Hosken from MTV News says that, like Aja, Gaucho shows how "great yacht rock is also more musically ambitious than it might seem, tying blue-eyed soul and jazz to funk and R&B".[16]

Hal Leonard's Best of Steely Dan explains that Gaucho is "a concept album of seven interrelated tales about would-be hipsters."[17] The lyrics of "Hey Nineteen" are about an aging hipster attempting to pick up a girl who is so young that she does not recognize "'Retha Franklin" playing on the stereo.[18] The song closes with the ambiguous line, "The Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian, make tonight a wonderful thing", leaving it up to the listener whether the narrator is consuming tequila and drugs with the love interest, or if he is in fact alone.[18][19]

Stewart Mason of AllMusic says that "Time Out of Mind" is "a barely veiled song about heroin, specifically a young man's first experience with the drug at the hands of a pretentious, pseudo-religious crank talking of 'chasing the dragon' with the 'mystical sphere direct from Lhasa.'"[20] According to Ian MacDonald, "Two songs are about hookers, two more concern the doings of coke dealers, and a fifth depicts the denouement of a seedy marital dispute. What redeems it all is the humour and artistry. Lyrics exude class as well as underclass, while the music, whatever its guise or disguise, is immaculate".[21]

Keith Jarrett sued Becker and Fagen for copyright infringement over the title track of the album, claiming it plagiarised "Long As You Know You're Living Yours" from his 1974 album Belonging. As a result, Jarrett has since been included as a co-author of the track.[22] In an interview after Gaucho was released, Fagen said that he loved the Jarrett track and had been strongly influenced by it.[23]

The cover art is based upon a wall plaque entitled "Guardia Vieja – Tango" (Old Guard – Tango), located in a southside Buenos Aires promenade known as Caminito, by Argentine artist Israel Hoffmann.[32]

Just prior to the album's release, the band members had another argument with MCA over the retail list price. MCA made Steely Dan a test case for its new "superstar pricing" policy, whereby new albums by top-selling artists would sell for $9.98, one dollar more than those of other artists.

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[11]
Chicago Tribune	[33]
Christgau's Record Guide	B−[34]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[35]
The Great Rock Discography	6/10[36]
MusicHound Rock	1/5[37]
Pitchfork	9.4/10[38]
Rolling Stone	[39]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[40]
Tom Hull – on the Web	B+[41]

The album was greeted with mostly positive reviews. Rolling Stone's Ariel Swartley said of the album: "After years of hibernation in the studio, the metamorphosis that began with The Royal Scam is complete. Steely Dan have perfected the aesthetic of the tease."[39] The New York Times gave Gaucho a positive review,[42] later deeming it the best album of 1980, beating out Talking Heads’ Remain in Light and Joy Division's Closer.[43] The album also received a positive review from the Montreal Gazette.[44]

Not all reviews were positive. The second edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide gave Gaucho a rating of 1 star out of 5; critic Dave Marsh called it "the kind of music that passes for jazz in Holiday Inn lounges, with the kind of lyrics that pass for poetry in freshman English classes."[45] Pittsburgh Press's Pete Bishop found it "too well-crafted, too artificially sophisticated", and lacking in spontaneity.[46] The Village Voice's Robert Christgau remarked, "Even the song with Aretha in it lends credence to rumors that the LP was originally entitled Countdown to Lethargy."[34] In 2000 it was voted number 504 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.[47]

In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that Gaucho, while sonically similar to Aja, features musical performances that have been overly rehearsed to the point of lacking emotional resonance, as well as inferior songwriting, excepting the highlights "Babylon Sisters", "Time Out of Mind" and "Hey Nineteen", which "make the remainder of the album's glossy, meandering fusion worthwhile".[11] David Sakowski of PopMatters reappraised the album as a "classic" that was largely "lost in the shadow of Aja and the changing tides of music".[48]

The album reached #9 on the U.S. Album Chart and was certified Platinum. "Hey Nineteen" reached #10 on the U.S. Singles Chart, and went to #1 in Canada. The album reached #27 on the UK Albums Chart.

All songs written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, except where noted.

• Complete lyrics