The Greatest Steely Dan Track… That You’ve Never Heard

An outtake for the ages that owes its very existence to the sheer willpower of a loyal (and sometimes overly obsessive) fan base.

If you asked most serious artists why they pursue their craft, many might say that it’s about progress and growth.

To strive and to improve upon their last project, and create something with even greater substance and gravitas on the next go-around.

Putting their legendary wry cynicism aside, I think that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen would have probably concurred.

After creating five excellent Steely Dan studio albums, they put the cherry on top of the sundae with their sixth recording, Aja.

As noted by many, including a recent mention by a tnocs.com contributing author, Aja is a work of art so completely and thoughtfully constructed that even those who don’t like it will acknowledge that it was a landmark effort.

(Objective music fans are my favorite kind of people, but that’s another article for another day.)

So, the question was, exactly how and where would Steely Dan go from there?

Perhaps feeling challenged, inspired… or likely both, the duo’s next album, Gaucho, was a stellar addition to an already vital catalog. Whether or not it measures up to the greatness of Aja has been debated. Some say that it’s not quite as good, while others insist that it is the slightly better effort. If I were asked to choose? Call me Deacon Blues.

For myself and for many folks, that’s the answer. And I’ll spare you eleven paragraphs to tell you why.

But I’ve often wondered if the rankings of the Dan’s number six and seven LP recordings would skew any differently, if, back in 1980, someone hadn’t accidentally pushed the wrong button on a tape recorder.

To create Gaucho, the usual Steely Dan motus operandi was in place.

If you’ve ever wonder why audiophiles and music fans alike regale the sonic perfection of the Steely Dan catalog, a good place to start your research with be with Roger Nichols.

He was the engineer for landmarks such as

Nichols is rightfully credited with

beto include a literal busload of studio musicians who would play the same parts repeatedly, and sometimes torturously, until it was just right. And even then, most of these player’s individual performances would end up on the cutting room floor. However tedious and frustrating the process, that was their recipe. And it wasn’t going to change.

You may remember Gaucho and its radio-friendly second track, Hey Nineteen. In hindsight, it feels like the logical choice for a first single. But there was another song that was a very strong candidate for that distinction. It was a particular favorite of Becker and Fagen as well as producer Gary Katz and engineer Roger Nichols, who also strongly advocated for a composition called “The Second Arrangement.”

It was upbeat, yet wistful, melodic, had several great hooks, and showcased all of the ace players deftly hitting their marks.

In other words… your typical Steely Dan song.

And in this case, a very good song. One that would be memorable, and rank among their stronger efforts. The opening lyrics are exactly as Becker-Faganish as you would expect them to be:

Pour out the wine, little girl
I’ve got just two friends in this whole wide world
Here’s to reckless lovers
We all need somebody

Stashed in the yellow Jag
I’ve got my life and laundry in a Gladstone bag
You should know the program
Just one red rose and a tender goodbye

Steely Dan’s “The Second Arrangement”

The rhythm section’s contribution to the song, the essential bass, drums, keyboards, and guitars, had finally been completed. The intricate parts had been played many times over by each musician. This alone had taken several weeks, but after a lot of work, it was finally deemed ready to pass muster. Now it needed only a signature Steely Dan horn arrangement, and some reworking of the background vocals.

And finally, it would then be ready for Donald Fagen to replace the temporary lead vocal scratch-track, and do it for real in his signature mournful and reflective style. They would have a very solid recording, and the probable hit single release for the album.

Fate, or perhaps the Santa Ana Winds, had other plans.

An assistant engineer working on the project was preparing the master recording for a listen, and made a simple yet uncorrectable mistake:

He accidentally erased about 75% of the song.

This was during the days of magnetic tape, so there was no computer file backup. No method of retrieval. It was permanently gone. Reportedly, when the news was told to Donald Fagen about what had occurred, he just stared silently for a second, stood up, and walked out of the studio.

There were a few attempts to start from scratch and re-do the whole thing, but somehow, the feel of the previous erased version just couldn’t be replicated. The recording sessions for Gaucho had already been riddled with several production challenges, along with some terrible personal problems that plagued Walter Becker in particular.

Perhaps feeling as if all of this was part of a larger curse on the project, they decided that The Second Arrangement was best left alone to die an unfortunate death. And so, this song ended up as a ship that passes in the night, a gap in the Steely Dan set list that was never to be heard.

However, in the recording world, curious things sometimes happen. Some of the people working on the project had made cheap, sonically inferior copies of the track, to use as reference material. There were also some poorly recorded, yet discernible tape copies of other parts of the song. None of these would be remotely acceptable for release, but the snippets do exist.

And over the past 40 years, these breadcrumbs have been very slowly and very randomly discovered, and culled together. This has resulted in several fan recreations of the song from the bootlegged cassettes and studio scratch tracks.

To the delight of Steely Dan Nation, every couple of years someone will offer up a slightly improved version. Sometimes featuring a better EQ, or maybe a new reduction of the original tape ”hiss,” or some other 21^st century audio processing wizardry; it’s all a masterclass in patience and successive approximation.

Here is 43 seconds of what could be called the “current state of the art” for this song. It’s clearly bootleg-level quality:

For those who would have preferred that the lead vocal was clearer, I feel you – it’s not the easiest thing to listen to.

But fans will be fans. All true lovers of Steely Dan have lovingly embraced such Frankencreations of “The Second Arrangement,” while cheerfully accepting that we’re probably at the point of, “as good as it will get.”

Until… a stunning development came to light in 2020:

…in the form of a Facebook post by Cimcie Nichols, the daughter of the late Gaucho session engineer.

Yes, agreed. Good job, Mom.

The family has discovered three cassettes that may include working mixdowns of the song. With magnetic technology this old, there is an excellent chance that the cassette’s tape will physically disintegrate into brown flakes upon the first playing. Therefore, great care is being taken to see if it’s salvageable. If so, a real-time digital recording will be made as the tape is played.

Perhaps the story of this long lost recording isn’t over quite yet. Maybe it’s like the song itself says:

Now’s the time
to redefine
the first arrangement again.