“Can’t Buy a Thrill” - Steely Dan

Although released in November of ‘72, I’m still including this in my review of senior year albums. I was pretty much a lost soul after high school and the lead track on this album, “Do it Again”, reminds me so much of that winter of ‘72/’73. It was played constantly on Top 40 and FM radio. It introduce us all to Donald Fagan and Walter Becker and their unique brand of music. This debut album led us all to future classics like “Pretzel Logic” and “Aja”.

Fagan and Becker enlisted talented session musicians throughout their career and Can’t Buy a Thrill is no exception to this rule. The dual lead guitarists (here we go again), Denny Diaz and Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, were two of the best and they shine on this record. However, for one of the most popular and classic tracks on the album, “Reelin’ in the Years”, Fagan/Becker brought in Elliot Randall for the lead guitar. Randall, who was a friend of Baxter, was well known in New York circles and his band was hired for the ‘72 Broadway production of “Jesus Christ, Superstar”. Later that year he left New York for LA and sessions with Steely Dan.

I found all this out researching for this post. In that research I stumbled on the video here from a show in 2002 of Randall’s band. His guitar work on this live version is astonishing. How many times has he played this? 1000, 5000, maybe 10,000. He hits it note for note and still has fun doing it. It is said that Jimmy Page has called it his favorite solo of all time.

I could go on and on about Walter Becker and Donald Fagan. But I probably don’t need to. Steely Dan cemented their place in classic rock history with hit album after hit album. But to understand how they changed rock music for the better, you should start here with Can’t Buy a Thrill.