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The Latest Breaking News from Steely Dan

“I wanted a bicycle for Christmas, and they gave me a guitar. It pissed me off”: Jeff “Skunk” Baxter has played with everyone from Steely Dan to Dolly Parton – but he didn’t even want to be a guitar player

Baxter would go on to become a bona fide guitar great, but his life might have turned out differently had he got his wish...

Guitar World

“He asked to hear it, so I played it, and he said, ‘I have to play on this. Give me a track’”: How a 20-year-old Steve Lukather beat three seasoned session pros to feature on this ’70s soft rock classic

England Dan & John Ford Coley bookended their decade-long career with the album Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive, which features a fast-rising Lukather on a couple of tracks

Guitar World

“He had this toy, but one day he came to work and told us that the toy had become a man”: How an advanced drum machine saved a difficult Steely Dan album

The innovative machine also received its own platinum record for its painstaking drum replacement

MusicRadar

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“They said, ‘Now it’s time to play the solo.’ I just came up with it on the spot”: Remembering Rick Derringer – the B.C. Rich-toting maverick who brought the fire to Johnny Winters’ band, and was a one-take ace for Steely Dan and more

The Ohio guitarist was one of rock’s most adaptable talents and had the production skills to go with his playing

Guitar World

“Aja by Steely Dan isthe blueprint… If there was a formula for every kind of success you could have in music, that recordembodied it”: Young Gun Silver Fox are keeping yacht-rock afloat with lawsuit guitars and 10-year-old strings

Top-tier ’70s-style AOR is back on deck with Young Gun Silver Fox, whose guitarist and co-founder Shawn Lee shares how rare, oddball and collectible guitars are the wind in their sails

Guitar World

“The good news is it was recorded – you can go online and see it. The bad news is that’s because someone stole all the master tapes”: Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter on his supergroup with Joe Walsh, sessions with Joni Mitchell and the voices of Albert King

The session great discusses being hand-picked by Gene Simmons, fitting in with James Brown, creating classic solos for Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, and Frankenstein acts on most of his guitars

Guitar World

"The All-American Boy just didn't translate as a solo artist": Rick Derringer's debut album might contain his biggest hit, but is that enough?

More than just a flashy sidekick?

Louder

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“You have to know Donald’s sense of humour. It was a total set-up”: Did Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen really tell the people behind the Yacht Rock movie to “F*** off”?

Michael McDonald thinks Donald Fagen doesn’t hate ‘yacht rock’ as much as he pretends

Louder

Rick Derringer, ubiquitous guitarist in US pop and rock, dies aged 77

Singer and guitarist scored a US No 1 fronting 60s rockers the McCoys, before work with artists as varied as Barbara Streisand, Steely Dan, Alice Cooper and ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic

The Guardian - UK

“Derringer's legacy extends beyond his music, entertaining fans with his signature energy and talent”: All American guitar legend Rick Derringer dies, aged 77

He scored a number one hit when he was still a teenager, played with Johnny and Edgar Winter, Steely Dan, KISS, and more. He wrote Hulk Hogan's anthem. Derringer's life was extraordinary

MusicRadar

“I use a spark plug to play slide. It's a trick Lowell George showed me. It gets incredible sustain – metal on metal”: In the face of sexist skepticism, Fanny's June Millington carved a unique six-string path, and inspired countless players in the process

The pioneering guitar hero discusses the unique mods she made to her '57 Les Paul, why there's more freedom in playing with just a bassist, and the time that '57 Les Paul ended up on a Steely Dan record

Guitar World

“I probably hauled in 20 guitars. I listened to the record top to bottom, turned to him and said, ‘It doesn’t need anything’”: Jeff “Skunk” Baxter on the one studio session where he lugged a ton of guitar gear – and didn't use any of it

While being a session player can sometimes be a thankless job, Baxter recalls a particularly memorable session with Steely Dan producer Gary Katz

Guitar World

“It’s a slam-dunk lost classic”: How Rush and Pink Floyd led James Dean Bradfield to Man – a band he’d previously dismissed

Manic Street Preachers frontman wasn’t convinced by his fellow Welsh musicians, until he discovered the Steely Dan and Little Feat elements of their 11th album

Louder

“He would lead you down the garden path with quite a bog-standard chord structure and then suddenly go AWOL”: From David Bowie to Radiohead and Steely Dan, here’s some of popular music’s most outlandish theory choices

No theory practitioner would advise you do as these great artists did, but the brilliance of their songs speak for themselves

MusicRadar

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Guitar World

“Jimi Hendrix came in with an old Duo-Sonic. I had just put together a Strat I’d strung up left-handed, and I went, ‘I’ll trade you.’ I was docked three weeks’ pay”: Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter recalls the questionable guitar deal he made when he met Jimi Hendrix

A young Baxter was working in a local guitar store when Hendrix came searching for a new guitar

Louder

"Above all, it was detested by the critics": A beginner’s guide to yacht rock in five essential albums

Yacht rock, soft rock – call it what you will. Here are five brilliant albums that define the genre in all its bearded, Hawaiian-shirted glory

The Independent UK

Yacht rock gets celebrated — smoothly, of course — in new documentary

The stress of Thanksgiving is over

MusicRadar

“There is potential here for the world’s most unlikely mash-up”: It’s Steely Dan versus Megadeth in the Battle of Black Friday!

Both have songs called Black Friday - so which one to choose?

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Motor1

Meet the Man Behind Gran Turismo's Amazing Jazz Soundtrack

The iconic racing game Gran Turismo introduced much to the world. The series’s huge popularity made heroes of many cars, from the unsuspecting Suzuki Cappuccino to the mighty Nissan Skyline GT-R. And GT’s now-iconic menu music, composed by Isamu Ohira, also exposed many to a unique version of jazz fusion.

Guitar World

“I got a call from Glenn Frey. I just said. ‘Where do I sign?’ Here they were asking me to join The Eagles without playing one lick of music with them”: Timothy B. Schmidt joined The Eagles at the height of Hotel California – and didn't even audition

From Poco to Toto, Steely Dan to Spinal Tap, Timothy B. Schmidt has logged endless road miles and studio hours – and then there’s his main gig...

MusicRadar

All aboard: New documentary charts the rise, fall and rise again of yacht rock

Contributors include Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins and more

Louder

“Robert Plant was so impressed with the record, he phoned me up and said:Do you wanna support us?”: Meet Forgotten Pharaohs, the rising band making nods to Steely Dan, Neil Young and Led Zeppelin

Forgotten Pharaohs were signed as the result of an egg-and-spoon race and a wayward Croc

The Independent UK

R.E.M. reunite at Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony also honoring Timbaland and Steely Dan

A reunion of R

The Guardian - UK

What a Fool Believes by Michael McDonald review – the soul singer with a nature as sweet as his voice

From falling foul of Ray Charles to writing with Burt Bacharach and singing with Steely Dan, McDonald has led a fascinating, if addiction-fuelled, life, but his memoir errs on the side of cliche

Louder

“I’m happy we’ve had hits. But I do wish the record label had put out some of our challenging songs as singles”: Some only know them as ‘That Africa band,’ but how prog are Toto?

They were inspired by prog heavyweights and their records have always contained surprising depth

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