Steely Dan Co-Founder Walter Becker Dead At 67

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STEELY DAN guitarist and bassist WALTER BECKER passed away SEPTEMBER 3rd at age 67. No cause of death was given.

BECKER formed STEELY DAN with DONALD FAGEN in the late 1960s after the two met while students in college.  A string of hugely successful album began with the 1972 release of "Can't By A Thrill," which featured the Top 10 single "Do It Again" and Top 15 follow-up "Reelin' In The Years."

Their third album, 1974's Pretzel Logic," produced the act's biggest single, the Top 5 hit, "Rikki Don't Lose That Number." In 1977, they scored their highest charting album, "Aja." In 1978, that album won the GRAMMY for Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording. In 2003, the album was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame and ranked number 145 on ROLLING STONE's "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. 

The group disbanded less than a year after the release of 1980's "Gaucho." They reunited in 1993. Their next album, 2000's "Two Against Nature," resulted in four GRAMMY wins including Album Of The Year.  In 2001, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Their ninth - and final - studio album, "Everything Must Go," was released in 2003.

BECKER had also released two solo albums, 1994's "11 Tracks Of Whack" and 2008's "Circus Money."

A note released to the media by DONALD FAGEN said, in part:

"We started writing nutty little tunes on an upright piano in a small sitting room in the lobby of WARD MANOR, a mouldering old mansion on the HUDSON RIVER that the college used as a dorm. WALTER had a very rough childhood - I’ll spare you the details. Luckily, he was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. He was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny. His habits got the best of him by the end of the seventies, and we lost touch for a while. In the eighties, when I was putting together the NY Rock and Soul Review with LIBBY, we hooked up again, revived the STEELY DAN concept and developed another terrific band. I intend to keep the music we created together alive as long as I can with the STEELY DAN band."

The folks at BENZTOWN are offering this tribute to BECKER:

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