Countdown to Ecstasy (1973)

Countdown to Ecstasy is the second studio album by American rock band Steely Dan, released in July 1973 by ABC Records. It was recorded at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, California, except for Rick Derringer's slide guitar part for "Show Biz Kids", which was recorded at Caribou Ranch in Nederland, Colorado. After the departure of vocalist David Palmer from Steely Dan, the group recorded the album with Donald Fagen singing lead on every track.

Although the album was a critical success, it failed to generate a hit single in the United States and consequently only charted at number 35 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart, though it was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1978. The album has received considerable acclaim from music critics.

Background and recording

During touring for Steely Dan's first album, Can't Buy a Thrill, it was decided that David Palmer was not a suitable lead vocalist for the band, and he was asked to leave. Attempts to replace Palmer were unsuccessful, and so Donald Fagen took on the lead vocalist role.

Recording sessions for Countdown to Ecstasy took place between tour dates, leaving songwriters Fagen and Walter Becker little time to come up with new material. Songs were often assembled at the last minute; "Bodhisattva", the album's opening track, was written by Fagen the night before it was recorded. The circumstances also left such a shortage of material that the eight songs featured on the album were the only ones recorded during the sessions (a ninth, "This All Too Mobile Home", was attempted but not completed).

The instrumental section of "Bodhisattva" uses a four-part saxophone-like section, with all four parts played by Fagen on an ARP Pro Soloist synthesizer. The monophonic ARP could only play one note at a time, meaning that Fagen had to overdub each part individually. The synthesizer was so prone to going out of tune that Fagen had to stop every few notes to retune it before the recording team could again punch in. This was so trying to Fagen's patience that, once the section was finished, he unplugged the synthesizer, threw it down the stairs, and jumped up and down on it. The engineer, Roger Nichols, then brought some alcohol with which they set it on fire. The studio was in the same building as the ABC Dunhill headquarters; when a number of executives came across the wreckage the next morning, they had it framed and mounted with an inscription about "Steely Dan, men, and machines".

Becker wrote most of the verses for "The Boston Rag", while Fagen was the primary writer of the chorus, incorporating guitarist Jeff Baxter's suggestion that he use a chord pattern from Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

According to Jim Hodder, "Your Gold Teeth" was inspired by the time Palmer returned from the dentist with a bridge on; Fagen came up with the song's chorus on the spot.

"My Old School" is lyrically a series of recollections, both real and fictionalized, of Becker and Fagen's experiences at Bard College, centered on an account of a drug raid at the school in May 1969 (ordered by G. Gordon Liddy, who is referred to in the song as "Daddy Gee") in which Becker, Fagen, and Fagen's then-girlfriend Dorothy White were arrested. Baxter built the Stratocaster he played on the song himself, cutting the body from a piece of maple and winding the pickups. He finished assembling it three hours before the recording session for "My Old School", in the parking lot of Valley Sound, and plugged it directly into the mixing console for the recording.

"Pearl of the Quarter" was written before Can't Buy a Thrill and occasionally played on the supporting tour, but was not recorded for that album because it was felt that it did not fit the mood.

Becker and Fagen were both science fiction fans, and were inspired to write "King of the World" after watching the 1962 film Panic in Year Zero!. The radio transmission-like voices in the instrumental section were recorded by Becker lying under the drum kit. Dias's credit on Countdown to Ecstasy for "Stereo Mixmaster General" is an in-joke referring to an incident in the mixing of "King of the World". Dias came up with the idea of mixing each section separately and then splicing the two-track master tape together. He and Nichols worked on this all night and were still there when the next band came in for a 10 a.m. session, but the mix was not used.