10 Hidden Details In Legendary Rock Songs

When Steely Dan first went into make Aja, they were never going to settle for any old session musician. These guys had graduated to studio lab rats at this point, and the team of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were never going to finish a song until they had the best of the best, bringing in multiple veteran drummers to play on the title track. You had to be a monster to play a drum break like this, and Steve Gadd almost had too much energy to contain in just a few seconds on the record.

During the breakdown section where the saxophones and drums trade off different licks, Steve is flying up and down the drum kit playing intricate rhythms that seem to have more in common with jazz and fusion than with the flavors of pop rock that appear on the record. As the band jams along further down the record though, Steve had to come off right on the time to make the next section work, only to find himself out of drums when he was doing one of his final massive rolls across the kit.

Instead of just doing another take of trying to add on to his kit to run the track again, the final mix picked up him going around the drum kit one more time and ending the entire drum solo with a subtle click of his sticks before going back into the song. Most drummers might like to grandstand with as many drums as they can possibly fit in the studio, but some of the best percussionists know how to make music out of pretty much anything they get their hands on.