Today’s classic song of the day is an early one from Steely Dan, the hard rockin’ shuffle “Reelin’ in the Years.” It was featured on their debut album, Can’t Buy a Thrill, and released as a single by ABC Records in March of 1973. The single went all the way to #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #7 on the Cash Box Top 100.
Like almost all Steely Dan songs, “Reelin’ in the Years” was written by head honchos Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. It’s nothing more than a solid kiss-off to a former lover, detailing the various things the singer doesn’t like or doesn’t understand about that person. As the lyrics say:
Your everlasting summer you can see it fading fast
So you grab a piece of something that you think is gonna last
Well you wouldn’t even know a diamond if you held it in your hand
The things you think are precious I can’t understand
Are you reelin’ in the years?
Stowin’ away the time
Are you gatherin’ up the tears?
Have you had enough of mine?
The real cool thing about this track, however, is the astounding guitar solo by studio ace Elliott Randall. (No, I’m not talking about the extended two-guitar line in the bridge; that was played by bandmates Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and Denny Dias.) No less an eminence than Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page has called it his favorite guitar solo of all time. I can’t disagree with that.
Elliott had known Becker and Fagen from when he’d played on some of their demo recordings when they were in the backup band for Jay and the Americans, and they called him in to play on this one track on their first album together. He set up his gear in the engineering booth, listened to it once, and ripped it out.
Here’s what Mr. Randall remembers about the session:
That was the first take, all the way through. We laughed a lot. Actually, it was my second performance, because the run-through wasn’t recorded, and at the time we all thought that the unrecorded performance might have been better. Oh well…
There are actually three separate solos in “Reelin’ in the Years.” The song starts with one bar of solo guitar that states the melody from the song’s chorus. The rest of the band comes in with measure two, and Elliott starts to wander away from the main melody into a fully improvised line. His target notes throughout are A and E, the tonic and the fifth of the Mixolydian mode. He ends this short intro solo with a long repeated sixteenth-note run down the notes of the mode followed by a broad quarter-note triplet figure and an ending A power chord (A and E, with no third).
The second solo comes after two verse-chorus combinations, following that written-out dual guitar interlude by Baxter and Dias. This longer solo enters with a squealing high F#, the major seventh of the underlying G Major 9 chord. Elliott plays the next several lines over an extremely wide three-octave range, using his guitar’s entire fretboard. While he stays pretty much within the confines of the A Mixolydian mode, he’s not afraid to use chromatic notes; he’s particularly fond of using Bb and C-natural as passing tones. He plays a variety of rhythmic figures, some of them complex triplet-based syncopations. And there are lots of grace notes and bends, to add the appropriate flavor to the solo. He again ends the solo with a forceful quarter-note triplet figure, centered on middle A; the final note is a held high A.
The final solo is in the song’s out chorus, which is what you hear as the song goes to fade out. This is my favorite of the three solos. Elliott uses the technique of repetition and variation here, developing a four-note motif (F#-A-A-F) and repeating it on different parts of the beat. Then he moves to a scorching series of sixteenth-note triplet riffs, around the target note B. The following figure flows around the target note D, then he plays repetition-and-variation with a new three-note motif (D-E-A) moving through eighth-note and eighth-note triplet variations. As the song starts to fade out, Elliott is now all over the fretboard, from a low G (below middle C) all the way up to the second A above the staff. It’s a superb demonstration of both instrumental and improvisational technique—and it really wails!
I interviewed Elliott Randall for my book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Solos and Improvisation. I found him to be gracious, funny, and very informative. Even better, when I analyzed the solo for my book, I realized that it illustrated every single improvisation technique I’d discussed in the book—all in one solo!
You can learn more about Elliott Randall and his music on his website, www.elliott-randall.com. Elliott has played for a lot of great musicians over the years, including Ashford and Simpson, Asia, the Blues Brothers, Felix Cavaliere, Harry Chapin, Desmond Child and Rouge, the Doobie Brothers, Peter Frampton, James Galway, Art Garfunkel, Astrid Gilberto, Richie Havens, Rupert Holmes, John Lennon, Ramsey Lewis, Nils Lofgren, Laura Nyro, Tom Rush, Seatrain, Sha Na Na, Gene Simmons, Carly Simon, B.J. Thomas, Loudon Wainwright III, Jimmy Webb, Carl Wilson, and Peter Wolf. He played on three separate Steely Dan albums: Can’t Buy a Thrill, Katy Lied, and Royal Scam, and was also a member of one of the early incarnations of the Saturday Night Live band. Elliott is a tremendous musician and just a super-nice guy, and I’m proud to call him a friend.
