No Filler Music Podcast - 100th Episode - Steely Dan's Hired Gun: The Guitar Solos of Larry Carlton

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

For this very special episode of No Filler, we welcome our father Stan to the pod to help us commemorate our 100th episode. He ignited our passion for music at a young age, introducing us to bands like Steely Dan early and often. And he was once the Music Director and morning drive DJ at a small town Texas radio station back in the 70s. Together we take a look at Larry Carlton's many contributions to the sound of Steely Dan, with a listen back at some of his greatest guitar solos in their catalog. This includes "Kid Charlemagne", "Don't Take Me Alive", "I Got The News", and "Third World Man." Tracklist Kid Charlemagne Don’t Take Me Alive I Got The News Third World Man Everything You Did This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Pugh, pio. We made it to 100. So, Q, what are you some of your, if you reflect back on our 100 episodes, what are some of your favorite moments? Favorite, not necessarily moments, but favorite albums that we've talked about. What are some of your favorite episodes?

I'd say for sure, helplessness blues, the Fleet Fox's episode. I just love listening to Fleet Foxes, and I'll take any excuse to do it. Fuck, man. It's kind of crazy to think about, about how much we've covered so far

I'll tell you one of my favorites is the Jimmy World episode really because yeah only because we I think we we basically it gave me an excuse to dive into the history of email music which I've never really dove into and I enjoyed kind of you know learning about the fact that email is not what you and I thought email was when we were growing up no you know I mean yeah the history Yeah, absolutely. A lot farther back than I ever thought.

And the sound has evolved quite a bit from what we know of it from the 2010s, you know. Yeah. I was also, you know, I'm a huge fan of every single Spoon episode that we did just because. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah. And as far as like memorable episodes, sharing those animal collective songs with you from Sun. Tongues,

sticks out to me because of your reaction to some of those songs, dude. Some of it, I just say, you know, I was just dumbfounded by some of it. Yeah. You know what else was a good episode,

dude? Episodes. The one with Larry, where we talked about Nick Drake, and the one with Nathan, where we talked about in rainbows. Yeah, so maybe we need to have more guests on the show going forward.

How do we make that happen? I mean, we just, you know what? All you got to do is believe, you know? Believe to achieve. Exactly. It rhymes. All right. Well, maybe we'll, uh, maybe we'll, uh, maybe we'll, we'll strive to get some more guests on here going forward. Yes, because I don't know about you, but I'm tired of hearing us talk every week. You know, I have to piece together these episodes and it's like, God damn. Oh, hey, well, you know what, Speaking of guests, what do we have in store for the 100th episode today?

Oh, yeah, this is just an intro for an episode. Okay. Yeah, let's get to it then. We've brought our dear old dad along for this 100th episode to talk about Larry Carlton and specifically Larry Carlton's guitar work on Steelie Dan Records. I mean, he is a big part of the Steely Dan, like ethos, you know? Like, when you think about, let's put it this way, if there's a Steely Dan song that you are a big fan of and there's a guitar solo, I bet you it's a Larry Carlton guitar solo. Now, I mean, don't get me wrong. There's plenty of great guitar players other than Larry Carlton that show up on Sealy Dan records. and he didn't really show up until

what did we find out? Katie Lide was his first his first appearance. But arguably one of the most well-known and cherished guitar solos in Sealy Dance Catalog and in just guitar solos in general

would be Kid Charlemagne, which is Larry Carleton. So you know what? We're going to get into all that. Yeah. And our dad really is like the best person, you know, we know that we could easily access to talk about this stuff with, dude.

You know, he was a DJ in the 70s. He played a ton of Steely Dan songs during his stint on these, on these, you know, top 40 stations. You know, and he was the reason why we're as big of music fans as we are. It's just our entire life has been music-centered because of this man. So we were honored to have him on and excited. to share this 100th episode moment with him. It was a great conversation. We dive into Larry Carlton and Steely Dan.

We talk a little bit about Michael McDonald. We play a lot of great guitar solos. This is the first time we've done a whole episode dedicated to guitar solos specifically, not songs, but solos. Yeah, really, it's the first episode where it's just been focused on, on a specific person's contribution to a catalog of music. You know what I mean?

Like like you said, usually it's, hey, let's pick an album or let's look at a few albums of an artist, but we're talking about songs in general. But this is more, we are laser-focused in on the guitar solo in this song or in this song. And that's pretty cool.

It was a lot of fun. And yeah, our dad's a giant, you know, lover of guitar music. You know, he took us to Jeff Beck shows when we were a kid, and he took us to... Yeah, dude, every year we went to the Dallas guitar show. Yeah, guitar show. We went to, you know, the guitar, the Crossroads Festival, you know, with Harry Clapton and Zizi Top and all that stuff. So, yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, let's stop yapping and get into the episode here. So without further ado, here is our conversation with our father, Stan, about the... Larry Carlton and Steely Dan. All right, Q, so episode four, we had our big brother Spencer on for the Food Fighters episode. And it was all right. That was an all right episode. Yeah, that was a long time ago.

Now, here we are in our 100th episode. We're going to talk about the guitar player, Larry Carlton. And, you know, in context of Steely Dan. And we thought to ourselves, who better to have on this episode than our father, Mr. Stan Self? He was waiting in the wings right now on Skype with us. Hello, sons. Hey, Dad. I feel like we've mentioned you on this podcast quite a bit, just like in passing,

just like talking about, oh, you know, we used to listen to this. You know, dad used to play this in the music room growing up or whatever. So like, you know, we've essentially, like, credited you with, you know, sparking our lifelong passion for music. So it only makes sense that you would be on this podcast at some point. So I figured the 100th episode would be a good one to have you on. I'm flattered to be here. So there's a lot of stuff that I don't know about your radio past. Like I know bits and pieces of it, but you were a radio DJ in the set.

70s, correct? Correct. At a small town of Abilene, Texas, which, unless you're in Texas, you probably have no idea where Abilene is, but it was a like top of the charts type radio station, right? A top 40 station. And so we were trying to do what a lot of FM stations were doing, and that was moving FM into the mainstream. whereas prior to that FM had been pretty much either beautiful music or public radio or album rock.

And as more and more cars began to be available with FM radios in them, you began to get hit radio and country hit radio onto FM, where stereo could come into play because AM was mono only. So we were at that point in time where FM was becoming, much more mainstream. And it coincided with the deregulation of radio, which brought, you know, literally thousands of new FM stations into the country.

That's great. So that was all happening in the 70s. Yeah. Reagan deregulated radio early in the 80s, but it began to, it ticked off a little bit before that, even during the Carter administration. And so prior to deregulation,

you had about, maybe at most six FM stations per major market. But because of the way FM technically works, you can have radio stations as close as two frequency points apart. Like 91.1 and 91.3 can coexist together. You can't do that with AM. You've got to have a lot more separation. So you can almost have an unlimited number of FM stations.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. So, Dad, did you get, did you have a say in, and what music you played or did you just get handed a list? Actually, I was the morning drive, DJ and the music director. So I had 100% control over what music we played. Cool. Man, that sounds awesome. So did it have to be, it had to be singles, right? Well, we, uh, we tried to mirror the national, um, major market hit radio stations, because that's what everybody tried to do. There was very much an admiration society at work among probably eight or ten national hit radio stations.

And everybody mirrored that. So you'd look at Radio and Records Magazine and Billboard magazine and see what the other stations were playing. And then you'd mirror that to a certain extent, but you might put a few songs in there that you thought would appeal to your local market, not necessarily L.A. or Chicago or New York, but something that would be more for your local market.

So in Texas, we might have a few more crossover country hits, right? Like a little bit more Kenny Rogers or Dolly Parton or something like that could cross over a little bit more often, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you had to play some Willie Nelson, right? Let me think about that. Yeah, there were a couple of Willie crossovers. you know, the poncho and lefty that he did with Whalen Jennings, that was a crossover.

And Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys, which came out of the movie, the electric cowboy, electric horseman, I think, or something like that, with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. They were in that movie. See, Dad, you're talking to some young 30-somethings. We have no idea of any of that meant. But that's okay. So were you at the station with Steely Dan as far as like, you know, it seems like their heyday was 70, you know, mid-70s, basically, right? Were you there?

Do you remember playing any Steely Dan tracks? Oh, sure. And, you know, the way Top 40 works today and even then is you play the current hits, you play recurrent hits, which were probably, you know, a year, year and a half old. And you'd play oldies, which go back maybe 10 years or more. So we played a lot of Steely Dan. The first significant radio interview that I did live was with Michael McDonald during his first recording with the Doobie Brothers. And on that interview, we talked about dubies and his time with Steely Dan. So it was very interesting.

That's awesome. So can I just say, like, how is it that that, that, uh, We don't know that. I had no idea that you had interviewed Michael McDonald. I knew that. You did? I think we talked about it a little bit. Yeah.

So that's cool because we have Michael McDonald is appearing on this episode because I have him included in the, I got the news clip that I put together here. The dubies actually came through Abilene on their tour westbound from Dallas to Abilene to Lubbock. They hit college towns, of course, where all the people. were going to be, yeah. Yeah, I'm surprised that they let Dewey Brothers into Abileney. That's just to be quite awesome. Oh, we got everybody back then. It was pretty amazing, yeah.

Okay. Dad, another question I wanted to ask, this is just something I don't know about you. Was music a significant part of your childhood like it was ours? It was. And I wish I had done a little bit more of what you guys did, and that is learn to play an instrument, which I didn't do. But yeah, no, music was huge for me. Was that because of your parents? You know, like, was music just part of your household? Like it, like it was ours? No. Not in the same way at all.

That's what we, that's what we figured. That's really what I was curious about. Yeah. No, not really. So you had to, you had to go outward to find your music. Like, so I guess because, if that's the case, like, was there a friend or like somebody that, like, somebody that, like, Like who got you into music? Because at some point you obviously started to go outward and then listen to rock and stuff that probably our grandparents, your parents, wouldn't have approved that right? Your Aunt Sheila, my older sister by 11 years, was a music fanatic. This is news to me.

I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, she had a great collection of 45 RPM's and she would stay up at night and call the radio station and make requests. That's great. Wait to see if somebody was, if they were going to play it. And I remember the day she brought home,

Meet the Beatles, the album. And we played that about 10 times over and over and over. So I have to credit her with my love for pop music. Yeah. That's great. All right. Well, let's, you guys want to talk about Steely and Larry Carlton?

Yeah. let's get it right into it. Okay. So, Larry Carlton, he's also known as Mr. 335, and I know that, Dad, you know what that means. Quentin did not know what that means. I sure is that I don't know what that means. That's a Gibson. Yeah, that's the Gibson. Oh, is that his, his guitar of choice or something? He's been playing it for decades, yeah. That's his signature guitar. It's an ES335. So chances are, what you're hearing on the Steely Records is his ES335 that he's played forever. So like we said earlier, we're talking about Larry Carlton in the context of Steely Dan, in other words, his guitar contributions to the Steely Dan records that he appeared on.

And he was on every record from Katie Lide to Gaucho. and so that's from 1975 to 1980. And, you know, his contributions kind of, it seems like, you know, with his first one on Katie Lide, there wasn't really much of a guitar solo, you know, but although the guitar is very prominent in that song, if you listen to it, I mean, it's always there in the background, and it does have a very, it's right along with Donald's voice and stuff, you know. But I think Larry Carlton is known primarily for,

for his guitar solo on Kids Charlemagne, which was the Royal Scam, 1976. So that's our first clip for today. As far as like, when you look at his Wikipedia page, which has a bunch of his discography. It's kind of ridiculous if you scroll down. Yeah, most of his contributions are as a studio musician. And, like, prominently with Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell as well.

and then just a whole host of other people. Yeah, I mean, I counted like over 30 albums that he appears on just with random people. Yeah, and he's, you know, to like some of the more notable stuff. He was on off the wall by Michael Jackson. I'm trying to see any other people that are well-known. The Nightfly, Donald Fagan. Yeah, he's up for Steeley. He recorded with John Lennon and Sam B. Davis Jr.

So, yeah, a lot. Yeah, so this is like the guy that you want on your album. He's one of the greatest guitar players of all time probably. You would say that too, right? Yes. As far as electric guitar players, top five probably. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, so.

Let's play some tunes then. Yeah, our first clip is Kid Charlemagne. So it's actually, it's an extended clip because there's kind of two. guitar solos in the song. So what I wanted to do with each of these clips is give at least some sort of like lead in into the solo because it helps to hear the solo like in context with the song, right? But in this one in particular, like you're going to hear quite a bit of the song because the second solo in the song actually fades the song out. So let's just listen to it and then we'll talk about it. Okay. So that that is the the guitar solo that kind of, you know, put him on

on the map as far as like, you know, legendary guitar solos. It shows up on a ton of lists, you know, of best guitar solos of all time. Rolling Stone put it as number 80 on their list of 100, which, you know, it's high up there, right? I mean, I would say that it's probably a lot better than some of the bottom 80 on that list, right? Any chance you know what was the number one for that list? I'm trying to find an old article here.

Here we go, I got it. Number one, can you guys try to take a guess? The Van Halen? Nope, that's number six. Eruption is number six. It's actually not what I would have thought. It's Johnny Be Good by Chuck Berry. It was groundbreaking.

Yeah, I was going to say it, that's probably because it's sort of like the start of all of it, right? Yeah, you can't have guitar sellers without Johnny Be Good. Yeah, yeah. Stay Right of Heaven is number eight on the list. But yeah, so it's a, I mean, it's a, it's a great guitar solo because of how many things like he's doing in that. So I watched this video and maybe we'll post it in the show notes. I think, Kear, you're familiar with this guy. And Dad, if you're not familiar with him, you should probably check out some of his videos because he goes into, into Dev.

quite a bit when he talks about songs and he has a series of videos called What Makes the Song Great. It's a guy named Rick Beto and he has a YouTube channel and he did a What Makes This Song Great on Kid Charlemagne and he broke down the solo like note for note basically and talked about how great it is more so than I could ever try to reproduce so I'm not going to try to but maybe we'll post a link to that video on the show notes. but um so dad like what do you think as far as like what i want to know because i'm not too familiar with larry carleton's solo stuff do you think like does it sound to you like he used his time with celie dan to like experiment and try new things or is this kind of more in line with what his

solo stuff is this is pretty much carleton okay classic carlton if you listen to his solo albums what you'll learn is that as he writes his songs, he also writes the improvised solos. And that's what he does with all of his studio work too. He actually writes the solos out, note for note, and then plays them. And so when he does a concert and recreates his solo, it sounds exactly as it does in the original studio recording. So, yeah, this is class.

said Carlton. He does it in the keys that he needs to do for the song, but other than that, it's his style. So it's like, I mean, what's the style? It's like, it's, it's blues. Bluesy jazz and jazz. Lots of note bending, you know. Yeah, he does a lot of note bending. You understand the string bending aspect of what he's doing. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, and he's doing a lot of sliding to he slide and hammering on and all that kind of stuff.

I mean, do you think that's why Steeley Dan went back to him over and over again because he's the perfect fusion guitar player and they're like one of the best fusion bands of all time, you know? Like he's exactly, like he's the guitar version of Sealy Dan if you want to think of it that way.

Pretty much. I mean, if you... It's like a perfect marriage. If you think of the guitarists that they worked with the most, Skunk Baxter, Denny Diaz, and Carlton, they're very different, but they all have a jazz component to what they can do on the frontboard.

Let me quote Walter Becker here in an article I read about Larry Carlton and Steeley Dan. Talking about royal scam, you know, Becker says, you know, if that's the definitive Steely Dan guitar album, then Larry Carlton is the reason why. And he says, you know, there would be a lot of volatile people with volatile music style. in the room. And in a lot of cases, it seemed to me that Larry, more than anybody else, was holding things together rhythmically and in other ways. So like you're saying, they worked with a lot of different guitar players, but I guess once Larry got in the mix, he just kind of like honed in on a specific sound, and that's usually what they went with for their guitar work. They also credited

him with writing the rhythm tracks on Asia and Gaucho. So he actually writes a lot of the rhythm tracks for the entire song. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So we can listen to the next solo on Kid Charlemagne or we can move to the next one if you guys want to. Yeah. Let's play it.

Let's listen to the rest of it. Okay. All right. So like I said earlier, there are two distinct solos on Kid Charlemagne. So let's listen to that second one. That's how the song ends. It fades out with the song or the solo. So I also wanted to put the reason that that was.

an extended clip with the verse is because that might be one of my favorite steely Dan lines of all time. There's gas, or he says, is there gas in the car? I think the people down the hall know who you are. I love that. That's great. I love the story. Like, if you look at the lyrics here,

it's about like a Coke dealer or something like that, and he's trying to make a getaway, basically, because somebody's on to him. But anyway, I just noticed something I have to point out to you guys. You know, you work with the program Garage Band on this podcast, right? Yeah. So the logo or the icon for Garage Band is a Gibson 335.

Oh, you're right. There you go. Wow. There you go. So if you have Garage Band at home, you can play along with it. It looks just like Larry Carlton's guitar. It does, yeah, same. It's got the same finish and everything?

That's great. Yep. It's like it was meant to be the whole thing. Anyway, so let's move on to the next track. It actually is the next track on the album, too. This is also on Katie Lide. No, shit. Royal Scam.

This is called Don't Take Me Alive. And if Walter Becker said that this is their, like, guitar album. It's known as their best guitar album. Yeah, that's what, yeah, the definitive Steely Dan guitar record. Yeah, obviously, Kid Charlie Man, it's probably one of those reasons. But I feel like this intro is, I mean, if you're on the fence about Larry Carlton as a guitar player, like this, this is my favorite intro, guitar intro maybe of all time. So, I mean, that's how you start a song right there. Dad, did you own a copy of Royal Scam? Yes, I did. Did you like it?

Oh, yeah. I mean, when you hear that intro, even if you're not a blues guitar fan, you will be. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I mean, there's nothing to, there's nothing to hate about that. You know, it's just so good.

It's also the perfect song for showing how blues and rock are intricately linked, you know? Yeah, and that's what Steeley Dan, that's why I love Steeley Dan so much because they take jazz and blues and rock and just like fuse them together in the perfect way, you know. But yeah, so I have a quote here about this intro from Larry Carlton. He was talking about how like, you know, it really goes in like, like you're right in the middle of it. Like, let me see that again.

So like it starts really heavily, right? Aside from that sort of that chord that he kind of slowly plays, that it's. starts out with. And he said that that was actually Donald Fagan's idea. He says, there was no chord in front of the beginning of the song. I don't know what else we tried, but Donald was the one who finally just said, why don't we just put a big chord in front of it? It was that simple. I went out into the room where my amp was and stood in front of it and tweaked until there was the right tone. And then I did four or five or six of those chords to where everything rang. They adjusted the limiter and everything, so it really sat like they wanted it to, but Donald was right.

So I think that's kind of interesting. I like, and I really love how that starts, right? Because it's, you know, he kind of slowly plucks the notes of that chord and lets it kind of sit there for a little bit. And then the drums come in and it all sort of starts, you know. But heavy fuzz. Yeah, heavy fuzz. But yeah, that's, you know, we can credit Donald for that. Well, so he was saying that the song was just going to start just right there, like just go right into it. And they're like, well, I don't, you know, I don't kind of, I don't like how that sounds. Let's figure out something to ease us into it. Why don't we just put a big chord in front of it? Right. Yeah, I think that was a good, a good choice. But one thing I also like about the songs that he appears in, at least the ones

we played so far, when you heard in that clip toward the end, there was another little guitar riff that he had, it seems like he, you know, he likes to do that where if you hear him in the background of a guitar or of a song where it's not the solo, like it's sort of like he's teasing as solo again. Yes, I noticed that. You know what I mean? It's like you're getting, you're hearing a little glimpse of it before it happens, you know. Yeah, it is kind of, it is. Well, I mean, in that case, in that case, the solo is the very first thing of the song. But in other, there's other examples where you'll hear him throw a lick in there that's kind of a, uh, you're, nod back to the solo or to the solo that's coming up, you know? And I like that. I've always

like that. I think, hey, Travis, I think we should probably pause real quick, take a quick break, and then we'll get back into it. And we're back. Yeah, so let's talk about Asia. So there was a, I'm not sure what the, if it was a channel that put these out or if it was just something that just existed separately. But there's this really great series called the classic albums. where they go into the studio with the musicians and talk about an album. And there was one that was done on Asia. So it's got, you know, Donald and Walter and a bunch of the studio musicians from that session back in the studio. And they're sort of going, you know, track by track and talking about it.

And there's a clip that I found of Walter kind of talking about Carlton's contributions to the album. And it sounds like kind of probably the approach he had with every album. So let's play that interview clip real quick. I think of myself as the person that they wanted to be the liaison between themselves and the studio musicians. They would give me their demo tape, and it had those wonderful piano parts on it. And many of the bass parts were on there also. And I would be the person that would take those notes off of the tape, fill in the blanks where they weren't sure of what they wanted to be played. And then I would take that chart to the session.

and I would be the person who was familiar with the song out in the studio with the studio musicians. So if Donald or Walter would say, Larry, when we go to the bridge at the such and such, I would be able to tell the musicians that's bar 19, B-flat-7th with a raise-nine. Okay, so that was Larry talking about how he would get the charts, I guess, is what he said,

before the sessions would start. And that's probably how he, would write his soul, you know, because you talked about how he likes to write his solos out completely. That's probably why he wanted to get the charts ahead of time, you would think. So it sounds like all the other musicians would turn to him, you know, and he would kind of direct them into what they need to do next. Right. And if you think about it, like, I think there were some other musicians that had recorded with Steely Dan previously on Asia as well. But like this is his third rodeo, you know,

if you will, like with Steely Dan. So like, you know, he's, he's done this with him. Like, he knows how it goes. But obviously, Asia was like the most complicated album that they put together. So I'm sure it was pretty. And they had so many people coming in and out of that door, you know. It was a revolving door of, like, these studio musicians. So Larry was probably one of the, like, the solid, like, constants in the studio, you know.

So it probably made sense for him to kind of lead like that. But anyway, I thought that was interesting. So, um, we have a clip. of the song I Got the News, which as I said earlier, has Mr. Michael McDonald on it. And I

always love hearing his voice. Me too. He's got that classic voice. You guys just like the family guy episode. There is a classic family guy episode with Michael McDonald, which is funny. Okay, so this is

I Got the News. It's off of Asia. It came out in 1977. if you didn't already know that. And here we go. The tone that he gets on that guitar is just amazing. Yeah, so he dialed back the fuzz for sure. Well, that song is a jazz song, period. Yeah.

There's no much rock feel to that at all. It's pure jazz. One thing I was curious about Dad, how different was Steely Dan? like in the landscape of music throughout the 70s, like what was, you know, what made them stand apart from everything else that was going on back then? Well,

a lot of pure rock and roll fans never accept a Steely Dan. They thought that they were too jazzy. They had horns on every album. Right, and backup singers in every song, pretty much. Yeah, and just the way they wrote the songs were much more jazz than rock. Yeah. And so they weren't accepted.

In fact, for a long time, they weren't even on the ballot for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame forever. They were very late editions. So you, what was the first song of theirs that you heard? Was it reeling in the years? Do it again.

Okay. Same album. So, I mean, reeling in the years, to me, that's a rock song, you know? Yeah. In fact, the opening is one of the great rock openings of all songs, period. I agree.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Dini Dia's solo is amazing at the start. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. So, I mean, that's funny because that's their first album. So you think that that would have put them right into the rock, you know. Were they considered rock on that record or was it still considered?

Yeah, do it again was a pure pop song in a big hit. But, you know, they quickly. got the reputation of being far too jazzy, not enough rock, not enough guitar, too many horns. There were two or three songs on that album like Dirty Work that was too jazzy for them. And then Carly Simon did the hit version of Dirty Work, and that made it even more pop jazz.

And so the pure rock fans, of the time who were listening to Sabbath and Zeppelin and the stones were getting harder at that time. Yeah. And, you know, a few other progressive rock bands. They just couldn't find a spot for where Steeley Dan should fit in that new world order. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, and Steeleadon got jazzier and jazzier too.

about it. Because by the time you get to Asia and Goucho, it's super jazzy. Oh, yeah. But anyway, what I like about that song is how it's sort of that solo, and then it's, they kind of go back. There's a lot of, like, going back and forth between the guitar. And the piano? Like a little piano ditty and then, like, the vocals.

It's cool. I like how, I like how they do that. And Michael McDonald shows up, you know? What's not to that? I know. I mean, there's nothing. Exactly. I mean, he really does have one of the,

of the most unique voices. Oh, you can, yeah. Ever. You can pick his voice out anywhere. And he was with Steely Dan from the beginning. Really? Yeah, I think he showed up on Prezell Logic for the first time. Yes, I believe so.

I think pretzel logic might be my favorite Steely Dan record. Just throwing that out there. I mean, that's what we, so we, I guess we mentioned that the last episode that came out was actually an early recording that we did that was sort of re-released. But yeah, we talked about Pritzel Logic last week. Technically, it was like two years ago that we talked about it. Yeah. Well, no song from Steely Dan made it higher up the charts than Rick, you don't lose that number. It got to number three. Well, there you go. And nothing was ever higher from them on the top 40 charts. Which is kind of amazing to me because it's a super, um,

There's not much rock on that song either, you know? All right. So let's see here. We got one more song to play here. And what I like about this one, in contrast to the other clips we've heard, is it's a very different sounding guitar, both in a sound and a sound and just the genre that it is closer to than jazz or blues, I would say. So this is off of the next album, Goucho, which came out in 1980. This is the very last track. It's called Third World Man.

So lots of sliding and lots of bended on that one. So, I mean, it's a sliding guitar, right? He's got a slide. So it's almost like a, it's the closest thing to like a country kind of guitar sound almost. Then almost back to like Pretzell Logic. talking about pretzel logic with a with a gun with a gun yeah you know how that was kind of had that kind of country almost vibe to it western kind of vibe to it but yeah i feel like the solo that solo not necessarily the song but the solo has kind of a nod to country playing a little bit

Travis you know as a guitar player his use of the volume pedal was really unique and he sort of created the whole sound around swelling the volume with the volume pedal off the amp as opposed to using the knobs on the guitar and you could really hear it in that song. Yeah, no, now that you said that, yeah. So here's another interesting fact about this song. It almost didn't make it on to Gaucho. It was actually a session from the Royal Scam Days. So I've got a quote here from Larry Carlton, the man himself here.

He says about gaucho when Billboard magazine came out and reviewed it. They said, you know, blah, blah, blah. Great guitar solo by Larry Carlton. And I said, but I didn't play on gaucho. They'd cut it in New York. I didn't play on it. So I found out later they had finished mixing gaucho in New York and one of the second engineers erased one of their master's,

Tracks. So third world man was in the can from the Royal's the Royal Scam and they had to reach back in the old tapes and find something to finish the album. Wow. And that's how I ended up on Goucho. Wow, that's cool. He wasn't in the studio for Goucho. He really didn't, if you think about it, he didn't contribute to the Goucho album other than they found this old, they had to basically finish the album out because there's like these lost Steely Dan songs that were on these master tracks that were erased by an engineer. And you can actually, you can find them. There are a couple of tracks that have been dug up that were from this old session that

was erased. So there are definitely some B-sides out there, if you want, of stuff that was supposed to be on Goucho. But I think that's kind of interesting that, and you know, what's funny is like when you listen to Third World Man, like compared to the rest of the Goucho stuff, it doesn't sound like it belongs on the record. No, it doesn't. So it kind of makes sense.

if you think about it. That's funny too that he he reads a billboard article and he's like, hang on, what? I wasn't in Gaucho. What are you talking about? It's kind of funny that they didn't reach out to him and tell him like,

hey, by the way, you're going to show up on this record. There's got to be countless recordings from Steely Dan that just never found their way to albums. Sure. There's going to be tons of songs

that we've never heard. Yeah, I mean, if you think about a gaucho is, you know, those three years after Asia came out, and there's only seven songs. There must have been, you know, you know many other song ideas they must have had in a three-year span between Asia and Gaucho. Yeah.

And it comes down to seven or eight. If you think about the two that were lost on the master session, but I mean, it's crazy. You know, there must have been tons of stuff. Well, if you think about a recording session that got devoured. divided or split, Larry Carlton was working on a solo album called On Solid Ground. And he was involved in a shooting. He actually got shot in the throat walking out of the guitar studio in the middle of that session.

And so the last four songs on that album had to be done after he finished rehab of about 10 months. but his vocal cords were destroyed. He got shot in the throat. What? Was that just a stray bullet? No, it was just apparently a juvenile gang just driving by shooting out the window of a car and just, yeah, just ran. And he just picked him.

She shot it. He was in Burbank, California. Oh, my God. Yeah, it says here his left arm was paralyzed. And for six months, he was unable to play more than a few notes. So, I mean, yeah, that's, he could have. lost his ability to play guitar. So good thing he recovered.

But that's a great album to listen to because not only because of the fact that he came back and for the tunes when he recovered, but it takes you through almost every style that he mastered from jazz, blues to rock. It's a really cool album. And that was during the era when he wasn't playing a 335. he became a designer and worked with a group called Valley Arts and they made Solid Body Electrics in the 80s and this is sort of a hybrid strat tele thing that they created that he recorded most of that album with.

That's cool. Hmm. Yep. Oh, yeah, I'm looking at a picture right now. That's a cool looking guitar. Yeah, there you go. I wonder what Gibson thought about that. I don't know.

They had plenty of people play in their guitars. They were more well known than Larry Carlton, I'm afraid, back then. That's true. As far as rock and roll gods, there are plenty of Gibson players out there. Plenty. Yeah. All right. Well, I mean, that's what we have for you as far as our steely Larry Carlton episode.

But I do have another clip here because we were talking about what he did afterwards and maybe what led him to want to do more stuff. outside of the studio. I have a clip. I'm not sure when this was recorded, but it was definitely an interview from the 80s, I want to say, because he had just put out, he had just put out the record Sleepwalk, came out in 1982, and he had done this interview with these guys, specifically about all of his years of, like, studio sessions and like the kind of the toll that it played on him over time. So let's listen to the, that real quick. I think as you said doing 20 sessions a week for three or four years, that's

five, six hundred sessions a year. It became a job. In the beginning, I really enjoyed that. I felt I was contributing to the records I was playing on. I was learning. I was playing. I've always said this in my interviews, but I was playing with some of the best musicians in the world every day, nine or ten hours a day and getting paid for it. So you're making money, your growth as a musician is phenomenal, as I say, working with that caliber of players all of the time. But doing it that much, it became a job. And I noticed in about 1976, I started not enjoying, I wasn't looking forward to going to those sessions. I wanted to give because I'd been giving for the past five years. I go to a session. I'll give them the best I can all of the time. So to me, that was an indication that possibly it was time to make some kind of a change. I didn't want to do a session and not play my best because my heart wasn't into it.

It wouldn't do it just for the money. So at that time, I became interested in record production. So, yeah, I think that's kind of interesting when you think of it that way. Like, if you're a studio musician, it is kind of a day job, you know, in a way. It's a lot of hours, too. Yeah. And, like, when you look at his Wikipedia page, where it lists out his studio sessions, he, you know, from 19.

1971 all the way to 79. So basically the entire decade of the 70s, he was in the studio, you know. And like he said, he got to work with the best musicians out there, which, you know, you can't really measure how that impacted his career. I mean, it's probably what made him who he is, right? But, you know, if you're somebody like him, like you're not really getting to do what you want to do. But it does allow him to be so flexible. because, you know, you and I talked about his work with Michael Franks and a lot of other jazz artists like the Crusaders.

His versatility came from all those hours of working on different kinds of records, different kinds of bands. He had to be a camellian every day. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's funny. You said that Michael Frank's album is not listed on his Wikipedia. Really? Maybe I should edit the article here.

Wikipedia is not perfect. No, it is not. But yeah, it says with others and it lists a ton of albums, the Michael Franks record is not on here. Unless Michael Frank spells his name in some weird way and I'm not searching for it correctly. I'm not seeing it here. Well, two of the Michael Franks recordings were made with the Crusaders.

So the entire recording was made with the Crusaders and Michael Franks. And that was during the time that Carlton was with the Crusaders. Dad, did you know that Larry Carlton shows up on Christopher Cross's debut album? Absolutely. Great solos. Is that the one that we used to listen to all the time? With the flamingo on the cover. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. That's good stuff. We used to clean our room to that song. What, sailing? No. Well, if it's the record I'm looking at. Yep. All right.

So I guess that's... That'll do it. Yeah, that's it. Just a little side track. I mean, it's a little bit longer than our normal sidetracks, but that's because you've got our pops on here. And this is the 100th episode, so this is kind of special. It was an honor to be here.

This, I mean, this feels full circle, Ed. Yeah. Because, yeah, I may think about it, this is, you know, what is podcast, if not, you know, the next evolution of the radio format. So we've kind of followed in your footsteps here. True. And we do have full control over the music that's played, which is sort of like, you know, how you were the music director.

We don't get paid to do this, which is one difference, but... Someday. Maybe one day, maybe one day. So, hey, can you give us a radio sign-off? A radio sign-off? Okay. What was your call sign from back there from back in the 70s? You know, I had two or three different air names. You never used your own name because you had the beauty of anonymity.

Sure. They never saw their face, right? This is the No Filler podcast, 100th episode. Rapping up. Yeah. Beautiful. Coming at you, not live. Coming at you pre-recorded.

Traffic and weather next. Yeah. Yeah. Heavily edited. Anyway, so that's that. Go to, as we always say, at the end of the episodes here, check us out on pantheon podcasts.com where you'll find plenty of other great music podcast content

check us out on no filler podcast.com which is our website. You'll find all of our previous shows and our show notes. And that's that. Do we want to tease what we're doing next week or no? I'm going to do it. Okay. So next week we're talking about another great guitar player,

Mr. Jeff Beck and we're going to cover Blow by Blow. Yeah. So this has been a good little stint of of 70s, 70s rock, which I feel like we haven't spent enough time in. So now we've got plenty of great albums that we've talked about here.

Wally's here. I mean, Dad, you're the one who showed us Jeff Beck, you know. And this album specifically. Yeah, blow by blow. I remember listening to a lot of that album in your car, Dad. Do you remember seeing him live at the Majestic Theater in Dallas?

Oh yeah. Yeah, that was an awesome show. Technically, we saw him at the Crossroads Festival. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was there too. Yeah. Q, I think he said it at some point. I don't know if this is on the podcast or not, but every time I listen to this album,

I'm kind of the same way with you. It's like, I'm always blown away by it. I'm pun intended, I guess. Oh, Jeff Beck, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's an incredible album. There's so much going on. For me, it's, I mean, I'm blown away by the drummer.

Whoever they had in that session, man, he's just a machine. Well, yeah, we'll have to figure out who that was, but yeah. And the Beatles producer did those two albums, wired and blow by blow. Really? George Martin. Yeah, at Abbey Road. I didn't know that. Dang.

Well, there you go. That makes a lot of sense. All right. Hmm. All right, we'll save this for later. it. Paul McCartney is listed as the writer for She's a Woman. What? And John Lennon. Is that a Beatle song? Yeah. What? Holy shit. All right. We got a lot. We got a lot talk about it next week. I didn't know any of that. Okay. So that'll be next week. Yeah, that'll do it for us this

week. So my name is Travis. And my name is Quentin. Dad, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Let's do it again. Yeah, we'll definitely do it again. All right. We'll talk to you guys next week. I'll take care. Guys, it's going to be a long night of Border Patrol, so I brought along Michael McDonald to help us out. How's he going to help us?

He's going to do backup vocals for everything we say. How's he going to know what we're saying? Is he going to do it for all of us? Yes, he's going to do it for all of us. Yeah, I hired him for the night. It costs like $2.50 an hour, so don't skip on a conversation. Don't skip on the conversation.