Quote:
Originally Posted by Esteban
Steely Dan - Do it Again
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Do you know the Steely Dan story about the loss of the master tape of "The Second Arrangement" supposed to feature on the "Gaucho" album (1980) ? A junior engineer erased it by mistake in the studio. Three weeks of painstaking production lost forever. Donald Fagen later told Rolling Stone that the incident was "one of the most serious emotional setbacks we've had in the studio." In 2020 a tape was found in archives of the studio engineer, but no further news about what was on it.
Would have been great. Sounds like a "The Nightfly" prequel track.
"During the production of Steely Dan's 1980 album Gaucho, many songs were considered for the album. The most famous of these scrapped songs is the ill-fated original closer of the album, "The Second Arrangement". A favorite among the band and fans, the song was going to be included on the album until it was deleted on accident. The band attempted to rerecord the track to no success, and the song was shelved in favor of "Third World Man".
Development and deletion
As with most every song, a demo is the first recorded in its timeline. The same goes for "The Second Arrangement". Along with a few other piano demos, "The Second Arrangement" went further into development, along with songs like "Babylon Sisters" and "Kulee Baba". After the demo was recorded and the song was slowly built up, a full band version was recorded. At this point, the band was happy with the song and it became a favorite of engineer Roger Nichols and producer Gary Katz. All the song really needed was a horn arrangement.
This is the point where disaster struck. To ready the track for listening, a tape transfer had to be performed. This task was given to a junior engineer. Instead of transferring the song to the blank tape, the engineer had accidentally transferred the silence of the blank tape to the tape containing the song. By the time he realized what he'd done, only about 25% of the song remained intact. Roger Nichols broke the news to the band, and Donald Fagen allegedly walked out of the studio in silence upon hearing the mishap.
After the deletion the band tried to rerecord the song several times. These attempts were fruitless, as the band thought these recreations were nowhere close to as good their deleted take was. Left with an album without a closer, the band decided to retrieve an outtake off the cutting room floor. This outtake, then called "Were You Blind That Day" had its lyrics reworked into "Third World Man". With this, "The Second Arrangement" was completely scrapped."
One of the recordings sessions bootlegs (bad recording quality):
Donald Fagen explaining the delete disaster during a 2011 live show: