by Rickie Lee Jones

Singer Rickie Lee Jones is a longtime Steely Dan fan who collaborated with the late Walter Becker on her 1989 album Flying Cowboys. In recent years, Jones was asked to serve as opener during Steely Dan’s Carnegie Hall residencies in New York, where she joined the band onstage during their set. Following Becker’s death September 3rd, Jones penned a tribute to her friend and producer, which you can read below:

I first heard Steely Dan back in Kansas City, Missouri, where I ended up living with my dad after running away from home a second summer in a row. It was 1970 and I was just 15 years old. “Do It Again” was playing on the radio that summer night. I had just dropped some acid and I was on my way to see Led Zeppelin for their KC concert on their first USA tour. My date was a fat guy I had just met – him driving by and said, “Hey you wanna go to a concert?” He had high hopes I guess, and I just wanted to get out of the house. What I remember more than Led Zeppelin though is “Do It Again” drumming through the twilight heat, and the joy of all that Victor Feldman percussion…  >> Full article on rollingstone.com