Walter Becker obituary

Superbly talented guitarist, singer and songwriter who co-founded Steely DanSteely Dan, the American jazz-rock band formed by the multi-instrumentalists and songwriters Donald Fagen and Walter Becker in 1972, marked the high point of the music industry’s most profligate period. Young, ruthless and supremely intellectual, the two musicians gained a lifelong reputation for obsessive recording methods in the studio, forcing session musicians to record dozens of takes in search of the perfect