As a nation is transfixed on the destructive fires going on in Southern California, the fate of millions living there seem to rest on something man has no control over: those Santa Ana winds. Hot, dry gales that blow in from the desert to the east help to create dry conditions optimal for wildfires and fan the flames. And at speeds of 35 knots, it can be a general pain in the ass, too.
That's why people there fret over it:
Here come those Santa Ana winds again...
Steely Dan principals Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have by 1980 resided in the Los Angeles area long enough to know this too all well. Gradually since their 1972 debut, their songwriting shifted from being East Coast-centric of their formative years to a having firmly West Coast focus by the time they recorded Gaucho. Since Becker and Fagan thrived on writing about depravity in the human condition, they found much lyrical fodder in the heavy-partying L.A. scene of the seventies. "The Glamour Profession" is relatively explicit about this, but "Babylon Sisters" covers much of the same territory.
In broad terms, Steely Dan explained the subject matter for this song within the liner notes for 1995's Alive In America: "Late-seventies L.A. noir. Apocalyptic. Burned out. Slide into decadence or healing regression? Cool beat."
The details of what exactly is being sung about are a little sketchy but it sure sounds a lot like a middle-aged man whose moral compass is broke and playing with fire with girls young enough to be his daughter (a favored theme revisited twenty years later on "Janie Runaway"). But as the narrator relishes in anticipation of a weekend of debauchery, he's still worried about those Santa Ana winds.
This is the also the song where I was introduced to the term "kirshwasser" and 27 years later I'm still waiting for the right time to use it, much less drink it. Becker and Fagan compositions are always good for learning cool new words and phrases that might never apply to the real world. So what, it all sounds hip as hell, anyway. That's one of the things people love about The Dan.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
The attention to detail is evident everywhere on track.
you got that right! though honestly, that describes just about everything they'eve ever done, eh?
the impossible task of following Aja.
yep. Aja is one of those perfect records.
2 - Pico
Ack! The sentence you picked out would be the one that has a typo.
But, yes, while that's true of most everything they did, it's especially true here. For example, Fagan spent four hours with the producer and engineer perfecting the fadeout on this song.
3 - Donald Gibson
I remember watching Skunk Baxter on the History of Rock & Roll documentary jokingly say that, in Steely Dan, it would take them about 6 weeks just to find a comfortable chair.
4 hours to work on a fadeout seems rapid in that context.
- Donald
4 - Pico
Yeah, I think that the only reason why it didn't take four days instead of four hours is because Becker wasn't there ;&)
5 - The Haze
There was three years between Aja and Gaucho and the CD Gaucho that hit the stands in 1980 wasn't the one truly intended for the public due to a battle with their old record company MCA(which used to be ABC).They signed with Warner Bros.and Gaucho was an appeasement to MCA. Still great work from a great pair. I don't remember seeing their names on the HOF list(chuckle**).Their skewed versions of western civilization are modern classics that will always stand the tests of time.