In Babylon, a moment of clarity
Drive west on Sunset to the sea
Turn that jungle music down
just until we’re out of town
This is no one night stand
it’s a real occasion
Close your eyes and you’ll be there
it’s everything they say
the end of a perfect day
distant lights from across the bay…
So begins “Babylon Sisters’, the opening track on Steely Dan’s Gaucho, their last album before a 20-year hiatus. It’s a sneaky song. It sounded fine the first time I heard it, but there’s a lot there. If you’re a middle-aged man looking into “Babylon Sisters” be careful, you may find it looking back into you.
Fagen and Becker grew up listening to serious jazz, but they parted ways with the titans in one important way. Great jazz performances are often built on songs with very simple lyrics, “My Favortie Things” or “A Foggy Day”. It’s supposed to be about the music, after all. But Steely Dan challenged that, especially in their later albums, layering complex lyrics onto complex musical arrangements, all with a pinch or three of darkness. “Babylon Sisters” goes for three.
The song starts in a car. We know exactly where we are: driving west on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, toward the coast. We don’t know where we started from - maybe Brentwood or Bel Air, perhaps Westwood, or the Sunset Strip if we met for drinks earlier.
Where are we going? To good places. As it happens I know this drive well. I love it because, late in the day, you can pull over and see something like this:
Photo source and credit here
If you’re with some attractive people (note the plural in the title: “sisters”) you can share the moment with, so much the better.
We’re going someplace great with them - “this is no one-night stand, it’s a real occasion.” So probably not just a bar or nightclub, but a special venue - maybe one of the private beach clubs? As it happens there’s one right near here; the Bel-Air Bay Club, founded in 1927 and still going strong, available for weddings and other events. Close your eyes and you’ll be there, it’s everything they say: the end of a perfect day…distant lights from across the bay:
A Real Occasion at the Bel-Air Bay Club, photo source here
Excuse, I’m going to hit that chorus again, powered by the estimable Valerie Simpson and Patti Austin.
And then…
So fine, so young,
Tell me I’m the only one…
Ah, there’s a problem. It’s pretty clear the narrator is older than the women he’s with, and it’s pretty clear they both want an exclusive. If it’s going to be about love, he has to choose (“love’s not a game for three”), but while he enjoys watching them dance, he’s too weary and too damaged, to reciprocate with anything more than appreciation.
This was an important tonal shift for the band. The early albums were tough and mean, from “My Old School” to “Don’t Take Me Alive”. In a 1993 interview Fagen acknowledged “we were angry kids, there’s no doubt about it.” But this song isn’t angry, it’s bewildered. It’s about what’s happening in your head when you know you’re doing something stupid …but aren’t quite ready to quit.
My friends say no don't go
For that cotton candy
Son you're playing with fire
The kid will live and learn
As he watches his bridges burn
From the point of no return
Protip: it may be be fruitful to learn from your behavior before burning bridges. Our narrator hasn’t burnt his last one yet...but he can see it from here. He knows he faces a choice. In the liner notes to a later album we find this cryptic note from Fagen(?):
Late-seventies L.A. noir. Apocalyptic. Burned out. Slide into decadence or healing regression?
Well?
I’m thinking…!
It was too late for Steely Dan to die young, and there was never any possibility of either of them leaving a beautiful corpse, so they were stuck with facing the consequences of their choices. For Becker it was his girlfriend’s death by overdose and the ensuing litigation. For Fagen there was one more album - the magnificent, autobiographical Nightfly - followed by a decade of therapy, From a 2002 interview:
I basically went through a sort of psychological crisis", he explains, his table drumming speeding up a little. "I'm a person who is kinda prone to nervousness and depression, and there were long periods when I was just feeling (pause) numb…. I was in my thirties but I was still an adolescent because I'd never had a chance to grow up. I'd been compelled to do this since I was about eleven. Working was a way of avoiding having to do or think about anything else." Specifically, what was he avoiding? "Everything in life aside from music and lyrics," he says, and then lapses into another of his silences.
Musically, “Babylon Sisters” is a masterpiece. There’s great drumming from session legend Bernard Purdie, who opens with some choice beats and then settles into his signature half-shuffle (Fagen: “cool beat”). The keyboards, horns, and chorus, arranged to within an inch of their lives, are flawless. I’m not sure Fagen or Becker actually played any instruments on the song - the session talent they brought was so good they didn’t need to.
One Internet commentator suggests the opening vibe might have been influenced by this deep (but awesome) Eddie Harris cut. I hope so:
I highly recommend playing “Boogie Woogies Bossa Nova” as a warmup for “Babylon Sisters”, which you can listen to here (is that banjo I hear strumming lightly in the right channel?):
I like the live version from Alive in America a little more because Fagen’s vocal is more tentative, his voice a little weaker with age. He can take some chances here that he wouldn’t take laying down a track. This performance also emphasizes more strongly the contrast between the ambivalent dramatic monologue and the powerful, insistent chorus:
Avigal Danino does this performance with a light touch, taking out some of the angst and hinting at how the story works from the other side:
Sam Bidgood and Company take up the challenge and do a beautiful job:
This cover by a Dutch group in a proper studio is almost note perfect:
…and I very much like this flawless live performance by the Franklin Brothers:
The Hoops McCann Band takes its Steely Dan seriously, but its cover of “Babylon Sisters” loses some of the noir feel. Jazz guys do this sometimes, but if you play “April in Paris” I say you need to get some April and Paris in there. There’s some good playing on this though:
“Babylon Sisters” is too singular and accomplished to have spawned many legitimate imitators. But Dave’s True Story offers a kind of homage, referencing the most chilling line from the song - “I should know by now that’s it’s just a spasm”: