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The electric sitar solo on "Do It Again", the "Bodhisattva," "Green Earrings," and "Aja" solos, taking guitar lessons from Billy Bauer, and much more.
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05-12-2025 03:11 PM
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The beginning of that interview freaked me out, because he mentioned that the bass player of the LI band that DD was in had just quit and went back to college. He turned out to be a guy my sister was going out with, who also played the guitar, and had studied with Joe Monk. He used to tell me about Monk.
He went back to music school and became a music teacher.
As usual, Rick Beatoff disappointed me with the jazz aspect of his interviewee's background, and I was surprised to hear that he had never even heard of Billy Bauer!
I would've liked it if he asked DD about the jazz musicians/guitarists he listened to and liked. Billy Bauer had started his own jazz club in his studio in LI back then and had friends of his like Phil Woods and Joe Morello.
Maybe DD just didn't want to talk about jazz, but he did play on a Hampton Hawes album called "Something Special".
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That surprised me too. Kids today, am I right?
Originally Posted by sgcim
It would have been interesting to hear more talk about DD's jazz guitar lessons with BB, but there was a lot that was new to me about what the band was like in the early days. Interesting about Fagen and vocals---he didn't want to be the frontman and didn't have the lung capacity to carry on a whole show singing. (I wonder why.)
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Thanks for that ….
Beautiful player , wonderful
phrasing , lovely chromatic lines
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I resemble the remarks above. I have gotten irritated with Beato, on occasion: his admiration for some music that has little musical value. His seeming deep knowledge of many things arcane, but holes sometimes, with things that seem obvious (such as Billy Bauer). And his lack of emotion, dynamics, phrasing or melody when he plays the guitar. But I love his channel. I love the interviews, the most. I think he knows this, too. He knows that everything else he does pays for the interviews. He knows how much we love hearing people like Denny speak. (Before this video, there was nothing that I was aware of.) He knows that the audience would love interview details, but understands that asking the artists about their most well-known musical contributions are what will keep the viewership up, and support the channel’s continued momentum. I nearly cried watching Denny talk about what he did. Same thing, in the Jarrett interview. These are moments in the ether, we would have never seen without Rick Beato.
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Well, we are not Rick's target market I suspect. Especially when he is talking about music theory, analysis of pop songs, etc. He maintains some agnosticism regarding the artistic validity of most genres of music, which is probably commercially wise. He can be a bit brutal in his periodic reviews of the top ten Spotify tunes (and rightfully so, most of them are crap- the musical equivalent of cheap jellybeans). The stuff he responds positively to is sometimes the production rather than the song or the performance, which I often don't hear what he's referring to.
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Interesting playing, and clearly a very defining part of Steely Dan. Interviews of that kind is probably following a script agreed and laid out beforehand, and are not completely documentary, but as many interviews and articles half'n'half documentary and entertainment.
In general I like the Beato videos - except for the common "I am so f...ing cool, and you love me" opening of most videos.
Mostly I enjoy the musical content, and he has a good producer-like attention to detail.
Besides - if there are aspects or themes that someone would like to hear Beato's take on, I propose to tell him. If he finds that it has something to it he may pick up on it.
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I like the way Beato bobs his head when listening to Dias's electric sitar solo on Do It Again at 9:00. I can relate. I can't keep my neck still when listening to music with an insistent beat.
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FWIW...
Beato has interviews with Scofield..Benson..Metheny..Carlton
like his style or not..he does get the top names to interview
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First interview of Dias that I know of, and a treasure for that alone. I know they can't cover everything, but Gold Teeth II is the only omission I can think of.
As for the Bauer thing, it may be interview technique to get Dias to tell us listeners about him.
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That's how I feel too. I like Rick's interviews. Show me a better interview with Denny. Or Sting or Dominic Miller or Metheny. At least he gets musicians to sit down and talk about music. Originally Posted by Average Joe
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Hmm… planning beforehand might be more documentary and informative than making surprising questions about things that happened - oh lord - 40-50 years ago. Originally Posted by teeps
Interesting playing, and clearly a very defining part of Steely Dan. Interviews of that kind is probably following a script agreed and laid out beforehand, and are not completely documentary, but as many interviews and articles half'n'half documentary and entertainment.
In general I like the Beato videos - except for the common "I am so f...ing cool, and you love me" opening of most videos.
Mostly I enjoy the musical content, and he has a good producer-like attention to detail.
Besides - if there are aspects or themes that someone would like to hear Beato's take on, I propose to tell him. If he finds that it has something to it he may pick up on it.
Beato is best music journalist that I have ever seen. He’s got enough musical knowledge about the interviewees works, he is interested in them AND he gets excited about the people he interviews, which make the audience excited too.
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So he's supposed to be this music expert and he doesn't know who the guitarist was on the first documented (recorded) example of free jazz played in the history of the world???? Originally Posted by Herbie
Not to mention BB wrote a huge book about his life's work called "Sideman", because he played on more jazz records than almost any musician that ever played."Oh Lord", 40 to 50 years ago, what importance could that have in a type of music that's been around over a century?
I only listened to this Beato because my sister went out with DD's bass player. I haven't listened to him in years.
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Hmm… I'm sorry if I disappoint you but I guess that 99% of the contenporary music expert journalists do not know who Denny Dias is. Some might remember that ”Steely Dan was that British metal band, wasn’t it?” Originally Posted by sgcim
Last edited by Herbie; 05-20-2025 at 01:44 PM.
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Then they should be fired.. You did know I was talking about Billly Bauer, didn't you? Originally Posted by Herbie
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At the Wiki page for Billy Bauer is this: In an interview with Rick Beato in May 2025 Steely Dan guitarist Denny Dias stated that he had lessons with Bauer.
Thus the page was very recently updated. I guess if the person who updated it had said Beato didn't even know who Bauer was, that could be taken as a knock of Bauer.
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I see that my phrasing may be read as either/or between planning and documentary Originally Posted by Herbie
What I actually meant is that they most likely agreed beforehand on which topics to cover and how they should be weighted.
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Yes, but before this converstion I hadn’t faintest idea who Billy Bauer was. But hey, I am not a musical expert, I am an amateur and I have the greatest pleasure in human life: I can learn something new almost every day! Originally Posted by sgcim
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Sure I know him, he was Joe Satriani's guitar teacher. Along with some guy that Elvis didn't like.
;-)
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My take on Beato:
Interesting insights and I am glad he has access to musicians that interest me. His insights into songs, stories, and theory are interesting to me.
Probably not as good a teacher as he imagines himself to be. But I have not purchased any of his materials or lessons. I am just going off of his attempts to teach on his channel. He is probably talking way over my head, but I don't think that is the point in teaching.
I really didn't get much out of the Diaz interview. I got more out of the Skunk Baxter and Larry Carlton interviews as far as SD guitarists go. He just posted another one with Justin Hayward that I thought was decent.
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Not the best music channel out there, and there’s things that annoy me that have been much remarked on lol, but some of the interviews are worth watching, and pretty unique in terms of the Big Names he hauls in.
Every so often he’ll make a video about something I don’t know much but am quite interested in about and those are often quite engaging.
He strikes me as a non specialist with a broad knowledge of a number of areas. Probably a good thing to have been in his previous line of work. He might not know who Billy Bauer is, but he knows, for instance, how to mike a drum kit and engineer a record which are things I know nothing about (don’t know about anyone else.)
Seems mostly a rock fan with some basic knowledge of and genuine enthusiasm for jazz and classical.
Maybe he’s introduced some rockists to the joys of Oscar Peterson, who knows?
But mostly I think he’s found his thing is giving middle aged rock bores spurious technical sounding reasons why the music they already like is extra good. I doubt younger people watch him in great numbers.
But I do think he actually enjoys music, and I like that about him.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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He has a masters in jazz guitar from NEC, and was a working jazz player and teacher (was a professor at Ithaca College in NY for a while). A couple of his videos go into how he moved from there to being a rock player, and eventually record producer. As a matter of personality I think he is a generalist, but by training he is a jazz specialist. I haven't looked at his "Beato Books" but a gather they're jazz-oriented theory and ear-training guides. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
He also has videos where he demonstrates Wes Style block chord soloing and Joe Pass style chord/melody. I've not seen/heard any jazz performances of his, but just from the snippets in his videos he seems like a pretty strong player.
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So much for academia. Originally Posted by John A.
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Yes I know all of that. Originally Posted by John A.
You get a degree from a good music college and you learn "jazz theory" (actually chord scale theory) and you are a strong and capable player. He's clearly transcribed a fair bit, because he can sing the solos. They do that at school, the kids, you know. Doesn't mean you are a jazz guitar specialist. If he was, he'd probably know more about jazz guitar, so there's that. What does 4 years or whatever of degree really get you? Or whatever a master's is in the US (it's two years here in the UK.)
I have a master's degree in Astronomy, and that doesn't qualify me to do anything in Astronomy lol.
He has a strong grasp of a number of styles of guitar playing. He strikes me as the type of player who would have been a good call for just about any gig you might need someone for, including a jazz standards gig, background classical, top 40, whatever. (Maybe less so know, you do get deskilled if you haven't done that type of thing for a few years.) There's loads of players who come out of the colleges like that and they are solid, even great players and they make a living.
They are not necessarily people who know a million standards off by heart and have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the players and who focus their energies on just that area of music. There are people like that on the forum, such as Holger.
Beato seems more of Steely Dan, Pat Metheny, Holdsworth kind of guy. He likes Wes, Joe and Oscar though. It's cool.
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In the interview, Dias mentions the software company he went to work in, Nantucket Corporation here in Los Angeles. I was in that company at the same time, me on the business side driving marketing and Denny on the development team. For a guy who had a long tenure in such a prominent band, and having his guitar and general musicianship skills, you'd never know it from his overall conduct. At that time (latter '80s into 1992 when we sold the company) he wanted to be known as a software developer, and discouraged talk of his Steely Dan past. He was introduced to people as, Denny Dias, software developer. But he didn't really "give up" music. It just became a private endeavor. Though one year (this was 1990 or '91) we had a developers conference in Munich and Toto happened to be touring in Europe. While he was there, Toto asked him to sit in with the band for a couple of performances, which Denny did, and it was as though he never left the performing life. Denny was always a gentleman. Unassuming, free of ego projection. Always approachable, able and willing to relate to or talk to anyone. But, he sure could play guitar and continued to do so. He mentions in the interview near the end that he's working on some new music. Originally Posted by Mick-7
Phil
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