In a message on its Facebook account today, Caesars Windsor has confirmed the Steely Dan concert scheduled for October 20, will continue despite recent news of the passing of founding member Walter Becker (on the right in the photo).
“Music lost a genius and a Legend this weekend with Walter Becker’s passing,” the Casino said in its statement. “We are deeply saddened by this loss and send our condolences and best wishes to his family and friends. As many of you have inquired, we can confirm that the October 20th show is set to continue as scheduled.”
Becker, Steely Dan’s guitarist, bassist and co-founder died Sunday, September 3 at the age of 67. No cause was given, but Becker had not been as active a member of the band for health reasons.
Steely Dan has sold more than 40 million copies of nine studio albums, won four Grammy awards and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. At the height of their fame, Becker became addicted to drugs, endured a series of personal crises and withdrew from the band several times.
In a lengthy statement, the band’s only remaining founding member, Donald Fagen, released a lengthy statement about the death of his friend and musical partner:
“Walter Becker was my friend, my writing partner and my bandmate since we met as students at Bard College in 1967. We started writing nutty little tunes on an upright piano in a small sitting room in the lobby of Ward Manor, a mouldering old mansion on the Hudson River that the college used as a dorm.
We liked a lot of the same things: jazz (from the twenties through the mid-sixties), W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, science fiction, Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Berger, and Robert Altman films come to mind. Also soul music and Chicago blues.
Walter had a very rough childhood – I’ll spare you the details. Luckily, he was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. He was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny. Like a lot of kids from fractured families, he had the knack of creative mimicry, reading people’s hidden psychology and transforming what he saw into bubbly, incisive art. He used to write letters (never meant to be sent) in my wife Libby’s singular voice that made the three of us collapse with laughter.
His habits got the best of him by the end of the seventies, and we lost touch for a while. In the eighties, when I was putting together the NY Rock and Soul Review with Libby, we hooked up again, revived the Steely Dan concept and developed another terrific band.
I intend to keep the music we created together alive as long as I can, both with the Steely Dan band. We’ll miss him forever.”
Tickets are still available for the October 20 show at Ticketmaster. Prices range from $62-124.
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