HAL is a great little groove. Very typical Steely Dan chord progressions. I manage to play a lot of the melody on guitar during this track. Some Steely tracks melodies can be limited to a couple of notes for the vocals (e.g. Black Friday). This one has a beautiful melody, complete with those odd little passing notes and key changes we know and love (Becker/Fagen for).
I'm very pleased with the solo on this one. You can't beat the Steelies to improvise over. It's tough to play with such a clean sound and guitar tone but this you can get #in the pocket' of. It's bluesey, it's jazzy, and, as you know, I'm sparing with the number of notes I play per musical bar. I'm out to be the most expressive I can be - and that means making the most you can of the notes you've got (and the silences between them).
At over five minutes this is one of the longest Steely track I have done!
Steely Dan Trivia... Apparently, this song is based lyrically on the epic novel The Odyssey by Homer. The hero, Ulysses, is trying to get home across the ocean after the Trojan War, but the gods keep making it difficult:
It's off the Aja album
