The Second Arrangement

During the production of Steely Dan's 1980 album Gaucho, many songs were considered for the album. The most famous of these scrapped songs is the ill-fated original closer of the album, "The Second Arrangement". A favorite among the band and fans, the song was going to be included on the album until it was deleted on accident. The band attempted to rerecord the track to no success, and the song was shelved in favor of "Third World Man".

Development and deletion
As with most every song, a demo is the first recorded in its timeline. The same goes for "The Second Arrangement". Along with a few other piano demos, "The Second Arrangement" went further into development, along with songs like "Babylon Sisters" and "Kulee Baba". After the demo was recorded and the song was slowly built up, a full band version was recorded. At this point, the band was happy with the song and it became a favorite of engineer Roger Nichols and producer Gary Katz. All the song really needed was a horn arrangement.

This is the point where disaster struck. To ready the track for listening, a tape transfer had to be performed. This task was given to a junior engineer. Instead of transferring the song to the blank tape, the engineer had accidentally transferred the silence of the blank tape to the tape containing the song. By the time he realized what he'd done, only about 25% of the song remained intact. Roger Nichols broke the news to the band, and Donald Fagen allegedly walked out of the studio in silence upon hearing the mishap.

After the deletion the band tried to rerecord the song several times. These attempts were fruitless, as the band thought these recreations were nowhere close to as good their deleted take was. Left with an album without a closer, the band decided to retrieve an outtake off the cutting room floor. This outtake, then called "Were You Blind That Day" had its lyrics reworked into "Third World Man". With this, "The Second Arrangement" was completely scrapped.

Circulating versions
Many versions of "The Second Arrangement" were recorded, but a few of those takes have made it out of the studio in form of bootlegs. Hardcore collectors are known to have reels of Gaucho sessions, but are not willing to share them. Below is a bullet point list of the takes you can find on the web.


 * A piano demo of the song is commonly shared in CD or digital bootleg collections. This is the earliest take of the song fans have. This take can be found on YouTube as well as in high quality FLAC on music trading websites.
 * Another demo of the song exists, though only as a ~30 second clip. A YouTube upload of the audio was posted, however the source video shows a 45 RPM record containing the demo spinning on a turntable. The story goes that the owner of the demo was a DJ, and had the audio pressed onto vinyl. The owner originally kept his whole ordeal a secret until somebody leaked the 30 second clip.
 * The most well known take of the song is a full band outtake, only lacking horn arrangements. It is also commonly shared on CD or digital boots and can also be found on YouTube and in high quality on music trading sites.
 * A final studio take of the song has surfaced multiple times. First appearing as an 18 second clip, a longer 2 minute clip was found on engineer Larry Franke's website. This was thought to be the full version until a full 6 minute version surfaced. This take is instrumental, and can be found on YouTube. A few hardcore Steely Dan collectors have retrieved the source MP3 from Larry Franke's website.
 * Finally, a live version of the song was performed in 2011 as a part of the Rarities Night at the Beacon Theater in New York. The almost entire concert can be found in FLAC, only omitting "Peg", "Josie", "Reelin' in the Years", and "This All Too Mobile Home". This live version also includes a horn arrangement.