In a recent chat with Ultimate Classic Rock, Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter revealed why Steven Tyler wasn’t on his solo album.
In his debut solo album, ‘Speed of Heat,’ the guitarist revisited Steely Dan’s ‘My Old School’ because he used to sing it live with the band. “Steve’s one of the best rock singers I know,” Baxter replied when asked why Tyler didn’t sing on the record. “I thought it would be a great addition to the performance and to the energy level that I was looking for, for the song.”
Baxter continued, “He’s an old friend, so I thought I’d ask and see if he wanted to do it. His response certainly surprised me. I just did it as a scratch vocal for him, so he could know where the vocal was.”
“I had really no intentions of singing it on the record – but he knows more about this stuff than I do,” Jeff said before mentioning what Tyler had told him. “So I trusted him and I still do. He said, ‘You oughta do it.’ I said, ‘Okay, I’ll take a shot.’”
“Well, I had sung the song live with Steely Dan when we toured,” Baxter told Cleveland Scene in 2022 about why he wanted to make a new version of ‘My Old School.’ “Every time we would perform it, it would gain a little more energy. I thought that someday it might be interesting to revisit it with an arrangement that had a lot more punch. I put together an arrangement for it.”
‘Speed of Heat’ includes original songs with guest stars like Michael McDonald, Clint Black, and Jonny Lang, as well as new takes on classic songs. Besides ‘My Old School,’ a space-jazz version of Steely Dan’s ‘Do It Again’ was also on the album.