Gaucho

At least 42 session musicians played on it. Sessions began in New York in 1978, and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, hired on the strength of Sultans of Swing, found the day on Time Out of Mind long and gruelling. His playing is on more than half of the track, whatever the myth says. The partnership was strained, largely by Becker's escalating drug use. Becker was hit by a car while walking home to his Upper West Side apartment and spent six months recovering, and the pair worked by telephone. His girlfriend Karen Roberta Stanley died of an overdose at his home on 30 January 1980. Her family sued, and the court ruled for Becker.

Dissatisfied with the timing of drum tracks, they paid Nichols $150,000 to build a drum machine he called Wendel. Per Scheiner it supplied the basic beats on Hey Nineteen, Glamour Profession and My Rival, but not on Babylon Sisters, Time Out of Mind or Third World Man. The drum track of the title song was assembled from 46 takes, and only Porcaro's drumming on it was kept. Becker did not play on Babylon Sisters, Glamour Profession, My Rival or Third World Man, and it took more than 55 attempts to mix the 50-second fade of Babylon Sisters. A three-way legal fight between MCA, Warner Bros. and the band followed over the right to release it.

Keith Jarrett won a co-writing credit on the title track because of its resemblance to his instrumental 'Long As You Know You're Living Yours. Becker told an interviewer he loved the piece, and Fagen said they had been heavily influenced by it. The cover is based on Israel Hoffmann's low relief sculpture Old Guard, Tango, which is in the Caminito street museum in the La Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires. Third World Man began as an outtake called Were You Blind that Day, with different lyrics. Larry Carlton later said he played on it because a master was erased during the album and they reached back into older tapes.

It reached 9 in the United States and 27 in the UK and went platinum. Hey Nineteen reached 10 on the Hot 100, and the album won the 1982 Grammy for best engineered recording. Pitchfork's Alex Pappademas called it the most end-of-the-seventies record ever made, and noted that it was the last album Becker and Fagen made together until 2000. A bootleg called The Lost Gaucho collects early outtakes, among them Kind Spirit, The Bear and The Second Arrangement.