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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (2.29) 9 JANUARY 2023
The Stop
Formed in 1971 by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, Steely Dan was an American rock band which drew from a wide range of American musical styles to produce some of the ‘most intelligent and complex pop music of the 1970s.’1 Building on their preference for traditional pop, blues, R&B and - especially - jazz, Fagen and Becker created a ‘sophisticated, distinctive sound’ characterised by ‘accessible melodic hooks, complex harmonies and time signatures, and a devotion to the recording studio.’ From the very beginning Fagen and Becker demanded perfectionism, an obsession that resulted in a series of exquisitely produced albums.2
Fagen and Becker met at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 1967 where they soon began playing in bands together. These groups3 ranged in style from progressive rock to jazz, a spectrum which began to inform their original compositions. Joining Jay and the Americans’ backing band4 in 1970, the pair remained with them until mid-1971 when, after recording the soundtrack for the low-budget film You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It or You’ll Lose That Beat,5 and having Barbra Streisand record their composition ‘I Mean to Shine’,6 they relocated to Los Angeles where they hooked up with producer Gary Katz7 who suggested they form a band to record their songs.8
Steely Dan’s debut album, Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972), produced two surprise hits - ‘Do It Again’ and ‘Reelin’ in the Years’ - both of which were sung by Donald Fagen instead of vocalist David Palmer.9 Deciding Palmer’s voice didn’t fit the desired aesthetic, by the time their second album - Countdown to Ecstasy (1973) - was released, Palmer had been quietly let go and Fagen was the sole lead singer. Due to issues with touring,10 Fagen and Becker decided to ‘drop the pretence of being an actual band and ceased touring’ altogether, preferring instead to ‘nurture their eccentric ideas’ with an ever-changing roster of extremely talented studio musicians.11 The result of this decision produced their two most popular and critically acclaimed albums - Pretzel Logic (1974) and Katy Lied (1975). These albums brought popular music into a ‘high modernist phase’ as Steely Dan compressed their musical interests and styles into ‘immediately accessible’ vignettes. Their idiosyncratic, iconoclastic songs - containing some of the ‘toughest lyrics in pop music’ - tell complicated stories12 about ‘lost friendships, lost hopes, and joyless perversity’ to convey their interest in the ‘decay of pleasure.’
Steely Dan’s popularity ‘skyrocketed’ with the subsequent albums The Royal Scam (1976) and Aja (1977), but contractural disputes with their record label meant Gaucho wasn’t able to be released until 1980 and the resultant tensions led Fagen and Becker to give the band a rest while they pursued solo careers. In the early 1990s they began performing together onstage as Steely Dan, releasing a live album - Alive in America - in 1995. They returned to the studio in 1998 to produce the Grammy-winning Two Against Nature (2000), and followed this with Everything Must Go in 2003. Though no further albums were recorded as Steely Dan from this point,13 they continued to tour up to the point of Becker’s death from oesophageal cancer in 2017. Since then, Fagen has continued to tour occasionally as The Steely Dan Band.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to a short video (3:41) called The Gift of Room Tone. It’s a compilation of the moments of deliberate silence captured at the end of interviews, so the editor can use the natural background noise of the room as a baseline. There’s a soundtrack, so it’s not the silence the interviewees would have heard, but it’s rather hypnotic to see some well-known (and many I don’t recognise) actors, artists, musicians, etc. sitting still and silent for a moment.
The Recommendation
Today’s recommendation is Major Dudes: A Steely Dan Companion (2018). Edited and introduced by Barney Hoskyns,14 this is a collection of articles and interviews with Walter Becker and Donald Fagen - and gives a glimpse into their world. A gift from my brother15 a few years back, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who’s a fan. If you’re not, well ….
From the back cover:
At its core a creative marriage between Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, Steely Dan are one of the defining and bestselling American rock acts of the last half-century, recording several of the cleverest and best-produced albums of the '70s - from the breathlessly catchy Can't Buy a Thrill to the sleekly sinister Gaucho.
In the '90s they returned to remind us of how sorely we had missed their elegance and erudition, subsequently recording Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go during the following decade. They have sold close to forty-five million albums.
'A lot of people think of them as the epitome of boring '70s stuff,' novelist William Gibson said in 1993, when Becker and Fagen toured for the first time in nineteen years. 'They don't realize this is probably the most subversive material pop has ever thrown up.’
Now fully embraced by the 'Yacht Rock' generation - semi-ironic devotees of '70s Southern-California slickness - Steely Dan no longer polarize lo-fi punks and studio geeks in the way they used to. In 2001 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Major Dudes collects some of the smartest and wittiest interviews Becker and Fagen have ever given, along with insightful reviews of - and commentary on - their extraordinary songs. Compiled by Rock's Backpages editor Barney Hoskyns, the book's contributors include Charles Shaar Murray, Robert Palmer, Ian MacDonald, Bud Scoppa, Penny Valentine, Fred Schruers, Sylvie Simmons and Michael Watts.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist has been difficult to select. I love Steely Dan and every album has many, many great tracks that could easily end up here. In the end, though, I’ve chosen these five - all of which could legitimately place in my Top Ten - as they’re not the ones most frequently heard on the radio or in department stores. They also exhibit the band’s trademark juxtaposition of incredible, catchy musicianship with beautifully dark and twisted lyrics: ‘Dirty Work’ (Can’t Buy A Thrill, 1972), ‘The Boston Rag’ (Countdown to Ecstasy, 1973), ‘Charlie Freak’ (Pretzel Logic, 1974), ‘Everyone’s Gone to the Movies’ (Katy Lied, 1975) and ‘Haitian Divorce’ (The Royal Scam, 1976). They work quite well in this order, but shuffle if you must …. One way or the other, enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is my favourite lyric from the Steely Dan song ‘Dirty Work.’ The song is about a man who’s having an affair with a married woman - possibly because he loves her, possibly because she’s paying him. Either way, he knows he shouldn’t do it - and that it’s all going to end badly - but he’s trapped in a situation brilliantly portrayed by Fagen and Becker using a chess simile.16 It’s dirty work, but someone’s got to do it:
‘Like the castle in its corner/In a medieval game/I foresee terrible trouble/And I stay here just the same’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next stop …
I use the past tense because Steely Dan - though a version with Donald Fagen as the sole remaining original member occasionally tours - effectively stopped existing at the death of Walter Becker.
I’ve loved Steely Dan for as long as I can remember - which definitely stretches as far back as listening to them on the car radio as a kid in the 1970s. When I got older and began to understand the stories they were telling, well - that only strengthened my appreciation. To hear the catchy, poppy ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ or ‘Everyone’s Gone to the Movies’ play in a grocery store and know what those songs are really about is to participate in their perfect subversion. Sources for today’s Stop include Steely Dan (Britannica) and Steely Dan (All Music).
Which included the Bad Rock Group, whose drummer was future comedic actor Chevy Chase.
They performed under pseudonyms: Fagen chose Tristan Fabriano; Becker was Gustav Mahler.
Nope, I hadn’t heard of it, either - and let’s just say Google’s auto-fill didn’t fill. Nevertheless, the film - which ‘involves a young hippie and his search for the meaning of life while in Central Park’ (thank you, Wikipedia) - stars Zalman King (director of erotic thrillers such as Two Moon Junction (1988) and Wild Orchid (1989)), Richard Pryor and Robert Downey, Sr. In addition, Wes Craven (director of horror films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the first four films in the Scream franchise (1996-2011), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) - among many others) had his professional feature film debut as its editor.
On her Barbra Joan Streisand album.
Katz is a prolific producer, with credits including Steppenwolf, Three Dog Night, Diana Ross, 10cc, and Joe Cocker among others.
The band took its name from the steam-powered strap-on ‘prosthetic phallus’ named ‘Steely Dan III from Yokohama,’ which appears briefly in William S. Burrough’s highly controversial, drug- and sex-soaked, deliberately provocative and ultimately nonsensical novel Naked Lunch (1959). Subversive from the start, Fagen and Becker knew exactly what they were doing when they chose this name - and this attitude permeates and informs their music.
Who actually sung on only two of the tracks (which kind of begs the question of his role as ‘vocalist’) - the brilliant ‘Dirty Work’ (see today’s Playlist) and ‘Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me).’
In short, they hated it - especially having to manage the different musicians.
Among others, these included guitarists Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter (who also played with the Doobie Brothers), Denny Dias (who played on the first six albums), drummer Jeff Porcaro (who came to prominence as the drummer on Katy Lied, but is best known for being co-founder of the rock band Toto), and Michael McDonald (the Captain of Yacht Rock (see The Bus 1.10 ‘Yacht Rock’); his distinctive voice appears on many tracks - listen to ‘Peg’ (from Aja (1977)) for a perfect example).
Often using multiple first- and third-person perspectives in the same song. For an example, see ‘Everyone’s Gone to the Movies’ in today’s Playlist.
Though both Fagen and Becker released several solo albums.
Hoskyns is the co-founder and editorial director of the online rock-journalism library Rock’s Backpages. He’s also the author of numerous books including ones about The Band, the late 1960s LA rock scene, Tom Waits and the LA Canyons sound in the 1970s.
Who, it is safe to say, is not a Steely Dan fan.
Becker was a big fan of chess.
I enjoyed this! They're one of my favorite bands of all time. Always something new to discover in their music. (PS: it's "Fagen," not "Fagan.")