Steely Dan

STEELY DAN

Formed: 1971, New York City

Members: Walter Becker, vocals and guitar (born Queens, New York, 20 February 1950); Donald Fagen, vocals and keyboards (born Passaic, New Jersey, 10 January 1948)

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: Two Against Nature (2000)

Hit singles since 1990: "Cousin Dupree"

Steely Dan, Walter Becker's and Donald Fagen's thirty-year vehicle, first appeared at the crossroads of the 1960s and the 1970s, when pop's optimistic bloom had taken on a darker, more serious tone. The group's composers embodied that trend with admirable skill, wedding hummable tunes to probing lyrics that touched on the underbelly of the American urban dream. Their characters are outsiders from dime-store paperbacks—drifters, losers, barflies, forgotten jazz players—all evoked in immaculately turned musical arrangements.

Steely Dan's output hardly fits a conventional template. Their barbed wit recalls Frank Zappa at his more acerbic, yet their arrangements, constructed with legendary zeal, often owe much to the big-band tradition. New Yorkers transplanted to California, they began as long-haired composers when hippiedom was in vogue, yet they never subscribed to the utopian visions of the West Coast. Their home terrain appeared to be the subterranean jazz cellar of the 1950s, where saxophones interwove with beatnik verse. Despite these seemingly esoteric inspirations, Steely Dan has enjoyed hits on the pop charts and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

From Writing to Performing

Becker and Fagen began as jobbing tunesmiths at the end of the 1960s, part of that fading tradition of songwriters who turned out work on demand for a producer, publisher, or artist who required it. As the 1970s dawned, their quirky approach to songwriting—they always sought an original twist in the words, tune, or tempo—saw them move toward writing material that they liked and wanted to record with a band of their own. It took a while to convince anyone that the Becker-Fagen credit had real credibility or commercial punch, but when they teamed with producer Gary Katz to make the album Can't Buy a Thrill (1972), the writers' belief in their own songs began to bear fruit; they linked with the guitarists Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Denny Dias, the drummer Jim Hodder, and the vocalist David Palmer. But it was Fagen's singing tones that stood out on the set's two most memorable pieces, "Do It Again" and "Reelin' in the Years."

The group seemed capable of delivering potent pop melodies in a highly sophisticated setting. Their tunes had an instant accessibility that recalled the work of the wall-of-sound creator, Phil Spector, or the Beach Boys' resident genius, Brian Wilson; their arrangements had a sleek gloss born of the expertise of jazz session players. Unravelling the meaning behind the songs was a challenge from the start. Even "Do It Again," seemingly an infectious, Latin-flavored jamboree, hides an enigmatic message in its words, "In the mornin' you go gunnin'/ For the man who stole your water."

Productive Decade

The 1970s saw almost annual outings of new Steely Dan material. Notoriously reticent as touring musicians, Fagen and Becker saw their first batch of sidemen quickly drift away in search of live performance opportunities. Yet Baxter stayed long enough to deliver a sensational solo on "My Old School," a key moment on the second album, Countdown to Ecstasy (1973), before joining the Doobie Brothers. The album also included the sardonic "Show Biz Kids," in which an insistent, razor-sharp guitar riff accompanied a satire on the record business, including a self-reflective reference to "Steely Dan T-shirts".

Buoyed by the arrival of the singer Michael McDonald and the percussionist Jeff Pocaro, Pretzel Logic (1974) sustained Steely Dan's momentum. "Barrytown" is its sweetest track; "Parker's Band" shows swing affinities and pays homage to the jazz groups of the 1940s. "East St Louis Toodle-Loo," the band's only cover, brings a Duke Ellington classic to a rock audience.

The album Katy Lied (1975), despite the rolling thunder of the opening track "Black Friday," marked time as illness dogged Fagen's voice. But The Royal Scam (1976) features some notable gems: the soap opera sentiments of "Haitian Divorce," the slight but haunting enticements of "The Fez," and the Wild West saga of "Don't Take Me Alive": "I crossed my old man back in Oregon / Don't take me alive."

Yet it was Aja in 1977 that seemed to draw the best from the group's writing duo and producer Katz. The mysteriously named album featured extraordinarily stylish and sleek music. Now able to draw a stable of the very best session players—the saxophonist Wayne Shorter and the drummer Steve Gadd among them—Becker and Fagen fully indulged their musical vision: a rich mix of exquisite pop harmonies and virtuosic jazz playing. "Peg" and "Deacon Blues" proved to be masterpieces of melodic and lyrical construction.

Drifting Apart

The story appeared, however, to have run its course. Although the album Gaucho emerged in 1981, the circumstances surrounding its delivery were traumatic. Becker was mired in personal difficulties: drug problems, a fractured leg sustained in a road accident, and the suicide of his girlfriend. Steely Dan's dissolution ensued shortly after the release of the album. The split did not slow either man's productivity, however: Fagen recorded the acclaimed solo album The Nightfly (1982), and Becker eventually took the producer's chair for Rickie Lee Jones and the British group China Crisis.

During the 1990s Becker became active in the New York Rock and Soul Revue and appeared on their album Live at the Beacon (1992); in 1993 Fagen released his much-anticipated second solo outing, Kamakiriad, which drew on Becker's production talents and sparked speculation about a possible resurrection of Steely Dan. The album, a concept affair with sci-fi overtones, features eight interconnected works relating the story of a journey in a dream car set in the near future.

The following year Becker issued the underrated and self-deprecatingly named album 11 Tracks of Whack (1994), a collection which hinted at some of Steely Dan's more melancholy moments and featured Fagen at the studio controls. Artistically, it even over-shadowed Kamakiriad with a string of edgy, bitter pieces like "Junkie Girl," "This Moody Bastard," and "Cringemaker." This positive rush of solo activity after more than a decade of collaborative silence prompted the duo to discuss the return of the band that had made them famous.

Reuniting on Tour

Initially, and uncharacteristically, Steely Dan stepped from the shadows as a live combo, touring in 1994 and reprising their extensive body of hits. To the widespread interest of critics and the delight of their patient fans, their 1995 album, Alive in America, captured some of the on-stage excitement that had been largely missing from the group's earlier history. But such developments suggested that new material might also be in the cards, and the group eventually lived up to expectations with the release of Two Against Nature (2000), produced this time not by Gary Katz but the two songwriters themselves.

With the typical irony Becker and Fagen chose a title that implied they had survived despite the onset of age, extended absence, and the ever-changing whims of the popular music landscape. Yet their 2002 recording was carved from the same stone that had made their 1970s output so distinctive—the jazz voicings of the chords, the displays of vocal and instrumental virtuosity, and a string of new, typically oblique melodies that hinted that they'd never really been away.

They seemed lighter at times, a little less world-weary and cynical. "What a Shame about Me" appears to be more tongue-in-cheek than wallowing misery, and "Cousin Dupree" is a charming comedy of family manners. But the somber, minor-key tunes "Almost Gothic" and "West of Hollywood" still see life through sepia-tinted glasses. Two Against Nature won both critical plaudits and a Grammy for Best Pop Album.

Steely Dan has managed to combine melodic invention and lyrical sophistication, delivering music in a diverse range of styles—rock and soul, jazz, and Latin—while still retaining a pop sensibility in some of the best American songwriting of the post–Elvis Presley era.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Can't Buy a Thrill (MCA, 1972); Countdown to Ecstasy (MCA, 1973) ; Pretzel Logic (MCA, 1974); Katy Lied (MCA, 1975); The Royal Scam (MCA, 1976); Aja (MCA, 1977); Gaucho (MCA 1980); Two Against Nature (Giant, 2000). Solo, Donald Fagen: The Nightfly (Warner Bros., 1982); Kamakiriad (Reprise, 1993); Solo, Walter Becker: E 11 Tracks of Whack (Warner Bros., 1994).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

B. Sweet, Steely Dan: Reelin' in the Years (London, 2000).

WEBSITE:

www.steelydan.com.

simon warner