Steely Dan on TV, Film and Video

Steely Dan is an American rock band; its core members are Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. The band's popularity peaked in the late 1970s, with the release of seven albums blending elements of jazz, rock, funk, R&B, and pop.[1] Rolling Stone magazine has called them "the perfect musical antiheroes for the Seventies."[2]

The band's music is characterized by complex jazz-influenced structures and harmonies played by Becker and Fagen along with a revolving cast of rock and pop studio musicians.[1] Steely Dan's "cerebral, wry and eccentric"[1] lyrics, often filled with sharp sarcasm, touch upon such themes as drugs,[3][4][5][6] crime,[6] and their true-to-life "contempt of west coast hippies."[5][6] The pair are well-known for their near-obsessive perfectionism in the recording studio,[7][8] with one notable example being that Becker and Fagen used at least 42 different studio musicians, 11 engineers, and took over a year to record the tracks that resulted in 1980's Gaucho — an album that contains only seven songs.[9]

Steely Dan toured from 1972 to 1974, but in 1975 became a purely studio-based act. The late 1970s saw the group release a series of moderately successful singles and albums. They disbanded in 1981, and throughout most of the next decade, Fagen and Becker remained largely inactive in the music world. During this time, the group steadily built and maintained "a cult following."[1] In 1993, the group resumed playing live concerts; the early 21st century saw Steely Dan release two albums of new material, the first of which earned a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. They have sold more than 30 million albums worldwide and in March 2001, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[10][11][12]

History

Early years

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker met at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 1967. Fagen was passing by a cafe called The Red Balloon when he heard Becker rehearsing the electric guitar.[13] He would later recount the experience during an interview: "I hear this guy practicing, and it sounded very professional and contemporary. It sounded like, you know, like a black person, really."[13] He immediately introduced himself to Becker, and asked him "Do you want to be in a band?"[13] They quickly realized that they enjoyed similar music, and even listened to the same jazz radio stations; not long after, they began writing songs together.

The two soon began playing in local groups. One of these bands, first known as The Bad Rock Group and later as The Leather Canary, included future comedy star Chevy Chase on drums. They played covers of songs written by The Rolling Stones ("Dandelion"), Moby Grape ("Hey Grandma"), and Willie Dixon ("Spoonful") along with a handful of originals.[13] Terence Boylan, another Bard musician, remembered that Fagen immediately took to the Beatnik lifestyle while attending college: "They never came out of their room, they stayed up all night. They looked like ghosts — black turtlenecks and skin so white that it looked like yogurt. Absolutely no activity, chain-smoking Lucky Strikes and dope."[13] Fagen himself would later remember it as "probably the only time in my life that I actually had friends."[14]

After Fagen graduated in 1969, the two moved to Brooklyn and tried to peddle their tunes in the Brill Building in midtown Manhattan. Kenny Vance, a member of the pop group Jay and the Americans, who had a production office in the building, took an interest in their material that led to work on the soundtrack of the low-budget Richard Pryor film You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat in 1971. Becker later spoke bluntly of the soundtrack: "We did it for the money."[15] A series of demos made between about 1968 and 1971 are available in bootleg form.[16] This collection features approximately twenty-five tracks, and is notable for its stripped down production and decidedly lo-fi nature (many songs are just Fagen and his piano), in contrast to future Steely Dan works. In addition, although some of these songs ("Caves of Altamira," "Brooklyn," "Barrytown") were re-recorded for Steely Dan albums, the majority of them were never officially released.

Becker and Fagen joined the touring band of Jay and the Americans for roughly a year and a half.[17] They were at first paid $100 per show, but partway through their tenure the band's tour manager cut their salaries in half.[17] The group's lead singer, Jay Black, dubbed Becker and Fagen "the Manson and Starkweather of rock 'n' roll," referring to cult leader Charles Manson and spree killer Charles Starkweather.[17]

They had little immediate success after the move to Brooklyn, although Barbra Streisand recorded their song "I Mean To Shine" on her 1971 Barbra Joan Streisand album. Little other significant headway was made by the pair until one of Vance's cronies, Gary Katz, moved to Los Angeles to become a staff producer for ABC Records. He hired Becker and Fagen as staff songwriters and they flew to California. Katz would produce all their 1970s albums with a collaboration with engineer Roger Nichols.

After realizing their songs were too complex for other ABC artists, at Katz's suggestion they formed their own band with guitarists Denny Dias and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, drummer Jim Hodder and singer David Palmer, and Katz signed the band to ABC as recording artists. Being fans of Beat Generation literature, Fagen and Becker named the band after "Steely Dan III from Yokohama," a strap-on dildo referred to in the William Burroughs novel The Naked Lunch.[18][19] The addition of Palmer as a second lead vocalist was due to a combination of Fagen's resistance to singing in front of an audience and the label's feeling that his voice was not "commercial" enough. Fagen lacked confidence in his voice and was known to have suffered from occasional bouts of stage fright.

In 1972, ABC sent out promotional copies of Steely Dan's first single, "Dallas," backed with "Sail the Waterway." It is unclear if "stock" copies were ever released to the general public, and if they were, the single sold so poorly that promotional copies are more abundant today (whereas the reverse is true for most releases). The two songs were re-released on vinyl a handful of times as b-sides and on EPs throughout the 1970s and 1980s; as of 2009, "Dallas" and "Sail the Waterway" remain the only officially released Steely Dan tracks to have not been reissued on cassette or compact disc. Becker and Fagen would tell an interviewer in 1995 that the songs hadn't been reissued because they felt the tracks were "stinko."[20]

Can't Buy a Thrill and Countdown to Ecstasy

Their debut album, Can't Buy a Thrill, was released in 1972 and made an immediate impression with the hit singles "Do It Again" and "Reelin' In the Years," reaching #6 and #11 respectively on the Billboard singles chart. Those and the Palmer-sung "Dirty Work" eventually became staples on classic rock radio. "Reelin' In the Years" also features an acclaimed guitar solo by Elliott Randall.

Because of Fagen's reluctance to sing live, David Palmer handled most of the vocal duties on stage. During the first tour, it became apparent to Katz and Becker that Palmer's interpretation of the material wasn't having the same impact, and eventually convinced Fagen that he was the one who best conveyed the attitude and meaning of the songs. Palmer quietly left the group during the recording of the second album, soon hooking up with Carole King, with whom he wrote the 1974 #2 hit, "Jazzman."

The lineup of Can't Buy a Thrill and its follow up, Countdown to Ecstasy, was very band oriented. Denny Dias handled the rhythm guitar as well as the famous electric sitar solo on "Do It Again," and Jeff Baxter handled lead guitar duties. Jim Hodder played drums as well as singing on one track, "Midnite Cruiser." As for Becker and Fagen themselves, Becker played bass and sang some sparse backup vocals while his partner Fagen played all keyboards (piano, electric piano, organ) and sang lead on every track but three.

Countdown to Ecstasy, released in 1973, failed to match the level of commercial success of the first album. Becker and Fagen blamed this on having to rush-record the album between tour dates and the fact that they weren't entirely happy with some of the performances on the record. The album's singles included "Show Biz Kids" (curiously chosen for release as a hopeful hit) and "My Old School," both considered "classic" Steely Dan by fans and critics alike, but failing to make any significant impact on the charts. However, "My Old School" (and, to a lesser extent, "Bodhisattva") did become a minor FM Rock staple as years passed, and remains so to this day. "Bodhisattva" was also notable as the only readily available live recording of Steely Dan for many years (as the B-side of the 1980 single "Hey Nineteen").

Pretzel Logic and Katy Lied

Steely Dan returned to prominence with their third LP Pretzel Logic in early 1974, a diverse set that produced another hit single, "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", a US Top Ten hit (#4 on the Billboard chart) which became yet another enduring AM rock radio staple. It is also notable as the only Steely Dan album to contain a song by another composer—their note-for-note transcription of Duke Ellington's and Bubber Miley's "East St Louis Toodle-oo". This song also holds other importance as the only instrumental ever done by Steely Dan, the only Steely Dan song to feature a banjo, and the only song on which Donald Fagen is credited with playing the saxophone (he also plays the piano solo). Album cuts "Any Major Dude Will Tell You" and the title track would go on to be fan favorites.

During the tour for the previous album, the band had added Sonny & Cher's young session drummer Jeff Porcaro (later a member of Toto) and also added ...   More