• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

By Ashley Kahn hapsodically , and revealingly, Walter PBecker, Steely Dan’s cofounder, recently perPormers described paradise: “It’s the club where all THE STEELY DAN ADVANCED PLACEMENT EXAM • the jazz greats who are Explain the importance of each of the following in the far-reaching and fractured worldview of Steely Dan: l dead still play. Ellington (ANSWERS APPEAR AT END OF ESSAY.) l and Monk and Coltrane 1. Beat w riter W illiam S. Burroughs. 2. A root-beer float. ; and Parker, and it’s the 3. Annandale, New York. ; original music and the 4. Sixties LSD wizard Owsley. 5. Precious-metal dentures. l old arrangements and 6. Early jazz trumpeter Bubber Miley. 7. The University of Alabama football team. l the original styles, and 8. Nineteenth-century French novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans. l there are beautiful wait- 9. Legendary saxophonist W ayne Shorter. l resses and cheap beer.” 10. October 25,1929. I Virtual as Becker’s venue l of choice may be, it l houses the stuff that l Steely Dan are made of. Steely Dan: Donald Fagen (lePt) and Walter Becker i uRiNG t h e s e v e n t i e s , Building office of Jay and the Americans an era while searching for songwriting work. They given to outrageous gestures and were hired, first to compose songs (Barbra Streisand’s “I Mean to Shine” was a rare ear­ 4/4 thunder, Steely Dan taught rock ly sale) and then to perform with Jay and his to swing. With pointed wit, intelli­ oldies group. Becker and Fagen fit uncom­ fortably with the group; they insisted on be­ gence and saber-toothed sarcasm, ing introduced onstage as “Gus Mahler and d mey delivered shrewd, jazz-infused Tristan Fabriani.” Salary renegotiations has­ tened their departure. hits, rife with smooth, sophisticat­ Determined to be part of a group perform­ ed harmony and syncopated, finger­ ing its own songs, the duo responded to a Vil­ lage Voice ad (reading, “Must have jazz chops popping rhythms.“We want that ongoing flow, - no hang-ups,” Fagen recollected) placed by that lightness, that forward rush of jazz,” Becker Denny Dias. In short order, they consumed the band, with Fagen taking over vocal du­ announced in 1974. “Pm attracted to music that ties. All the original members but Dias fled as Fagen and Becker’s original material proved frightens me - like Coltrane’s tone on the saxo­ too demanding. Rehearsals, songwriting ses­ phone,” echoed cofounder Donald Fagen. sions and anonymity ensued. W hen Steely Dan arrived in 1972, horn- Then the phone rang. Gary Katz, a pro­ fronted bands (Blood, Sweat & Tears, ducer they’d worked with in New York, had Chicago) and fusion’s first wave (Miles recently been hired by ABC Records in Los Davis, Weather Report) had already Angeles. Were they interested in heading prospected the territorial overlap of rock west and joining the company as songwrit­ and jazz. But none did it like the Dan. No ers? (The fact that jazz legend John Coltrane other outfit sifted a wider range of influ­ had recorded for ABC could not have been ences nor elevated the music to a more liter­ lost on the two.) Katz’s plan was to use the ate level. They seemed to speak in code, staff positions to allow Becker and Fagen to coming on as rock’s English majors gone form a band, and they did. Dias followed, beatnik, penning dark, street-real songs of Katz hooked up the trio with guitarist Jeff dislocation (“Daddy Don’t Live in That New “Skunk” Baxter and drummer Jim Hodder; York City No More”) and condemnation the first incarnation of Steely Dan was bom. (“Show Biz Kids”). Their lyrics bounced In the waning months of 1972, Steely Dan’s from Bukowski realism (“Your black cards debut single, “Do It Again,” began to scale can make you money/So you hide them when the charts. ABC excitedly rushed the band you’re able”) to biblical parable (“In the land onto the road to open for the Beach Boys, of milk and honey/You must put them on the Chuck Berry and Frank Zappa (Zappa hailed table”). Their very name referenced a dy­ their “downer surrealism”). Hit followed nasty of dildos in that mystic bohemian Top Forty hit: “Reeling in the Years” in 1973. bible, Naked Lunch. “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” in 1974. On Irreverent, ironic rockers humbled before their third platter - Pretzel Logic - the Dan the saints of jazz, Steely Dan have always em­ made their knowledge of and reverence for braced paradox. They were cynical New York jazz explicit. “Parker’s Band” was their natives whose well-crafted sound symbol­ homage to Charlie Parker, the alto-sax pio­ ized Seventies California. Studio craftsmen who forsook the stage yet sought the impro­ vised charge of live performance. Songwrit­ ers who aspired to the pop tradition of Leiber and Stoller and Phil Spector yet glori­ fied social misfits and desperate malcon­ tents, faded hipsters and disposable messi- ahs. (Jerry Leiber once said their music reminded him of German art music.) “Our music scares me more than anybody else’s,” declared Fagen. “The combination of the words with the music - like a cheerful lyric and a sad or menacing melody, or vice versa - 1 find that irony frightening.” Keyboardist/singer Fagen and guitarist Becker are the double helix that defined Steely Dan. “When they’re in the same room at the same time,” noted longtime Dan guitarist Denny Dias, “it’s like one person Chevy Chase on drums) and recognized a neer who sired bebop; “East St. Louis Too- with two brains. They usually finish each kindred spirit in each other. “We clicked on dle-Oo” was their faithful re-creation of other’s sentences.” every level,” Fagen recalled. “We listened to Duke Ellington’s early theme song. Years be­ Becker and Fagen shared much from the the same jazz stations. We liked the same fore sampling and other digital recycling outset, growing up in New York City’s ex­ books . the way we defined ourselves.” A techniques, they kicked off “Rikki” with a pansive suburbs (Westchester, New York, lasting partnership was bom. suave vamp borrowed wholesale from hard- and Passaic, New Jersey, respectively). They Following school - Fagen graduated (se­ bop piano man Horace Silver. first crossed paths at Bard College in upstate nior thesis: Herman Hesse) while Becker was But the more success - and their manage­ New York, where they became the core of a asked to leave (“I was on an accelerated pro­ ment and record companies - pushed Becker small group of musicians (including a young gram”) - the pair stumbled into the Brill and Fagen to tour, the more they resisted. In 1974, weary of constant travel and inconsis­ tent live-sound systems, they stepped on­ stage for the last time (that is, until 1993). Steely Dan became a full-time studio project. Over their next two albums - Katy Lied and The Royal Scam - their perfectionist reputation began to build. They booked weeks in the studio, experimenting for days on just one track. Trying and retrying each tune with different blends of talent, they juggled L.A.’s best soloists and sessionmen: guitarists Lar­ ry Carlton and Rick Derringer, vibraphonist Victor Feldman, vocalist Michael McDonald, saxophonist Phil Woods, bassist Chuck Rainey, drummers Hal Blaine and Jeff Por- caro. Creating behind the studio glass suited them. “It wouldn’t bother me at all not to play on my own album,” commented Becker in 1977. “We just keep the quality up for our­ selves,” Fagen added. Their isolation proved their success. Aja was Steely Dan’s next, long-awaited release, a yearlong project that “was the best exam­ ple of what we were trying to do using stu­ dio bands,” remarked Becker. It hit in late 1977, as Debby Boone, the Bee Gees and Fleet- wood Mac sat atop the charts, and sounded like nothing else: a sophisticated fusion of R&B, jazz and funk, boasting intricate vocal harmonies and songs about rebel wanna­ be’s, Hollywood starlets and girls on the run. Steely Dan’s best-selling effort - widely imitated and career defining - Aja eventual- lb spent sixty weeks on the charts and yield­ ed three hit singles (“Peg,” “Deacon Blues” hoopla and welcome. This time, it made Opposite, top: Fagen (at and “Josie”), reached Number Three and sense and sounded right. They spent the piano) and Becker; bottom, was nominated for a Grammy. Looking back, next two years touring, after which Becker’s L to R: Jim Hodden Becker, Fagen notes, “When we first started, we first solo d istil Tracks of Whack, and the Denny Dias, JePP “Skunk” were more writing pop songs of the time... group’s first concert recording, Alive in Amer­ Baxter and Fagen; Above: but by the time we did Aja, we knew more of ica, were released. Fagen and Becker what we enjoyed doing - our stuff im­ In 1998 Steely Dan finally returned to the proved.” comfort of the studio. “Barely eighteen years As the Seventies ended, so did Steely go by,” quipped Rolling Stone when Two Against Dan’s relationship with ABC and L.A. They Nature was released last year. To Dan fans released “FM,” a soundtrack single, then re­ new and old, the long-awaited return proved a n s w e r s : located to the East Coast and signed with the group’s enduring appeal and sound. The 1. Author of Naked Lunch, from which Fagen MCA, just as their songwriting had begun to music featured the familiar Steely Dan signa­ and Becker drew the name Steely Dan.

Load more

  4

Copy Link