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Steely Dan

Steely Dan has been more of a conceptual framework for inventive music-making than a typical rock band. Spearheaded by a pair of resourceful musical auteurs Donald Fagen and Walter Becker - they have done nothing by the books since launching Steely Dan in 1972. The band’s very name is a scatological reference from a novel by Beat Generation anti-hero William Burroughs. Though Steely Dan recorded prolifically for much of the Seventies, they toured for only a brief spell early in that decade, deciding they much preferred the studio to the road. This allowed them to craft a wry, nuanced and hyper-literate series of albums - seven in all, released from 1972 to 1980 - that are highly regarded by connoisseurs of pop hooks, jazz harmony and desiccating wit.

Beneath the highly polished surface of Steely Dan’s music, astute listeners could hear a visceral love of and identification with the very soul of jazz. Fagen and Becker referenced Duke Ellington, Stan Getz and Horace Silver at least as much as any rock-oriented source material. Even so, there was a certain accessible quality to songs like “Reelin’ in the Years,” “Do It Again” and “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” that allowed Steely Dan to connect with rock fans, especially those who were college-aged and "educated.

Co-founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker met in 1967 while attending Bard College in upstate New York. After serving as touring musicians with Jay and the Americans and trying their hand as staff songwriters, they formed Steely Dan in Los Angeles as an outlet for a growing backlog of offbeat, original material that no one else seemed inclined to record. In the beginning, Steely Dan was an actual band with a lineup of Fagen, Becker, guitarists Denny Dias and Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, and drummer Jim Hodder. This configuration cut the albums Can’t Buy a Thrill, Countdown to Ecstasy and Pretzel Logic. Though Dias remained on board through 1977’s Aja, Steely Dan were almost completely Fagen and Becker’s fiefdom by the time of Katy Lied, their fourth album.

On record, the duo recruited the cream of L.A.’s jazz-pop studio scene, including Michael McDonald, Victor Feldman, Jeff Porcaro, David Paich, and jazz stalwarts like David Sanborn, Tom Scott, Michael Brecker, Larry Carlton, Chuck Rainey, Bernard Purdie, Phil Woods and Wayne Shorter. Producer- engineer Gary Katz, who worked on every album through 1980’s Gaucho, was a vital member of the Steely Dan brain trust whose input was critical to the perfectionist, audiophile quality of the group’s recordings. The A-list musicians provided a glossy top coat to Steely Dan’s agreeably sleek music - an ironic vehicle for their cutting, urbane and often black-humored lyrics.

The group also had a serious side, too, that’s often been overlooked. “Deacon Blues” (from Aja) presented a moving portrait of a down-at-the-heels jazzman, “Kid Charlemagne” nervously surveyed a drug dealer’s netherworld, and there was much to suggest that Fagen and Becker weren’t just mocking the decadent affectations of the Seventies - though no one did that very thing better than they. Steely Dan hit a commercial and artistic peak in the late Seventies. The hugely popular Aja, released in the fall of 1977, had nothing to do with any musical currents that were popular at the time, but its jazz- inflected lushness and inscrutable intelligence appealed to listeners across the spectrum. Aja, which soared to #3, was soon certified platinum " it was, in fact, one of the first albums to receive this newly created award, which recognized sales of one million copies. Within a year of its release, Steely Dan " whose musical sophistication and sardonic outlook made them unlikely candidates for Top Forty success " charted four hit singles: “Peg,” “Deacon Blues, “FM” and “Josie.” Rolling Stone dubbed them “the perfect musical antiheroes for the Seventies.”

Steely Dan’s long-delayed seventh album, Gaucho, appeared in 1980. A year later, they announced they were breaking up. Over the next two decades, relatively little new music surfaced from either of them. Fagen released a solo album, The Nightfly, in 1982, but would not be heard again until 1993, when his ambitious Kamakiriad " produced by Becker, and representing the duo’s first real collaboration since Gaucho " was released. That same year, they reincarnated Steely Dan as something it had rarely been in its previous lifetime: a touring entity. Fagen and Becker led the “All New Steely Dan Orchestra ‘93” on a national tour. A comprehensive box set, Citizen Steely Dan: 1972-1980, was released late in the year. Walter Becker issued his one and only solo album, 11 Tracks of Whack, in 1994. Steely Dan hit the road again with the “Citizen Steely Dan Orchestra ’94.” Highlights from the two tours were culled for Alive in America, a single CD released in 1995.

In February 2000, Steely Dan released Two Against Nature, their first album of all-new material in two decades. Later that year, Fagen and Becker compiled and annotated a two-CD best-of, Show Biz Kids: The Steely Dan Story. In 2001, Two Against Nature won a Grammy for Best Album and Steely Dan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was an improbably successful year for a band that had been largely dormant for the previous 20. Chalk up one more ironic conquest for the unpredictable Steely Dan.
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Why Steely Dan Can Never Really Be Yacht Rock

by Eric Pettine
December 21, 2024

This article was first published on All About Jazz on April 20, 2019. The website Really Smooth Music provides the definition of the term Yacht Rock as being “a variation of popular Soft Rock that peaked between the years of 1976 and 1984 (as featuring a) highly polished brand of soft rock that emanated from Southern California during the late '70s and early '80s. The term is meant to suggest the kind of smooth, mellow music that early ...

Book Review

Nightfly: The Life of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen by Peter Jones

by Doug Collette
September 17, 2022

Nightfly: The Life of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen by Peter Jones Peter Jones 368 pages ISBN: #978-1641606875 Chicago Review Press 2022 In his introduction to Nightfly: The Life of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, author Peter Jones could hardly have drawn a more clear outline for his biography of Steely Dan's co-founder. As a result, it only stands to reason that Fagen's late creative partner and friend Walter Becker makes his first appearance around ...

Radio & Podcasts

Sisters from Another Jazz Mother? Part 2

by Ludovico Granvassu
August 20, 2022

You know how scientists say that, statistically, every person has roughly six look-alikes around the world? Well the same seems to be true in the music world, where one can find quite a few songs that appear to be sound-alikes of other compositions we're familiar with... This does not have to be necessarily the result of plagiarism but can often be the outcome of the fact that certain melodies can enter a musician's brain and come back out later in ...

So You Don't Like Jazz

Discovering Jazz through Pretzel Logic

by Alan Bryson
October 4, 2020

It's a good bet that most of us have heard people say they don't like jazz, or even worse, drop the H-bomb, “I hate jazz." If you choose to engage, the key is to tread lightly and tailor an approach that considers the tastes and sensibilities of the other person. The “So You Don't Like Jazz" column explores ways to do just that. Steely Dan If you dig down in the music collection of many people who claim ...

What is Jazz?

Cold Fusion: The Search for the Jazz/Rock Unicorn, Part 2

by Kurt Ellenberger
March 12, 2020

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Part 2: Steely Dan's AjaI ended the first part of this series with the question that prompted these articles: “Why is there so little music that genuinely fuses two styles together and does so in a way that maintains the integrity of the stylistic contributors?" I could have phrased in differently by asking a closely related question: “Why is there so little fusion music that is accepted as authentic by ...

Live Review

Doobie Brothers/Steely Dan at Blossom Music Center

by C. Andrew Hovan
July 1, 2018

The Doobie Brothers & Steely Dan-The Summer of Living Dangerously Tour Blossom Music Center Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio June 23, 2018 If there is one tried and true adage that is applicable to the arts, it is the one that goes “everything old is new again." Be it a need for monetary sustenance, a love of touring, or a little bit of both, we have seen an increase in the number of summer tours featuring iconic ...

Live Review

Steely Dan at Blossom Music Center

by C. Andrew Hovan
August 8, 2015

Steely Dan Blossom Music Center Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio July 28, 2015 Back in April, Steely Dan got the busses loaded up for their semi regular touring season that included a few nights at Coachella. July 6th then brought forth the official summer tour, with twenty-three dates set through the middle of August. Billed as the “Rockabye Gollie Angel" tour, whatever the hell that means, The Dan brought its travelling minstrel show to Blossom Music Center ...

Music Industry

Steely Dan: Black Friday

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
November 27, 2021

Adding the word “black" to a day of the week began in September 1869, after Jay Gould and James Fisk tried to corner the gold market. Prices plunged, wealthy investors lost money and the day became known in the press as Black Friday. After the stock market crashed on October 24, 1929, newspapers referred to the day in its coverage as Black Thursday. Five days later, when the largest single number of shares were traded in stock-market history, newspapers called ...
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Recording

Steely Dan: Deacon Blues

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
September 9, 2015

Among the most arch and enigmatic composers of the post-Vietnam War era are Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Together, they are Steely Dan, and their songs depict hard-luck stories of eccentrics, weirdos and outcasts. What makes their characters and predicaments sympathetic is the jazz-influenced music that lends sophistication and drama to the tales. It's a mood thing that somehow unites the musical approaches of Ray Charles and Horace Silver. For this Friday's Wall Street Journal (up online now here), I ...
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121

Music Industry

Steely Dan | Santa Barbara | Review | Pics

Source: JamBase
July 26, 2011

By L. Paul Mann Steely Dan :: 07.06.11 :: Santa Barbara Bowl :: Santa Barbara, CA July 6th was an unusually crisp and warm evening in Santa Barbara with light Santa Ana winds buffeting the hillsides above the city. It was a perfect summer evening for a concert by the veteran jazz rock fusion band Steely Dan. As the sunset faded to twilight, the 11-piece Miles High Big Band and the Embassy Brats began an impressive jam introduction of an ...
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150

Performance / Tour

Steely Dan: Beacon Theatre Run

Source: JamBase
May 10, 2011

SEVEN NIGHTS OF THE DAN Steely Dan have announced a special run of shows from September 14-23 at the Beacon Theatre in NYC as part of their previously announced 2011 Shuffle Diplomacy Tour. Pre-sale for these performances starts on May 15, with a general on-sale on May 20. The band will be playing special sets on each night. September 16, 19, and and 20 will feature full album performances of Gaucho, Aja and The Royal Scam respectively. The September 14 ...
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114

Performance / Tour

Metrotix, Fox Theatre Offering Presale of Steely Dan Tickets on Friday, March 4

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
March 4, 2011

Metrotix and the Fox Theatre are offering online buyers a presale of tickets to the concert by Steely Dan on Wednesday, August 24 at the Fox. Tickets go on sale to the general public at 10:00 a.m. this Saturday, March 5; the presale begins at 10:00 a.m. Friday, March 4 and continues until 10:00 p.m. that evening. To access the presale, go to the Metrotix site and use promo code HEY19. For a band whose musical output is usually categorized ...
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271

Performance / Tour

Steely Dan Wrap Beacon Theatre Stand with Gaucho Gig

Source: All About Jazz
August 14, 2009

Last night Donald Fagan and Walter Becker got dressed, walked down the street and made a little lucre playing the most cynical music ever.

The event was the final night of Steely Dans long stand at New Yorks Beacon Theatre. Theyve been here since July playing the final three records of their early career 1976s Royal Scam, 1977s Aja, and Gaucho, an album so stinky with 70s jaundice it came out in 1980, the most 70s year of all time. ...
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106

Performance / Tour

Steely Dan Promises Special Shows on 'Rent Party' Tour

Source: Billboard Magazine
June 17, 2009

A desire “to do something that would be different and give fans the chance to shape the shows" is behind the special shows Steely Dan is doing as part of its just-started Rent Party '09 U.S. tour. “In the current climate of financial desperation, we figured there's no reason why people who are going out and buying tickets to concerts shouldn't get a little extra," the group's Walter Becker tells Billboard.com. “We've been sort of thinking about this and taking ...
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Performance / Tour

Steely Dan Plans Tour Finale in Santa Rosa

Source: All About Jazz
August 15, 2008

Rock & Roll Hall of Famers, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen will soon be wrapping up their Think Fast, Steely Dan Summer Tour 2008, but not before two last blow-out concerts in the Sonoma Wine Country! Becker and Fagen have decided to end their critically and popularly-acclaimed tour in Santa Rosa, August 26 and 27. Tickets are still available for the Sonoma County concerts, which went on-sale in June. The concerts represent one of the most intimate opportunities ever to ...
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200

Performance / Tour

Steely Dan Come to Southern Cal

Source: All About Jazz
July 31, 2008

Steely Dan soon returns to Southern California, playing Honda Center in Anaheim on Aug. 4.

Band: Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, Jon Herington, Keith Carlock, Freddie Washington, Jeff Young, Walt Weiskopf, Michael Leonhart, Jim Pugh, Roger Rosenberg, Tawatha Agee, Cindy Mizelle, Catherine Russell.

Only two acts this decade have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and also won one of the three major Grammy Awards. U2 is one, Steely Dan the other. The latter's Grammy win -- ...
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181

Radio

Steely Dan's Donald Fagen and Walter Becker to Guest Host on Sirius Satellite Radio

Source: All About Jazz
July 30, 2008

WHO: Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan WHAT: SIRIUS' Pure Jazz channel will welcome jazz-influenced rock pioneers Donald Fagen and Walter Becker from Steely Dan. Fagen and Becker will each co-host an hour playing classic jazz favorites. They will also share their thoughts about artists who continue to inspire them, including Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie. WHERE: Pure Jazz SIRIUS channel 72 WHEN: Saturday, August 2 at 10 pm ET and rebroadcast on Sunday, August 3 ...
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