Steely Dan: "Steely Dan's name has been popping up as a hip musical crush. Remember, this glossy bop-pop was the indifferent aristocracy to punk rock's stone-throwing in the late 70's. People fought

"Bring me some bandages and there'll be sex" -girl in a Bruce Jay Friedman story

"If the 1960's can be seen as a decade largely characterized by musical alienation, with its more radical manifestations often directed explicity against the status quo, against traditional concert music, and against the concert situation itself, the 1970's represented a period of widespread reconciliation." -Robert P. Morgan,"20th Century Music"

It was the hippest of times, it was the squarest of times - mostly the latter. And while it was certainly true that we found ourselves in the unenviable position of being labelmates with the likes of Tommy Roe and Freddie Fender, we yet aspired to see our own names written on the stars alongside the greats, near greats, and ingrates of jazz, funk, and/or rhythm and blues, depending.

The dim half light of near-quasi-celebrity in which we basked notwithstanding, as the seventies wore on, we found ourselves feeling kind of empty inside - as though driving home from a sodden one-nighter with some eminently forgettable made-for-TV-movie queen, say Sharon Farrell or even Susan St. James. Blinded by the as-always-too-bright L.A. skyscape, at once faintly hungry and vaguely nauseated, we switch on the scratchy car radio to soothe our weary psyches, and lo - we are mocked and assaulted by the tinny bleat of our own recorded music, its every flaw hideously magnified, its every shortcoming laid bare. O cosmic hipsters, flipsters, fingerpopping daddies - ye mighty gods of jump music - why hast thou forsaken us? Well, probably for lots of good reasons, both known and unknown, but we come away from this soul wringing thought experiment convinced of two things - 1) this town is Going Down With The Beast, and 2) these L.A. cats are making us sound like a couple of goddamn pussies.

Having recently relocated in the 457 zone (that's out Malibu way, babies) and as we began work on a new collection of fresh and ultra-hard-hitting material designed to redeem ourselves on the public airwaves, it so happens that on a certain magic night both of your humble narrators had strangely similar precognitive dreams involving a) the Brill Building, b) Larry de Tourette, doorman/mascot of same, and c) fear of lifetime employment at Colony Records, located on the ground floor of same. Even allowing for a brief cameo by an unidentified pair of teenage Eurasian deaf mute babysitters towards the end of Act 3 (Becker) or an extended scenario involving amateur theatricals, a tank of nitrous oxide and a snooty upper eastside middle school for French girls (Fagen), the effect of these apocalyptic visions was much as though we had both drawn "The Hanged Man" during Bard College stoner seance on All Hallow's Eve. In other words, we were, according to these distressing prognostications, well and truly fucked - unless we took heed and reinvented ourselves on the streets of the City of Class, and pronto.

A period of research and reconnaissance ensued, the chief purpose being to determine a) who exactly played the drums on a certain Laura Nyro record (Bernard Purdie? Herb Lovell? Artie Schneck?) and b) whether the EMT echo chambers at A&R Studios on Seventh Avenue were still the grandest in the land. Was the roast beef still rare, the corned beef lean, the skies still blue, the cab drivers loony - in short, did they remember us still on the Great White Way? Was it possible for food to taste other than it did at the Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Boulevard? Or was it too late for us to reclaim our rich cultural birthright as citizens of the Greater Metropolitan Area? The results of our inquiries were encouraging. Passages were booked, leaves taken, rhythm charts passed around, and the rest is musical history, of a sort (see enclosed CD).

Fast forward to mixdown, back in L.A. Comfortably configured in our customary listening positions at ABC Records Studio C, we find ourselves feeling all fat and sassy. Seretonin receptors sipping at a seemingly inexhaustible supply of whatever, we feel as though we are strolling down a realer-than-real virtual Broadway, past the City Squire and on into the groovingest Broadway nightclub you can ever imagine, with the bugaloo band of your dreams up on the stand wailing away. Instead of the usual make-mine-vanilla scrubbers, we find ourselves rocking out to the soul-stirring sounds of some fiercely funkadelic and deeply righteous Bernard Purdie grooves, Chuck Rainey bass lines, Paul Griffin piano riffs, and the like. Here comes a guitar solo - Larry Carlton, no problem there. Don Grolnick keyboard vamps so solid you could set your watch by them. Background vocals, blaring trumpets, wah wah guitar solos, ha-ha lyrics - it's all there. Our happiness at this particular point in time would be ultracomplete save for one thing - namely, we have not as yet found a cover shot for the album. None of our much-prized souvenirs of Springtime in the Big City - gold faucets from the St. Regis, Polaroids from the Metropole, sixpack of thick terry bathrobes with various hotel monograms, empty pack of Delicado Olivados, hecho en Mexico - our copious stash of colorful Big Apple swag leaves us still wanting for suitable thematic material pertaining to the desperately needed cover art. Luckily for us, we are in Los Angeles where, more than anywhere else in the known universe, bad taste abhors a vacuum, and before long we find ourselves staring into the maw of the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none (excepting perhaps Can't Buy A Thrill). Why are those buildings turning into reptilian horrors, or vice versa? What squalid back alley of the human condition is meant to be invoked by this contused nightmare palette? What manner of man - ill-shod, unshaven - dares sleep peacefully through this fearsome and repulsive protomorph?
(to be continued)

Donald Fagen & Walter Becker, 1999

What?

! i'm scared to ask, but who would this be today?

this thread reminds me that i don't have enough steely dan in my collection. sd are one of those bands that conjure warm memories for me like old photos from the 70s.

the phrase "hip musical crush" is so horribly cynical...it's like they're saying, "damn, i'm just upset i didn't get there first." the idea of music as this territorial pissing match just seems so myopic.

Jewel -vs- Bobby Short .. dunno .. I was thinking Wayne Shorter when I read it & don't give a shit about Jewel in any case.

I still can't get Steely Dan but I've learned to respect them. they use the studio as it was designed, as a transparent tool for maximum control over the sound, invisible & seamless: they clearly aren't 'live' performances, but there's no overt signs in the music indicating that they aren't, they still refer to an idealized version of live music. in the early 80's when I started buying records they seemed to be missing the point entirely, I liked people who used the studio as an expressive, intrusive instrument, I wanted the seams to show. 20 years later I'm increasingly sick of blathering self-induglent eno-damage & the SD records now seem like miracles of restraint.

still left slightly cold by the sound though. but anyone who's spent any time in a studio or has any experience in engineering has to give it up for the accomplishment.

Another arrogant moron writing for Pitchfork. No fucking idea what a 'copyist' does but that doesn't stop him from sneering.

really enjoying jody's posts.

i didnt expect my invoking jewel would prompt people to start posting her lyrics

FAGEN: Hell, we steal. We're the robber barons of rock 'n' roll.

MUSICIAN: Well, the only other thing on the record that seems obviously borrowed is "Glamour Profession." The rhythm and feel of it, and the way the synthesizer/horn vamp swings against the pulse sounds very much like Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band.

BECKER: I don't listen to them. Donald listens to them. But I see what you mean though.

MUSICIAN: I'm not saying it was necessarily a conscious act of pilferage.

FAGEN: That song was influenced by disco music in general.

MUSICIAN: Nouveau Swing Disco?

FAGEN: What you're saying is basically valid. There are other things that are borrowed too. The bridge on "Glamour Profession" is a take on the bridge of Kurt Weill's "Speak Low."

BECKER: Which is taken from Ravel.

MUSICIAN: What about popular music? Anything going on that you might be a bit more enthusiastic about?

BECKER: I've had a tough time with the radio lately. It's pathetic.

FAGEN: The Talking Heads are very interesting. They're a top band.

MUSICIAN: That's what happens when you go to the Rhode Island School of Design.

FAGEN: Fortunately, it's mainly their album covers that I like. The covers and the guy's eyes are great. There's at least an intelligence behind them, which is more than you can say for most groups.

BECKER: Further and further as time goes by... they're leaving it in the dust.

FAGEN: I like Donna Summers' records.

BECKER: I bought the single, "Turn Out The Lights." Had to have it.

FAGEN: I did like Dr. Buzzard's first record. But only that one.

MUSICIAN: So I guess it's pretty bleak out there, is that what you're saying?

BECKER: I guess, unless there's something out there that's being suppressed, which is entirely possible.

FAGEN: Oh, you know what I went for in a way, Ian Drury and The Blockheads. More of a comedy thing.

That Musician interview that JBR is quoting is awesome. They have such great, wry rapport. I honestly don't think I'd ever read an interview or heard them speak at length until I saw all those Las Vegas clips promoting the last record. Those were priceless. I think they could carry their own TV show!

I loved Chaki's story about driving on Sunset and hearing "Babylon Sisters". There lyrics have that quality that allows them to insinuate themselves into your life in funny ways. Sometimes I'll be walking around and the line "Here come those Santa Ana winds again" will pop into my head. ANd I don't think I've ever been to Santa Ana! But it's not really the melody that gets caught in your head, it's the sentiment, the feeling .. if that makes any sense.

I just tried to find a link for those clips, but it looks like they must have taken them down :(

No, because they are cold and unfeeling studio technocrats.

Walter and Donald ride around in a taxi in Las Vegas

ha, I'm here - it's just that when someone busts out the "SD is boring"/aor/what-punk-was-against/et al I feel this crushing weight that must be what freshman Survey of English Lit. profs feel when some student who's never read anything pre-20th century comes with the "this isn't pertinent!" etc.: I just want to say, firmly and as calmly as I can: "Have you actually listened to the records?" because Steely Dan is so unambiguously not what their detractors almost invariably accuse them of being ("laid back," "mellow," etc) that there's hardly any point in arguing about it

OK. OK. OK. When you have a band like Steely Dan, whose lyrics put pretty much everybody else's to shame, then it's at best narrow-minded to assume that any aspect of what they're doing isn't meaningful. What I mean: when, say, the White Stripes rock out, I don't think they're trying to engage their rock with their lyrics in any particular way: they're just doing what they like to do, approaching their craft in the way that seems best to them. The lyrics may engage with the music (more aggressive lyrics for more aggressive music, for example) but it'd take some work to suggest that the inverse was ever the case. With Steely Dan, on the other hand: the production, the melodies, the changes, all that stuff bounces off the lyrics (in markedly different ways, I might add; again, if variances in production aren't audible to you, then you're not listening very hard) in ridiculously pointed (and, I'd say, rather obvious) ways. "Glamor Profession" is probably the most obvious example. In a way, the snide "oooh, slick" that they sometimes get amounts to a "mission accomplished" for Becker & Fagen: they have successfully talked above their audience. That this has been their goal all along is perhaps on of the most hilariously cynical things in the history of music.

indifferent aristocracy.....yeah keep dropping those 10 ratings on Radiohead and Modest Mouse, they're positively "bands-of-the-people"