In 1972, Donald Fagen (then 24) and Walter Becker (then 22) formed the rock band Steely Dan. The name Steely Dan was borrowed from William S. Burroughs' 1959 book 'Naked Lunch' ("Steely Dan III From Yokohama"). They met in 1967 as undergraduates at Bard College in upstate New York. Ten songs from Steely Dan reached the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 Hits chart between 1973 and 1981. The 6-minute song 'Do It Again' (peaked at No. 6) was the breakout hit from Steely Dan's first album, 'Can't Buy A Thrill'.
"We don’t have much of a problem with singles material, because unlike a lot of other basically FM groups, our music tends to be adaptable to really commercial purposes," Donald Fagen told the press at the time. For some singers and listeners, it was hard to make sense of the often hidden meanings in the lyrics of many of Steely Dan's songs. However both advised their music was "based on things we know about."
'Pittsburgh Post-Gazette' noted, "Steely Dan's relaxed music is offset by dark, sardonic lyrics. All songs loaded with a detail for places and names that calls for a Steely Dan Dictionary on the Web." Donald Fagen explained to the 'Los Angeles Times',
"Actually Walter and I are very sweet-natured lads. We were angry kids, there's no doubt about it. To a lot of people, the '60s is now (in 1993) some sort of incredible layer cake invented by the media. But the fact was that we did have the attitude that we were brought up with, inauthentic values, etc., and were trying to find some other kind of alternative values. We were looking for that in a very aggressive way. And as you get older, you're not that angry anymore."
Speaking to Arthur Lubow of 'New Times' magazine in 1977, William Burroughs made the observation, "These people are too fancy. They’re too sophisticated, they’re doing too many things at once in a song. To write a bestseller, you can’t have too much going on. You take 'The Godfather', the horse’s head. That’s great. But you can’t have a horse’s head on every page. These people tend to have too many horses’ heads."
Arthur Lubow remarked, "Even if you can’t understand some words of a Steely Dan song, the lyrics are usually evocative." 'Do It Again' was described as "a hypnotic tune about a professional loser." One reviewer in 2004 tried to make sense of the song, "The first verse's theme is irony. The second verse is about discord in relationships. The third verse is about the 'bad guys' in the world. All three verses share a common theme of things repeating themselves. With a song titled 'Do It Again', history repeats itself. Bottom line."
Donald Fagen maintained, "It has to do with when we were born and how we grew up. Even though we were really too young to experience a lot of the golden age of jazz in the '50s, nevertheless that's what we were into, through recordings, although we saw live jazz as well at the tail end of that era. And we also had literary aspirations, I suppose. We never try to be obscure. If we're communicating better, that's just another characteristic of sophistication.
"We're not particularly good popular-song writers. I usually come up with germinal musical idea, and then we will arrange to meet. Usually one or both of us won't show up, but I think we generally come to make something out of it. So it is really a collaboration. It's not one of us writing the music, the other lyrics. And it's not like Lennon and McCartney, who as I understand it's usually just wrote a song by themselves and then put both their names on it. It is a collaboration: we think very much the same musically. I can start songs and Walter can finish them. He's a very good editor also. He'll suggest improvements on my original idea, and then we'll work on lyrics together."
Steely Dan stopped touring in 1974 to "concentrate on recording and writing music, which takes a lot of time and thought." In 1981, Steely Dan disbanded but re-formed again in 1993. Arthur Lubow pointed out, "One reason that their material doesn’t appear on other records is that the melodies are hard to sing. A more forbidding handle is the nature of the lyrics."
Donald Fagen insisted, "I think one of the best things about rock and roll as opposed to jazz is precision and a professional sound. That’s what I like about popular music. We strive for that sort of slick sound. It just takes time to get something to be good, to get 8 or 10 songs that are all good. Most rock and roll albums will be padded with less than wonderful material. We want every bar of the album to be good."
Speaking to Bob DiCorcia in 1997, David Palmer stated, "The word 'genius' is bandied about a lot in pop music but those two are the genuine article. Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and a few others I can think of reinvented the medium for the '60s. They spoke to my generation in a way that the 'old guard' songwriters never could by combining their own musical-lyrical sense and created a hybrid that influenced songwriters for three decades (the '70s to the '90s).
"Wasn't it John Lennon who said that all he and Paul really wanted to do was be the next Goffin and King? I also think her pop sensibility runs like a thread through everything she’s ever written, from the Drifters to The Byrds to The Monkees through her 'Latin period' right up until the present — even if the styles changed — her sense of what makes a great pop song never has. I'm a fan of anyone who practices the 'craft' of songwriting and can hold my attention.
"I'm still a sucker for a great 'hook' … be it Smashing Pumpkins, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Vince Gill, Patti Loveless, George Strait or Alanis Morrisette. I’m also not one who believes that art and commerce are mutually exclusive. I’ve been broke and I’ve had bread and having is much better. More power to anyone who can sell a zillion CDs."
Arthur Lubow remarked, "Even if you can’t understand some words of a Steely Dan song, the lyrics are usually evocative." 'Do It Again' was described as "a hypnotic tune about a professional loser." One reviewer in 2004 tried to make sense of the song, "The first verse's theme is irony. The second verse is about discord in relationships. The third verse is about the 'bad guys' in the world. All three verses share a common theme of things repeating themselves. With a song titled 'Do It Again', history repeats itself. Bottom line."
Donald Fagen maintained, "It has to do with when we were born and how we grew up. Even though we were really too young to experience a lot of the golden age of jazz in the '50s, nevertheless that's what we were into, through recordings, although we saw live jazz as well at the tail end of that era. And we also had literary aspirations, I suppose. We never try to be obscure. If we're communicating better, that's just another characteristic of sophistication.
"We're not particularly good popular-song writers. I usually come up with germinal musical idea, and then we will arrange to meet. Usually one or both of us won't show up, but I think we generally come to make something out of it. So it is really a collaboration. It's not one of us writing the music, the other lyrics. And it's not like Lennon and McCartney, who as I understand it's usually just wrote a song by themselves and then put both their names on it. It is a collaboration: we think very much the same musically. I can start songs and Walter can finish them. He's a very good editor also. He'll suggest improvements on my original idea, and then we'll work on lyrics together."
Steely Dan stopped touring in 1974 to "concentrate on recording and writing music, which takes a lot of time and thought." In 1981, Steely Dan disbanded but re-formed again in 1993. Arthur Lubow pointed out, "One reason that their material doesn’t appear on other records is that the melodies are hard to sing. A more forbidding handle is the nature of the lyrics."
Donald Fagen insisted, "I think one of the best things about rock and roll as opposed to jazz is precision and a professional sound. That’s what I like about popular music. We strive for that sort of slick sound. It just takes time to get something to be good, to get 8 or 10 songs that are all good. Most rock and roll albums will be padded with less than wonderful material. We want every bar of the album to be good."
Speaking to Bob DiCorcia in 1997, David Palmer stated, "The word 'genius' is bandied about a lot in pop music but those two are the genuine article. Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and a few others I can think of reinvented the medium for the '60s. They spoke to my generation in a way that the 'old guard' songwriters never could by combining their own musical-lyrical sense and created a hybrid that influenced songwriters for three decades (the '70s to the '90s).
"Wasn't it John Lennon who said that all he and Paul really wanted to do was be the next Goffin and King? I also think her pop sensibility runs like a thread through everything she’s ever written, from the Drifters to The Byrds to The Monkees through her 'Latin period' right up until the present — even if the styles changed — her sense of what makes a great pop song never has. I'm a fan of anyone who practices the 'craft' of songwriting and can hold my attention.
"I'm still a sucker for a great 'hook' … be it Smashing Pumpkins, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Vince Gill, Patti Loveless, George Strait or Alanis Morrisette. I’m also not one who believes that art and commerce are mutually exclusive. I’ve been broke and I’ve had bread and having is much better. More power to anyone who can sell a zillion CDs."
