Steely Dan: Anthony's Album Guide

My handy dandy profoundly subjective numerical rating scheme is decoded here.

Can’t Buy A Thrill (1972) 8
Countdown To Ecstasy (1973) 8
Pretzel Logic (1974) 8
Katy Lied (1975) 9
The Royal Scam (1976) 8
Aja (1977) 6
Gaucho (1980) 8
Alive In America (1995) 4
Two Against Nature (2000) 6
Everything Must Go (2003) 8

There’s likely no band that inspires as much revulsion and reverence among hipsters of every generation as Steely Dan. Are you smart enough to get Steely Dan? Or do you think they’re mainstream pap? Have you convinced yourself you like this cheesy, jerk-off bullshit in the name of irony? Is self-awareness a saving grace for hold music? Who cares if they’re smart? What defines cool anyway? The Dan’s merits are a debate that will forever echo across record stores and web forums. It even showed up in a Judd Apatow movie. And yet, to the best of my knowledge, few seem to get just why they inspire this divide.

The problem isn’t that they’re a jazz act. Lots of Steely Dan fans probably have no time for Ornette Coleman, and the opposite is certain as well. Wild-ass improvisation, raw emotion, a conversation between musicians...you don't get these things from Steely Dan. This is because Steely Dan isn’t jazz. Steely Dan are jazz supremacists. The songwriting duo of singer/keyboardist Donald Fagen, and his late compatriot, guitarist/bassist Walter Becker, made it their life’s mission to let everyone know that nothing on earth was better than jazz. Jazz musicians were such a gifted breed of cat that Fagen and Becker never dared to claim the honor themselves. They were too young, too capitalist, and too corrupted by the suburban spoils and immaturity of the baby boom. But through the socratic logic of true assholes, Steely Dan was the best pop group in history, due to understanding and accepting pop's inferiority. And don't even mention rock & roll.

On their first album, surrounded by future Doobie Brothers and the rare rockers skillful enough to stomach, the Dan referred to Thelonious Monk as “their old friend” (albeit, in deniable code). That initial line-up, already chop city, would gradually be replaced by dozens of jazz musicians even more suited to give Fagen & Becker’s music the accomplished feel and tasteful soloing they felt it deserved. But the music would never actually become jazz. These were valentines to the beat-era hepcats they never got to be. Jazz was above Steely Dan, and, with the sentimental exception of soul music (Fagen sometimes moonlighting behind Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs on retro tours), everything else was below. Including your favorite rock albums. Without question.

Steely Dan were boomers with so much contempt for boomers, they’d rather boomers' moms got on board via easy listening radio. After all, these moms knew Mick Jagger was a clown. Fagen, writhing behind his keyboard, and the absurdly stoic Becker, would rather be mistaken for genteel schmaltz than the groaning cavemen and shrieking cheerleaders they opened for. This is why someone like Steve Albini, despite sharing a similar contempt for the commercialism of the modern era, and a similar respect for the art of studio recording, utterly refused to show them any respect. Albini died proud he recorded a Stooges reunion album that most people found humiliatingly dumb (I dig it). He loved to rock, and didn’t see it as something to evolve past or regret. For anyone who refuses to treat jazz as a genre all others must genuflect to, Steely Dan is, at best, a quixotic tragedy. “Christ the amount of human effort wasted to sound like an SNL band warm up,” as Albini put it on Twitter. “Steely Dan gargles my balls,” as Seth Rogen put it. Or, at least, a Seth Rogen character that wakes up to “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” instead of “Kid Charlemagne.” 

Me, I’m a Libra. I respect the argument for jazz’s magnificence, but also know I love rock more. I’m not offended by jazz supremacists, especially those with a smirky sensibility about it. And how smirky was Steely Dan? Steely Dan were so smirky, they hung out with Chevy Chase in college. Steely Dan were so smirky that, after they wrote an open letter to Owen Wilson asking if You Me & Dupree was inspired by their “Cousin Dupree,” they wrote an open letter to Wes Anderson just to say he peaked with Bottle Rocket, and The Darjeeling Limited looked like it could use their help.

Mark Mothersbaugh...Everyone in Hollywood knows that he is a first class professional musical supervisor. Obviously you and he have a lot of great history together and we can imagine there is a certain rapport both professional and personal. But we certainly can’t work with him, anymore than he would consent to work with us. Same thing for the mandolins and the twelve-string stuff and the harpsichord, they’re out. You yourself may be partial to those particular instruments. We’re not. Remember, we saw “Tom Jones” in its original theatrical release when we were still in high school, we had to listen to “Walk Away Renee” all through college and we fucking opened for Roger McGuinn in the seventies, so all that “jingle-jangle morning” shit is no big thrill for us, OK?

(This was their last open letter, probably due to them getting more negative attention for it than financial opportunity. And Fagen later complimented Moonrise Kingdom, having actually been a horny boy scout in the ‘60s.)

Though they’d probably throw out 97% of my record collection, leaving the Louis Jordan box, Our Man In Paris and Blossom Dearie, but maybe not In A Silent Way (definitely not Ask The Ages), Steely Dan are my kind of jerks. They’re a valuable reminder that snark predates the power chord, and might be more cutting without it. My increasing appreciation for jazz has made it easier to accept their preferred, Albini-anathemic timbres and harmonies. But again, they’re not jazz. And I don’t listen to Steely Dan for jazz’s virtues. I listen to them for the virtues of wry jerkdom. And eccentric pop.

Failing to make it in the fading Brill Building scene after college (their songs were just too good! Allegedly!), but encouraged by Gary Katz at ABC Records, Becker and Fagen reluctantly accepted their genius required a band of its own, moving to LA with Denny Dias (lead guitar), Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (mustache guitar), Jim Hodder (drums) and David Palmer (vocals). That’s right, Steely Dan had a vocalist. ABC didn’t think the world was ready for uncut Don yet, and Don was nervous about live shows anyway.

Ironically, Palmer’s spotlight number is only the third most famous song on Can’t Buy A Thrill, Fagen able to get “Reelin’ In The Years,” which makes rueful condescension sound like Thin Lizzy, and the recidivist rumba “Do It Again,” into the Top Ten himself. Though Palmer wasn’t hip enough to play Nilsson to Fagen’s Newman, he’s actually less of a problem than drummer Hodder taking the Thelonious tribute, or the back-up ladies asked to buttress the showboating solos on “Kings.” Countdown To Ecstasy has no hits, but also no Palmer, streamlining the early Dan vibe: Fagen obtusely mocking the egotists and airheads around them, above chord progressions few could play, between solos no one could dismiss. I dig it.

Fagen/Becker stop ceding as much territory to Dias and Baxter on Pretzel Logic, Hodder not even allowed to drum. Their desire for another hit, achieved with “Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number,” leads Fagen to new heights of vocal confidence on tracks like “Barrytown” and “Any Major Dude Will Tell You,” the godless man’s “Lean On Me.” But the shorter song lengths can lead to affectations too cutesy for this Stooges fan (a talk-box solo on a Duke Ellington cover!). Did Baxter demand country exercises for his steel guitar prowess or were Becker & Fagen the ones eager to show it off? 

That under-discussed element of early Dan was gone after the Logic tour, Becker and Fagen firing the gang and declaring Steely Dan a purely studio project (Dias, and touring vocalist Michael McDonald, would respectively be allowed to contribute solos and those trademark high notes on occasion). Though Katy Lied is certainly enjoyed by the critical elite, I don’t know anyone else who considers it their favorite Dan platter. Maybe it’s a depressive Goldilocks thing for me, with Lied neither too ornately tricky, nor too sideman-centered, compared to the alternatives.

The finest ringers are brought into solo between Fagen’s dry, dark tales on Lied, but with Toto’s future drummer slamming it down behind them nine times out of ten. The other tenth, “Any World (That I’m Welcome To)” gets Hal Blaine’s softer, but no less assured touch, as Fagen admits needing a loving partner. The actual finale, “Throw Back The Little Ones,” unconvincingly tries to take it back. The song is a witty, pathologically appropriate curio, but I tend to skip it. I guess I’m more sentimental than they are. The Royal Scam is brighter musically, but more obscure lyrically - the boisterous arrangements and coded sneering almost feels like Elton John under the influence of red kryptonite. I dig it.

Did I say I was more sentimental than Steely Dan? Maybe that’s just when it comes to other people. “Deacon Blues,” the centerpiece of Aja, is often considered the Dan’s finest moment. “My back to the wall, the victim of laughing chance/ this is for me, the essence of true romance,” Fagen reports, waxing rhapsodic about a devil-may-care saxman who “crawls like a viper through these suburban streets,” living for the night, and the song, and the sex, and the booze and oh my god, it’s so corny. An immaculate portrait of beautiful loserdom, for sure. But it’s still jive, Fagen more a snapping turtle than a viper, and still alive behind the wheel at 77. I sympathize with people who wish their genius, their defense mechanisms, and their pearls before swine were as celebrated as college football, but I’m more of a “when I’m dead, just throw me in the trash” kind of guy. My antipathy for the thesis takes the wind out of Aja, their most jazz-supremacist album, every song its own session pro recipe. But “Peg” and “Black Cow” are so good even “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” fans know the hooks, courtesy of De La Soul and Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz.

In 1978, Steely Dan recorded the title theme for the movie FM, a suitably self-aware number about the increasing commerciality of radio, the damn Eagles singing along between the solos. It’s not on that year’s predictably fine but superfluous Greatest Hits 2LP, but an outtake from The Royal Scam, “Here At The Western World” is. The 1991 update of 1982’s Gold has both songs and some other Fagen soundtrack contributions, making it the most worthwhile compilation for nuts. The Showbiz Kids 2CD is probably the most worthwhile for normies. All the comps get a 6 for being predictably fine but superfluous. 

1980’s Gaucho earned them yet another Grammy for engineering, and a knowledgeable round of applause for Roger Nichols, thank you. But critics were split on whether the album had captured the band’s lithe, sinister essence or if they were huffing Nichols’ polish and running on the fumes. If I may generalize (and if you transcend this, bake yourself a cookie), it feels like Generation X (and the punk sympathetic) associated it with insufferable boomer excess, while millennials (and the pop sympathetic) hear that delicious decadence they like to call…yacht rock. Gaucho’s supple lite funk and pristine keyboards inspire a vicarious dream of gainful employment, beachfront summer rentals and that eternal signifier of unsustainable good times: cocaine. My immediate reaction was far more the former, and the duo’s split after its release does give it credence. But they sure hadn’t lost their sense of humor about it all. “Hey 19” is an admirably frank song about finding yourself a creepy old man covering the check, and the title track’s “No, he can’t sleep on the floor/ what do you think I’m yelling for?” may be the biggest laugh line of their career. John Mulaney types impressed they have serious grown-up problems and vices can’t get enough of this stuff. I dig it.

Becker, tired of living like a Steely Dan character, detoxed in Hawaii while Fagen indulged his love for the pre-Beatles era on 1981’s The Nightfly, a solo debut I’ll try again sometime. I actually got 1993’s Kamakiriad from my mom’s BMG CD club in middle school, charmed by a video starring Rick Moranis and the local progressive station playing “Teahouse On The Tracks.” Becker produced the album for Fagen, Fagen producing Becker’s 11 Tracks Of Whack the next year. The union rekindled, a Steely Dan tour followed, celebrated on 1995’s Alive In America. Maybe it’s the glib xennial talking, but hearing an audience cheer as the backing vocalists go “you’ve got to shake it, baby, you’ve got to shake it” really kills the ironic vibe. By the cooed, saxed-up traipse through “Reelin’ In The Years,” I’ve gone from Paul Rudd saying “they were incredible” to Paul Rudd saying he’s “going to yah mo burn this place to the ground.” 

The duo finally deigned to release a reunion album, Two Against Nature, in 2000, technically their first without Gary Katz producing, Roger Nichols now “Executive Engineer” above a handful of eager acolytes. The old were delighted, honoring them with their first Album Of The Year Grammy (Aja had lost to Rumours, and Gaucho to Double Fantasy). The young were furious, as the album lacked Thom Yorke wailing, let alone Eminem pretending to get a blowjob from Shaggy 2 Dope. In hindsight, us upstarts failed to appreciate the Dan wedded Radiohead’s love of studio soundscape and Em’s love of self-aware misogyny (the opening song celebrates “Gaslighting Abbie”). That I prefer 2003’s Everything Must Go mirrors my stance on Pretzel Logic and Katy Lied. Go was more casually bashed out (on a relative scale) with their touring band (a far friskier one than a decade earlier), and I prefer their skeevy games over less cutesy, less fussy backdrops. What’s the point of being an aging weirdo, fantasizing about assassinating God, and love-hating the neurotics who’ll still sleep with you, if you can’t relax and let the drummer do his thing?

With neither audiences nor NARAS impressed by the nonchalance of Go (their only album without a gold trophy today, which figures…*smirks behind theoretical sunglasses*), Becker and Fagen put out solo albums apart from each other, the Dan ironically now a profitable live venture (they even played Coachella!) until esophageal cancer took Becker in 2017. Fagen then toured the songbook without his pal, battling Becker’s estate over rights and royalties, while dealing with his own illnesses. After having to miss some shows with the Eagles, and losing his wife of thirty years last October, It’s unclear whether Fagen will use the Dan name again, tour solo, or kick back until the memorials come. But if the last Steely Dan shows were as the opening act for the Eagles’ farewell tour, their core duo half-departed as well…that’d be pretty Steely Dan. Available to all, but only truly appreciated by a fraction of the room.

Kate Lied is at 123 on My Top 400 Albums Of All Time, between R.E.M. and Warrant. I'm telling you this because I've found people are more inclined to discuss and share reviews if there's a quantitative element at the top or bottom they can easily debate. Prove me right! Direct correspondence, however, can be shipped off to anthonyisright at gmail dot com.