And Then I Discovered Steely Dan

Becker and Fagen

Let me first start off this post by saying I wasn't a Steely Dan one year ago, or even nine months ago for that matter.  I don't know what compelled me to continue to dig deeper into their catalog, but let's just say I wasn't impressed with the surface hits of Steely Dan in the past, yet an inner voice called upon me to buy their albums and really listen to everything on their albums.  And buy them I did.  First Aja (largely considered their best, and great Michael McDonald backing vocals with one of the greatest jazz-rock songs in "Peg").  Then Gaucho (possibly my favorite of theirs but it changes by the day between this and Aja).  Then later The Royal Scam, Can't Buy A Thrill, Katy Lied, and of course Donald Fagen's brilliant early 80's solo album, The Nightfly.  Now it all makes sense.  You can't compare any band before or after the Dan, they were truly originals.  Lyrically, their themes were dark and at times demented (even the band name "Steely Dan" comes from the name of a dildo in William S. Burroughs novel The Naked Lunch), yet when you listen to an early 80's album like Gaucho, you can picture yourself listening to this album on a yacht with some middle-class yuppies drinking some Cuervo Gold.  But everything inside the music--is so much more.  A great example of this is in this clip where Becker and Fagen discuss the making of the song "Peg"

Becker and Fagen were the minds behind Steely Dan, and they built their songs around dozens of session musicians that would come in by the hour.  They had a vision, and even if multiple takes of songs that lasted upon days on end (coke had to play a part, right?), they apparently knew what they were doing.  Here's one of my favorite Steely Dan tracks, the title track off of Gaucho:

With all of the rare groove, psych-folk, boogaloo, and northern soul I have bought recently, apart from possibly Marvin Gaye's entire catalog, there isn't anything I've listened to more then Steely Dan's catalog in these past six months.  I love every bit of it.

 P.S. I need to apologize to my father, as I used to cringe and tell him to turn off the Dan whenever he would put on their Decade of Steely Dan album when I was a child.  I loved most of the music he put on as a child (Stevie Wonder, George Benson, The Beatles, Hall & Oates, Grover Washington), but I couldn't connect with Steely as a child.  I was wrong about them for over 30 years.