By Steve James
Reuters
NEW YORK — This is the first millennial leap year since the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1582, but for some rock fans this February 29 has even more significance.
It’s the release date of the first new Steely Dan album in two decades — “Two Against Nature.”
The disc’s debut coincides with a PBS TV special on the jazz-tinged, horn-backed band that is known as much for its wit and sophistication as its funky eclecticism.
The 90-minute show “In the Spotlight” produced by New York’s PBS station Thirteen/WNET airs here March 1 and on public stations across the country in the next two weeks.
From Goffin and King, to Bacharach and David, to Lennon and McCartney, the annals of pop are peppered with dynamic songwriters. Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have received enough critical acclaim and chart success to include them in that elite group.
Keyboardist Fagen, a beardless Allen Ginsberg figure now, and the enigmatic guitarist Becker play some of their most popular tunes, such as “Babylon Sisters,” “Josie,” “Green Earring” and “Kid Charlemagne” during the TV performance.
They also play some of the songs from the new album, such as “Cousin Dupree,” a ditty Fagen calls “risque” about a guy turned on by his now grown-up cousin.
The new album is the first of all-new Steely Dan material since “Gaucho” hit stores in 1980, although both Becker and Fagen have recorded solo albums. The show is the first time fans have really seen the duo at work on screen, since “Gaucho” came out in the old days before MTV and music videos.
Between songs, the camera follows them through Manhattan in a limo at night, talking about their music. Becker talks of growing up with Elvis Presley, but being really excited by the sounds on rock ‘n roll radio, like R&B and soul, that molded the Steely Dan sound.
For Emmy-winning TV producer David Horn, who described himself as a “huge” Steely Dan fan, the project was clearly a labor of love.
“I was a jazz musician before I got into TV,” Horn told Reuters recently. “When I was at Berklee (music school in Boston) Steely Dan was the benchmark.”
Becker and Fagen are serious musicians, he said, who read charts for all their compositions. “Their performances are very exacting… but they also have a lot of humor in their songs.”
Who else could see “humor in a song about incest,” Horn said, referring to “Cousin Dupree.”
But Becker, 50, and Fagen, 52, are notorious for their sense of perfection, he added. “Yes, they are perfectionists. There’s a joke that they say ‘We’ve worked six months on the vowels, now another six months on the consonants.”‘
The challenge in both the performance and the documentary part of his film was ensuring these serious musicians “didn’t come off as pompous,” said Horn, who has made “Spotlight” and “Great Performances” shows on PBS about such disparate musicians as Leonard Bernstein and Linda Ronstadt.
“It was a total collaboration, they had some ideas how they wanted it to look. but they tried to retain a bit of the mystique and artiness.”
The danger in the project, he said, was that it didn’t look like “This is Spinal Tap” — Rob Reiner’s parody “rockumentary” film about a rock band.
“Actually, they are funny guys and would have loved to do a parody. If they can send themselves up, they will,” said Horn.
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