Nostalgic Time Not in Steely Dan’s Nature

Expect a high-impact show that will banish
any talk of traipsing down the garden path

By Alan Sculley
Special to The Commercial Appeal

MEMPHIS — Steely Dan begins its summer tour Saturday at Memphis in May’s Beale Street Music Festival.

The duo are touring on the heels of the release of the Donald Fagen solo CD, Morph The Cat. But Fagen’s musical partner in Steely Dan, Walter Becker, says fans can rest assured that even without new Steely Dan music to play, he and Fagen won’t let the shows become a nostalgia trip. “We’re definitely sort of in the anti-nostalgic camp,” says Becker.

“And when we’re on stage it’s the band and the musicians that are there, and the way it sounds and feels is just not an attempt to recapture anything. It’s a real musical event that’s happening for the first time before your very eyes. And I think … we’re going to try and condense the Steely Dan set down into a maximum, high-impact, slamming type of deal that will completely banish any talk of nostalgia or traipsing down the garden path or however you put that.”

Steely Dan’s history certainly suggests that Fagen, Becker and the rest of the touring band will make good on that promise. The group has always been known for its sense of musical sophistication and adventure. It’s worth noting that despite still being hugely popular at the time, Fagen and Becker broke up after the 1980 Steely Dan album, Gaucho, in large part because they realized they were stagnating creatively.

Fagen (keyboards/vocals) and Becker (bass) formed Steely Dan after meeting at Bard College in upstate New York in the late 1960s, and immediately made an impact with the 1972 debut album, Can’t Buy A Thrill, which included “Do It Again,” “Dirty Work” and “Reelin’ In the Years,” some of the most enduring music in the Steely Dan catalog.

Subsequent albums — Countdown To Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied and The Royal Scam — maintained the debut’s high standards, building a large and loyal following.

As the ’70s rolled on, Steely Dan evolved strictly into a studio project, with Fagen and Becker employing a variety of players to fill specific instrumental roles on their songs.

“We discovered early on that because we were doing music that had jazz harmonies and jazz elements in it, that it sort of required us to try and strive for a certain level of polish because otherwise it just sounded like, you know, music students playing jazz, which is an effect we were trying to avoid,” Becker says.

Fagen and Becker reached a creative and commercial peak with 1977’s Aja. But soon after that their partnership went off track.

During the writing and recording of their next album, Gaucho, Becker suffered two major setbacks — first the suicide of his girlfriend, and then he was hit by a cab, suffering a broken leg.

With the duo feeling burned out and in need of addressing their lives outside of Steely Dan, they went their separate ways.

Fagen re-emerged with his 1982 solo CD, The Nightfly, but it wouldn’t be until the 1990s that either artist would again surface with new music.

But there was behind-the-scenes activity. By the mid-1980s, the duo had begun visiting each other for writing sessions.

And in 1992, Fagen and Becker teamed up as part of the New York Rock and Soul Revue tour (alongside vocalists Boz Scaggs, Phoebe Snow and Michael McDonald).

After that roadshow, Fagen and Becker decided to test the waters with Steely Dan.

Tours were booked for 1993 and 1994, sandwiched around the making and release of Fagen’s 1993 solo CD, Kamakiriad (produced by Becker) and Becker’s 1994 release, 11 Tracks Of Whack (produced by Fagen).

Then it was on to a full-fledged return of Steely Dan with the 2000 CD Two Against Nature.

Not only did the disc enjoy considerable popularity, it became the first Steely Dan release to win non-production Grammys, taking home 2002 honors for Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Engineered Album/Nonclassical.

“I just was amazed that in this institution that’s usually all about what happened in the last year, and how many records people sold, that they chose us,” Fagen noted at the time.

Another record, Everything Must Go, followed in 2003.

While Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go arrived in fairly quick succession, Becker says it probably will be some time before he and Fagen make another Steely Dan CD. Becker has already started work on a solo album.

“I’m sort of in the middle of it,” Becker says, “so, I think that (a new Steely Dan album) is in the far-flung future.”

Becker says he enjoys touring now more than in the 1970s, before Steely Dan became strictly a studio project.

“At the point where we jumped out in the ’70s, the control that we had over presenting our music, the way it sounded, was pretty hit-and-miss,” he says. “In the intervening years they’ve gotten it together to that point that you know it sounds good every night.”

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