OnlineHost: The wheels of “Blink of An Eye” were set in motion when Michael McDonald teamed up with arrangers Jimmy Bralower and Jeff Bova, a duo that has worked with such musical luminaries as Steve Winwood, Cyndi Lauper, Eric Clapton and Womack and Womack. Bralower and Bova were largely responsible for the album’s rhythm and textural […]
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A Big Hello from Hawaii
Seeking to recover after Steely Dan, Walter Becker hid out on an island in the sun. From where he granted Giles Smith a rare interview By Giles Smith The Independent Online If you want to speak to Walter Becker, at home in Hawaii, you phone his record company in Los Angeles. Then you hang up […]
Deja Vu From Days at the U
Originally published on Sept. 21, 1993 By David Menconi Raleigh News & Observer CHARLOTTE — Steely Dan is a band that has both no context at all, and all the context in the world. For the most part, Steely Dan didn’t exist outside the studio during their ’70s heyday. They never played live except for […]
Veteran Rock Stars Show Fans They’ve Lost Little to the Years
By Steve Dollar Atlanta Constitution ATLANTA — Dinosaurs walked the earth again in Atlanta over the weekend, causing a ruckus in the city’s bigger music venues and proving, as if promoters of three heavily attended concerts didn’t already know, that old rock stars never quite become extinct. In fact, they’re a hardier species than anyone […]
Doing It Again
By Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly Greeting each other with a handshake at the center of New York City’s Madison Square Garden stage, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen seemed less like the pop stars Steely Dan than like a couple of reformed dweebs exchanging a brusque hello at their 25th high school reunion. Considering that they […]
Steely Dan in LA: Old School, New Liberation
By Richard Cromelin Los Angeles Times In the sunshine of the ’70s, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were a voice of doom, prophesying from the heart of subversively seductive, sophisticated pop hits. In the turbulence of the ’90s, they’re a couple of pussycats. Well, not entirely — the two brand-new songs they played […]
Steely Dan reunion tour offers flashes of old brilliance
By J.D. Considine Baltimore Sun COLUMBIA, Md. — It’s funny the way reunion shows work. As curious as we might be to see how our old favorites have changed over the years, it’s always vaguely disappointing to hear a familiar tune done differently. Because even if that change is ultimately for the better, the fact […]
Fagen Does Dan; Dan Does It Again
By Geoffery Himes Washington Post Donald Fagen’s first album in 11 years, Kamakiriad, can be judged from two different perspectives. On the one hand, it marries tartly ironic lyrics with lush jazz harmonies in ways well beyond the reach of today’s ambitious pop-rock composers from Sting and Billy Joel to Mark Knopfler and Brenda Russell. […]
Two-Decade Countdown to Ecstasy
After a 19-year hiatus, those sophisticated, subversive jazz punks Walter Becker and Donald Fagen are back to do it again live, out on the road. It’s not some kind of nostalgia sell-out thing, is it? By Chris Willman Los Angeles Times Flash back to the late ’70s, exact date undetermined. You turn on “The Donny […]
Steely Dan Reelin’ Again
By Steve Morse Boston Globe Take two alienated suburban kids. Throw in an early love of jazz, blues and Bohemian culture. Send the youths to Bard College, where they meet and become fast friends. Add a fussy, workaholic nature. Toss in a zest for strangely alluring lyrics that Frank Zappa once dubbed “downer surrealism.” Then add […]
