Newhouse News Service
When Steely Dan released “Two Against Nature” in 2000, it was the band’s first new studio album in 20 years. Now, just three years later, Steely’s colorful co-founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are confounding expectations with the release of the comparatively instantaneous studio follow-up album, “Everything Must Go.”
Then again, as with everything related to Steely Dan through the years, things may not always be exactly as they seem.
“We actually didn’t tell anybody this at the time,” said Becker recently from his home in Hawaii. “But during those 20 years we weren’t working just on the one album. We were working on 64 different albums that are going to come out serially, according to ideal marketing schemes.”
He was kidding, of course, but getting a straight answer out of Becker and Fagen isn’t an easy task. Like their often-impenetrable lyrics and sophisticated song structures, it’s all part of their offbeat charm. That combination has served them well over the course of a partnership that dates back to when they met while attending college at Bard in upstate New York in 1967.
All these years later, they’re on a certifiable roll. “Two Against Nature” earned four Grammy Awards, including one for Album of the Year, and the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. Becker and Fagen insist, though, that the notoriety was short-lived.
“It was great while it lasted, but it only lasted for, like, six hours or something,” said Becker.
“Then everyone rapidly forgot who we were again,” echoed Fagen, speaking from his home base of New York City during the same interview.
The new album is typically cool, musically meticulous and notable for its exquisite production and a series of new Fagen and Becker standouts, including “Things I Miss the Most,” “Green Book,” “Lunch With Gina” and the title track.
“When we started making ‘Two Against Nature,’ we didn’t know who was going to be in the band,” said Becker, honestly trying to explain how they got back into the studio so quickly. “We had musicians flying around, coming and going, this band and that band. But by the end, we knew we had a core group who we wanted to work with. I think a lot of stuff flowed from the fact that we had these New York guys who we knew were going to be around and available, with great attitudes, talent and everything else.”
And so they got back to work, recording with a core band that included keyboardists Bill Charlap and Ted Baker, drummer Keith Carlock and guitarists Hugh McCracken and Jon Herington. Becker played bass and guitar, while Fagen, as always, played various keyboards and sang lead vocals. One notable exception was “Slang of Ages,” which features Becker singing out front, his first such credited lead vocal appearance on a Steely Dan studio album.
“I sort of have managed to avoid doing that until now by gallantly offering to do it and then studiously avoiding the actual possibility,” said Becker. “This time I realized, as we were getting down with the tracks, that here was a song I actually could sing. I called my own bluff, basically.”
Or, as Fagen explained, “When an idea’s time has come, you should just get out of the way.”
Lyrically, the disc is typically twisted, filled with the idiosyncrasies and eccentric wordplay that have been the Dan’s trademark since the band’s string of 1970s classics like “Reelin’ in the Years,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” “Pretzel Logic” and “Peg.”
Anyone looking for explanations behind new songs like “Green Book” had best be ready for a nonlinear reply.
“A metaphorical exploration of Eros,” said Becker of the track.
“On a literal level, the green book is a series or a set of virtual programs that might exist sometime in the near future,” said Fagen, who added that the particular program involves the ability to “explore erotically in virtual reality.”
“But it’s certainly a metaphor for everyone’s relations with their significant other in reality as well.”
Whether that kind of lyrical fare can connect with a younger audience doesn’t seem to matter much to either Fagen, 55, or Becker, 53.
“If they don’t get it now, they’ll get it later,” said Becker. “We feel they’re going to come home to us sooner or later.”
“It’ll be Dan-o-mania,” promised Fagen.
The band that avoided the road at all costs during its commercial heyday will be touring again this summer, just as it has frequently since the early 1990s.
“It’s a completely different experience for us now,” said Becker. “We have a great band that’s consistently good, night after night, as opposed to in the ’70s.”
While the tour will include everything from stops in major outdoor sheds to indoor venues of various sizes, don’t look for Steely Dan to get back to playing small, intimate rooms in the foreseeable future.
“The problem, at one level, is that our band is so big it’s not that easy to fit (in a small venue) and actually present what we’ve been doing,” said Becker.
But he said the day may come when they scale everything back down.
“As time goes on… in conjunction with album No. 16 in the series. That one uses the five-man jam band.”
Until that day, enjoy “Everything Must Go.” It may take quite a few years before Steely Dan rolls out those 64 other albums, including that beauty with the five-man jam band.
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