By Robert J. Toth The Wall Street Journal One of pop music’s sneakiest masterpieces has turned 25. Often, an album rises from regular best-seller to classic status because it captures the temper of its times. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” for instance, simply sounds like 1967, trippy and disarrayed. But “The Nightfly,” the 1982 […]
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Just A Minute With: Donald Fagen
By Mark McSherry Reuters NEW YORK – American musician Donald Fagen — half of jazz-rock duo Steely Dan alongside Walter Becker — is in no rush to put out a fourth solo album, having taken 25 years to produce the first three. Outside of Steely Dan, Fagen’s three albums — “The Nightfly,” “Kamakiriad,” and “Morph […]
Steely Dan at Hammersmith Apollo, London
By John L Walters guardian.co.uk “Hiya kids,” says Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen, “we’re going to play songs from the recent past, and going back to the deep 70s… if you know what I mean.” Everyone knows what he means, as the 12-strong band hammer out the golden repertoire: Time Out of Mind, Hey Nineteen, Bad […]
Men of Steel
By Rosa Shiels The Press CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — The line from Boston is crackly and the voice indistinct. If there were ever a time for good reception it is now; the New York aristocrats of jazz-rock, Steely Dan, have finally decided to come down our way, and Donald Fagen is on the line, ready […]
Steely Dan Reels in the Glory Years
By Paul Kosidowski Milwaukee Journal Sentinel The 21st century still holds the Me Decade in ironic reverence, as any Abba or AMC Gremlin enthusiast can testify. But Steely Dan, the precision-engineered and subversive pop phenomenon of the 1970s, isn’t a likely candidate for nostalgia. Still, its Marcus Amphitheater concert Thursday night was the perfect start […]
Steely Dan Plays It Smooth At Freedom Hill
By Gary Graff The Oakland Press STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. — For a band that defiantly didn’t tour for so many years, Steely Dan has become a pretty smooth live act. Of course, Walter Becker, Donald Fagen and company have had some practice at this point, having resumed Steely Dan as a performing entity in 1993 […]
Steely Dan Still Reeling in the Fans
By David Yonke Toledo Blade “I think it’s universally agreed that our music is the best possible Muzak — rock Muzak — to play in a supermarket.” — Steely Dan in a 2003 interview on NPR Two college jazz fans struggled to peddle their songs in New York’s legendary Brill Building, landed a job playing […]
No Static At All
By Donny Kutzbach ArtVoice.com BUFFALO — I was born in 1974, so the magic of Steely Dan was probably never really supposed to be for me. It seemed meant for those who had an inkling of the power of street-corner doo wop, had heard the early Motown singles and knew the studio-created perfection of the […]
Steely Dan Concert Won’t Be a Nostalgia Trip
Gannett News Service This summer, Steely Dan will tour on the heels, not of a group album, but the release last year 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 […]
Steely Dan Fills Need for ‘Deep ’70s’ Fusion
By Sarah Rodman Boston Globe BOSTON — There are very few summer concerts one can go to and find the lead guitarist raunchily riffing on Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. But then there are very few, if any, bands like Steely Dan. Tuesday night the revered fusion duo of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen brought […]
