Originally published on July 18, 2013
By Alan Sculley
Finger Lakes Times
GENEVA, NY — In the 1970s, Steely Dan became that decade’s ultimate studio band, having decided in 1975 to quit touring to concentrate on turning out studio albums like Pretzel Logic (1974), The Royal Scam (1976) and Aja (1977).
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker became famous for their meticulous approach to album making, casting a host of studio musicians to play specific parts on albums and sometimes recording upwards of three dozen takes of certain performances in a quest to capture the exact qualities they wanted in their songs.
So it’s ironic to hear Steely Dan’s founding members Fagen and Becker say the greatest reward since reuniting in 1993 has been, of all things, playing live shows.
“It’s great fun to play with a really good band,” Becker said, as Fagen concurred. “That goes without saying, but I think that’s the essence of it right there for me.”
That much seems apparent when one considers the studio output in the two eras of Steely Dan. From 1972 until the 1980, when Fagen and Becker shelved Steely Dan after deciding they had run out of creative fuel, they released seven albums.
Since reforming, they have made just two Steely Dan albums, Two Against Nature (2000) and Everything Must Go (2003). Meanwhile, Steely Dan has toured most every summer, including a 2009 run in which on different nights the band performed the albums The Royal Scam, Aja or Gaucho, in their entirety.
Fagen has also joined forces with Michael McDonald (a member of Steely Dan in its early years) and Boz Scaggs for a pair of tours as the Dukes of September.
The only new music since “Everything Must Go” has been solo albums from Fagen (Morph The Cat in 2006 and Sunken Condos in 2012) and Becker (Circus Money in 2008).
Clearly, touring now is much more enjoyable and satisfying than it was in early 1970s. And the compromises that had to be made back then had a lot to do with the decision to concentrate solely on album making.
“Everything has changed (now),” Becker said of touring. “First of all, we were just beginning to headline shows in the ‘70s. We were usually in the band with like eight people in it or something and were earning $3,500 a night tops. And plus, you were playing under extremely variable circumstances and so on. So, it was a completely different type of experience.”
“The venues and the menus and the hotels and everything have gotten better,” Fagen added. “So now it’s much more fun to play.
I’m glad that we turned into a big-time touring band later in life. It’s almost like we planned it out that way.”
Fagen and Becker were trading answers to reporters’ questions during a mid-July teleconference interview. The setting provided an opportunity to hear the interaction between the two knowledgeable and talented musicians. And as is fitting for a group that took its name from a strap-on sexual organ, it became obvious that the two share a sharp sense of humor and an ability to entertain each other. That, one would surmise, is part of the reason their partnership has endured.
Frequently answers would evolve — or dissolve — into the kind of humorous stories shared between best friends or in-jokes that probably hold more meaning to Fagen and Becker than for the rest of the world.
One such example came when the pair was asked if any new Steely Dan music was in the works. Becker hinted that might be getting that itch again.
“It’s just a smell now,” Becker responded. “Next thing is then you taste it, then you start to feel it. You know how this goes.”
“We do have some songs that I’m just remembering now,” Fagen said, recalling an aborted attempt to resume Steely Dan’s career. “We have some songs that are really good ones that we only half finished back in like 1984.
“We keep threatening to work on (those),” he said.
“We actually did finish a couple of those,” Becker chimed in.
“We have a bunch of things,” Fagan elaborated. “Put it this way— any other band in the world would have long ago finished or mixed or whatever these old things that were lying around and (released them with) a great ta-da fanfare, but we just don’t play it like that.”
“That’s not the way we roll,” Becker agreed.
At the suggestion that the unreleased material must be good if it’s been saved for so long, the conversation turned.
“I guess that’s true,” Fagen said. “At least we think it’s good stuff. It’s like every time we get together we end up just going fishing. Maybe it has to do with our age.”
“Remember the time that you were chased in by those mullets?” Becker said.
“Or by those blue fish. Jesus, that was bad,” Fagen recalled. “The weird thing is I’ve only been fishing a few times, especially when I was a kid. The first time I went fishing I caught a box turtle instead of a fish, and the second time I caught a real ugly fish called a lamprey.”
“You caught a lamprey?” Becker queried
“Yes, they have these big suckers on the front,” Fagen confirmed.
“You caught a lamprey in New Jersey?” Becker said in amazement.
“Yes, and after that I didn’t go fishing for years because I thought like every time I went fishing I would catch these really ugly exotic (fish),” Fagen said concluding the story.
Any fishing that gets done for now will have to happen during free time on the road as Fagen and Becker work their way across the country on the “8 Miles To Pancake Day” tour through Oct. 8.
They’ll be joined by an eight-piece band they’ve billed for this outing as The Bipolar Allstars (featuring Keith Carlock on drums, Freddie Washington on bass, Jim Beard on keyboards, and Jon Herington on guitar), and three vocalists, named for the occasion The Borderline Brats.
On certain dates, Steely Dan will again play either “Aja,” “The Royal Scam” or “Gaucho” (plus select hits).
Becker and Fagen said they believe a survey was done about the kind of shows promoters wanted, and some (especially in cities where Steely Dan will play more than one show), requested one of the albums as a centerpiece to the group’s show.
“I guess the promoters think that they’ll pull in more people if we do something special on one of the nights, something like that,” Fagen said.
“Either that or they want some people to come twice or something, some scheme like that,” Becker added.
In reality, Becker noted, the various types of shows really aren’t that different from each other.
“If you look at the different kinds of shows that we supposedly have, the fact is that they’re more or less actually the same show,” Becker said. “We just put the songs in a different order.”
And Fagen said he isn’t ruling out playing a fourth album from the Steely Dan catalog at some point in the tour.
“We noticed that the other day we were learning a couple older songs that we haven’t done live previously,” he said. “And we realized we had yet another album where we knew all the songs. So we could actually play another album from beginning to end, which we might just spring on the audience some night.”
Sculley is a freelance music journalist based in Naples, Fla. With more than two decades of experience, he figures he has done roughly 3,000 interviews with music artists spanning nearly every genre of contemporary music.
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