Originally published on Jan. 10, 2017 By Andy Kahn JamBase Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen turns 69 years old today (1/10/2017). In the early 1970s, he and Walter Becker established the jazz-leaning Steely Dan and soon found themselves counted among the premiere musicians in rock. The pair’s complex compositions, tight arrangements and enlisting of top-notch session players helped produce some […]
Tag Archives | Donald Fagen
Donald Fagen Talks Full-Album Shows
Originally published on Oct. 6, 2016 By Alex Biese Asbury Park Press Steely Dan is getting ready to do it again. For the sixth year, the Grammy-winning jazz/rock combo led by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker will be in residency at the Beacon Theatre in New York City staring Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2016. The Rock and […]
Steely Dan Hits the Road Again
Originally published on September 28, 2016 By Bruce Pilato Sound & Vision It has been 44 years since Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s jazz-tinged pop band, Steely Dan, soared to the top of the Billboard chart with timeless hits such as “Do It Again,” “Dirty Work” and “Reelin’ In The Years.” Soon after its initial […]
Review: Eminent Hipsters
Originally published on May 13, 2014 By Paddy Kehoe RTE.ie Since their formation in the early Seventies, their days of hit single success and the seigneurial, yet still frantic years of the present, Donald Fagen has led Steely Dan through thick and thin. That jazz-inflected, but essentially rock combo has always been a long-tailed ensemble […]
Icon: Donald Fagen
Originally published on Feb. 12, 2012 By Dylan Jones GQ Magazine – UK As one half of Steely Dan, Donald Fagen was responsible for what many consider to be one of the greatest albums ever made, 1977’s jazz-infused masterpiece, Aja. With a career that has seen him veer from rock stardom to pathological secrecy, via long periods of […]
Donald Fagen’s Steely Love of Jazz Radio
Originally published on Jan. 2, 2014 By Ben Fong-Torres For the San Francisco Chronicle It wasn’t his fault, but Donald Fagen, half of Steely Dan and a fine artist on his own, stood up San Francisco. Fagen, author of the delightful book, Eminent Hipsters, was going to be in town at the Swiss American Hall […]
‘Eminent Hipsters’ Review
Originally published on Dec. 30, 2013 By Austin Trunick undertheradarmag.com This collection of autobiographical essays from Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen — who might otherwise have become a journalist, or an English teacher, as he explains here -— primarily focuses on early influences that found him in Cold War-era suburban New Jersey during his youth, up […]
‘Eminent Hipsters’ Review
Originally published on Dec. 20, 2013 By Alan Light The New York Times Eminent Hipsters By Donald Fagen Viking, $26.95. Eminent Hipsters isn’t a memoir, but rather two projects stuck together: a series of essays Fagen (best known as half of Steely Dan, a band rarely mentioned in the book) calls “a kind of art-o-biography […]
Memoir Is a Tell-Some, Not a Tell-All
By Mark Reynolds PopMatters.com There are some things we know about the rock band Steely Dan. First, it hasn’t been a band in the conventional sense for most of its existence. Second, their songs, with jazz-inflected structures and worldwise, often cryptic stories, have never seized center stage in the pop landscape, even as they’ve sold […]
Eminent Hipsters, by Donald Fagen
By Peter Aspden The Financial Times Eminent Hipsters by Donald Fagen Jonathan Cape RRP£16.99/Viking, RRP$26.95 176 pages As befits a musician who made merry and smart during the golden age of the vinyl album, Donald Fagen, co-founder and frontman of Steely Dan, has split this collection of autobiographical essays into two, violently contrasting, sides. Side […]
