By Fred Kaplan For The New York Times This is my death album,” Donald Fagen said in his office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “It’s about the death of culture, the death of politics, the beginning of the end of my life.” Then he mock-sobbed, “Boo hoo hoo.” Mr. Fagen, best known as […]
Tag Archives | Donald Fagen
Steely Dan’s Fagen Ready to Morph
By Jonathan Cohen Billboard Finding love in an airport security line, a ghostly feline hovering above New York and imaginary conversations with the late Ray Charles are not usual topics addressed in rock ‘n’ roll. But they’re prime subjects in the alternate musical universe of Steely Dan principal Donald Fagen, whose third album, Morph the Cat, […]
Review of Morph The Cat
By Andy Gill The Independent In an age when skilful PR hype and internet downloads have combined to shrink the gap between an artist’s first steps and their acclaim as Greatest Thing Ever to little more than a few nanoseconds, the appearance of a new Donald Fagen album serves to provide a little perspective, and […]
What Will the Cat Drag In?
By Neil Drysdale Scotland Herald His voice sounds akin to Bogart’s in The Big Sleep; a guttural drawl of laconic humour mixed with a man’s-gotta-do cynicism. Donald Fagen has grown up, steeped in the oeuvre of Damon Runyon and Raymond Chandler, so perhaps it is hardly surprising that nothing surprises him any more about his native […]
Remembering ‘The Nightfly’
By Jim Clayton Bad Monkey X I missed the Grammys this year, since they aired while I was out on a gig. But my sources (one drunken friend watching a delayed satellite feed at 2 a.m.) described the momentary hush and murmur that fell over the audience before they burst into applause for Album of […]
Steely Dan Takes on Life in ‘2vN’
By John Soeder Cleveland Plain Dealer Donald Fagen doesn’t consider himself a dirty old man. But he plays one — several, actually — on Two Against Nature, Steely Dan’s first new album in two decades. “There’s a certain amount of denial in older men who say they’re not attracted to younger girls or to women other than […]
Steely Dan First in Irony
By Chuck Klosterman Akron Beacon Journal There is a logic to humor. Of course, how that logic is applied makes all the difference in the world. First, there is the logic of being silly, which is essentially the art of being obvious (if a clown gets hit in the head with an anvil, a 5-year-old child […]
Q&A with Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen
By Aidin Vaziri Special to the San Francisco Chronicle Many reasons have been given for Donald Fagen, 52, and Walter Becker, 50, getting back together as Steely Dan nearly 20 years after releasing their last studio album, 1980’s “Gaucho.” But no one has hit on the obvious — where else are these guys going to […]
Bringing up Steely Dan; Donald Fagen Makes His Cleveland Area Parents Proud
By Susan Rzepka Cleveland Jewish News CLEVELAND — “Would you, by chance, be a Steely Dan fan?” Beachwood resident Joseph “Jerry” Fagen inquires wryly. It’s an unlikely question coming from an 80-year-old, but Fagen’s “favorite conversation starter” affords the opening he needs to do what any parent would do in his shoes: kvell a little. […]
BBC Online Chat
BBC Host Welcome to the Steely Dan Live Chat, with Walter Becker and Donald Fagen joining us live from the US. We’ll be chatting tonight about the chequered history of one of the most important and intelligent bands the US has produced. You can ask your own question by typing in the box at the bottom […]
