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 | Interview
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, […]
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 […]
Proud to be Rock Anomalies
By George Varga San Diego Union-Tribune SANTA MONICA – Making a mark on posterity is not a concern for Steely Dan’s acerbic co-founders, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who have absolutely no interest in how they’ll be remembered by future generations. “I don’t care; I’ll be dead,” said a suitably deadpan Fagen, 55, as he […]
Back on Track
By Mike Weatherford Las Vegas Review-Journal Steely Dan’s album “Everything Must Go” was recorded in the post-Sept. 11 climate, but apocalyptic visions are nothing new to the dark-humored musical team of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. “We were born just as the nuclear age started,” notes the 55-year-old Fagen. “We grew up with very low […]
Sept. 24: Steely Dan
By Michael Senft The Arizona Republic Twenty-two years ago, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen dissolved Steely Dan, the band they had taken to stardom with such albums as “Pretzel Logic,” “Katy Lied” and “Aja,” despite a lack of concert performances. Ten years ago the pair reunited, and spent most of the ’90s on summer shed […]
Reeling in the Years
By Michael Senft The Arizona Republic Twenty-two years ago, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen dissolved Steely Dan, the band they had taken to stardom with such albums as Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied and Aja, despite a lack of concert performances. Ten years ago the pair reunited, and spent most of the ’90s on summer shed […]
Somber words set to a sweet beat
By Ron Gonzales For The Albuquerque Journal The reigning pop duo of the ’70s finds itself back on top. There are very few music artists who would dare to refer to either Marcel Proust or Sigmund Freud in a song. Then again, Steely Dan, the band that has dared to do it, is not a […]
A Boomer Band Grows Philosophical
By Rafer Guzmán Newsday Donald Fagen is likely the only rock star able to drop the word “eschatological” into a conversation — and use it correctly. Speaking by cell phone while walking around his hometown of Manhattan, Fagen is explaining “Everything Must Go,” the title track of Steely Dan’s latest album. The song, like the […]
Contemplating end of the world
By John Soeder Cleveland Plain Dealer Even if “discorporating” really is a word — sorry, it’s not in our dictionary — who uses it in everyday conversation? Those wise guys in Steely Dan, that’s who. We were talking about the upgrades at Blossom Music Center, where singer-keyboardist Donald Fagen and bassist-guitarist Walter Becker bring their […]
