By Larry Katz Boston Herald Walter Becker is no longer Steely Dan’s silent partner. “My inner child is screaming like a banshee,” he says. That’s because his adult self is singing onstage with Steely Dan and on a first solo album, “11 Tracks of Whack,” which lands in stores Sept. 27. The seldom-heard-from Becker’s emergence […]
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Veteran Rock Stars Show Fans They’ve Lost Little to the Years
By Steve Dollar Atlanta Constitution ATLANTA — Dinosaurs walked the earth again in Atlanta over the weekend, causing a ruckus in the city’s bigger music venues and proving, as if promoters of three heavily attended concerts didn’t already know, that old rock stars never quite become extinct. In fact, they’re a hardier species than anyone […]
Doing It Again
By Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly Greeting each other with a handshake at the center of New York City’s Madison Square Garden stage, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen seemed less like the pop stars Steely Dan than like a couple of reformed dweebs exchanging a brusque hello at their 25th high school reunion. Considering that they […]
Steely Dan in LA: Old School, New Liberation
By Richard Cromelin Los Angeles Times In the sunshine of the ’70s, Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were a voice of doom, prophesying from the heart of subversively seductive, sophisticated pop hits. In the turbulence of the ’90s, they’re a couple of pussycats. Well, not entirely — the two brand-new songs they played […]
Steely Dan reunion tour offers flashes of old brilliance
By J.D. Considine Baltimore Sun COLUMBIA, Md. — It’s funny the way reunion shows work. As curious as we might be to see how our old favorites have changed over the years, it’s always vaguely disappointing to hear a familiar tune done differently. Because even if that change is ultimately for the better, the fact […]
Fagen Does Dan; Dan Does It Again
By Geoffery Himes Washington Post Donald Fagen’s first album in 11 years, Kamakiriad, can be judged from two different perspectives. On the one hand, it marries tartly ironic lyrics with lush jazz harmonies in ways well beyond the reach of today’s ambitious pop-rock composers from Sting and Billy Joel to Mark Knopfler and Brenda Russell. […]
Two-Decade Countdown to Ecstasy
After a 19-year hiatus, those sophisticated, subversive jazz punks Walter Becker and Donald Fagen are back to do it again live, out on the road. It’s not some kind of nostalgia sell-out thing, is it? By Chris Willman Los Angeles Times Flash back to the late ’70s, exact date undetermined. You turn on “The Donny […]
Edgy, Cool Steely Dan Back on Stage and Tour
By Jon Pareles The New York Times As timing goes, now would hardly seem to be the right moment for the first Steely Dan tour since 1974, which came to Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night. Pop music has veered sharply away from everything the group’s core, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, cared about most. […]
Picking up Where Dan Left Off
By J. D. Considine Baltimore Sun Packaging, they say, is everything, and Donald Fagen’s Kamakiriad (Reprise 45230) is a case in point. Mention to most pop fans that Kamakiriad marks Fagen’s reunion with Walter Becker, and the reaction is likely to be mostly yawns. Explain, however, that Becker and Fagen’s last project was a little […]
Q&A with Donald Fagen
By Chris Willman Los Angeles Times When it rains, it pours for drought-stricken Donald Fagen fans. For starters, this week brings to record stores his first new studio album in 11 years, Kamakiriad. While futuristically themed in part, the record will sound instantly familiar to fans of Steely Dan, with the kind of literate, jazzy […]
