Steely Dan - Donald Fagen - Two against nature

Steely Dan belong to the exclusive élite of universal musicians, capable of winning over listeners of the most disparate tastes and attitudes. In their songs, in fact, the pop instinct – essential for seducing the mass audience – merges with an almost avant-garde technique that cannot escape notice even from the most demanding ears. Their music is jazz dipped in strawberries, accessible and dazzling, steeped in proclamations of sonic refinement and love for sophisticated atmosphere. A colourful collage, the result of multiple influences – jazz, of course, but also rock, pop, country, soul, blues, funk – that intertwine with one another, balanced in perfect equilibrium.
Before their arrival, jazz's convoluted harmonies and compositional techniques had almost never found an outlet in popular song, not even in its noblest forms (from the Beach Boys to the Beatles): Steely Dan managed to channel them into catchy tracks with an irresistible groove, where a robust rhythm section is paired with jazz-rock guitars, complex electric piano voicings, horn phrasing and soul-inflected vocal harmonies. All impeccably performed and polished in the studio.

Boundless elegance and professionalism taken to the point of exasperation are the constants of a musical outfit that has always managed to convey a sense of sunniness with every listen. No obsession with innovation for its own sake, or with any other lofty, profound ideology. Their mission is to rediscover old sounds, ideally smoky and in black and white like a noir with Humphrey Bogart, and to manage to blend them with modern sonorities and production techniques.
It's love for music that's their driving force, the urge to play and the pleasure of nailing the feeling and the right night to bring to life a jam session built on improvisation and good taste.
The arrangements are another of their secrets: behind every single nuance of their songs you can sense the painstaking work these craftsmen of sound have managed to achieve, with small flourishes that, for a few seconds, enrich and shape a melody, making it brilliant.
Framing their pop miscellany are deliciously enjoyable lyrics, mostly cryptic and mocking, full of wordplay, slang terms and literary references, tied to American culture and to the lifestyle of big cities (New York and Los Angeles in particular). A style that — as has been noted — finds an effective cinematic alter ego in the New York comedies of Woody Allen, equally light, ironic and intelligent.

Intellectual, elitist, reclusive and averse to the rituals of show business, Steely Dan represent a happy anomaly within rock's conventions, to the point that, on their 2000 reunion album, they would go so far as to call themselves "unnatural."

From college to the steam-powered vibrator

When they meet in 1967 at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen are two suburban freaks with a fetish for perfect sound and a soft spot for the jazz of Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane. The two immediately decide to channel their passion onto the stage, playing in a few local bands.
After Fagen graduates in 1969, they drop everything and land in Brooklyn to join a group called Jay and the Americans, who will go down in rock history solely for having been the antechamber to Steely Dan.
The experience lasts a couple of years, but it doesn't stop the duo from taking on other projects, such as the soundtrack to the film You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It. Having moved to Manhattan, the two future Dan members try their luck on their own, earning little more than pocket change, with the exception of the song "I Mean To Shine," entrusted to the prestigious voice of Barbra Streisand.

Even geniuses, though, need that fateful encounter, the one that opens the right doors at the right moment. For the Becker & Fagen duo, the man of providence is named Gary Katz, a fresh producer for Abc Records eager to launch new talent onto the American market.
Katz is left stunned by the pair's compositional and technical ability, and decides to bring them with him to California, to Los Angeles, where our heroes write new songs — one of which, "Any World (That I'm Welcomed To)," will resurface much later on Katy Lied, entrusted to the care of legendary drummer Hal Blaine.
It's the start of a magical partnership: Katz will produce every Steely Dan album throughout the Seventies, also backed by the other key man, sound engineer Roger Nichols. Katz's bet is an all-in one: he doesn't just want two dependable songwriters for the label's other artists on the roster (Three Dog Night, Dusty Springfield), he wants an actual band, with Fagen and Becker as its backbone.

So, in the golden summer of San Francisco in 1970, an ad goes out looking for versatile musicians, "no time-wasters." In the end, four are selected: guitarists Denny Dias and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (coming from a bizarre outfit called The Ultimate Spinach), drummer Jim Hodder and singer David Palmer.
Thus, under the aegis of Abc Records, a group is born by the name of Steely Dan (an expression lifted from Burroughs's "Naked Lunch," where it refers to a steam-powered vibrator!).

Their debut album, Can't Buy A Thrill, with a cover depicting a red-light district from the 1940s (hence the title?), comes out in 1972 and is already a minor earthquake. The main tremor is called "Do It Again," a chart-smashing hit and the ideal soundtrack for any road trip under the West Coast sun: a sly intro, with Hodder's brushes and sticks scattering Latin American aromas, then piano runs setting up the entrance of Fagen's voice, here doubled by Palmer, followed by the irresistible chorus (“You go back jack do it again/ Wheel turnin round and round/ You go back jack do it again”) and, dulcis in fundo, Denny Dias's dazzling solo on coral electric sitar, carried on by Fagen on the plastic-sounding organ. A small masterpiece, complete with the historic video capturing them live, long-haired and dressed in a way that's frighteningly kitsch. The other hit single is "Reelin' In The Years," country-rock à-la Eagles, driven by the harmonies and Randall's guitar, with a syncopated piano and a pulsing bass in the background.
The rest of the album holds up well, even if it lacks that one standout peak. Particularly notable are "Dirty Work," with David Palmer on vocals, a soft electric piano and a solo by Jerome Richardson on tenor sax; "Kings," with Fagen backed by the harmonies of Clydie King, Shirley Matthews and Venetta Fields; the nonsensical cha-cha-cha of "Only A Fool Would Say That"; and the sunny closer "Turn That Heartbeat Over Again." Jim Hodder takes over lead vocals on "Midnight Cruiser," while Baxter stands out with a couple of bravura turns on steel guitar in "Fire In The Hole" and on the soul digression of "Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me)."

Fragmentary as it is, Steely Dan's debut already makes clear the band's trademark, wholly atypical compared to the pop-rock production of the time. If there are any uncertainties, they concern Fagen as a singer: too timid, to the point of handing the microphone to Palmer during their troubled live shows, he will only later become convinced of his own abilities, also reassuring the label, which had doubts about his "commercial" appeal. Palmer, on the other hand, would leave the group at the end of the tour.

The (anti) show-biz kids

If it was the hit singles that had propelled the debut album up the charts, the follow-up, Countdown To Ecstasy (1973), can boast above all greater stylistic coherence, with Fagen's voice more prominent, Becker finally on guitars, and a heavier use of jazz progressions in the compositions. The torrential blues of "Bodhisattva" is already an eloquent example of this, with its five-plus minutes of neurotic guitar playing and a backbeat like a hypnotic trance session. A live-improvisation feel also marks "Show Biz Kids," with a delicious, dogged groove over which the band embroiders a breezy jam, with Rick Derringer excelling on slide. The harmonies, horns and bop piano of "My Old School" shape another gem, enriched by one of their typically mocking lyrics.
But other tracks also help cement the cohesion the band has reached by this point, such as the cocktail-pop of "Razor Boy," with Victor Feldman on vibraphone and Ray Brown on upright bass, the ballad "The Boston Rag," with a fine solo from Baxter, the jazzed-up salsa of "Your Gold Teeth," and the country flavors of "Pearl Of The Quarter."
The album, however, marks a step back commercially, failing to make an impact on the charts. Fagen and Becker themselves aren't satisfied with it, and attribute its "imperfection" to the haste with which it was put together, in the middle of a grueling tour.

Having recruited Jeff Porcaro (future Toto drummer and top-tier session man) and Michael McDonald (later singer and keyboardist for the Doobie Brothers), Steely Dan crown their "first phase" with Pretzel Logic (1974), the album that best sums up their ideas and aesthetic.
Every single one of its songs would become a classic of their repertoire. Just think of the overture of "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," steeped in bewitching fusion sonorities, where everything revolves around a piano riff, with Fagen's rough voice turning more relaxed, while distorted guitars in the background lend just enough character. "Night By Night" is another essential piece of this album: a modern funk track, intense in Fagen's vocal delivery, with Jeff "Skunk" Baxter's "extraordinaire" guitar roaring in the background, while Porcaro rages away on percussion.
"Any Major Dude Will Tell You" is a lovely little acoustic gem carried by a sweet, winking piano. "Barrytown" flaunts an endless chorus, while "East St.Louis Toodle-Oo" offers a delightful reworking of a Duke Ellington classic. "Parker's Band" moves in a balance between present-day funk and fusion only hinted at here and there. "Through With Buzz" is a short song enriched by dreamy strings.
The title track is an elegant nocturnal blues, introduced by electric piano and immediately seized by Fagen's vocals. "With A Gun" plunges us into scenes of wild country-rock. "Charlie Freak" flows smoothly over a monotone piano that adds an unexpected shadow of unease to the album's moods.
Closing things out is "Monkey In Your Soul," which, as its title suggests, marks an excursion into gritty soul through sudden, abrupt guitar jabs that play off stuttering saxophones, excellent support for introducing Fagen's brooding vocals.

Pretzel Logic wins over the critics even more than the public. But the grueling touring schedule creates a rift within the group: Becker and Fagen, tired of taking precious time away from their obsessive work of composing and recording, break with Baxter, who joins McDonald in the Doobie Brothers; Dias, on the other hand, remains available for studio albums until 1977.

Starting over from two

On Katy Lied (1975), the duo thus has to rely on a host of session men, including McDonald and Porcaro themselves. The result is a solid transitional album, one that smooths out the fusion roughness of Pretzel Logic but doesn't yet arrive at the acid-jazz-pop turn of Aja. Either way, it's another trove of memorable songs, ever more polished, ever more sophisticated. The opener "Black Friday" is an electric blues warmed by a vibrant guitar solo from Becker, as is "Bad Sneakers," where the vocal interplay between Fagen and McDonald returns. Rhythm'n'blues cadences resurface in the twisting "Chain Lightning" and in the caustic urban sketch of "Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More," a portrait of a loser "spat out" by the Big Apple.
The spectrum, however, is as broad as ever: and while the atypical melody of "Rose Darling" even echoes Dylanesque suggestions, and that of "Throw Back The Little Ones" seems to have come almost straight out of an opera, the dazed nursery rhyme of "Doctor Wu" plunges back into jazz-soul atmospheres that Phil Woods's alto sax steeps in rivers of nostalgia, and "Your Gold Teeth II," with its surreal, almost "messianic" lyrics, folds back toward the West Coast, with duets between Fagen's piano and Larry Carlton's jazzy guitar. "Everyone's Gone To The Movies," finally, adds a splash of calypso, confirming an ever more pronounced taste for the exotic.

Katy Lied goes gold and confirms the excellent rapport between good sales, sold-out concerts and flattering reviews. But for Fagen and Becker, that's not enough: the recording quality isn't satisfactory, because the hiss wasn't properly reduced. A detail that irritates them so much that they will refuse to listen to the album in its final form. To their extremely demanding ears, the term "lo-fi" will always and only be synonymous with "poor quality."

Though seemingly secondary to melody and arrangement, rhythm had always played a significant role in Steely Dan's compositions, seduced as they were by a certain black groove straight out of the Motown school.
On their fifth album, The Royal Scam (1976), this comes through more clearly, steering their sonic prism toward reggae, funky and even dance vibrations, with a richer, more airy orchestration driven by a monstrous Larry Carlton on guitar, the keyboards of Paul Griffin and Don Grolnick, and relentless drumming courtesy of Bernard Purdie.
Emblematic of this new direction are above all the riotous overture of "Kid Charlemagne", with its crackling disco groove and an incendiary Carlton on guitar; the delightful reggae divertissement of "Haitian Divorce", built entirely around the ingenious trick of a guitar run through a talk-box (something similar to what Pink Floyd would do a year later on "Pigs"); and the loose-limbed, irreverent blues of "The Fez", with its insistent synth riff over a single verse (“Ain’t never gonna do it without a fez on/ that’s what I am/ please understand/ I wanna be your holy man”) and the only Steely Dan track to carry a third songwriting credit: Griffin's, who also appears on organ.
And yet, the album is at the same time one of the darkest in the Dan's entire output. Starting with the cover, which depicts a homeless man with holes in his shoes surrounded by unsettling (and tragically kitsch!) monster-skyscrapers, and continuing with the lyrics, almost all inspired by sordid tales of desperadoes on the run from crime: Kid Charlemagne, the San Francisco acid dealer with no customers left; the bank-robbing bomber of "Don't Take Me Alive"; the jewel thieves of "Green Earrings"; the hapless Puerto Ricans of "The Royal Scam". Nor are the usual vivid little gags missing – chief among them the family row in "Everything You Did" ("Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening").
The Dan's more reflective side finally resurfaces in the jazzy soft-rock of "The Caves of Altamira", with its dazzling refrain ("Before the fall when they wrote it on the wall/ When there wasn't even any Hollywood…") followed by the clash of strings and horns; in the convoluted "Don't Take Me Alive" (almost an ante-litteram version of Prefab Sprout); in the fusion flourishes of "Green Earrings"; and in the gospel choir of the title track, a solemn and sardonic farewell to the record.
A snapshot of post-Watergate, pre-punk New York, The Royal Scam would fail to break through on the charts and remains one of the most underrated albums in the Steely Dan discography. Looked at properly, though, it can be considered one of their absolute peaks, surely the ideal midpoint between the guitar-driven sound of their early days and the more "glossy" trend of the records still to come.

In Search of the Perfect Song

It would be the following album, Aja (1977), that would finally launch the band's fortunes: a sensational bestseller (three million copies sold compared to 500,000 for each previous work, a platinum record and No. 3 on the charts) that would distill the Dan's perfectionism into a new manifesto of their multicolored jazz-pop.
Everything about Aja is obsessive, from the work on the sound, always meticulous and impeccably polished (it's no coincidence it won the Grammy for Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording of the year), to the songwriting, the longest and jazziest of their repertoire, yet still able to drop a catchy chorus at exactly the right moment, ensnaring the listener. Just as obsessive was its making, documented in the fine DVD "The Making of Aja", where the band explains that recording the tracks went through two stages: reaching perfection, and then going beyond it, which gave the work a more "human" quality. A sort of perfectionist odyssey spent for months in the studio by Becker and Fagen, in the company of extraordinary musicians, among them jazz and fusion aces like Wayne Shorter, Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour and Steve Gadd.
Outside it's hell – 1977 is the year punk explodes worldwide – but inside Gary Katz's production studios, they're living on another planet entirely, where a single trace of hiss could be enough to ruin days of work.

Aja draws on swing and bebop traditions, but also on the "golden age" of jazz, from Count Basie to Duke Ellington, softening the rock drive of the previous records with the smoothness of the horns, and weaving ever more velvety and intricate arabesques. Still, a contagious euphoria shines through, a legacy of those memorable sessions, with jazzy improvisations that wrap themselves perfectly around the instrumental beds. With every listen the songs reveal new shades, the instruments take part in a hypnotic flow that grows ever more sinuous and absorbing, and in which narrator Fagen once again manages to beguile, telling tales of false moves and missed encounters.
Seven tracks, virtually all flawless. Starting with the closer, the gorgeous "Josie", which enchants on every listen with its rubbery groove, its irresistible chorus (“When Josie comes home/ So good/ She’s the pride of the neighborhood”), its solid funk beats, intricate cross-rhythms and concise guitar solos over a soft backdrop of horns and synths. Fagen delivers it with a romantic flourish, backed as ever by the trademark backing vocals. Yet it's one of their grimmest tales: a portrait of urban decay, steeped in sexual abuse and drugs. Even the opening "Black Cow", behind its smooth refrain and disco-funk beats, doesn't spare the harsh details, telling of a man's revulsion toward his unfaithful wife.
Ambitious and multifaceted across its eight minutes, the title track is a lesson in suite-form latin-pop, with magnificent swirls of keyboards and two show-stopping moments: Wayne Shorter's (of Weather Report) rhapsodic sax solo, descending gently back into the vocal theme, and Steve Gadd's explosive closing drum solo. Then there's "Deacon Blues", another unforgettable chorus for a bitter, disillusioned ballad ("Drink Scotch whiskey all night long/ and die behind the wheel"), with Pete Christlieb's tenor sax front and center.
It's precisely this resignation to the 1970s Los Angeles lifestyle, where one has to "slink like a viper through these suburban streets", that is the album's prevailing mood, renewed in "Home At Last" (“I know this superhighway/ This bright familiar sun/ I guess that I’m the lucky one”), an Odyssey rewritten as a shuffle, with Victor Feldman's piano in the spotlight. The record's "greatest hit", though, is "Peg", deliciously swung over near-disco rhythms, with hushed harmonies sealing yet another immortal refrain: "Pantonal 13 bar blues with chorus", as Steely Dan themselves would describe it.

A mature record, at once a summa and a new destination for Steely Dan music, Aja would leave a deep mark on the pop that followed, influencing, among others, the new cool and acid-jazz movements. Cheerful and light only on the surface, it is in fact a record of bitter disillusionment with the "California dream". An admission of frustration and failure whispered in the middle of a cocktail party.

The following tour, however, ends abruptly, as Becker & Fagen, seizing on financial disputes, pull out. So, after slipping one of their most ironic tracks, "FM", into the soundtrack of the film of the same name, the two shut themselves back in the studio, where they burn through 360 tapes (!) to record what would remain, until the end of the millennium, their final studio album, Gaucho.

The album's gestation, however, is troubled by legal headaches (MCA Records, having acquired ABC, claims the right to release the album even though Becker and Fagen have by now signed with Warner) and, above all, by turmoil in Becker's personal life: his girlfriend is found dead of an overdose in his apartment, and the guitarist faces a charge of complicity in her death (from which he will eventually be cleared); then he's struck by a taxi in Manhattan, suffering serious leg injuries.
Finally, jazz pianist Keith Jarrett files (and wins) a plagiarism suit against the pair, arguing that the track "Gaucho" is too similar to his own "Long As You Know You're Living Yours".

When, in 1980, two years late, Gaucho finally hits the shops, it's both a release for the band and a point of no return: nothing will be the same again, and the long hiatus that will stretch on until 2000 – broken only by the pair's occasional solo releases – will confirm that the project has essentially run its course.
In the meantime, though, there's another gem of high-tech sound (another Grammy for Best Engineered Album) and masterful performances: the sessions feature the likes of Steve Gadd, Rick Marotta, Anthony Jackson, Jeff Porcaro, the Brecker brothers, Michael McDonald and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits (the latter, as the story goes, was made to redo his part fifty times!).
And then there are the songs, the melodies, the arrangements. And the grooves, taut and razor-sharp. Like that of the opener "Babylon Sisters", where the drum tone, the touch of the keyboards and the interplay between Fagen and the female backup vocals are polished to a shine by trusty sound engineer Roger Nichols. The other big hit is "Hey Nineteen", a sly funk-rock number straight out of a night-club, with a killer chorus and a stinging Fagen synth solo: it would be their last successful single, and yet another proof of the duo's talent for dressing complex harmonic structures in pop clothing.
Obsessive pulses, driven by a magnetic bassline, propel the gallop of "Glamour Profession", where Becker is replaced on guitar by Steve Kahn, while the sunny "Time Out Of Mind" finds a young Knopfler launching into a subtle closing solo. It's Jeff Porcaro, soon to enjoy the glories of "Toto IV", who steals the show on the title track, with his usual mastery behind the cymbals. That drumming then sets the stage for Steve Gadd's virtuosity on the aching closing ballad "Third World Man" (in the final verse, Fagen even sings a line in Italian: “When he’s crying out I just sing that Ghana Rondo/ E’ l’era del terzo mondo/ He’s a third world man”).

But, as mentioned, the fuel has by now run dry, and in June 1981, at the peak of their success, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker announce they are suspending their collaboration.

Jazz and conversations

Fagen, however, stays in touch with Gary Katz, and just a year later entrusts him with producing his first solo record, The Nightfly, where the traits of the Dan's last two albums are pushed to extremes and elevated into an exclusive mandate.
The Nightfly mirrors the fantasies of a suburban kid who grew up in the America poised between the 50s and 60s, as Fagen describes himself in the liner notes. It's a night flight under the stars of jazz, between highways and skyscrapers, with an ear always glued to the radio. Because on the air is Lester The Nightfly, the elusive deejay Fagen embodies to finally put himself fully on the line. Memories, dreams and fantasies. All in a single night. A microphone in hand and a Chesterfield to be slowly smoked, in front of an old turntable.
The Steely Dan legacy is evident, but it evolves toward a leaner song-form, pushing instrumental excursions to the margins. What emerges is a velvety jazz-pop that still manages to strike straight at the heart. Fagen once again proves himself a master at handling "highbrow" music with a popular touch, yet avoids the trap of banally adapting to the mood of the moment, instead creating a timeless sound.
Every track surprises with its alternation of straightforward melodies and jazzy detours. Starting with the uptempo soul-reggae of the opener "I.G.Y.", with its retro flavors of sax and trumpet, a synthetic harp solo and the surging flow of the choruses over lush beds of synth and Rhodes piano. And at an accelerated clip, poised between Latin swing and electric blues, "New Frontier" also takes flight, the record's other standout, telling of a party in a fallout shelter in a dizzying whirl, with piano and synth trading off smoothly, and in the finale an imperious harmonica solo bursts in. The dance moves grow more syncopated on "Green Flower Street", funk filtered through Steely Dan's retro sensibility, for an interracial soap opera complete with a catchy refrain, galloping keyboards and sumptuous choruses. Funk that takes on Caribbean scents on "The Goodbye Look": a Hammond organ pushes its way through a riot of xylophones, marimba, congas and maracas, for a singular cocktail party set in Castro's Cuba.
But there's also the night-club crooner Fagen, the one who hams it up with the backing singers on the shuffling salsa cover of "Ruby Baby" (a Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller classic), or melts into the gorgeous serenade "Maxine", over the languid cadences of the piano, with just enough of a smooth sax, a jazzy guitar and vocal interplay worthy of Manhattan Transfer. Fifties-style vocal harmonies return on "Walk Between Raindrops", where jazz and swing flirt irreverently. The title track, meanwhile, distills all of the record's nostalgic spirit into the autobiography of Lester The Nightfly, deejay at WJAZ: muted guitars, call and response, seductive melodies and horns that never overstep the mark stitch together a sketch of sheer, gentle lightness.
The Nightfly is a gamble played entirely on a tightrope. Fagen would hand it down to posterity with the knowledge of having fulfilled a mission, of having crowned himself the Duke Ellington of pop.

Walter Becker, the sonic architect, the one of the two who preferred working behind the mixing desk, would mostly work as a producer in the pop sphere (his contribution to "Flaunt The Imperfection" by English band China Crisis is notable) or in jazz-fusion (Windham Hill would call on him to head up its new jazz roster).

Parallel paths, then, but destined sooner or later to reconverge.
A first contribution to the reconciliation comes from the chestnut curls of Roseanne "Rosie" Vela, former ELO vocalist, actress, model and cover girl (her "Vogue" covers are famous). Her striking grace and the sensual caress of her voice are right up Fagen and Becker's alley; they take up synth and guitar respectively on the nine ballads of "Zazu" (1986), the first and only album from the Texan muse, magnificently produced as ever by Gary Katz and, just as expected, superbly recorded.
Rosie Vela writes all the lyrics and sings with aching sweetness, but the Steely Dan stamp can't go unnoticed on enchanted music-box pieces like "Fool's Paradise", "Magic Smile" and "Interlude", which earn the album well-deserved success.

Through the Nineties, the gradual reconciliation between the two continues. As with couples who don't quite trust themselves yet, each produces the other's project before the long-awaited reunion.

It's Fagen who makes the first move in 1991, handing Becker production duties on Kamakiriad, his second solo work, which in effect comes across as a Steely Dan album under another name.
The futuristic car – a gleaming Kamakiri, aboard which the protagonist travels the world in a hypothetical future – is really a time machine: the nostalgia of the "night flight" has faded, replaced by what feels like a more "unbridled" mood, almost as if taking a step back toward the early Dan, updated with 90s technology. What's missing, though, is much of the groove; the textures are less varied and unpredictable, and the melodies don't always manage to bite.
If Aja managed to push past perfection in search of "humanity", here, by contrast, a sense of sterile control over the instruments prevails, which often sound electric even when they're acoustic (the drums, the horns). The class, however, remains intact, down to the wine-and-cocktail-hour fashionable lyrics, and one starts to suspect that, really, everything this man does is meant to complete what he did before, even years and years apart.
As on The Nightfly, there are eight tracks, and this time none under five minutes. The first single, "Tomorrow's Girls", sounds as if "Josie" and "Peg" had been turned into androids: they've become gorgeous "party girls", landed from hyperspace to entertain earthlings ("A virus wearing pumps and pearls"), in a radiant jam embellished by the usual choruses. Fagen keeps chasing the catchy refrain – just listen to "Springtime" and "Florida Room" to be convinced – but now favors sophisticated artificial creatures, like "Countermoon", a mutant soul number seasoned with gospel choirs and big-band horns, "Teahouse On The Tracks", a sensual weave of choruses and horns over a disco beat, and the tour de force of "On The Dunes", another soul number transformed into a multifaceted abstract suite.
The Dan's more "groovy" side resurfaces instead in the funky pulses of "Trans-Island Skyway" and "Springtime", and in the seven nervously syncopated minutes of "Snowbound", the track also credited to Becker, who for the occasion picks up bass and guitar again.

Too sophisticated and cerebral to win over the public, Kamakiriad would be further overshadowed by the happy event so many had been waiting for: with the old chemistry rekindled, Fagen hires Becker for his US concerts, effectively turning them into a Steely Dan tour. Unsurprisingly, it's a success, and the result is a live album, Alive In America, whose main purpose is to let the world hear just how granite-solid Steely Dan sound live.
Fagen would then return the "favor" by producing Becker's first solo album, Eleven Tracks Of Whack (1994), which, however, would go almost entirely unnoticed.

The Diehards

The true reunion comes at the dawn of the new millennium with Two Against Nature, and the 20 years separating this work from their last album, Gaucho, seem not to have passed at all. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker return, old and seemingly out of step, to have their say on contemporary music, with their paradoxically cultivated love for jazz and highbrow composition. Two Against Nature: two against the grain, which is indeed what Fagen and Becker seem to be, so far removed from the sounds of the present and so meticulous in pursuing their own idea of music.
It's moving to hear Fagen's voice again, thick and roughened by the years, yet still as eclectic as ever, swinging from tenderness to sarcasm, from bitterness to nonsense. It opens quietly, with bass and guitar trading lines in a funky groove, in a manner similar to the band's last outings. The title track performs the same function as the old "Aja": an eight-minute, multi-rhythmic, powerful, almost rhapsodic piece with the horns up front. A novelty, however, is the fact that the two of them play on almost every track, relying more on themselves than on guest musicians, in contrast to Gaucho, where the quality of the guests made everything shine and hit hard. Two Against Nature, by contrast, is a whispered record, more minimal in form. A few of the old collaborators remain here and there—Lou Marini and Dave Tofani—plus guitarist Hugh McCracken, who went down in history mainly for his memorable harmonica contribution to Fagen's "New Frontier."
The result is an uneven record, too often sterile and overwrought, where even the best tracks ("Cousin Dupree," "Gaslighting Abbie," "West Of Hollywood," with its endless closing sax solo) fail to match their counterparts from the golden years. But the class is still there: the sarcastic, cryptic lyrics counterpoint the soft, airy sonorities, the dissonant harmonies and the limpid arrangements. Above all, there's the usual sonic perfection, which earned yet another Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album (on top of those for Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Pop Vocal Performance for "Cousin Dupree," and Album of the Year).

Mca takes the opportunity to release what is, to this day, the best Steely Dan anthology, the double Show Biz Kids: The Steely Dan Story 1972-80, containing as many as 33 tracks, selected with unquestionable expertise. Practically essential for getting as thorough an overview as possible of the band's career.

Unusually quickly by their standards, only three years after Two Against Nature, Everything Must Go (2003) arrives, consolidating their rediscovered unity of purpose.
Even leaner in its rhythms and fastidious in its sound, the album continues the duo's improbable, against-the-grain path, ever more elitist and detached from contemporary trends. The coordinates remain the same: pop delicatessen over funky and r'n'b beats, a jazzy taste and fusion minestrone with a retro-modern sound. The variety of keyboards (acoustic piano, Rhodes, organ, synthesizer) guarantees the usual velvety sounds, and even without the customary army of session players, the line-up remains top-notch, with Keith Carlock on drums, Jon Herington and Hugh McCracken on guitars, plus additional keyboards from Ted Baker.
Yet the impression of an excessive perfectionism solidifies, coldly glossy and incapable of the melodic punches of the roaring Seventies. What remain, however, are flashes of brilliance, like the Wurlitzer piano sonata on the opening "The Last Mall," Fagen's synth solo that sounds like a harmonica on "Godwhacker" and on "Lunch With Gina," the romantic sax of the title track, or the organ embroidery on the murky "Green Book." Or again, Becker's slick guitar solo on that same "Godwhacker." And if there's one track that for a moment truly transports the mind back three decades, it can only be "Pixeleen."
But post-2000 Steely Dan is by now just good background music, cocktail-lounge fare for intellectuals, well exemplified by the single "Blues Beach," as smooth and refined as it is, ultimately, toothless.

In the meantime, however, the Steely Dan name has become a legend. So much so that Becker and Fagen were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for their contribution to American pop music and even received two honorary degrees. Not to mention the multitude of pop bands who owe their very existence to the two former college roommates: from Deacon Blue (and the name already says it all) to Prefab Sprout, by way of High Llamas, Bible, Style Council, China Crisis and many more besides.

And then there's an ever-undying Donald Fagen, ready to surprise again, thirteen years after his last solo album, with a new record.
Enter Morph The Cat (2006), where the New Jersey musician revisits his own aesthetic canons, music for chatting and for a rendezvous before midnight. Both in the slow pieces ("Morph The Cat") and the fast ones ("H Gang"), there's a retreat into shadowless segments, for the first time part of identifiable, almost decipherable memories. And even where a kind of blues from across the Channel seems to take over, as on "What I Do," everything leads back to that peak of atmosphere where everything feels breathable, from the guitar and harmonica breaks to the keyboard solos.
On "Security Joan" we return completely to Steely Dan territory, both in rhythm and in anxieties, as well as in the bass interludes and the huge piano chords that frame the movement. Also very recognizable is the "use" of verses in choral echo and the flat-key passages, not to mention the chorus that breaks things up. Even a very long guitar solo, distorted yet playing on an irreproachable clarity, never gets boring.
Ultimately, Morph The Cat is yet another reconstruction of his career, with the usual deprivations and additions, some products of the times, some not, but always meticulous in being impeccable and well thought out. So one can be left rapt in that "Love Boat"-like setting that "The Great Pagoda Of Funn" draws you into, with its muted little trumpets and its cruise-ship jazz. The sonic inflection is metronomic, but it's precisely the brilliant use of predictability that is Fagen's best asset, so much so that it creates here an irreplaceable form of entertainment. And even the funk of "Brite Nitegown" can shock, a close relative of Quincy Jones's tricks for Michael Jackson, always poised between bar and dance hall.

In the summer of 2007, Steely Dan set off on tour again, and for the first time in forty years they also reach Italy, in the now-historic Lucca show, backed by the "best band they ever had," in Becker's own words. Like every self-respecting "classic," their repertoire manages to withstand the test of time, still winning over new fans.

In 2012, instead, Fagen returns as a solo artist with Sunken Condos, co-produced by Michael Leonhart, whose taste for jazzy orchestration and flawless arrangement yields a sound that is once again impeccable, thanks also to the usual fabulous session men (among whom guitarist Jon Herington stands out) and to elegant arrangements, into which an unusual Wonder-esque harmonica occasionally creeps in. What also convinces is the album's overall groove, which on this front—from the unbridled funk of opener "Slinky Thing" to the sinuous disco strut of the single "I'm Not The Same Without You" all the way to the breakneck cover of Isaac Hayes's "Out Of The Ghetto"—marks a step forward from the more static, relaxed Morph The Cat.
The problems, if anything, come from an increasingly self-referential songwriting. Take "Miss Marlene," for instance, which is nonetheless one of the album's most successful tracks: practically a cold fusion, shuffle-flavored, of the immortal "I.G.Y." and "Ruby Baby," seasoned with the usual precious guitar flourishes and the obligatory female backing vocals. Or that Seventies-style wah guitar on "Good Stuff," echoing Haitian divorces of Steely-Dan-ian memory. Or again the organ and horns of "The New Breed," recreating the sophisti-jazz blend of "My Rival" from "Gaucho." There's a lot of self-quotation, in short, and a few episodes are genuinely cloying (the flaccid "Memorabilia," the pretentious closer "Planet d'Rhonda"). But to the man who invented a style out of nothing and kept it going for decades with inveterate class, one can, all things considered, forgive much. All the more so when one considers how the vocal harmonies of that raspy, roughened throat can still enchant, today as back then. And faced with the high-class retro-modernism of "Weather In My Head," a funk-tinged Chicago blues number that sounds like it stepped straight out of the Seventies, and "The New Breed," a showy midtempo built on Prophet-5 synth and mellotron inlays, all that's left to do is tip one's hat.
It's the same, incurable Fagen, watching you amused, with that sardonic little smile of his, between one cocktail and the next. Strawberry jazz, as the saying went, and so it shall be forever: take it or leave it. We, too, are happy to sip it again this time.

Hardly easy-going and decidedly out of step, to borrow Fossati's words, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker today are more than ever "two against the nature." Two incurable "backward-lookers," who have always looked to the great orchestras of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, who can't help citing in interviews their passion for Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins, only to then drift noticeably away from them in their actual results. Far from any temptation to merely quote, like true craftsmen of music able to plumb that ocean of sound that was jazz between 1920 and 1950, deconstructing sonorities and notes, dreaming up lunatic melodies that seem to spring from a deeply personal vision of the musical. Always, in the end, true to themselves, since way back in 1972, the year of their debut. Everything passes, except their superb feel for good vocal harmonies and smart, easy-listening music.

Contributions by Ugo Coccia, Stefano Pretelli ("Pretzel Logic") and Angelo Franzese ("Morph The Cat")

Special thanks to Beppe Colli for the invaluable bibliographic reference "Steely Dan 2000" (Blow-Up, April 23, 2000)

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