“It wouldn’t bother me at all”, said Walter Becker from Steely Dan opposite Rolling StoneS Cameron Crowe in 1977, ‘not to play on my own album.’ He found a fact with it. Steely Dan was known for hiring the best studio musicians for their sessions they could find. But he also summarized the strange, indirect approach to the rock star status, which he and his long-time songwriting partner Donald Fagen shared.
From their beginnings as jazz-loving hipsters on Bard College to their flowering as ironic pop aesthetes, the two were always the strangest hit makers who packed their songs with as many intelligent chords, obscure allusions and unconventional characterizations. But despite all the adversity, they created their own proud niche in the canon of the Classic Rock.
“Reelin ‘in the Years” (1972)
Let’s leave it to Steely Dan to show themselves unimpressed by the song for which they may be best known. “It’s stupid. But effective,” Donald Fagen told 2009 Rolling Stone about the “Can’t Buy a Thrill ”-Single.
“It’s no fun,” added Walter Becker. And thus reinforced the coolness in the room. Nevertheless, the track is an early prime example of what should later become a trademark of Dan. A sarcastic removal to an ex (“The Weekend at the College Didn’t Turn Out Like You Planned”) is combined with a lively shuffle groove and rounded off by Elliott Randall’s glowing guitar riffs that give the whole to the finish.
“My Old School” (1973)
With this exuberant rock meets-R & B song, Becker and Fagen have an old calculation. Inspired by a raid during her time on Bard College, who still got angry with the two aspiring stars. “California Tumbles Into the Sea/That’ll be the day I go back to annandale”, Fage sings wistfully over the location of the university in the north of the state. While a perfectly orchestrated wind section begins behind him.
“Rikki Don’t Lose that Number” (1974)
In classic Steely-Dan manner, the duo picked up a vamp from a blue note classic-Horace Silvers “Song for My Father”-to start this derogatory description of a college romance. Which never took place. As FAGEN said, he tried to seduce the married and pregnant bardonine Rikki Ducornet at the time. But she never called back. Like most love songs by Steely Dan, this has a bitter aftertaste. “You say to yourself that you are not my type. But you don’t even know what you want.”
“Black Friday” (1975)
Inspired by the Goldcrash from 1869, Becker describes and in this thrilling, carefree opener of ‘Katy Lied’ a financial crisis as an excuse for the vertigo -like debauchery. “I will do what I like,” swears the typically blinded narrator. ‘I won’t wear socks and shoes/and have nothing to do, except/to feed all kangaroos. ”
“Kid Charlemagne” (1976)
Steely Dan opened her hardest album, “The Royal Scam”, with this extremely funky chronicle about the rise and fall of a legend of counterculture. Inspired by the famous LSD chef Owsley Stanley III. “I think he was based on the idea of the Outlaw LSD chef of the 1960s, which basically survived the social context of his specialty. But of course it was still an outlaw,” said Becker once about the song. Larry Carlton’s stylish guitar solo became legendary among the band’s music fans. While Kanye West convinced the band in 2007 with a handwritten letter to sample the song in “Champion”.
“PEG” (1977)
We cannot avoid distrust the narrator of this chic radio song that makes promises to an up-and-coming starlet that may turn out to be empty words. A classic Steely-Dan topic. “And if you smile for the camera,” says Fagen, “I know that you will love it.” The duo worked with its studio musicians until exhaustion to reach the perfect, airy groove of this outstanding song from “Aja”. And was known to be leaning A number of guitar solos off before you decided on a jewel of Jay Graydon.
“Deacon Blues” (1977)
In one of their more tender or more tenderly the middle-class measurement, Fagen and Becker appreciate a guy from the suburb. Who dreams of a freer, more unusual life that he could lead if he only learned to play saxophone. “The protagonist is not a musician,” said Becker in the Classic albums-Documentation too Aja. “He simply imagines that this would be one of the mythical forms of loosening that he could strive for. And who can say that he is not right?”
In the same documentation, FAGEN described the song as ‘as autobiographical as our songs can only be’. Perhaps in allusion in the way he and Becker had worshiped jazz musicians when they were still suburban children. And dreamed of escaping everyday life. The Dans introduced the title as a kind of mascot for the would-be-down-and-outs. “If a college football team like that of the University of Alabama can have a magnificent name like ‘Crimson Tide’, then the nerds and looser should also have a grand name,” said Fagen.
“Babylon Sisters” (1980)
“Babylon Sisters” is the perfect opener for ‘Gaucho’. The last album of the first creative phase of The Dan, which is the highlight of her perfectionism in the studio. It may be the band’s most slippery song. Not to mention that he is also the saddest. Our protagonist drives with two prostitutes “West On Sunset”. And hunt a dream of youthful excessiveness in California, of which he knows that he fades, but which he cannot give up. “Well, I should now know that it is just a cramp,” says Fagen over the butter-soft lite jazz groove of the song. Although it is clear that the narrator’s midlife crisis may kill him.
“Hey nineteen” (1980)
Gaucho is essentially a concept album about the long lingering at the fair. And this track is its greasy heart. The protagonists of Steely Dan are hardly ridiculous and pitifully than the aging guy from this leisurely radio song, which gets into a 19-year-old.
He browses with his achievements in the student connection. And tries to make mood with some Aretha. Just to determine that his companion “does not remember the Queen of Soul”. The song increases to a perhaps ultimate yacht rock refrain. Its pure satire for many who sing along with the band live is apparently not aware of it. “The Cuervo Gold/The Fine Colombian/Make Tonight A Wonderful Thing.”
“Cousin Dupree” (2000)
Becker and Fagen might have grown up when she was in 2000 with her comeback album with Grammys, which was awarded Grammys in 2000 Two Against Nature returned. But they still couldn’t get their thoughts out of the gutter. A typical example of this is this story about the unsuccessful attempts from a failure to seduce his younger cousin.
As always, her representation of the misguided lust of middle -aged lust was incredibly apt. “Honey, how did you grown/like a rose/well, we played earlier/When we were three/how about a kiss for your cousin dupree?” The song later led to one bizarre controversy With Owen Wilson, when the two claimed – whether joking or not, it was difficult to say that the premise for his film ‘You, Me And Dupree’ from 2006 was taken from the song.