Steely Dan  

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Steely Dan is an American band working in the jazz rock idiom, best known for such songs as "Do It Again" (1972) and "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" (1974). They were founded by core members Walter Becker (guitars, backing vocals) and Donald Fagen (keyboards, lead vocals) in 1972. Blending elements of jazz, R&B, traditional pop, and sophisticated studio production with ironic and cryptic lyrics, the band enjoyed critical and commercial success starting from the early 1970s until breaking up in 1981. Rolling Stone has called them "the perfect musical antiheroes for the Seventies". Fans of Beat Generation literature, Fagen and Becker named the band after "Steely Dan III from Yokohama", an oversized, steam-powered strap-on dildo mentioned in the William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch.

Lyrics

Steely Dan's lyrical subjects are diverse, but in their basic approach they often create fictional personae that participate in a narrative or situation. The duo have said that in retrospect, most of their albums have a "feel" of either Los Angeles or New York City, the two main cities where Becker and Fagen lived and worked. Characters appear in their songs that evoke these cities. Steely Dan's lyrics are often puzzling to the listener, with the true meaning of the song "uncoded" through repeated listening, and a richer understanding of the references within the lyrics. In the song "Everyone's Gone to the Movies," the line "I know you're used to 16 or more, sorry we only have eight" refers not to the count of some article, but to 8 mm film, which was lower quality than 16 mm or larger formats and often used for pornography, underscoring the illicitness of Mr. LaPage's movie parties.

Thematically, Steely Dan creates a universe peopled by losers, creeps and failed dreamers, often victims of their own obsessions and delusions. These motifs are introduced in the Dan's first hit song, "Do It Again," which contains a description of a murderous cowboy who beats the gallows, a man taken advantage of by a cheating girlfriend, and an obsessive gambler, all of whom are unable to command their own destinies; similar themes of being trapped in a death spiral of one's own making appear throughout their catalog. Other themes that they explore include prejudice, aging, poverty, and middle-class ennui.

Many would argue that Steely Dan never wrote a genuine love song, instead dealing with personal passion in the guise of a destructive obsession. Many of their songs concern love, but typical of Steely Dan songs is an ironic or disturbing twist in the lyrics that reveals a darker reality. For example, expressed "love" is actually about prostitution ("Pearl of the Quarter"), incest ("Cousin Dupree"), pornography ("Everyone's Gone to the Movies"), or some other socially unacceptable subject. However, some of their demo-era recordings show Fagen and Becker expressing romance, including "This Seat's Been Taken", "Oh, Wow, It's You" and "Come Back Baby".

Steely Dan's lyrics contain subtle and encoded references, unusual (and sometimes original) slang expressions, a wide variety of "word games." The obscure and sometimes teasing lyrics have given rise to considerable efforts by fans to explain the "inner meaning" of certain songs. Jazz is a recurring theme, and there are numerous other film, television and literary references and allusions, such as "Home at Last" (from Aja), which was inspired by Homer's Odyssey.

Some of their lyrics are notable for their unusual meter patterns; a prime example of this is their 1972 hit "Reelin' In the Years", which crams an unusually large number of words into each line, giving it a highly syncopated quality.

"Name dropping" is another Steely Dan lyrical device; references to real places and people abound in their songs. The song "My Old School" is an example, referring to Annandale (Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, is home to Bard College, which both attended and where they met), and the Two Against Nature album (2000) contains numerous references to the duo's original region, the New York metro area, including the district of Gramercy Park, the Strand Bookstore, and the upscale food store Dean & DeLuca. In the song "Glamour Profession" the conclusion of a drug deal is celebrated with dumplings at Mr. Chow, a Chinese restaurant in Beverly Hills. The band even employed self-reference; in the song "Show Biz Kids," the titular subjects are sardonically portrayed as owning "the Steely Dan T-shirt."

The band also often name-checks drinks, typically alcoholic, in their songs: rum and cokes ("Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More"), piña coladas ("Bad Sneakers"), zombies ("Haitian Divorce"), black cows ("Black Cow"), Scotch whisky ("Deacon Blues"), retsina ("Home at Last"), grapefruit wine ("FM"), cherry wine ("Time Out of Mind"), Cuervo Gold ("Hey Nineteen"), kirschwasser ("Babylon Sisters"), Tanqueray ("Lunch with Gina"), Cuban breeze (Fagen's solo track "The Goodbye Look"), and margaritas ("Everything Must Go") are all mentioned in Steely Dan lyrics.

Discography

• 1972: Can't Buy a Thrill
• 1973: Countdown to Ecstasy
• 1974: Pretzel Logic
• 1975: Katy Lied
• 1976: The Royal Scam
• 1977: Aja
• 1980: Gaucho
• 2000: Two Against Nature
• 2003: Everything Must Go

See also

• List of songwriter tandems
• Roger Nichols (recording engineer) - Recorded every Steely Dan album, winning six of his seven Grammy Awards in the process.