The 1972 hit Steely Dan song Donald Fagen couldn’t stand: “Not very sophisticated”
Steely Dan were usually the last act concerned with being the greatest band in the world.
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker saw their musical career as a craft rather than a chance to get on the radio, and half of their best hits aren’t necessarily the easiest to take in if everything you listened to in the 1970s was The Captain and Tenille. They could still write a catchy tune when they wanted to, like ‘Reelin’ in the Years’, and Fagen has never been able to live it down since.
Success can sometimes become a burden for artists who are constantly striving to evolve. Songs that audiences adore often end up representing only a small fraction of what their creators feel capable of achieving.
Even for studio wizards like The Dan, Can’t Buy a Thrill is a little bit rough around the edges. It’s almost expected that any debut album by a future legend is going to be shaky, but there are a handful of songs on the final record which don’t sound anywhere close to the group who would one day write ‘Deacon Blues’ or ‘Kid Charlemagne’.
The smooth jazz approach to rock music is definitely there, but there are also a handful of songs which don’t belong within the same area code as Steely Dan. For as competent as a singer as he is, ‘Dirty Work’ doesn’t do them any favours by having David Palmer on lead vocals, who sounds more like if they got Tony Orlando to sing something suited for Leonard Cohen.
While Fagen did get up the courage to sing lead on ‘Reelin’ In the Years’, there are pieces of the track that veer too close to pop territory. It’s hard to imagine that, considering the number of jazz lines running through the track, but this is what Miles Davis would have been asked to perform if he didn’t have any principles for what his sound was supposed to be.
That tension between accessibility and sophistication would remain a recurring theme throughout Steely Dan’s career. Even their most commercially successful material often contained far more complexity than casual listeners initially realised.
And despite the incredible guitar breaks, Fagen would rather not have to listen to the tune ever again, saying, “I’m sort of fed up with ‘Reelin’ in the Years’. But then again, I think that’s because it’s not very sophisticated. It was kind of an early attempt to do what we do. I never had much to do with choosing the singles. That was the record company’s prerogative. I tried to stay out of that.”
That’s not to say the record didn’t have its fans, either. Jimmy Page had singled out the guitar solo on ‘Reelin’ In the Years’ as one of his personal favourites, and considering how massive the master tape sounded, every single producer in the world was going to go after that sound to get their own projects to sound equally huge.
If nothing else, this was a decent first taste of what Steely Dan could do without going into experimental territory. If fans could enjoy something like this without struggling too much, it might not have been too hard to get them into the heavier stuff once the group released records like Aja later.
There are admittedly fewer surprises here, but that hardly matters. Steely Dan never focused on being an AM radio rock act, but just because a track sounds great next to acts like Chicago doesn’t mean it’s too simplistic. It’s a bit basic, but the mainstream had a much broader palette than Fagen probably thought.
While Donald Fagen may never rank ‘Reelin’ in the Years’ among Steely Dan’s finest achievements, its enduring popularity demonstrates the band’s rare ability to bridge the gap between artistry and accessibility. It may not possess the sophistication of their later classics, but it remains an essential chapter in the story of how Becker and Fagen developed into one of popular music’s most respected creative partnerships.
