“A culture”: The artist Donald Fagen thought no one could escape
Some musicians are so heavily ingrained in modern culture that it’s difficult to imagine their absence. For other artists, those who are inextricable from society and its various art forms influence certain things even when there’s no intention to do so. For Donald Fagen, Steely Dan borrowed a lot from one of the most pivotal cultural forces, even when his personal feelings towards this particular character proved ambivalent.
From their beginnings, it was obvious that Steely Dan wasn’t planning to play by anybody else’s rules. Unlike many who were either revolutionising the counterculture movement or pandering to it, Fagen and his friend Walter Becker preferred challenger acts like Frank Zappa and the more jazz-leaning compositions and decided to base their group on the various aspects of genre-blending innovation.
Of course, adopting certain folk and singer-songwriter styles meant crossing over into territories that had already been well-mastered, but Steely Dan borrowed many of its facets rather than attempting to create a carbon copy of it, which made their music exude subtle hints towards earlier, traditional folk players in a more natural and masterful way.
However, when anyone mutters the word “folk”, particularly in relation to the time Steely Dan began to emerge, there’s almost always one name that follows: Bob Dylan. Now, Fagen’s relationship with Dylan is a tumultuous one that involves stories about near-misses and respect turned sour, but even he admits the hold the brooding troubadour had over the band’s sound.
With records like Highway 61, Steely Dan learned how to utilise vocalisation against the rest of the arrangements but in a way that appeared simplistic and stripped back rather than overdone. In Fagen’s view, Dylan’s North Star on this album was the way “everything was obvious,” with the lack of reverb making it sound “dry” in an endearing way—every instrument was pronounced, making it impossible to be boring.
But Dylan’s influence on the band didn’t just relate to one record, one song, one lyric, and so on—rather, it prevailed in a more omnipresent manner, mainly because his achievements were so extraordinary and his influence became so pervasive that it is impossible to separate him from all art across the board. Fagen recognised this when he once described the singer as a “culture.”
“The thing is, Bob is a culture,” he told Tablet. “And I don’t think we have anything to do with that.” Discussing an article he wrote called The Anxiety of Zimfluence, he added: “It was about the debt that the people who came after him had to his style. […] I do think popular music fulfils a lot of the function of poetry. And yeah, Bob’s the one who broke it open.”
Despite the various bitterness Fagen felt towards Dylan, it’s clear he understands his sheer impact and how Steely Dan worked with it rather than against it. Fagen might have his reasons for not always embracing the singer, but his appreciation will always run bone-deep, especially in those moments he doesn’t intentionally or openly recognise his contemporary’s lingering presence.
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