The film Donald Fagen calls “stupid funny”
Steely Dan were a very funny band. In fact, it says a lot about founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen that they got their name from a William S. Burroughs reference to a quiver chasm stimulator. It says even more that they enlisted budding comedian Chevy Chase as their first drummer when they were essentially a jazz band. This odd mix of an artistic literary canvas, splattered with youthful comedic irreverence and earnest musical intent served them very well indeed.
They seemed to sit outside of the counterculture bubble and that distance meant they could burst with satire from afar. In this sense, they are a refreshing musical oddity. All too often only artists with a degree of solemnity find themselves revered as though we have to be certain that someone is smart and serious enough to be worthy of praise, but Steely Dan have escaped the clutches of cursed novelty and sprung a sideways glance upon the mainstream.
With this, they have influenced a wider circle than many of their contemporaries, remaining not only relevant in a musical sense but helping to colour a wider cultural realm. This is perhaps why their success is flourishing once more in the Twitter age where near-nonsensical acerbic wit sits millimetres from the glare of solemnity, in short, an ideal spot for Steely Dan to enjoy a resurgence. There is a film that is following suit and it’s no surprise that Donald Fagen loves it.
When citing some of his favourite films of all time, Fagen offered up huge praise for Bruce Robinson’s 1987 gem Withnail and I, Fagen claimed that it was a hilarious work that had a crucial socio-political message: “Among other things, the best film about the demise of the sixties counterculture. With iconic performances by Richard E. Grant, Richard Griffiths, and the unbelievable Ralph Brown. Stupidly funny.”
That same sense of ostensibly being about nothing but farting around was the way that Steely Dan looked at the world and satirically illuminated it by proxy. As star Paul McGinn said adding credence to Fagen’s take that it speared the ‘60s: “It comes from the mid-1980s, but it sticks out like a Smiths record. Its provenance is from a different era. None of the production values, none of the iconography, none of the style remotely has it down as an 80s picture.” But it does have all the wild hints of a zeitgeist hitting it a little too hard and lost its mirth.
As Marwood says but never really lives up to: “Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day… And for once I’m inclined to believe that Withnail is right… We are indeed, drifting into the arena of the unwell… making an enemy of our own future… What we need is harmony, fresh air, stuff like that.” That’s very much a wry decree that could’ve been plucked from the album Two Against Nature.
