“Downer surrealism”: did Frank Zappa get Steely Dan all wrong?
While they might be considered something of a Marmite band, with people either praising them effusively or deriding them for being too kitschy, Steely Dan were undoubtedly masters at what they did. From expertly crafted songs courtesy of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker to taut, jazz-inflected musicianship, there are few things that you can criticise the duo for in terms of their natural talent – it’s more just that their aesthetic features have a tendency to rub listeners up the wrong way.
Their music always possessed a sense of intelligence and creative flair, but at the same time, they were criticised for being a little too austere at times, taking their own brilliance far too seriously and never eking out so much as a smile when cultivating what seemed like playful jazz-pop. There were other groups that offered a similar thing, often sharing live and studio members with acts such as The Doobie Brothers, but in terms of the end product, there were few who rivalled Steely Dan in their lane.
You could make the argument that an artist like Frank Zappa could also have been placed under the same umbrella, often employing elements of jazz fusion and progressive rock into his compositions, but there was something a little more abnormal about the work of Zappa that kept him separate from Steely Dan’s exploits.
It’s quite easy to picture Steely Dan having mainstream crossover appeal, whereas the majority of Zappa’s work managed to evade this by simply being too impenetrable to obtain anything more than cult status. He’s celebrated by legions of devoted fans, but there’s a reason they like his work, and that’s because they’re happy to be confronted by his often oblique and unusual style and have figured out how to digest it. This lack of accessibility was something that Zappa ultimately took pride in, as he would’ve hated to be adored by people who didn’t “get” his music, although at the same time, the fact that people weren’t always receptive to his work and were perhaps beneath its zaniness was something that frustrated the multi-instrumentalist.
Given that, you’d assume that a band with the intelligence of Steely Dan would gain the respect of a man like Zappa, but unfortunately, they did little to excite him. Calling them “downer surrealism”, he was firmly in the naysayers’ camp when it came to their music and had little patience for their interpretation of how jazz and rock could be combined. But was he right to call them such a thing, and did his snarky label even befit the band in the first place?
Yes, Steely Dan had an austere seriousness and sense of perfectionism about their approach, but you can hardly listen to a record like Aja and not hear vibrant instrumentation that is filled with personality. To call it a “downer” or depressive is wilfully ignoring how playful their music could be, and while their outward personalities may not have always matched this, they’re not the sort of band you can easily imagine yourself downing several whiskies to alone while crying.
Having Zappa label you as a surrealist is also somewhat rich, considering how mind-bogglingly out-there some of his concepts for albums could be. There’s barely a fraction of surrealism on a record like Katy Lied, so when you take an album as bonkers as Weasels Ripped My Flesh as a point of comparison, you’re met with nothing but confusion over how Zappa has managed to perceive them as being the same level of weird as he is. Sure, he might not have liked their output, but stating that Steely Dan are “downer surrealism” is far from the most accurate description he could have come up with to disparage them.
