“Humiliated”: the only early singles Steely Dan actually liked
Any artist looking at their first records tends to feel like looking at old baby pictures. Sure, it’s cute to look back and see where everything started, but there’s also a good chance that you’re going to see a performance that could have been better or something that makes you cringe from the minute it comes on. Although Steely Dan had a track record for being some of the coolest people on the planet when working in the studio, Donald Fagen admitted that the first half of his career wasn’t worth remembering.
If you look at any of ‘The Dan’s works, almost all of their albums could be considered the greatest albums ever made by another band. While their comeback albums certainly left much to be desired from rock fans, they were never looking to please rock musicians anyway. These were studio musicians influenced by everything from jazz to blues and anything in between, and that didn’t mean competing with the Led Zeppelins of the world.
Granted, an album like Can’t Buy a Thrill is a much different animal than the studio wizards we knew later. Fagen could still lay down a groove when he wanted to, but outside of strong singles such as ‘Reelin’’ in the Years’ and ‘Do It Again’, a lot of the record just feels like the band were trying their best to get their strange jazz-rock experiments on the radio.
And with all due respect to David Palmer on songs such as ‘Dirty Work’, his voice doesn’t match with the band’s aesthetic at all. Steely Dan’s lyrics were always meant to paint pictures of the seediest characters you’ve ever heard, and hearing his blue-eyed soul croon is like hearing someone like Brian Wilson try to be Lou Reed half the time.
Countdown to Ecstasy did at least attempt to fix the problem, but the production ended up suffering a little bit on the way out. There were definitely some great cuts off the record, like ‘My Old School’ and ‘Bodhisattva’, but there are just as many songs that make you scratch your head wondering what they were actually going for.
According to Fagen, those kinds of growing pains didn’t end until they hit the album Pretzel Logic, telling Musician, “I don’t listen to our old records, but if I happen to hear one on the radio, my general feeling is humiliation. I don’t really understand some of our earlier stuff…I think starting with Pretzel Logic, I began to like a few cuts here and there as things I can really listen to.”
Walter Becker was more diplomatic about a few songs standing out, saying, “‘Do It Again’ is a good fucking record. ‘Reelin’ In The Years’ is a good record. It’s only fuckin’ rock n’ roll. It’s for kids. It’s not Gustav Mahler or even Tristin Fabriani.”
While Fagen and Becker weren’t as diplomatic with the rest of their early catalogue, you can’t deny that there are at least some pieces of brilliance on those first albums. ‘Bodhisattva’ is a rock and roll jam by way of Miles Davis, and ‘Dirty Work’ is still a decent piece of soul, all things considered.
Then again, the duo was never looking to impress the rock and rollers whenever he walked into the studio. They knew what a good record sounded like, and by the time they had started work on albums such as Aja, Steely Dan had created their own lane for the most amazing grooves known to man.
