Perfected pop: The Steely Dan album David Crosby called “too good”
David Crosby has always been clear about his love for Steely Dan. Indeed, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen’s brand of highly-produced jazz-rock won over the countercultural mainstay to the extent that, in 2020, he was willing to name Steely Dan his “favourite band in the world period,” thereby causing music journalists the world over the scratch out the first interview question on their list and start afresh.
If you’re looking to gain insight into the 1960s counterculture movement, you couldn’t do much better than David Crosby. As one of the founding members of West Coast proto-psych outfit The Byrds, he was part of one of the hippie era’s most revered and vital bands, not to mention instrumental in the development of pop music in the 1960s. After leaving the group under a cloud, he formed Crosby, Stills & Nash, who later became Crosby, Still, Nash & Young. When they parted ways, Crosby set out on an extensive solo career, casting numerous aspersions about his contemporaries as he went.
During a conversation with SPIN about his life and career, Crosby opened up about some of his favourite records of all time, two of which are the work of Steely Dan. The duo were fairly unique among their peers in that their craft was almost solely a studio venture. In fact, by the mid-1970s, Steely Dan was less of a band and more of a musical operation with Becker and Fagen in the directorial chair.
Steely Dan was formed in 1971 as a space for Fagen and Becker to showcase their “special material”. Unfortunately, they ended up writing bubblegum pop tunes for artists like Tommy Roe or The Grass Roots. Donald Fagen’s panic disorder made it impossible for him to front the group, and money problems began making touring unfeasible. They decided to take a turn inwards and make their home in the studio, where they quietly honed their ecstatic brand of jazz-infused rock.
The group’s creative peak, in the eyes of Crosby at least, is best reflected by their 1977 studio effort, Aja. Of the album, Crosby said: “Stunning writing. Stunning production, stunning singing, outstanding playing, but songs. Unbelievable goddamn songs. It’s too good. They’re all fantastic”. The album was the culmination of five years of work, during which Becker and Fagen had meticulously honed their sound while relying on a steady stream of the best session musicians in America. Steely Dan treated Aja in the same way Kubrick approached 2001: each take had to be nothing less than perfect. Take ‘Peg’ for example, which the duo only deemed satisfactory after guitarist Jay Graydon had recorded eight different guitar solos.
Released in September 1977, Aja was a hard-earned labour of love involving nearly 40 musicians and several months of studio time. Containing just seven tracks over a 40-minute LP, Aja was noted for its more protracted and complex arrangements that benefit from the expert production conducted by Gary Katz.
Like The Beatles, Steely Dan decided to stop touring midway through their most prominent decade. However, screaming fans weren’t the issue for Fagen and Becker; they simply saw touring as a cumbersome superfluity and a nemesis bent on limiting studio time. Instead, they preferred to focus on sleek, elaborate machines of art.
Aja, pronounced “Asia”, obliquely enough, derived its name from that of a Korean woman whom Fagen’s high-school friend’s brother married. The record is appropriately emblazoned with a sharp photograph by Hideki Fujii of the Japanese model and actress Sayoko Yamaguchi.
Bob Dylan would have cackled at such unashamed perfectionism. For Steely Dan, however, good craftsmanship was what it was all about. The duo’s high standards won them a Grammy for Aja, thus rocketing them into the realm of superstardom and cementing their iconic status.
