The first Steely Dan album Donald Fagen could actually stand listening to
While not loved by everyone, Steely Dan has perhaps one of the most ardent fanbases, and if you were to ask them exactly what makes the band great, they’re likely to point you in the direction of their impeccable seven-album run from 1971 to 1980.
If you ask a fan, they’ll tell you that the band were virtually flawless in all regards, that the songwriting was on another level to their contemporaries, and that there are few other bands who have managed to be as consistent as they were in their initial run as a band. This might sound like an extreme presentation of bias, and perhaps I’m showing my own true colours in saying this, but frankly, it’s all true.
Musically, Steely Dan were up there with the best of them and were not just adept at writing in one style either. Fluctuating between soft rock, jazz and pop, it was clear that the duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker weren’t content with churning out run-of-the-mill songs that stayed in one wheelhouse, but while many other bands tried their hand at swapping styles, it rarely worked as well as Steely Dan’s attempts at doing the same.
If the musical elements aren’t enough to fully convince you of their brilliance, then the lyrical content will undoubtedly play a deciding role in which side of the fence you’re going to find yourself sitting on. If you’re a fan of incisive storytelling that’s dripping with sarcasm, irony and satire, then perhaps there’s hope for you being inducted into the Steely Dan fan club, but if that’s not your bag, then perhaps they’ll never quite be for you.
It’s understandable why they’re such a polarising band, and while their fans often come out in droves to defend them, plenty of people still can’t quite manage to find themselves on board with what they have to offer as a project.
Strangely, that appears to extend to Fagen himself, who was seemingly constantly looking for the next thing to keep him occupied and eager to dismiss all of his past songwriting achievements. Of course, a lot of artists tend to cringe when they hear their own work, but Fagen has often been the most scathing critic of his own work.
During an interview with Musician magazine in 1981, he was asked at what point in the band’s career does he start to recognise their brilliance and which of his own records he can stand to listen back to. His response, suffice to say, was particularly damning. “The next album I like pretty well,” he began. “The one we haven’t done yet. The rest of them are fairly humiliating.”
Of course, there wasn’t a ‘next one’ for over 20 years, with Gaucho being the last record they made as a duo before separating. When pressed about whether this was even his ideal incarnation of the band, Fagen caveated his previous comments by saying that there’s a sliding scale that his records exist on.
“On the humiliation scale each album gets lower and lower,” he continued. “I think starting with Pretzel Logic, I began to like a few cuts here and there as things I can really listen to.”
As any fan (or major dude) will tell you, the string of listenable material starts with Can’t Buy A Thrill and ends with Gaucho. Fagen may well have been bored of listening to his own songs, but to completely dismiss them is just a contrarian and a perfectionist projecting his own worst feelings onto himself.
