The 2008 album that brought an end to Steely Dan: “He didn’t want to do that anymore”
In the eyes of many, when bands like Steely Dan and The Beatles opted to stop playing music live, they distorted the connection an audience can have with said music.
The thing that gets a lot of people most excited about music on the whole is the idea that they can eventually go and listen to such music in a live environment, mere metres away from their favourite artists and surrounded by like-minded listeners. It’s true, seeing music live can be a pretty magical thing, as it takes the listening experience and heightens it beyond comprehension.
So many people’s favourite musical memories come from when they saw their favourite bands live. In fact, the majority of people that you know who work in the music industry, helping to run venues and keep grassroots sound going, do so because of how passionate they are about live sound and how much it can have a positive impact on people’s lives.
“I first came to The Adelphi in 1991, so over 30 years ago,” shared Paul Sarel, the general manager of iconic Hull venue The Adelphi, “I came to see a band whose name escapes me, but they were a local band and what I remember the most about that is the singer kept getting a little electric shock off the microphone every time he sang into it. It amused everyone apart from him. Me and me, mate Mark, just got addicted to coming to gigs then.”
You can understand, then, given how connected so many people are to live music, why people would be upset when Steely Dan opted to stop performing onstage. However, this wasn’t a decision that the band made lightly. The reason they chose to stop performing live is that the need to write exciting songs that could also be taken to the stage was limiting just how experimental they could all be.
Some of their best songs came when they stopped performing live, as there was nothing holding them back when it came to really tapping into their creativity. The reason Steely Dan could use such interesting time signatures, touch upon various narrative themes, and experiment with different effects was due to not needing to ensure songs could be translated to a live audience.
This freedom was a bit of a double-edged sword, though, as while the band had a new sense of creative freedom, it also took a long time for them to put these records together. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, they loved the process, as they would spend hours, days, weeks and months in the studio trying to work out how to create these complex albums together. As they got older, their patience with these kinds of records ran out, and when they started working on solo albums, they realised in the later stages, in the interest of time, putting together more spontaneous records was better.
The last album Steely Dan made was in 2003; however, Walter Becker enjoyed writing more on-the-spot albums, and the last one of these he did was in 2008. Circus Money allowed fans to enjoy a more free-flowing Becker, but it also essentially put a full stop to the music that Steely Dan were making, because Becker was happy to move away from the complicated studio records the band previously pined for and instead knock out something simpler.
“Walter started becoming ill in maybe 2010, and he really didn’t want to [record more],” said Donald Fagen, “He was having trouble with the amount of production you had to do to make a Steely Dan record. He didn’t want to do that anymore. He put out a couple [solo] albums that I really liked that were maybe more spontaneous, and he enjoyed doing that more.”
