The forgotten movie that Steely Dan soundtracked: “We wrote that very quickly”
Steely Dan has built up a fierce reputation for the uncompromising pursuit of perfectionism that sees arduous recording sessions that blitzed through session musicians if deemed not up to scratch. The result is a healthy back catalogue of textural yacht-rock hits, but a string of musicians unwilling to continue any working relationship with them.
Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler once described working with them as “like getting into a swimming pool with lead weights tied to your boot.” At the same time, Steve Albini once said there are “two types of perfectionist: One will prepare, revise and rehearse carefully, with intent, honing an idea to a keen edge, ready to cut the cloth of execution”. He continued, “The other makes other people responsible by saying, ‘do it again,’ until by chance they are satisfied, then take credit” in an underhanded jibe directed towards the New York band.
Steely Dan’s fearless leaders, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, have uncompromisingly forged a sonic reputation for the band steeped in perfection. While that has admittedly rubbed people up the wrong way, the finished product is certainly an accomplishment of their aim, with album after album displaying hyper-focused sonic texture.
So perhaps it’s surprising to revisit a story where Steely Dan collaborated with perhaps the most elaborate medium of art possible. In 1978, they wrote the theme for the movie FM with a track sharing the same title.
With movie production being a spinning plate act, with various moving parts overlapping and halting their creative progress, it would be fair to assume that introducing one of music’s most difficult bands would cause creative friction. But surprisingly, it was the contrary.
Recalling the process with American Songwriter magazine, Donald Fagen recalled the experience, saying: “There was a film called FM and we were asked to do the title song,” he said. “And I said, ‘Does it have to have any specific words?’ And they said, ‘No, it just has to be about FM radio.’ We wrote that very quickly, I remember, in one or two days. And we also recorded it very quickly, too. Johnny Mandel came in and did the string chart. It was fun to meet Johnny Mandel”.
Suitably for the filmmakers, the track is vintage Steely Dan in terms of it’s composition, blending jazz, funk and blues. But in the pantheon of what Steely Dan fans would consider their greatest hits, this is certainly a record that slips through the net of consciousness. With that considered, it’s hard to argue that the painstaking process the band loyally adhered to throughout their career perhaps achieved true greatness. For the tracks of theirs produced in seemingly easy conditions, have been left to collect dust as their more problematic siblings have their time in the sun.
