The Steely Dan album their label hated
Maybe it’s their deadly serious in-studio perfectionism, or the fact that Steely Dan wound up on the shortlist of quintessential “dad rock” bands, but it’s just hard to wrap one’s mind around just how young Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were when their debut album, Can’t Buy a Thrill, became the unexpected hit of 1972.
The singles on that record, ‘Do It Again’ and ‘Reelin’ in the Years’, were so refined and radio-ready that Steely Dan’s overjoyed label, ABC Records, were understandably convinced that they had a long-term hit-making machine on their hands.
Again, though, it must be noted that Fagen, at 24, and Becker, at 22, were still fledglings in the music business, only just touching the surface of what they were capable of, let alone what they wanted to do as artists. Given creative control and a bigger studio budget, could they be expected to throw together another Can’t Buy a Thrill and collect their checks? Some young musicians could certainly be swayed in that direction, but there was never a chance with these guys.
“We expected to be putting out albums for quite a while until people started buying ‘em,” Becker admitted to the Star-Phoenix newspaper in Canada in 1973. “The long wait number, you know?”
How Steely Dan’s bold second album confounded the industry
Instead, the band spent much of ‘73 on the road, suddenly put on bills with the likes of Elton John, The Kinks, Frank Zappa, Taj Mahal, Uriah Heep, and The Doobie Brothers—the band that would later poach one of Steely Dan’s founding guitarists, Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter. Unavoidably, these experiences rubbed off on Becker and Fagen, and a bunch of new songs materialised.
“I think the second album is going to be a lot better than the first,” Becker had said at the time, but when that sophomore record, titled Countdown to Ecstasy, finally found its way to the executive offices of ABC Records, the response was decidedly less enthusiastic.
“They were so unhappy about it that there was hardly any promotion for it, and it was disappointing commercially,” Steely Dan guitarist Denny Dias told Mojo in 1995. “We were trying to go higher and better, and they were looking for something more saleable. They were used to AM pop stuff, and what they heard was a little more sophisticated, and they didn’t know what to do with it.”
Looking back, it’s always easier to side with the young, creative artists over the boring record company suits, but to be fair, ABC weren’t exclusively putting out AM radio fluff at the time. During the early 1970s, the label had rock acts like The James Gang, Steppenwolf, and Three Dog Night on their roster, and while they might not have recognised the genius in Steely Dan’s deeper foray into jammier jazz-fusion on Countdown to Ecstasy, it’s hard to say the record company’s fears about a lukewarm public reaction were wrong.
Steely Dan would later blame the lacklustre sales of the record, which peaked at number 35 on the US charts, on a lack of promotion and belief from ABC. This argument holds less water, though, when you look at how the band responded to the setback on their next album, 1974’s Pretzel Logic. This time around, there was a conscious effort to tighten things up and get back on the radio, showcased by the hit single ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’.
At the time, many fans and critics seemed pleased that Steely Dan had returned to form. It was only over the next few years, as the band’s devoted following began taking on a cult-like loyalty, that the mild misstep of Countdown to Ecstasy took on its later reputation as an overlooked gem, ignorantly misunderstood by the people tasked with selling it. ABC Records, incidentally, were out of business by 1979, with their back catalogue, including the sophomore album, bought out by MCA.
