When Bob Dylan brutally rejected a Steely Dan: “Dylan passed up a good thing”
To be in Bob Dylan’s band, you must be a particular type of musician—whatever that is, evidently, Donald Fagen wasn’t it. Then again, neither were The Rolling Stones, so Steely Dan’s acerbic Fagen can’t feel too hard done by. The original vagabond is notably fussy. Not even Dharma Montgomery got in when she auditioned.
Why does he wave fare thee well to these hopefuls so often? Well, on the fabled occasion that Dylan did play with The Stones, he wound up storming off the stage having sung about half a line, and he flipped his middle finger to Keith Richards as he left. It’s a classic incident that offers a stark insight into his onstage ways and what he demands of his backing bands.
It was a sunny evening in Montpellier in 1995; Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes was side-stage agog as two of the biggest behemoths in music history collided—unfortunately, not in the manner that the verb is usually intended in these instances. Robinson recalled: “The Stones don’t jam; they don’t deviate […] they go around the chorus, and then they come up to Bob’s turn.” At this point, Dylan doesn’t sing on cue and for the driving ways of The Stones, that is his proverbial bus stop missed—he’ll have to ride it back through to the terminus.
Dylan was miffed by this rigidity. Robinson concluded on Howard Stern: “[Bob] walks off before the end of the song, and they are like ‘Bob Dylan!’ and he turns around, and he looks at them saying ‘Fuck you!’ and he gives them the finger, and I’m like ‘The best fucking concert I’ve ever seen in my life, it’s incredible’. I can see Keith, he goes, ‘Don’t be like that, Bob!’”
You see, Dylan’s flowing ways are very particular, which is why, in 1981, he was looking for someone who had swing more so than polished professionalism. Thus, rather than digging through session musicians ahead of his forthcoming tour, Dylan placed a barely noticeable ad in a Los Angeles newspaper looking for qualified but unknown musicians to join him.
Donald Fagen replied. Dylan’s bass player, Rob Stoner, recognised his name amid the trickle of tentative responses. He excitedly contacted Fagen and said that he would put his esteemed CV before Dylan and get back to the Steely Dan founder in a matter of days.
Fagen waited patiently… and then he waited patiently some more. Had Stoner lost his number? He never heard back. This is strange because of all the particulars that pertain to Dylan’s live act, being jazzy shines through, so Fagen, in some ways, seemed primed. Alas, he was blanked. And now he is somewhat bitter about that.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Fagen told Brian Sweet in the book Steely Dan: Reelin’ in the Years, “Dylan passed up a good thing. Sorry, Bob, I’m not available anymore. I’m too busy,” he said despite having just finished touring Gaucho and finding himself in a lull. “I inquired about joining Dylan’s band, but when I did, I was quite secure in my own endeavours. I’m in Steely Dan and it was basically a whim.”
Since then, Fagen has turned towards scathing critiques of the original vagabond. “He has about a dozen minor-key-drone tunes with three chords. I find it very tedious. He actually has songs that are more boring than some early Appalachian songs. It’s amazing,” he said of Dylan in a 2013 Rolling Stone interview. “He has songs with 512 verses and almost no melody. I think a psychiatrist would be more useful than a throat doctor at this point.”
Nevertheless, in the past, The Dan had, indeed, pored over some of those verses. In fact, Dylan had such a great impact on Fagen and the late Walter Becker’s band that the opening line from his 1965 track ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’ – “Well, I ride on a mail train, baby / Can’t buy a thrill” – was lifted to give them the title of their acclaimed debut album Can’t Buy a Thrill.
This is why ambivalence rather than bitterness might be a better way to think of Fagen’s thoughts about Dylan. As he told Roger Friedman in 2016, he seemingly wants to bury the hatchet. “I’m so glad Bob Dylan hasn’t acknowledged the Nobel Prize. They don’t get it. He’s an artist,” Fagen said. “He’s mad at me. He even mentioned us in a speech.” But Fagen believes he was merely misconstrued despite his rather obvious words to the contrary. When Friedman asked what he’d like him to write by way of Steely Dan’s present appraisal of Dylan, he humbly replied: “Just say, we love him, he’s Bob Dylan, we talk about him all the time.”
As it happens, he even quotes Jack Nicholson on the matter, stating: “[Nicholson] said that as long as Bob Dylan is alive, he will be the greatest living songwriter.” And his voice being “shot” can never detract from that timeless truth.
But would Donald Fagen and Bob Dylan have worked?
Ostensibly, you might think the jazziness of Steely Dan would surely have lent itself well to Dylan’s free-flowing ways. However, we’re talking about two distinct forms here. Dylan wavers and jams in a jazzy manner. Steely Dan delves into augmented minor eights and syncopated rhythm sections in a jazzy manner. The two are almost polar opposites.
In fact, evidence for this can be derived from the fact that the band tried out at least seven top-tier session musicians for the guitar solo in ‘Peg’ before Jay Gaydon got it just how they had intended it after countless takes. Dylan, on the other, doesn’t have so much of a fixed idea in mind and more of a freewheeling notion to wander and for you to follow.
So, in all likelihood, what sounds magical on paper, would’ve likely ended with a shortlived case of you go your way, and I’ll go mine. Of all the things Fagen now respects about Dylan, being smart enough to notice that ahead of time is probably one of them. Alas, a phone call would’ve been nice.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.