Steely Dan explain why they “loved” Frank Zappa
When it comes to sardonically spearing popular culture, Steely Dan remains one of the finest acts to have ever done it. While the group – led by Donald Fagen and the late Walker Becker – might have looked like hippies, they were anything but, offering much more pulp than big-name countercultural outfits. Steely Dan blended comedy, misanthropy and musical nouse to create distinctive and endlessly listenable music. This fusion of the elements has given them the longevity to appeal to varying generations. There’s no surprise that Fagen and Fagen enjoyed such success, given that they took their cues from the master in this field, the great Frank Zappa.
Zappa was one of the first to bridge complex music with acerbic comedy. Breaking through with the Mothers of Invention in the mid-1960s, he then went on to enjoy an incredibly prolific solo career that saw him tear into the counterculture and fellow musicians, fight PMRC censorship, and even have a statue of his likeliness erected in Lithuania.
Augmenting his music with a weaponised grasp of comedy, Zappa demonstrated how to go against the grain and achieve success, a ground-breaking angle that paved the way for Steely Dan and many other groups. This wickedly comedic predilection was something that Fagen and Becker paid close attention to in the early days when they were honing what would become their unique sound.
Speaking to New York magazine in 2006, Fagen was asked what else inspired Steely Dan apart from science fiction. After naming authors such as Philip Roth, Vladimir Nabokov and Kurt Vonnegut, he said: “That certainly influenced the lyric writing. We also liked comic songwriting, like Tom Lehrer. He was a piano player and songwriter who wrote these grim, funny songs. And then we were both fans of Frank Zappa and the Fugs.”
It was then put to the Steely Dan leader that he once said Zappa was “the only model for the comedy” of his band. He said: “The only comic rock and roll I remember was Frank Zappa, really. The Fugs were comic also, but their music was so primitive. I remember the Fugs used to play free in Tompkins Square Park in the sixties, and at one point they were really the kings of the Lower East Side.”
Later, when speaking to Rolling Stone in 2021, Fagen was asked if he saw any similarities between his band and Grateful Dead, and in his response, he shared his love for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Once again, he explained that if Steely Dan had “any models” when they started, it would have been Zappa and the Mothers.
Fagen recalled: “When we first started, if we had any models, first of all, there was Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. We got to see a bunch of shows when they spent a summer at the Garrick Theater on Bleecker Street in the Village. In the afternoons, you could go in for nothing and watch them rehearse. And we both loved all that stuff. We loved what he was doing on stage and the humour, like a combination of Lenny Bruce and the hippie, counterculture humour.”
Whilst Zappa made no bones about hating some of the work released by his contemporaries, he was a big fan of Steely Dan, which must be one of their greatest triumphs. “They’re one of my favourite groups,” he told Rolling Stone in 1974.
“I like their modality, their melodicism. Their lyrics aren’t bad in that vein they’re working, that downer surrealism,” he continued. “As relaxing listening music, I’d give it a 98. One person in our band, Ruth Underwood, would give them about a 120. She really fetishes them. She’s usually got their cassette rammed into her ear.”
