Steely Dan: Deacon Blues

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com

Among the most arch and enigmatic composers of the post-Vietnam War era are Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Together, they are Steely Dan, and their songs depict hard-luck stories of eccentrics, weirdos and outcasts. What makes their characters and predicaments sympathetic is the jazz-influenced music that lends sophistication and drama to the tales. It's a mood thing that somehow unites the musical approaches of Ray Charles and Horace Silver. [Photo above of Donald Fagen, left, and Walter Becker]

For this Friday's Wall Street Journal (up online now here), I had the pleasure of interviewing Donald and Walter together on the writing of one of my favorite Steely Dan songs—Deacon Blues. The song has hypnotic powers. It takes you on a glorious journey but also insists you take the trip over and over again. I also interviewed guitarist Larry Carlton, saxophonist Tom Scott and sax soloist Pete Christlieb about their involvement.

Interviewing Donald and Walter together yields fascinating insights. For one, they like to playfully gaslight the interviewer until they feel comfortable with the person's intent and intellect. Once you pass the test, they kick back and answer questions while feeding off each other's imagery. The results come from the desire to top each other. What makes Becker-Fagen special as songwriters is that they both write the words and music to songs. They aren't separate departments but part of the same creative thrust on both sides of the fence.

Like many readers of my generation, I was in college when Aja came out in 1977. I had been dragging my milk crates of jazz albums back and forth to Boston while everyone I knew was doing the same with different genres. In the process, you wound up being exposed to all of your friends' favorites in jazz, rock, soul, funk and disco.

When Aja came out, it sounded like all of those genres sifted together. The complexity was astonishing. The songs' words could be understood if not fully comprehended, the music was dramatic and the stories were like soundtracks to underground comics. Best of all, jazz was at its core. I never grew tired of Aja; there was always something going on that caught my ear. The best part is you could listen to the album if you were up or down. When down, it made you think things through. It was a collection of hipster saloon songs. When you were up, the music made you feel like you owned the world.

So this fall, like every fall in the past, I'll be at a Steely Dan concert in New York—not reliving my college years but listening for something I haven't heard before, that little twisted note on Walter's guitar, that acidic touch on a horn solo or a snarled lyric sung by Donald. The thinking behind the music still captivates.

JazzWax track: Here's Donald Fagen and the rest of the band performing Deacon Blues...

And here's a mini-documentary on the making of Deacon Blues...

Used with permission by Marc Myers

Steely Dan | Santa Barbara | Review

By L. Paul Mann

July 6th was an unusually crisp and warm evening in Santa Barbara with light Santa Ana winds buffeting the hillsides above the city. It was a perfect summer evening for a concert by the veteran jazz rock fusion band Steely Dan. As the sunset faded to twilight, the 11-piece Miles High Big Band and the Embassy Brats began an impressive jam introduction of an old big band tune, “Dizzy's Bidness."

The group, hand-picked by the notoriously perfectionist pair of Steely Dan founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, was composed of impeccably credentialed musicians and back-up singers. These included veteran musicians Jon Herington (guitar), Freddie Washington (bass), Keith Carlock (drums), Michael Leonhart, Walt Weiskopf, Roger Rosenberg and Jim Pugh (horns) and Jim Beard (keys), plus singers Tawatha Agee, Carolyn Leonhart and Catherine Russell.

Fagen and Becker, the genius musical duo, sauntered onto the stage about ten minutes later, looking cooler than the Pink Panther in a Saturday afternoon cartoon. The duo settled down in front of the army of musicians and launched straight into three of their biggest hits representing decades of work, including, “Your Gold Teeth," “Aja" and “Hey Nineteen.

Steely Dan had the sold out crowd on their feet almost instantly and kept their riveted attention for more than two and a half hours. As is their usual custom, most all of the classic hits they played were reworked into live jazz gems, including these extended classic openers.

Becker and Fagen bantered playfully with the crowd between songs, telling intelligent anecdotes about their long, brilliant career together. Steely Dan had played the Bowl before in recent years and also the nearby Chumash Casino Resort. In fact, the band has probably toured more in the last decade than in the three preceding decades since they first toured together.

Steely Dan first burst on the music scene way back in 1971. I saw their first tour opening for Chicago (then The Chicago Transit Authority) in 1972 at the massive Tampa Stadium. They came across as a long haired contemporary rock band with just a hint of jazz in their songs like their first hit “Reelin In The Years."

By 1974 the band had stopped touring and just worked in the studio, much like The Beatles had done the decade before. The masterful duo was one of the first rock bands to meld different genres of music into their own distinct sound. Combined with witty, intelligent and socially relevant lyrics, they were able to produce a string of hit songs for nearly a decade.

The pair broke up Steely Dan in 1981 and mostly stayed out of the music scene for the next decade. With great fanfare they resurrected Steely Dan in 1993 and became one of the hottest and most expensive live shows to see. As the 21st century dawned, the dynamic duo continued to tour and released two more albums, including one that garnered them four Grammy awards.
Read more on: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=84737