What Ted Gioia Didn't Tell You About Steely Dan
An Appreciative Response
I loved reading
’s recent essay about how he came to value the music of Steely Dan. What first made him chary was the band’s slickness, a quality that still puts some people off. I’ve heard Steely Dan dismissed as soft rock and yacht rock; maybe there’s someone out there who calls them wuss rock. But the worst label slapped on the band is dad rock.What could be less cool than listening to music your dad likes?
Let’s not dismiss the dads so quickly. Dads have experience. They’ve seen things. They’ve been at the bottom of enough whiskey bottles to know that optimism might not get you everywhere. They know the decks are stacked against honest, hardworking folk. They might have been one of the losers that Steely Dan sing about – the cuckold in “Everything You Did,” the nobody in “Deacon Blues.”
Anyway, why would you want to listen to what young people like? They don’t know anything and haven’t achieved anything!
With Steely Dan, though, the situation is more complicated. You might have seen this article from a couple of years ago reporting that Steely Dan is a favourite band among millennials. I might also add that young people are flocking to the slick, harmonically sophisticated City Pop coming out of Japan, a genre that would sound very different without the influence of Fagen and Becker.
But why does a rock band have to sound so polished? Don’t Steely Dan overdo it? Rock is cars and fights and women, not jazz chords and ironic lyrics about contemporary society.
Here’s how Mr Gioia put his initial reaction:
“Back in those days, I thought Steely Dan music was too slick. It was too polished and radio-friendly, with no rough edges. And that meant (or so I thought back then) that it must be shallow and contrived.
You need to understand the larger context.
Steely Dan represented the shift from a rock aesthetic to a pop aesthetic…
Steely Dan was clearly in the slick stuff movement. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, the purveyors of this absolutely perfect studio sound, didn’t set their instruments on fire or trash their hotel rooms. They didn’t hang out with genuine Indian gurus who were teaching them a better way. They didn’t jam on the rooftop until the cops shut them down. ”
There’s something right about this reaction. On YouTube you can find a video about the recording process for the song “Peg.” The session drummer Rick Marotta mentions that he opened his hi-hat just “a hair” and was surprised to hear it on the final track because engineers usually don’t care about that level of detail. Steely Dan did. On “Peg” they used six or seven different guitar players for the solo. (In the video you can hear the solos that they rejected. I hope we can agree they kept the best one.)
Steely Dan’s music is lustrous, but it doesn’t sound like any pop band I know. The heavy jazz influence brings in chords and key changes that you’ll rarely find in pop music. The track “Josie” is a great example:
The intro is a strange one: there’s a combination of notes that don’t really fit with each other, a descending chromatic line, and then a few typical Steely Dan chords that have long, complicated names – the sorts of chords that re-appear in the chorus without making it any less catchy.
But forget about the complications: listen to the groove in the verse. It’s mostly just one chord, but can you stop your foot tapping? It’s perfectly recorded but there’s nothing sterile about it.
People, this is not your typical pop song.
That’s because Steely Dan were not your typical pop band. They were sticklers and used the studio as an instrument. It’s easy to poke fun at their perfectionism, but what I want to emphasise is how their approach was antithetical to the aesthetics of pop music. Pop music is all about the star performer and the fame machine. The singer inspires devotion that was previously given only to religious figures. The pop star is a saviour; the gig is a sacrament.
None of this applies to Steely Dan: they weren’t divas. Messrs Fagen and Becker were notoriously reclusive, did almost no touring, were never good at interviews, and barely hid their scorn for music journalists. They were nerds. They were white guys with black humour. Their lyrics weren’t about the blondes at the bar but a small Australian town (even if they pronounced it wrong):
"When Black Friday comes,
I'll fly down to Muswellbrook,
Gonna strike all the big red words from my little black book.
Gonna do just what I please,
Gonna wear no socks and shoes,
With nothing to do but feed
All the kangaroos."
But it wasn’t the references to towns in my home country that got me interested in Steely Dan. I first fell for the guitar solos. I’ve written elsewhere about how heavy metal dominated my teenage years, but it also gave me an appreciation for accomplished musicians in all genres. At first, I only cared for the guitarists who could play a million notes per second. I wanted to hear players who could rearrange my face with their speed and precision. I heard their solos and showed my pleasure by slavering like a teenager at an open bar.
At university, though, I sang tenor in a barbershop octet and developed an ear for harmony. I still listened to guitarists, but now I wasn’t so much interested in speed as in note choice. I showed my gratitude with “ooh” and “ahh” and “oh yeah” – the appreciation of a man tasting fine whiskey. At this point, it was impossible to resist one of Steely Dan’s most popular songs, “Reelin’ In The Years.”
Not only does it have great guitar work, it even starts with a guitar solo (apparently Jimmy Page’s favourite.) How many songs – of any genre – start with a guitar solo?
It’s a move Steely Dan made again a few albums later. The track “Don’t Take Me Alive” starts with a magnificent solo from Larry Carlton, but Steely Dan stans aren’t shy about telling you that his solos on “Kid Charlemagne” are among the best ever recorded. (There’s no debate among the stans about this: the debate is about which of the two is better.)
If this doesn’t do it for you, then I don’t think anything will. Ted Gioia is right. Your dad is right. I’ve previously written about how jazz is inspiring young pop singers, and acts like Beyoncé and Daft Punk are making sheeny, hi-fi albums popular among a wider audience. Steely Dan is back in fashion.
Genteel? Yeah, maybe. But doesn’t everyone drink craft beer these days?
I was eleven and heard Ricky Don't lose that Number...I thought there was an unknown, yearning,sexuality in the music- that my little self detected was coming down the pike of my life in the 70's.