Chris Welch, Melody Maker, 1 June 1974
Steely Dan, in their short time together, have been hailed as one of the best bands to emerge from America in a long time. They have set the US rock scene back on a road to musical creativity and helped free it from the dominance of British bands established over the past six years. And they have done all this within the framework of pop songs – no more, no less.
The main members of the band are Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who write all their material and started out their career as staff writers for a record company. Steely Dan is really their orchestra, designed to present the songs on stage and record in the best way possible. As a result they have been through a few personnel changes, but the basic five are still together as they were on the first album Can’t Buy A Thrill.
They have built something of a cult following in Britain since the beginning of last year, with DJs playing great compositions like ‘Do It Again’, ‘Reelin’ In The Years’ and, more recently, ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’. The songs have a depth and a ‘finished’ quality that gives Dan the edge over other bands.
The band also sport some fine instrumentalists, Donald Fagen being an accomplished pianist with a sophisticated jazz and classically trained background, whose introductions to some of the numbers provide one of the high spots of their show. And there is Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, who has been received on the band’s recent tour of England as a new guitar hero. Jeff also plays pedal steel guitar and conga drums, while Donald’s co-writer, Walter Becker, is usually found at the back of the band, hidden away playing bass guitar.
Denny Dias plays a lighter guitar style to Baxter’s funkier approach, while Jim Hodder is the original drummer, joined on stage by Jeff Porcaro. Other additions to the stage act have been Royce Jones, a soulful balladeer with an appealing style who helps out on percussion, and Mike McDonald on Fender Rhodes piano.
One of the reasons for the various additions – two drummers, two guitarists – has been the quest for powerful stage sound to match the albums, which have incorporated session musicians from time to time. For example, on the first album, Elliot Randall, the blues guitarist, was added and played lead on ‘Reelin’ In The Years’, and there were seasoned jazzmen like Victor Feldman, Jerome Richardson and Snooky Young involved. Also, Donald was not happy at being the main lead singer, although he has an outstanding voice.
Steely Dan (the name comes from some strange New York phallic device) are a fairly hard-bitten bunch, capable of being sardonic and demanding off-stage. They give the impression of being used to the pressures of hustling in the big city for a long time before success came their way, and there is less of the laissez-faire to their personalities than one might expect to find in the average English band. But once they have relaxed, they are amenable and talkative.
The future will probably see more changes in the line-up and they are cagey about a next album. But whatever they do next they have, in a brief career, produced some satisfying and memorable music. You can’t ask for more.
Donald is a dark-haired, serious young man for whom Steely Dan is his orchestra – and life. But he has a sense of sardonic humour that is reflected in his oft-quoted remark that ‘our songwriting process is not unlike the creation of junk sculpture.’
Like his cohort, Walter Becker – they went to college together – he is quick-witted, sharply spoken and keen to talk in pungent and forthright fashion.
At the fashionable Blake’s Hotel in London, where the hippest musicians tend to congregate, Donald was deep in conversation with Jeff Baxter about the mysteries of the Third Reich, and both had been fascinated by their visit to Radio Luxembourg’s studios, which were Gestapo headquarters during the last war.
Black magic aspects of the Nazi creed were also under discussion, but it seemed healthier by far to talk on the subject of Dan, Steely, and their many compositions. What by the way, had led them to record Duke Ellington’s ‘East St Louis Toodle-Oo’ on the Pretzel Logic album?
‘There are about four recorded versions of “East St Louis Toodle-Oo”,’ said Donald, crouching in a settee over a cup of tea. ‘We took the best part of each and made a composite version. We changed horn parts to a piano solo, but we didn’t change it very much. It was Duke’s birthday recently and I sent him a copy of the record, and I would have been very flattered if he had heard it. But I don’t know if he did.
‘Walter and I are both jazz fans, and as a composition this one stood up so well, we wanted to hear it with all the expertise of modern hi-fi. Most of the great jazz compositions have been neglected. There is no jazz in America now. There is a considerable amount of electric experimenting, but that doesn’t interest me and their improvisation is strictly modal – and boring. John Coltrane was a fantastic player, but he was responsible for leading people into making a terrible mistake. I like more changes in music and, anyway, I preferred John before his modal period, when he was with the Miles Davis Quintet.
‘So there is no jazz of note in the States now. Most of the stuff played is nostalgic ’50s arrangements with good soloists. And of course Miles Davis has gone over the edge. I like to think we are a rock’n’roll band – with class. My bass player and I write all the material, but the solos and arrangements come from the group. Walter and I think it out in advance and then we go into the studios and work on the tunes from there. I think of them as compositions rather than songs. They are structured, but there is room for improvisation.
‘We’re a strange band, y’know. The music is all wrong. We all sat around in our living room and came up with this way of playing. It’s all very weird. Then there is the “imminent break-up”. Quote, “We’re about to break up”, unquote. That’s all ridiculous bull. We’re more or less fairly stable now as the five humanoids that started this thing.’
Walter, the mystery bass player who keeps well-hidden at the back of the stage, usually perched in the shadow of Jeff Porcaro’s drums, is a cheerful jester with a quick line in verbal badinage. But despite his public reticence, he is a vital founder member of the Dan, who co-writes those amazing songs with Donald Fagen, and for whom quality rather than commercialism is the most important factor.
‘Our sound system is designed for small halls like the Palace Theatre at Manchester, and we’d rather work in those situations than sacrifice the sound quality in a bigger venue. Dinky Dawson designed our sound system and he’s brilliant. He’s worked with us from our first gigs when we used to support the Kinks and the James Gang. That was terrible – bands used to play tricks on us in those days. Like not letting us onstage for a soundcheck, or turning the lights off. When Dinky first joined us to do the sound, I couldn’t understand a word he said, but I knew he was an intelligent, professional guy.
‘In our early days, we had some terrible disasters. I remember a press party we were supposed to play, when the equipment wasn’t set up properly and nobody could hear a note, and the lead singer picked up a can of beer, missed his mouth and poured it all over himself. That was our press reception. A heavy bummer! The singer was David Palmer. That was when Donald didn’t want to be lead singer – no way. Now Dave is a co-writer with Carole King, which shows where we were at. I didn’t even know he could write.
‘Sure, there have been some personnel changes. First there was the six and then there was the five and now we have three extra guys, including Royce Jones on percussion and vocals. We had two girl singers on our last tour, one of whom was known as Porky and is here with David Cassidy now.
‘Ostensibly we’re an eight-piece now, but that doesn’t mean we won’t change it. But all the main five have worked on all the LPs. Incidentally, we record every show we play live on tape – I’m not kidding. If we wanted to, we could put out a live LP, but there is only one song we play on the road that hasn’t been recorded before, and that’s “This Mobile Home”, which is a song about a trailer. You’ll have to hear the lyrics. We tried to record it for Countdown To Ecstasy and Pretzel Logic and, if it had been like it is now, we might have succeeded. We’re not that interested in live recordings, though, because there is a gross overkill in that department.’
How did Donald and Walter get together?
‘We’ve always written songs together, from when we started at college. But people wanted Mickey Mouse stuff, and the things we were writing were so outré. They were all four-minute songs – miniaturisation, as Donald would put it – but someone compared them to German art music. When we do an LP we like to get fourteen/fifteen songs on it, without sacrificing the recording quality. We just don’t have room for any more ambitious writing, until we do LP sets and, anyway, it doesn’t do to get too heavy.
‘The Who invented the concept LP with Happy Jack, right? I think that was very successful, along with The Who Sells Out.’
Why does Walter keep himself hidden at the back onstage?
‘You’ve noticed that? The reasons are it takes the heat off me and I don’t have to make my presence felt. As long as I can hear Jeff Porcaro’s snare drum and hi-hat, I’m happy. I moved up there about ten gigs ago. I just want to hear the drums and it’s all cosy up there. I have a seat, and it keeps me comfortable and happy!’
‘Skunk’ is in danger of becoming one of the biggest guitar heroes since the days of Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Peter Green. Certainly his English fans have taken him to heart: at all Dan’s concerts there have been yells for Jeff and cries of ‘Skunk!’
In fact, Jeff would rather drop the ‘Skunk’ bit. It came one night when he called on an old friend whilst under the influence of alcohol. As the friend took rather a long time to answer the bell, he decided to relieve himself against the door, just as the door opened, thus drawing forth the cry ‘You skunk!’
Jeff has a zestful, enthusiastic guitar style that occasionally goes over the top of Steely Dan’s otherwise disciplined standards but injects into the band a sense of fun and considerable excitement. Less tutored than the rest of the musicians, nevertheless he has had more actual live experience.
He has worked in a great variety of bands and is noted for his pedal-steel guitar playing, which has earned him a lot of country music work.
He first came to fame with the short-lived but highly respected Ultimate Spinach and has been doing a lot of touring with Linda Ronstadt. During his visit to Britain he has been thoroughly enjoying himself and is definitely responsible for the wilder off-stage scenes that accompany the band.
‘It suits me fine that Don and Walter do all the writing,’ says Jeff, through his moustache and spectacles. ‘I thought it wouldn’t until I heard their songs. I’m not a writer, I’m a technician. Donald tells me what he needs for a solo and I play it for him. Steely Dan for me is one of the finest bands I have played with, as far as both lyrical and musical content goes.
‘Sometimes in the States the kids just shout for “Boogie!” So we just wait until they shut up and we can start to play. Boy, is that funny! I love that. We want the kids to have a good time, of course, and we’re not into that Frank Zappa scene, the way Frank adopts a kind of missionary attitude towards the “kiddies”. But we do like to think the people who come to our concerts are there to listen to the music and not just kids who come to hear the hits.
‘It’s true that we play more to ourselves than the audience sometimes, but we have a lot of fun. After the show, we scream at each other if we have made any mistakes. But I’ve never been in a band that has played so many different kinds of music before. I used to have to be in five bands at once to get this kind of experience.’
Denny cuts an impressive stance on stage, with his massive, flowing black beard and broad shoulders dwarfing the guitar strapped around his waist. Denny, in common with most of the band, is a jazz enthusiast who prefers working in rock music for the excitement and opportunities it offers. He does not feel he is compromising his music either, and looks forward to a future when he will be able to present a wholly unique style.
Working in contrast to Jeff Baxter, nevertheless, Denny manages to strike up a firm musical partnership as a member of the ‘guitar section’. He has thoroughly enjoyed his first trip to Britain and says, ‘I love your country. I feel I have come to a civilised land. Just travelling around in a taxi, I have met so many great people. I’m not into museums or sightseeing – it’s the people who interest me most.’
What had Denny been involved in before his work with Steely Dan? ‘On a professional level, not much. I was going to school in New York and playing guitar at the same time in small clubs. I felt guilty about neglecting my school studies and I was just really getting interested in my subjects when I had to make the decision. So I quit school in 1969 to be a full-time musician. I was studying biomedical computer science and I completed my first semester. But I couldn’t bring myself to quit playing guitar.
‘I had a rock band but it was difficult to get work, because I didn’t want to play Top 40 stuff. We didn’t have too much original material either. Our bass player decided to go back to school, so I put an ad in the Village Voice for a bass player and pianist. That’s how I met Donald and Walter. When I heard their writing, well, I just stopped trying to write songs. We kicked out the other guys in the band, and you know, listening to Walter and Donald’s songs was like hearing the Beatles with jazz chords. I was flabbergasted! If I hadn’t met them, I’d still be back at school.
‘When they went to California to work for ABC-Dunhill, I hung around and eventually got a call to join them in the new band – Steely Dan. Before the call, I was gradually losing faith and almost went back to school.’
Denny has a strongly jazz-influenced style and he says his tutor had been one of the finest jazz guitarists. ‘Billy Bauer – he worked with Lennie Tristano when he was only sixteen years old. He’s getting old now, but he can still play and he works mainly as a tutor. I play as if I were a jazz musician, except I’m working in a rock context with its feel and excitement. I never play licks offother rock guitarists, and I avoid bending strings or the use of vibrato.’
How did Denny find working with Jeff Baxter in a two-guitar line-up?
‘There are no problems – except I’d like to play more. Jeff can play all the wide vibrato sounds and bend the strings, and he’s really good. We only met up through the band, and we’re on opposite ends of the stick, we’re so different. I play the jazz, while Jeff is much more experienced as a rock player. It’s fun to do the unison things as well – it’s a challenge – and we have pretty nice parts.’
Jim’s drumming has been aptly described as metronomic, and he is indeed a perfect foil to the more ambitious approach of his partner in the percussion section, Jeff Porcaro.
Jim is an original member, one of ‘the five’, and doesn’t seem to mind too much the additional drummer. In fact, he says he finds it stimulating and their drum duet is one of the highlights of the group’s act.
‘I like having the two of us drumming. It doesn’t always work in groups and you have to forget about your ego. With us, it sounds like one guy playing at times, but it makes for a better combination of sounds. From the time the band was put together, Donald wanted two drummers. I was against it at first, but what the hell, we had two guitarists and two keyboard players, so why not two drummers. And one of my favourite bands had two drummers – Frank Zappa and the Mothers. It can work like a locomotive, especially on tunes like “Do It Again”. It gives us both time to relax in different parts and we can concentrate more on the next fill. And of course you can pick your nose or drop a stick and nobody notices! What we have to watch out for is Donald when he conducts those long endings. It’s great material to play in this band, and we only clash occasionally, not so that anybody in the audience would notice.’
‘That first LP we did was only rehearsed for a couple of weeks and I didn’t even know the other guys. So it turned out remarkably well. Before Steely Dan I did a lot of session work around the Boston area and got screwed by managers – the usual thing.
‘It seems everybody has to have a glitter image and I can’t stand that. Nobody in the group can stand it! But the fact is, we have been accepted without glamour and fancy clothes. The whole glitter bit is stupid – it sucks. It’s true we had two hit singles and on our second LP we didn’t have any hits, so we had to be a little bit more commercial on the third one. Artistically, Countdown was our best LP, but for the sake of the survival of the group, we had to go more commercial on Pretzel Logic. But I think Donald and Walter are the two best songwriters since Paul McCartney and Paul Simon. You gotta have material. There are so many good players with no material. Us and the Doobie Brothers and the Eagles all started off around the same time, and I think good American bands are coming back.’