Steely Dan

Steely Dan, American rock band. Essentially a studio-based duo, Steely Dan drew from the gamut of American musical styles to create some of the most intelligent and complex pop music of the 1970s. The band members were guitarist Walter Becker (b. February 20, 1950, New York, New York, U.S.—d. September 3, 2017, New York City) and keyboardist and vocalist Donald Fagen (b. January 10, 1948, Passaic, New Jersey).

Becker and Fagen met at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 1967. They moved to New York City in 1969, where they worked on a movie soundtrack and toured as backing musicians for an “oldies” act, coming to roost in Los Angeles late in 1971 as staff songwriters for ABC Records. Working with ABC producer Gary Katz, they secretly assembled Steely Dan (named after a prosthetic phallus in William S. Burroughs’s novel Naked Lunch) with other young musicians, notably guitarists Jeff (“Skunk”) Baxter and Denny Dias, emerging in 1972 with Can’t Buy a Thrill. To everyone’s surprise, Steely Dan’s debut album spawned the hits “Do It Again” and “Reelin’ in the Years.” By the time Fagen and Becker finished their second album, Countdown to Ecstasy (1973), they had sacked vocalist David Palmer, leaving Fagen as sole lead singer. Gradually the duo dropped the pretense of being an actual band and ceased touring, preferring to nurture their eccentric ideas with a regular crew of studio musicians that included guitarists Larry Carlton, Elliot Randall, and Hugh McCracken, vocalist-keyboardist Michael McDonald, and drummer Jeff Porcaro. The absence of a formal group liberated Fagen and Becker, who did not have to devote energy to dominating other musicians.

Steely Dan reached its peak with Pretzel Logic (1974)—with the hit song “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”—and Katy Lied (1975). Dragging pop music into its high modernist phase, Becker and Fagen took musical ideas from the entire American spectrum, especially jazz, and compressed them into immediately accessible three-minute vignettes. Their songs described lost friendships, lost hopes, and joyless perversity, underscoring the paradox of thrilling music about the decay of pleasure. No longer sounding like an electronically enhanced Bob Dylan, Fagen became a distinctive singer who could put across some of the toughest lyrics in pop music with his pungent voice.

The duo’s popularity skyrocketed as their music lost its acute edge on The Royal Scam (1976) and Aja (1977). Difficulties in completing Gaucho (1980) persuaded Becker and Fagen to give the group a rest, and they pursued separate careers for many years. Fagen’s first solo album, The Nightfly (1982), recaptured many of Steely Dan’s strengths; Becker produced albums for various artists. In the early 1990s they each put out new solo albums, occasionally performed together onstage, and ultimately toured as Steely Dan, releasing a live album in 1995. By 1998 they were back in the studio working on Two Against Nature (2000). The well-crafted album, with its familiar but updated sound, silenced any doubts about the duo’s comeback, and it earned the Grammy Award for album of the year. That release was quickly followed by the equally accomplished Everything Must Go (2003). Becker died after a short illness in 2017, but Steely Dan continued to tour. In 2001 Steely Dan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.