steely dan bumper issue!
a guest edition, featuring 2 covers!
HELLO EVERYONE and welcome to a very special newsletter, from Olivia & Maggie. You’re either a subscriber to Maggie’s Bookhouse Broad or Olivia’s A Constellation. And this week we have combined forces to present:
.🎧⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ THE STEELY DAN NEWSLETTER ✩♬ ₊˚.🎧
Inspired by run-ins with multiple men spouting Steely Dan Facts, Maggie added a DANFACTS section to her last newsletter. Olivia, being a Steely Fan herself, suggested the two team up (much like Donald Fagen and Walter Becker) to create the ultimate yacht rock Substack experience. We’ve got trivia, doodles, songwriting tips and music! Olivia and Maggie each take a turn at playing a SD classic. So kick off your bad sneakers and pour a pina colada my friend, let us do the dirty work for you as we’ve been working night by night, crafting a newsletter to rival your favourite foreign movie. Is there gas in the car? Yes there’s gas in the car. Let’s go!
⋆⭒˚｡⋆DANFACTS by Maggie ⋆⭒˚｡⋆
THE STEELY STORY
If you’re reading this ‘sletter, then you may already know some Danlore. For those who aren’t schooled in Steely 101, though, here’s how the Dan came to be.
Steely Dan was formed by two major dudes, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, in the 1970s. Walter served as the ace of bass and guitar star while Donald spun yarns as lead vocalist with a side of tasty keyboard stylings.
The guys met at their old school, Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, a location that comes up in several songs. They shared a love of jazz, blues, and soul, and soon enough, they started writing songs together on a piano in Walter’s dorm.
Walter and Donald monkeyed around with several different band names and groups before ascending to their final form. Steely Dan, a name now known the world over, is a reference to a steam-powered dildo in the William Burroughs novel Naked Lunch.
The duo spent the early years of their career hustling to make a living off their music; all the while, they kept their personal projects going on the side. With the release of their first album, Can’t Buy a Thrill, in 1972, Steely Dan’s star shot skywards. The album was shockingly successful, spawning two top ten hits, ‘Do It Again’ and ‘Reelin’ in the Years’. It was time for Steely Dan to head out on tour.
After years of traveling the US and UK for Can’t Buy a Thrill and their second and third albums, Countdown to Ecstasy and Pretzel Logic, the Dan’s creative core had tired of life on the road and had “had enough of watching the more aggressive, dipsomaniacal band members lure intoxicated young ladies up to their motel rooms apres show,” per SD themselves. Thus, Walter and Donald retreated to the studio.
Over the next five years, they released four albums: Katy Lied, The Royal Scam, Aja, and Gaucho. Before Gaucho was released, Walter and Donald, burnt out on the artifice and excess of California, packed their bags and returned to New York. There, they decided to split up, Walter heading to Maui and Donald embarking on what became a successful solo career.
Indeed, it seemed that Walter and Donald were doing just fine sans Steely Dan and that the Dan was done. From 1981 to 1992, all was quiet on the Dan front. Then, the two reunited when Walter produced Donald’s 1993 album Kamakiriad and bam, the Dan was back in business. They released their reunion album, Citizen Steely Dan, less than a year later, followed by Alive in America and, in 2001, Two Against Nature, for which the Dan won Album of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group, and Best Engineered Non-Classical Album at the Grammys. That same year, Steely Dan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and received honorary doctorates from the Berklee College of Music.
In 2003, the band released Everything Must Go and turned to focus on live appearances, during which they’d sometimes play through an entire album in a night.
Steely Dan still tours occasionally, minus one member of its founding duo.
RIP Walter Becker, 1950 - 2017
⋆ MORE FACTOIDS ⋆
The Dan charted 15 entries on the Billboard Hot 100, including three top 10s.
Donald didn’t want to be Steely Dan’s lead vocalist; in fact, David Palmer was originally hired as lead vocalist and provided vocals for “Dirty Work”.
An early permutation of the group, called The Leather Canary, featured comedian Chevy Chase on drums.
When the dynamic duo split up and Walter moved to Maui, he assumed the lifestyle of “a gentleman avocado rancher and self-styled critic of the contemporary scene”.
Artists who Donald has written for include Diana Ross, the Yellowjackets, the Manhattan Transfer, and Jennifer Warnes.
A studio technician once erased an entire Steely Dan song, ‘The Second Arrangement’. 40 years later, the daughters of Roger Nichols, engineer-to-the-Dan, found a cassette with his rough mix of the song, which yes—you can listen to now. (Olivia’s note: this might be my new fav SD song)
Donny and Marie Osmond have covered “Reelin’ in the Years” and it’s a fever dream from start to finish.
The Dan has accrued a sizable fandom on Tumblr, where Steely Dan Saturday is celebrated.
Wearing a Steely Dan shirt in public, especially at the antique mall or the comic book store, is an almost guaranteed way to be approached by a middle-aged man.
SOURCES
https://www.steelydan.com/bio
http://steelydandictionary.com/
https://www.audioculture.co.nz/articles/hot-licks-magazine-covers
⋆⭒˚｡⋆ OUR FAV DAN JAMS ⋆⭒˚｡⋆
Olivia’s Choice
The top contenders I had to fight off were ‘Kid Charlemagne,’ ‘Dirty Work’ and ‘East St. Louis Toodle-oo,’ but ‘My Old School’ won out in the end, because it is just so much fun. The danceability of this track is a solid 10/10, and it is my life’s work to learn to scat the guitar solos by heart. ‘My Old School’ recounts a drug bust at the college Donald & Walter attended, and how the college bailed out the students, including Donald, but not his girlfriend at the time who was just visiting. Fagen vows, amidst honking saxophones, “I’m never going back to my old school!” Fun fact: he did go back to his old school, to receive an honorary doctorate in 1985.
Maggie’s Choice
I’m always bad at picking favorites, so I cannot name one song as my all-time forever number one; however, I am vibing heavily to ‘Bad Sneakers’ at the moment. If the Dan ever did a guest feature with Jimmy Buffett, this could have been the song. (Disclosure of authorial bias and mild Parrothead status: My Jimmy Buffett hits CD is my most prized possession out of all the detritus in my Prius.) ‘Bad Sneakers’ is about the disillusionment and burnout that SD’s core dynamic duo felt living in LA. “I’m going insane, I’m laughing in the freezing rain” alone is such a mood. I swear Steely Dan could take any subject and turn it into a song one can do both a close reading of and a body roll to.
I’m also currently obsessed with “the spore is on the wind tonight” as a sexy line in ‘Rose Darling’. If a suitor texted me that the spore was on the wind, hey–I’d be on my way over!
♡❀˖⁺. ༶ ⋆˙ SQUONK CORNER . ༶ ⋆˙⊹❀♡
“Have you ever seen a squonk’s tears? Well, look at mine.”
Steely Dan, “Any Major Dude”
The squonk is an iconic Pennsylvania cryptid known for weeping its way through the state’s hemlock forests. Squonks have loose, saggy skins too large for their bodies and have previously been captured only to vanish, leaving behind nothing but a pool of tears.
⋆⭒˚｡⋆ THE SONGWRITING by Olivia ⋆⭒˚｡⋆
I’ve had a couple of attempts writing a song in a ‘Steely Dan’ fashion (see: a song titled ‘West Coast Delight’) but I don’t think I could come up with anything close to the complexity of Fagen and Becker’s writing. To me, Steely Dan managed to write songs which were completely unlike anything else you’ve heard before, and yet… they sound like something that’s been pre-programmed into your brain. Is that dramatic? Yes. It is most likely that I just absorbed Steely Dan when I was in the womb, as I am 100% sure that my Dad was playing Pretzel Logic as I was chilling in a zygotic state.
Anyway! Let’s pretend we are writing a Steely Dan song together. Let’s go:
Music First
Donald Fagen said that they were drawn to writing songs in the way jazzers like Duke Ellington would – funky and interesting chord progressions first, then weaving a melody through. It’s a songwriting style geared more towards the instrumental side of things. So start banging on the piano and find some long chord progression that includes AT LEAST 12 different chords and I wanna see some inversions and added 9ths, goddammit.
The Story
I can sing many a Steely Dan song by heart but if someone asked me ‘Who is learning to work the saxophone? Why is he playing just what he feels?’ I would drink scotch whiskey all night long and die behind the wheel (metaphorically), which is to say, I don’t know the answer. I can’t say that lyrical obscurity was their intention, because Walter Becker once said, "It seems that there are far too many intentionally dumb people,” and I don’t want to be one of them. If you start to look closely, you find that their songs are imbued with semi-autobiographical lore, invented characters, and niche ways of referring to certain people and places. For their character-based songs (‘Kid Charlemagne’, ‘Aja’, etc) they would even have several pages of notes and backstory to the character that they wouldn’t even use in the tracks themselves. So your next step is to read some Beatnik novels, maybe get involved in a drug bust or two, and write ten pages of fictional backstory for a name you pulled out of a newspaper.
The Lexicon
Why rely on regular idioms when you can invent your own? Or come up with your own slang? I remember writing a song where I had a lyric that was ‘sitting in the backseat of a triple 87,’ a ‘triple 87’ being slang I invented for a taxi cab because in Aberdeen the taxi phone number was 87 87 87. “Only a fool would say that,” “live night by night” and “have you ever seen a squonk’s tears? well look at mine” all sound like phrases which already exist and could roll off your grandmother’s tongue. So go chew on a pencil and stare at a dictionary for 24 hours until you invent a new turn of phrase to pepper your lyrics with.
The Final Touches
When it comes to tying it all together, Fagen and Becker would pore over the arrangements, honing the songs until they were meticulously crafted objects. There were several Turkish cigarettes involved. And in the studio, the direction they gave their session musicians was detailed down to minutiae, down to the very vowel-sound for backing singers, for example. I am no big fan of this part of the process but it always makes a difference – edit your work with a careful ear and try to glean the best you can. Turkish cigarettes optional.
💿✩°｡🎧✮ COVER SONGS 💿✩°｡🎧✮
‘Only a Fool Would Say That,’ says Maggie
I spent an hour messing with “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” then totally switched plans and played a sloppy, impromptu rendition of “Only a Fool” for the cat in bed. Do excuse the sounds of things being dropped and tab scrolling mid-song. At least I was scrolling with a hand and not a foot as per usual. You can’t win em all!
Olivia goes to ‘Barrytown’
It’s been a while since I’ve played this song, but it used to be part of my busking repertoire when I lived in Edinburgh. Yes, I refused to play well-known covers and would just play Steely Dan, Prefab Sprout and my own songs. The opening line to this song always made me think of Disney’s ‘When You Wish Upon A Star,’ which then makes me just imagine that Barrytown is actually just Disneyland.
Thanks for reading! We put our whole hearts into this special bumper newsletter for you.
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‘Til next time!
Maggie & Olivia
Hi, Olivia and Maggie. While I'm sorry to hear men are Dan-splaining to you (embarrassing), I'm glad from that you managed to make this issue that's so much fun. I really enjoyed it.
This was exactly what I needed today. I was introduced to Steely Dan on my first day of college in 1974. Pretzel Logic. I loved both of your covers. Wonderful job Olivia and Maggie!