Steely Dan never had a No. 1 album or single. Aja (1977) topped out at No. 3 on the album charts, and several of their later albums eventually achieved platinum sales years after release. But because the group’s leaders, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, disliked touring and finally refused to appear live after mid-1974, the group never reached the young audience that most rock artists cultivate.

Nevertheless, for over a decade Steely Dan was among the most influential bands in the world. On the strength of their sophisticated, off-center songwriting, refined, jazz-oriented arrangements, and the painstakingly meticulous production and recording of their albums, Fagen and Becker became artists’ artists in every sense of the word. They drew on the talents of New York’s and L.A.’s finest musicians, and each new album was eagerly awaited by critics, rock radio, and professionals in every sector of the music business.

Steely Dan’s unrelenting drive for studio perfection literally wore out some guest performers and produced a slickness that rankles some critics in the ’90s. Yet their arranging and production ideas quickly turned up in dozens of hits by artists as diverse as Boston, Fleetwood Mac, Queen, the Bee Gees, Toto, and Chicago. Similarly, the group’s recording and mixing, mostly by engineer and friend Roger Nichols, pushed and finally exceeded the limits of analog tape and garnered a host of awards.

Steely Dan Signatures

• Clean, crisp, full sounds on bass, drums, Rhodes and other rhythm tracks
• Sophisticated, jazz-oriented chord progressions, brass arrangements, and solos
• A laid-back, easy L.A. feel in the rhythm tracks
• Fagen’s quaking, nasal, almost Bob Dylan–like lead vocals
• Breezy, breathy four-part male/female background vocals

Despite easily identifiable sonic signatures, Steely Dan’s productions are not pictorial or programmatic in the same sense as those of other artists I’ve discussed. Neither they nor producer Gary Katz tried to evoke steamy city streets à la “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” or the distressed mindscapes of “Every Time You Go” and “Billie Jean,” whose musical gestures portray specific places and dramatic situations. Instead, the Steely Dan team created “pure music,” as carefully structured and arranged as a Baroque masterpiece. Just as one fugue may seem pensive, another stern, a third jubilant, every Steely Dan song conveys its own mood with variations. But in each case the composers’ central goal is to design elegant, architectural musical structures whose detailing works in vacuo, like a beautiful mathematical proof.

When we consider how many of Bach’s “hits” are familiar to today’s rock audiences, it is no stretch to assert that Bach and Steely Dan wrote some of the classiest pop music of all time. Moreover, if pop music is defined by easily remembered melodies, catchy, repeating hooks, and a structure that enables the populace to join in, then Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky are all among the elite of pop. Each of them tried hard to ensure that the surface of their music would enchant untrained ears, while its inner structure would speak to a musically sophisticated audience in the most eloquent terms.

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker met as students at Bard College in upstate New York. By 1970 they had already written songs for two soundtracks, and one album that Richard Perry produced for Barbra Streisand. On a lark, they answered an ad in The Village Voice for “musicians with jazz chops.” Suddenly a band emerged, with Becker on bass, Fagen on keyboards, Jim Hodder and David Diaz on drums and guitar, and David Palmer providing pop-soul lead vocals. Fagen never liked his own voice, and would only sing backgrounds at first.

Next came a collaboration with Richard Perry’s ex-partner, Gary Katz, who in turn secured Fagen and Becker staff songwriter contracts with Dunhill. Working out of the Brill Building, the duo penned songs for a variety of artists, cultivated valuable industry contacts, and made their own demos, with Fagen singing. Out of necessity, Donald Fagen slowly became accustomed to thinking of himself as a decent vocalist.

With a growing reputation in New York clubs, Steely Dan (named after the steam-powered dildo that plays a pivotal role—as it were—in William Burroughs’ novel, Naked Lunch), added guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and a “real” lead vocalist, David Palmer, and soon landed a contract with ABC-Dunhill Records. Katz was the producer, and remained so on all of their subsequent work. The group’s first album, Can’t Buy a Thrill was released in late 1972 and went Top 20 on the wings of its shuffling, Latin-flavored No. 6 pop single, “Do It Again.”

The sophisticated jazz stylings that later became Dan’s trademark emerged in their second album. When this flopped, lead singer Palmer quit, leading to a rapid turnover of the rhythm section. Ace studio drummer Jeff Porcaro and keyboardist/singer Michael McDonald signed on in ’74, then Baxter left. A disastrous tour to support their fourth album, Pretzel Logic, forced McDonald and Porcaro to look elsewhere for work. (After the tour, it is rumored, Fagen and Becker would scarcely speak to each other.) From then on Steely Dan was whoever Fagen and Becker thought would turn in the right feel and flavor for each new song.

Over eight years, seven group albums and Fagen’s The Nightfly captured some of the finest performances of studio legends including: drummers Steve Gadd, Bernard Purdie, and Rick Marotta; bassists Will Lee, Abe Laboriel, Anthony Jackson, and Marcus Miller; keyboardists Michael Omartian, Greg Phillinganes, Rob Mounsey, and Don Grolnick; guitarists Jeff Baxter, Larry Carlton, Rick Derringer, Elliot Randall, and Lee Ritenour; brass by the Brecker Brothers, Crusaders, Tom Scott, and Wayne Shorter; and background vocals by a dozen singers who went on to successful solo careers. In short, Steely Dan albums were both all-star, “dream-team” events and launching pads for many careers that still thrive today.

While Fagen and Becker exude obvious joy in the pure craft of record making, there is an underlying sadness and world-weariness of the same kind present in Beatles’ albums beginning with Rubber Soul. Both artists were strangely compelled by their Muse to make another record.

Similarly, eschewing all the normal fare of rock ’n’ rollers, from live and TV appearances to press interviews, Fagen and Becker locked horns with the studio for months or even years at a time, amassing huge bills in the pursuit of the perfect rhythm tracks, vocals, and solos. Each spent weeks working with expensive session players or whole groups, racking up astronomical AFM union fees. Track by track, they built each album like architects working on the Pharoah’s pyramid. Everything must be flawless, costs be damned.

The Difference Between Appearance and Reality

There is a stark contrast between the musical and sonic beauty of Steely Dan’s achievements and the subject matter of their songs. From the beginning, they wrote of outcasts, runaways, drug dealers on the lam, expatriates, derelicts, dirty old men, freaks, and outright weirdoes. Oysters fashion pearls around bits of dirt that have gotten into their shells. Similarly, Steely Dan buried pieces of society’s detritus inside each beautiful package. Lyrics that seem witty and cynical in one light mask a deep undercurrent of bitterness as they reveal the seamy side of characters’ lives and personalities. Fagen’s quirky, quaking, almost self-effacing vocals stand out in awkward contrast to the slick musical bed, and point out that every can, no matter how beautifully labeled, is a can of worms.

In “Kid Charlemagne” (from the album, The Royal Scam), Fagen relates the fall of the inventor of a spectacular LSD-like drug. “Did you feel like Jesus? Did you realize that you were a champion in their eyes?” Finally, when fleeing his lab as the police approach, Fagen chides, “Careful what you carry, ‘cause The Man is wise. You are still an outlaw in their eyes.” Musically, the song never resolves to the tonic except in the turnaround after each chorus, and in the coda. Initially this lends an artificial energy to the arrangement. Later, however, the rhythm section feels continually on the run, perfectly underscoring the story line.