One of the songs in heavy rotation on KRLA that summer was called "Do It Again," and it turned out to be from the debut album of a band called Steely Dan. I wasn't much of a fan of mainstream rock, but there was something about DIA that grabbed hold of me instantly and wouldn't let go. In a summer of sappy country-rock pop shlock blubbering, of badly strummed acoustic guitars, of gee-ain’t-we-cozmik hippie love songs, DIA cut right to the bone with its hypnotic, stripped-down riff, ominous Afro-Cuban percussion, and sneering vocal about a total loser who kept "going back, Jack, and do[ing] it again," gambling, whoring, drugging...This wasn't music for smug Laurel Canyon hillbillies. It spoke of, and to, my downtrodden soul, and to the universal despair of humanity in general, and it sounded totally different from anything I'd ever heard on AM before. I couldn't believe it was on the radio.
I began following the rather amusing career of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, the masterminds of what I soon discovered wasn’t a band called Steely Dan, but a posse of studio guns who came in, did their dirty deeds, were paid off, and disappeared. No share-a-joint-man band-bonding bonhomie here; Becker and Fagen were intent on writing songs and recording them, getting the closest-to-perfect results possible...not on making friends and being cool. And it was amazing how close they came to creating the ultimate popular music with this very un-’70s methodology! Their second album, “Countdown to Ecstasy”, their third, “Pretzel Logic,” and their fourth, “Katy Lied,” created an arc of perfection that, in my opinion, has never been approached by anyone else, much less bettered. I wasn’t into drugs, but this music came close to the drug experience: the craving, the seeking, the finding, then the unbearable ecstasy of fulfillment, feeling it washing over you, indescribable, orgasmic.
Throughout the ‘70s, more albums followed, culminating in 1978 with “Aja,” surely one of the most exquisite, multi-layered recordings ever made. Then some existential rumblings; Becker was accused of murdering his girlfriend by getting her hooked on heroin, on which she overdosed (he was acquitted in court); Fagen was undergoing such existential despair that he could no longer write, and was sitting in a room staring at the wall for hours on end. One final album, “Gaucho,” was released in 1980...then came years of silence, punctuated at odd intervals by two Fagen solo projects and one by Becker. Finally, when I and everyone else who loved these two crusty punks had basically decided that they would never again reunite and perform together, in the early ‘90s they did get together, fronting a band they called Steely Dan (with no "original" members besides themselves), did a great tour, and released a “live” CD (albums by now being passe) called “Alive in America,” with nearly every live track re-recorded in the studio...that perfectionism thing again. Then silence again until 2000...and the release of “Two Against Nature”, the first Steely Dan album in nearly a decade. Although it seemed a bit sluggish to me compared to their earlier work, I was happy for the boys, in a post-modernist, ironic sort of way, when it garnered them that year's Best Album Grammy and, by extension, twin honorary degrees from the Berklee School of Music. I saw them three times on that year’s tour, and truly enjoyed their live performances.
Finally, summer of 2003...their “Everything Must Go” CD was released. I bought it the day it was released, listened to it, felt nothing. It seemed dead, energy wise, emotionally. It was well performed, but the songs just didn’t grab me.
“They’ve lost their edge,” said Eric. He was right. I tried to listen to EMG again, and again, but could never get beyond its blank facade, its smooth, impenetrable exterior, its total lack of connection. Hearing it was like having sex with someone you had once been madly in love with, after the fire had burned out...it seemed pointless, unsatisfying...frustrating...and all the worse because you carried within you such vivid memories of the heights you had once been able to reach.
Nonetheless, when the boys announced they’d be touring this year, we bought tickets to see them at Jones Beach. John, his mother (a big Dan fan), and his sister (an even bigger Dan fan) came too. Eric, John, and I attended an official “Danfest” in the parking lot before the show, Eric and I drank “Zombies from the coco shell” as mentioned in the lyrics to the Dan song “Haitian Divorce,” and we watched with somewhat detached amusement as everybody at the Danfest pretended not to be dying to get backstage access and actually see, maybe even speak with, their antisocial heroes. I was a bit bemused...these were Dan fans? where was the iconoclasm, the independent thinking that made them appreciate the existential ironies dished out by this unlikely-to-succeed duo? This was like a high school party...everybody trying to one-up everyone else, trying desperately to be hip, hipper, hippest. Comical. Sad. Our hostess, who called herself “Lady Bayside,” after a character in an earlier Dan song, was exemplary; on her own initiative, she had provided plenty of liquor, lots of barbeque, hors d’oeuvres...above and beyond the call of duty. That was a noble gesture, ministering unto the faithful. So forget it...have a drink with them, crack a joke, then be off to the show.
We climbed endless stairs and took our seats for the concert. We were several tiers up, having been unable to afford the more pricey seats when we bought tickets. It wasn’t quite the nosebleed section, but from where we sat the stage looked like a scale replica in a dollhouse. Finally, a cool half hour past the official starting time, the band came out (minus Becker and Fagen) and played a jazz number, Ray Bryant's “Cubano Chant,” as an opener. Toward the end of the song there was a tidal wave of applause: peering down, I could make out two tiny figures taking the stage, one with a guitar, the other seating himself behind a Fender Rhodes piano. There they were, smaller than life, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Steely Dan.
They launched into “Aja”. The house sound was abysmal. I’d never heard worse live audio in my life. The mix was hopeless; the distortion was almost unbearable. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The performance was “off”. I listened carefully; it hurt to listen. It was like a cover band grinding through an obligatory peformance of a once-greatest hit. The fire was clearly gone, burned out...fire in the hole, nothing left to burn. The figures on the stage were nearly invisible, but huge video monitors on either side of the stage zeroed in on them, blowing them up into vast, dim caricatures in pixelated form. Fagen’s bushy hair was completely gray. Becker’s hairline had receded until his high forehead blazed forth under the lights. Both wore glasses, for correction more than for coolness. The music did not improve, and neither did the sound. By the third song, “Godwhacker,” I turned to Eric.
“I have to leave,” I said. He understood. We got up, squeezed past John, his sister Laura, and their mom, tried not to trip over the other legs in the row, apologizing. Out into the aisle, down the steps, out into the mezzanine, through the gates of no return, to the parking lot...somehow a dream dying, bit by bit, with each step.
In the morning I woke up with emotions as multi-layered and bittersweet as some of the songs on “Aja”. A loss of innocence? Hardly. Disappointment because the sound was so lousy? Well, maybe, but that was far from the whole story.
Against all odds, these two total misfits, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, doing everything the way you weren’t supposed to, had slipped the surly bonds of earth...had, if only for a brief time, managed to achieve perfection...no doubt because they were unaware of it themselves.
But that sort of perfection, which should never have happened in the first place, could not be sustained. So? What was I feeling so bleak about? The fact that the old Zeitgeist was gone? The fact that I had come to need new injections of the “Dan” drug ever so often, and the dealer had evidently pulled up stakes, gone out of business? The fact that we all get older, including our heroes, and it’s hard to tell what’s worse, looking at them and knowing they were old and gray and tired, or realizing that you were getting that way yourself?
I could suddenly understand why Donald Fagen had spent all that time sitting silently in that room, staring at the wall. Highs are temporary. Perfection is ecstasy, but it can’t sustain itself. Sure, you can make ironic jokes about it, but the truth is, in the algebra of need, you can’t buy a thrill.
Everything must go.
