An interlude: Living the Steely Dan Dream
My morning with Don, Walt, and Katie Couric in 2000
Before Bach came Steely Dan, at least for me. There were drawbacks.
You know what’s not sexy? Being a teenager, grooving to smooth songs about the discomfort of being in your thirties and feeling out of touch with teenagers.
But I really wasn’t connecting to teenagers! Nirvana and Pearl Jam did not sing for me, and nor did the early hip-hop records winning over suburban New Jersey. I caved to my friends during my bar mitzvah party and requested that the DJ play Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” fooling absolutely no one.
It was all survivable, but my connection to Steely Dan cast me as a kind of fake outsider, similar to the characters in the Dan songs themselves. The ambient airs of dejection and cynicism, aspirational slickness undercut by persistent anxiety, a veneer of indifference masking aggression and lonliness… You were somehow pulling something over on everyone else. It felt gross, and aspirational.
Somehow the songs were also beautiful, even moving. Becker and Fagen’s genius emerges in the rare and extraordinary moments of pathos and longing that undercut their bitter vignettes. These losers wanted to be understood, and loved. That was me, too:
“Perhaps I'll find in my head / What my heart is saying”
“I went searching for the song you used to sing to me”
“My life is boiling over / It's happened once before / I wish someone would open up the door”
I recently lived out every Dan fan’s fantasy: a smart and curious person asking for my opinions about Steely Dan. I cannot stress enough that this just does not happen.
, of the most excellent Expanding Dan blog, invited me to reflect on my experience at the band’s Today Show performance, 25 years ago this week. He only lightly edited my rambling words, bless him.
I always had mixed feeling about Steely Dan. Musically they're so great, so far beyond most Rock and Rollers. But I was turned off enough by the cynicism and the slickness of the production values that I never really felt much of a desire to to delve into their catalog.
You captured the band’s ethos really well -- not easy to do -- and as well as the description of the state of the nation 25 years ago, thanks.