No static at all: Steely Dan Durham-bound

Coming our way in less than two months, says Pollstar: 1970s FM radio icons Steely Dan, scheduled to play the Durham Performing Arts Center on June 9. That's a far more intimate venue than our big outdoor shed, where the duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker played on their previous spins through the Triangle.

Below, an interview with Fagen in advance of Steely Dan's last show around these parts.

The Steely influence
By David Menconi, News & Observer
July 21, 2000

On the one hand, Steely Dan seems hopelessly out of step with contemporary music. The 50-something duo of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (augmented by the crackest of crack session musicians) comprise a self-contained songwriting entity where the playing's the thing -- at a time when the charts are overrun with Mousketeer karaoke, sung by videogenic teenage pinup dolls almost young enough to be their grandchildren.

Nevertheless, Steely Dan's cynical, deceptively smooth pop-jazz has proven to be influential. All Saints, Lord Tariq, Coolio, De La Soul and Puff Daddy are among the hip-hop artists who have mined the group's classic '70s catalog for samples. And Steely Dan is also a direct sonic influence on the likes of Beck, Meshell Ndegeocello and Joe Henry.

There remains, however, one particular kind of acknowledgement that Steely Dan has never received: the multi-artist tribute record. The closest thing to a Steely Dan tribute album is the soundtrack to the new Jim Carrey movie, "Me, Myself & Irene" (Elektra Records), on which eight of 15 tracks are covers of Steely Dan by contemporary acts. Among the highlights are Chapel Hill trio Ben Folds Five's plaintive "Barry-town," Ivy's suave "Only A Fool Would Say That" and Wilco's "Any Major Dude Will Tell You."

But don't expect a real Steely Dan tribute album anytime soon -- at least not one with any involvement from Becker and Fagen themselves.

"I, um, don't know if we're really... prepared to receive a tribute at this time," says Fagen, calling from a tour stop in Chicago -- and using a tone of voice that suggests he was just asked how he'd like to have a gold watch.

"Probably against our better interests, Walter and I tend to think of our songs as not very good cover tunes," Fagen continues. "They're in a pretty personal style, very dependent on the arrangement and attitude and all that, and they're hard to cover. The best covers of our songs that I've heard tend to be instrumental jazz covers, which I think is a better way to go with it. Unless someone really transmogrifies a song into something else, I don't really see the point."

Just in time for a new millennium comes the first set of new Steely Dan songs in 20 years, the aptly titled "Two Against Nature" (Giant/Warner Bros. Records). Like all Steely Dan studio product, "Two Against Nature" pairs soothing, high-gloss surfaces with nasty undercurrents -- mostly ruminations on growing old.

"It's the idea that everyone is fighting nature and the aging process," Fagen says of the album title. "It's kind of an axiom that when you get to be our age, you can't have a rock 'n' roll band anymore. So we're fighting nature in that sense. There's also the idea of art versus nature. Sometimes I think artists don't do well in nature, and they have to invent their own reality."

As for specifics, the songs on "Two Against Nature" detail the randy misadventures of a couple of aging dons on the make. The songs are overrun with "ripe and ready" young "sole-eyed creatures," who make Fagen's lead-voice protagonist "sizzle like an isotope." Oddly enough, the voodoo-suffused title track is the one song on the album that's least concerned with sexual matters.

"I wonder how we missed that," Fagen says drily. "If I'd known that, I would've put some in. But there's a lot of voodoo imagery in that particular song. We're kind of elevating ourselves to a heroic position. Our fans are being troubled with demons of aging, insanity; and we're offering up ourselves as someone who can deal with it -- kind of a 'Ghostbusters' theme, if you will, the idea that art can be curative. Listen to this, maybe it will cheer you up."