I’ve never seen you lookin’ so fine (my funky one)
A collection for Steely Dan obsessives
Describing the “concept” behind his band Steely Dan, Donald Fagen tells writer Richard Cromelin, “It’s all on record, you know. It’s all there. Thereisn’t much to say about it.”
Perhaps even less helpfully, Mr. Fagen’s musical partner Walter Becker then chimes in, “Even if we could answer the question, you know that we would lie … lead you off the scent.”
Notoriously prickly when being interviewed about their heady, razormusic, Mr. Fagen and Mr. Becker actually end up bringing out the best in writers tasked with analyzing their work. The proof is in editor Barney Hoskyns’ “Major Dudes: A Steely Dan Companion.” The anthology features 41 pieces ranging from a “gee-whiz, check these guys out” 1972 rave, to reviews and interviews contemporary to album releases, to more recent career-spanning near-academic analyses.
As with any such collection, repetition proves a minor irritant. In doing their due diligence, writers mention Mr. Fagen and Mr. Becker meeting at Bard College 14 times, Gary Katz bringing them to ABC-Dunhill records 23. Even Ultimate Spinach, an early band of one of Steely Dan’s originalguitarists, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, gets discussed five times. Mr. Hoskyns could have trimmed some of this but probably not without losing the integrity of the articles as originallywritten.
Readers willing to soldier through retellings of the Dan’s early years get treated to thorough explanations of what makes the band so compelling and polarizing. Mr. Fagen, and especially Mr. Becker, can be withering, but both are also smart, funny and, on occasion, revealing. Mr. Cromelin’s 1975 NME piece and Michael Watts’ 1976 Melody Maker interview feature the two at their most open, even as they playfully bat around select queries. Their takes on their literary and musical aspirations make for compellingreading.
More than half of the writing in “Major Dudes” comes from after Steely Dan’s most-lauded output ended with the 1980 release of the album “Gaucho.” That proves surprisingly satisfying as Mr. Fagen, particularly,stops snarling so much and writers have better perspective on the band’s catalog of jazz-steeped rock.
The final three pieces in the book may be the strongest. Ian Penman ostensibly reviews Mr. Fagen’s book “Eminent Hipsters” but spends far more time parsing out the value and burden of his music being considered “hip.” Mr. Penman’s take on the Steely Dan cover of Duke Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo” delivers some of the book’s most insightful musical analysis. Dylan Jones’ “Icon: Donald Fagen” gives a thoughtful modern context to the Dan’s music, considering how hip-hop artists sample it, a producer like Mark Ronson has learned from it and singer Jonathan Richmanjust doesn’t get it.
David Cavanagh’s celebration of Mr. Becker after the band cofounder’s untimely 2017 death also shares the lesson that informs so much of Mr. Becker’s second act with Mr. Fagen: Steely Dan sometimes went “too far” in their musical quests only to ultimately realize that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”
As “Major Dudes” clearly points out, Dan fans recognize that the group can be hard to love. Editor Hoskyns dubs them “brainy and not terribly pretty,” and novelist Nick Hornby acknowledges the potentially off-putting nature of their “difficult chords and ironic detachment.”
Even for those resistant to Steely Dan’s subversive charms, “Major Dudes” will likely inspire streaming at least some of the music of the band’s salad days and reconsidering their late-period releases and semi-solo albums.
What better recommendation could there be for a book about music, especially one considering a band so resistant to discussing its own work?