Steely Dan: “Pretzel Logic”
Let’s set the way-back machine to 1974, shall we?
It was the year of an oil embargo, a deadly spring outbreak of tornadoes and the only resignation of a sitting president of the United States.
A grim time for the history books, to be sure. But the music circulating that year held considerably more hope. It marked a commercial rebirth for two of the era’s most esteemed women artists while prompting the breakthrough of a third. It welcomed musical ambassadors from Sweden and Jamaica. And, by year’s end, it saw a storied New York band dissolve into a studio collective whose music would help define the decade.
Here is a roundup of 10 landmark recordings from a time of turbulence, albums that in 2024 are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their release.
The cracks of pop convention came tumbling down in huge chunks on Steely Dan’s third album. Though still a working a quintet, the songwriting team of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker cemented control. The songs were shorter, sleeker and, oftentimes, weirder than before, reflecting a jazzier pop stride. The record earned a major radio hit with “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” and offered considerable room for auxiliary singer Michael Mcdonald to roam. The band halted all touring after “Pretzel Logic” and morphed into what was basically a rotating arsenal of studio pros with Fagen and Becker at the helm.
Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot strums backstage at the Westbury Music Fair in New York on Sept. 8, 1987.
“The Heart of Saturday Night” may seemed to some as nothing more than a dark, boozy nightclub act. True, a stage character was at work. But the songs fueling that persona were packed with poetic imagery both grimy and glistening. A masterwork. triggered by one of the unlikeliest hits in pop history, 1976’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” “Sundown” fell quietly in the middle, a 1974 album that produced two Top 10 singles — “Carefree Highway” and the album’s bluesy and cautionary title tune. Much of record was indistinguishable from the other six albums Lightfoot released between 1970 and 1976. All were sterling mixes of country, folk and country familiarity.