Donald Fagen
“Donald Fagen’s often called ‘snarky’ because of the lyrics he writes, but for me it’s all about the music. What I like about prog is that it lets me develop ideas in different ways and, if I’m lucky, push some boundaries, and he’s done that all his life but in an almost subversive, deceptive way.
“There’s a lot of groove in the music, but underneath it the song structures and chord progressions are really innovative. On Aja, the track Peg is catchy and infectious but it’s really clever structurally. There’s a YouTube video where Donald talks about how he extrapolated it from a simple 12-bar idea. Gaucho is the coolest album ever made, but my favourite Steely Dan record is The Royal Scam, which takes a rock band and transitions into jazz and jazz rock, and it’s also laden with funk. There are so many interesting ideas on there.
“He’s always been an ideas person, and that’s what makes people stand out from the crowd. He looks at things in a different, left-field way. There have been times when I’ve been writing for IQ and have wondered: ‘What would Donald do?’”