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Steely Dan |
- Britannica - Wikipedia -
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Oct 12, 2022: New Yorker: My Unlikely Connection to Steely Dan
Whenever I see Steely Dan referenced anywhere, I experience a nonsensical jolt of recognition and identification, and never forget it. “Any Steely Dan come in?” the receptionists at a radio station ask in a Joan Didion essay. I once spent hours locating a video clip in which Stephen Colbert announces, in a bit on “The Late Show,” that he knows the lyrics to every Steely Dan song. John Mulaney also happens to be a huge Steely Dan fan. In a scene from the cartoon “The Fairly OddParents,” Vicky, the evil babysitter, has a boyfriend named Ricky, who dumps her at the end of the episode. She yells, “Ricky! Don’t lose my number! You don’t have to call nobody else!” May 14, 2020: UDiscover: Steely Dan
The jazz rock duo founded by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen found great commercial and critical success with their unique sound Sept 3, 2017: Rolling Stone: Steely Dan: 10 Essential Songs
“IT WOULDN’T BOTHER me at all,” Steely Dan‘s Walter Becker told Rolling Stone‘s Cameron Crowe in 1977, “not to play on my own album.” He was stating a fact – Steely Dan famously staffed their sessions with the finest studio musicians they could find – but he was also summing up the weird oblique approach to rock-stardom shared by him and his longtime songwriting partner Donald Fagen. July 11, 2014: AzCentral: Steely Dan essential singles: Reelin' in the Years
Jazz-loving soft-rock perfectionists Donald Fagen and Walter Becker topped some of the '70s' most sophisticated pop recordings with lyrical portraits of life on the dark side, casting a cynical eye with black humor and pathos on the American Dream as it was being acted out on a cocaine binge in the City of Angels. And that may not sound much like a recipe for infiltrating mainstream sensibilities, but Steely Dan were wildly popular — while almost never touring! — thanks to singles as indelible as "Do It Again," "Reelin' in the Years," "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," "Peg" and "Hey Nineteen." 
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January 10, 1948: Donald Fagen is born in Passaic, New Jersey.
February 29, 1950: Walter Becker was born in New York, New York.
November 18, 1972: "Do It Again" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100.
February 20, 1974:
Pretzel Logic was released on by ABC Records. It was written by principal band members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. They recorded the album at The Village Recorder in West Los Angeles with producer Gary Katz and prominent Los Angeles-based studio musicians. Pretzel Logic was the first Steely Dan album to feature Walter Becker on guitar. The album was a commercial and critical success upon its release. Its hit single "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" helped restore Steely Dan's radio presence after the disappointing performance of their 1973 album Countdown to Ecstasy. Pretzel Logic was reissued in 2000 to retrospective acclaim from critics. 
May 31, 1973: "Can't Buy a Thrill" it was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipments of 500,000 copies in the US.
July 5, 1974: Steely Dan's last tour performance was at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in California.
October 23, 1991: Becker attended a concert by New York Rock and Soul Revue, co-founded by Fagen and producer/singer Libby Titus (who was for many years the partner of Levon Helm of The Band and would later become Fagen's wife), and spontaneously performed with the group.
April 10, 2011: Longtime Steely Dan studio engineer Roger Nichols died of pancreatic cancer.
September 3, 2017: Becker died from complications of esophageal cancer.
October 13, 2017: Steely Dan played its first concert following Becker's death in Thackerville, Oklahoma. |
