Much of this FAQ was compiled and written by Metal Leg editor Pete Fogel ... ... with invaluable assistance from Tony Favia, Scott Silver, and Bill Pascador



First, let's dispatch with a few perennial favorites:

Did anyone in Steely Dan ever attend the University of Alabama?

No. Is [Insert Name Of Character In Song] really about [Insert Real Person]?

Who knows? Not us. Where did Steely Dan get their name?

Read below. Chevy Chase??

Read below. Squonk?? Kirschwasser?? Berberian???

You may find this fan's "Steely Dan Dictionary" helpful. What are the singers singing in "Show Biz Kids"?

Answered in this interview. This guy [whomever] says he was in your band. Was he?

Search the database for his name in the All Music Guide. How do I contact...

Our contact information is here. I have another question...

Try reading or text-searching below for an answer. Then glance at our siteguide for a relevant section or try searching the entire site for keyword(s) relevant to your question. About 95% of the questions emailed to the site can be answered in a few moments using one or more of these methods.

For a condensed history, see the SD Timeline

The Pre-Dan Era

Donald Fagen is born in Passaic, New Jersey on January 10, 1948. Walter Becker is born in New York City on February 20, 1950. They both grew up as disaffected suburban youths, going to school in the daytime and listening to the music of their idols Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane at night. They both feel an affinity with the "Jazz Life." Donald Fagen meets Walter Becker at Bard College in Annandale-On Hudson, New York in 1967. Fagen, a piano player, hears someone playing blues guitar in a student lounge and decides he must introduce himself. He discovers Becker playing a red Epiphone guitar and finds that they share the same interests in music and ironic senses of humor. A partnership is born. They form several college bands including "The Leather Canary" (which fellow Bard student Chevy Chase sat in with a couple of times) and "The Don Fagen Trio." Fagen and Becker also start to write songs together. Fagen graduates Bard in 1969 with an English degree. Becker also leaves Annandale. The two of them move to Brooklyn, New York and decide to peddle their songs at the famous Brill Building in Manhattan. They don't meet with much success, but they make an important early connection with Kenny Vance of Jay and the Americans. Vance helps them record some demos of their early material and gets them some odd jobs including doing the soundtrack for the low-budget Richard Pryor film "You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It." Vance also gets Becker and Fagen gigs as back-up musicians on Jay and the Americans' 1970-71 tour. Jay Black disaffectionately labels Donald and Walter as "Starkweather and Manson." Fagen and Becker also meet another aspiring producer, Gary Katz, in New York. Shortly afterwards, Katz gets a job as staff producer at ABC Records in Los Angeles and also secures two staff songwriter positions for Fagen and Becker. With the hopes of making it big as songwriters, Donald and Walter move to L.A. in November 1971.

The Early Steely Dan Era

After realizing that the songs they were writing were too sophisticated for the other artists on the ABC roster (Three Dog Night, Dusty Springfield), Donald and Walter secretly begin to put together their own band with Gary Katz as their producer. They enlist Denny Dias as a guitarist, whom Becker and Fagen had met earlier in New York through an advertisement Dias placed in "The Village Voice" newspaper, reading "Looking for keyboardist and bassist. Must have jazz chops!" Dias flies out to the west coast to help the boys put together the band. "Can't Buy A Thrill" With Fagen on keyboards and vocals and Becker on bass, they decide to sign up guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and drummer Jim Hodder. With the core band recruited, Donald and Walter need a name for their group. Since both of them were avid readers of 1950's "Beat" literature, they decided to name the band "Steely Dan" after a dildo in William Burroughs' "Naked Lunch." The band begins rehearsing after work in a cramped, abandoned office in the ABC building and begins recording with Roger (The Immortal) Nichols, a former nuclear engineer, as their recording engineer, a relationship that continues to this day. Since Fagen was uncomfortable as the lead singer, they also decided to sign up vocalist David Palmer as the front man. Since Palmer's vocal style didn't convey the attitude that Becker and Fagen wanted for most of the songs, and they also needed to finish the album, Donald reluctantly sang lead vocals on all but three songs on their debut album, which they named "Can't Buy A Thrill." An interesting portent of things to come, however, is the credited use of outside studio musicians such as Elliot Randall and Jerome Richardson on several solos. The album is released in October 1972 without much fanfare, but surprises everyone by spawning a runaway hit "Do It Again" which reaches #6 on the charts. ABC pressures the band to do a quick tour and Becker and Fagen reluctantly acquiesce. A second hit "Reelin' In The Years" emerges and reaches #11 on the charts. "Can't Buy A Thrill" becomes a gold record and peaks at #17 on the charts. As the band begins to record their next album, Fagen takes over on all lead vocals and David Palmer leaves the group. "Countdown to Ecstasy" Following the surprising commercial success of "Can't Buy a Thrill", Steely Dan come under tremendous pressure from ABC Records to continue touring to promote the album, while at the same time recording a new one. Consequently, the songs for their second album are hurriedly recorded in between tour stops during 1973. Fagen and Becker later said this gave the recorded songs a live kind of feel, since they were in the studio with basically their touring band. The songs that become the "Countdown to Ecstasy" album, released in July 1973, thus are more stretched-out, as they are in the live settings of the time. "Showbiz Kids" is the first single to be released, and despite Rick Derringer's amazing slide guitar work, it only reaches #61 on the charts. It was speculated later that the expletive used in the song did not popularize it with radio program directors. "My Old School", an homage to their days at Bard, also does not fare well as a single and peaks at #63. Despite the lack of a hit single, "Countdown" receives excellent reviews and spawns such radio favorites as "Bodhisattva" and "My Old School", with the latter becoming a classic encore sing-along for their live shows in the 90's. "Pretzel Logic" Under ABC's pressure to produce more hit singles, Fagen and Becker write some shorter songs for their next album "Pretzel Logic." This album is released in March, 1974 and spawns their biggest hit, "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" which reaches #3 in March 1974. Becker and Fagen are expanding on their practice of bringing in other studio musicians as they increasingly find the core band unable to achieve the sound they want on all of their songs. One of the session men is Jeff Porcaro and a long and fruitful relationship with Fagen and Becker begins. A second tour is arranged including Porcaro as second drummer, a new Katz discovery Michael McDonald on back-up vocals and keyboards, and another vocalist Royce Jones (Ambrosia). While this band was musically superior to the one on the first tour, the rigors of tour travel and opening for heavy metal bands is not to Fagen and Becker's liking. After a July 4, 1974 show at the Santa Monica Civic Center in California, they swear off touring for the immediate future and decide to focus on writing and recording. This prompts Baxter, who loves the road life, to leave and join the Doobie Brothers. Jim Hodder also quits as "Pretzel Logic" goes gold and reaches #8 on the charts.

The Later Steely Dan Era

"Katy Lied" Happily reborn as a strictly-studio unit, Fagen and Becker begin work on a new album with the help of Porcaro and McDonald. With Baxter gone, Becker begins to add more guitar work to his bass playing. Other contributors to the new album are more from the jazz world than the rock world and include alto saxophonist Phil Woods and guitarist Larry Carlton (Crusaders). "Katy Lied" is released in March 1975 to critical raves, but the closest thing to a hit single is "Black Friday" which reaches the #37. Unlike ABC, this doesn't faze Donald and Walter who could care less about the chart status of their singles. However, Gary Katz later regrets that he didn't suggest "Bad Sneakers" as a single. Despite the success of "Katy Lied" (Gold sales status, Chart peak at #13), Fagen and Becker are anguished by the sound fidelity of the album due to the faulty tape machine that they had used during recording. They refuse to listen to the album in its final form. Another major change in the structure of the band occurs when Michael McDonald follows Baxter to join the Doobie Brothers as the lead vocalist, prompting Gary Katz to comment, "Michael's role as a backup singer is the ultimate waste of talent." McDonald would, however, continue to surface on later Steely Dan albums. "The Royal Scam" Becker and Fagen return to the studio to work on their next album, the first in which Steely Dan is officially billed as a duo. "The Royal Scam" is released in May 1976 and turns out to be known as their best "guitar album," mostly due to the terrific work of Larry Carlton. The highlights for most fans and album rock radio stations are "Kid Charlemagne" and "Don't Take Me Alive." But again, there is no big hit single, although "Haitian Divorce" becomes a hit in England. With the ability to attract session men like Carlton on guitar and Chuck Rainey on bass, Becker scales back his own performance on the albums. "The Royal Scam" also features "The Fez," the only Steely Dan song with a third credited writer, Paul Griffin, who also plays organ on the song. "The Royal Scam" also goes gold and peaks at #25 on the charts. "Aja" ABC Records, consistent in their pressure for hit singles and a tour, drive Becker and Fagen back into the studio. The end result, "Aja", is released in September 1977 and features their longest and jazziest compositions to date. Fagen and Becker drafted even more giants of the jazz world including Joe Sample, Wayne Shorter and Tom Scott to execute their increasingly complex songs. "Aja" becomes their first platinum album and reaches #3 on the album chart, trailing only mega-sellers Fleetwood Mac's "Rumors" and Billy Joel's "The Stranger." "Peg" hits #11, "Deacon Blues" hits #19 and "Josie" hits #26 on the singles charts. Fagen and Becker also agree to tour again, but it is quickly aborted after the first rehearsal when members of the backup band started comparing pay scales and started griping over who was making more money. In February 1978 "Aja" wins a Grammy award for Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording. In July 1978, Fagen and Becker release the title track to the movie "FM" and it reaches #22 on the singles charts. "Gaucho" With the phenomenal success of "Aja," Donald and Walter are under considerably less pressure to release new material quickly. ABC releases a Greatest Hits package in November 1978 which includes one unreleased track "Here At The Western World." This collection also goes platinum and reaches #30 on the charts. Tiring of the L.A. scene, Becker and Fagen move back to New York to start recording their new album. While recording "Gaucho", Becker and Fagen had to endure various misfortunes which delay the release date: Becker is hit by a car, one of their favorite new tracks "The Second Arrangement" is accidentally erased by an assistant recording engineer, and there is a dispute over which record company has the rights to their forthcoming album. Becker and Fagen had already signed a new contract with Warner Brothers, but ABC (now owned by MCA) claims that they are still owed one more album. MCA wins the contract dispute and then decides to increase the album's list price to $9.98, one dollar more than all the other albums. Donald and Walter continue to hold back the album while they unsuccessfully fight the price increase. Finally, "Gaucho" is released in November, 1980. "Gaucho" follows in the footsteps of "Aja" stylistically and continues to use even more jazz session men. The album hits #9 on the charts and also goes platinum. "Hey Nineteen" hits #10 and "Time Out Of Mind" hits #22 on the singles charts.

The Post-Dan Era

After the release of "Gaucho" Fagen and Becker felt exhausted both musically and personally. In their minds, they reached their creative peak with "Aja" which made the recording of "Gaucho" an arduous challenge. In June, 1981, not long after Warner Bros. announced it would be releasing the next Steely Dan album, Fagen and Becker called it quits. Becker retreats to Hawaii, Fagen continued to work with Katz and Nichols and released his critically acclaimed solo album, "The Nightfly" in October, 1982. While "The Nightfly" also achieved gold sales status and peaked at #11 on the charts, Fagen quietly moved into semi-retirement in New York City. In the mid-1980's Becker reappeared, this time producing albums for acts like China Crisis, Michael Franks, and Rickie Lee Jones with Roger Nichols as engineer. Rumors of a Steely Dan reunion flew across the country in 1987 as he and Fagen played on model Rosie Vela's debut album, "Zazu," a Gary Katz production. Afterwards, they also attempted to write (sometimes by satellite telephone linking Maui and New York) songs for a new Steely Dan album, but they didn't come up with anything they really liked. Giving up on reforming Steely Dan, Walter then focused on producing jazz albums in the late '80s and early '90s for artists on the Triloka and Windham Hill record labels. After attempting and scrapping some songs for a follow-up to "The Nightfly" in the early '80s, Fagen also resurfaced from time-to-time, working on some movie and literary projects. He did a song "True Companion" in 1981 for the animated feature "Heavy Metal" and "Century's End" in 1988 for the sound track of "Bright Lights, Big City." Donald also contributed a semi-regular movie music column to the entertainment magazine, "Premiere." [Some of DF's columns can be found here. Ed.] In the late 80's and early 90's, Fagen, also having given up the idea of reforming Steely Dan, started exploring other musical styles, most notably soul music. He started making low-profile live appearances at some small New York clubs to sit in and play 60's soul music with a couple of bar bands. At the same time, he started participating in some soul music songwriter tributes called New York Soul. As these songwriter showcases became more popular and Fagen became more comfortable with performing live again, he founded the New York Rock&Soul Review, and recruited Michael McDonald, Phoebe Snow, and Boz Scaggs as well as soul legends Charles Brown and Chuck Jackson to play the music they grew up with and bring it to a new audience. Since each of the Review artists realized that they also had a constituency for their own music, they started peppering up the show with a few of their own hits. And that meant that Donald Fagen would start performing some of the Old Steely Dan songs again.

The New Steely Dan Era