When their Latin-infused breakout single, “Do It Again,” hit the airwaves in late 1972, Steely Dan were for a moment mistakenly regarded as a chill combo of California natives.
“We didn’t really care what coast they thought we were from,” says Walter Becker, who had recently arrived in Los Angeles from New York City alongside his songwriting partner, Donald Fagen.
“Although we did make a stab at [the] L.A. lifestyle,” Fagen says. “We bought cars, which is something you have to do when you’re there. We were coming out of a deadly New York winter, having never really experienced any tropical weather before. So, to us, it was great the first couple of years.”
“But we did continue to write songs about various sorts of New Yorky people once we got to California,” Becker says.
“Or,” Fagen adds, “songs about Los Angeles from an East Coast perspective.”
This exchange comes early in Reelin’ in the Years: The Steely Dan Story, a two-part, career-spanning audio documentary that aired on BBC Radio in 2000, shortly after the release of Two Against Nature. In the first half, presented here, Becker and Fagen discuss their meeting, the formation of the band, and the creation of the albums Can’t Buy a Thrill, Countdown to Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic, and Katy Lied.
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The doc covers some well-trodden territory (Bard, Burroughs, etc.), along the way flattening a couple beats of the story, particularly Steely Dan’s transition from a more traditional touring outfit to a studio-bound enterprise. Somehow the Brit narrator twice—twice!—mispronounces “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo.” Still, the piece is worth a listen, as Becker and Fagen manage to add fresh color and texture to even the most rote chapters of the band’s bio.
“We were sort of emboldened by the fact that we hadn’t been stopped yet,” Becker says of the decision to dust off a few of their Brill Building–era tunes, including “Charlie Freak,” “Barrytown,” and “Parker’s Band,” for Pretzel Logic. “And we felt that, at least as far as recording went, we could sort of do whatever we wanted to do, and hopefully the audience would justify us in some way.”
A more perfectly distilled expression of the Becker-Fagen attitude toward pop music-making may not exist.
