In early February 2000, the radio host Nicole Sandler found herself in the friendly confines of River Sound, Donald Fagen’s recording studio in Manhattan, interviewing Fagen and Walter Becker for SFX Radio Network’s “world premiere broadcast” of Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature.
“That interview was certainly one of the high points of my career,” Sandler recently told me. “They were charming and extremely funny.” She was kind enough to allow Expanding Dan to publish both the program that aired in the days before the album’s release (see the embedded file below) and the unedited audio of the interview (presented above).
“Donald and I, in discussing this record as we were making it, we sort of reconceptualized Steely Dan as just a blues band,” Becker says, “sort of a fancy blues band.” Prior to that, he reveals, “We were toying with the idea of doing an all-country album.” (From that toying came the seed of the rural farce “Cousin Dupree,” the only single from Two Against Nature.)
Becker and Fagen also discuss the role of long walks and rental videos in their songwriting process, Steely Dan’s feud with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, their turn as Web 1.0 humorists, and much more.
