Jazz chops, hang-ups, and assholes
In search of the Village Voice classified ad that gave rise to Steely Dan
One afternoon last spring, while poring over an issue of the Village Voice that was more than a half century old, I came across a classified ad that struck me as a premise straight out of the Becker-Fagen songbook.
“Un-discovered, un-established, talented sculptor enjoys Provincetown and the inspiring Cape Cod beaches in winter—only it gets too inspiring and too lonely,” read the small black type. “Need a chick that don’t talk too much, that needs the winter seascape, that will sit for my next work, to come along. Weekends mostly.”
Such amusingly icky scenarios, and the characters who dwell within them, were Steely Dan’s bailiwick. This one might have been right at home on Two Against Nature, whose Dean & DeLuca mug runneth over with sharply drawn portraits of romantically ineffectual egotists.
The creepy Cape Cod sculptor was a welcome distraction. For the better part of two days, I’d been tediously combing through the archives of New York City’s pioneering alternative weekly newspaper in pursuit of what increasingly seemed like a classic rock white whale: the 50-plus-year-old classified ad that had become a cornerstone of the creation myth of Steely Dan.
In the sometimes shadowy annals of the Dan, the Village Voice advertisement is considered a kind of sacred foundational text. So why, I wondered, had no one outside the group ever laid eyes on it?