Looks like today morning is a spontaneous tribute to Steely Dan. Found a booklet in a box set which I had bought maybe 5 years ago. I hadn’t listened to it much after I bought it since I had lent it to a friend. Recently I got the box set back from him as I felt the desire to get into their groove. The opening page of the booklet is a letter from Donald Fagan and Walter Becker to Andy McKaie, the vice president of MCA Records at that time. Am reproducing the whole letter since it hit some nice chords, hopefully neither the band nor MCA will mind (especially since am not getting paid for this).
The letter opens with a quote from Andy Mckaie made earlier about the band – “ Oy, Vey!! These boys are really off-the-wall, so enjoy ‘em before all the dough they’re making straightens ‘em out. It happens to the best of the sickies, y’know.”
And the letter is as follows:
Dear Andy:
Greetings and salutations from the heart of the hinterlands! The Steely Dan tour ’93 is in its last two weeks and the long promised historical material for the fabulous Steely Dan box set is likewise in the final editorial phase. Last minute tweaks and adjustments are being dialled in even as we speak. At this time it is our great personal pleasure to present you with the finished biographical notes for the long-awaited Steely Dan box set. Allow us to make, for your edification and for that of the loyal fandom, the following small but-not-i-hope-insignificant points:
1. We were of course only having a little joke last week when we pretended not to recognize you at the splendid MCA Platinum record presentation in the men’s room at the Greek Theatre in LA when Walter said to you. “Ha! So we meet at last!”, he was simply commenting on the fact that you were the last of the MCA bigwigs present that day to be introduced to us at that particular function. Could we ever forget our previous meeting in the Auxiliary Echo Chamber at Village Recorder, or the splendid plaque you gave us that day, or the fine photo of that historic meeting, later published in Billboard magazine for all the world to see? I don’t think so.
2. We are truly sorry about the delay in collecting and editing this material. We know you’ve been desperate to front-load the retail racks in time for the Christmas crush. Unfortunately, we are dependent on certain obsessive fans and demi-cultish publications for the old photos, reviews, ads, etc that will make this a fun package. After many hours of tiresome telephone conversations with these collectors, the big envelopes finally arrived, most often in rough condition, and/or stained with suspicious substances. We then began the tedious selection process, punctuated by frequent breaks to recuperate from the violent humiliation of seeing how we looked in 1971, ’72, ’75, ’78, ’81. Andy, just imagine how you might feel if photos of yourself from the ‘70s (big stoner grin, greasy hair down to your scrotum, wearing a psychedelic flower shirt, a cowhide vest, extra wide Britannia corduroy bell bottoms over shapeless Acme engineer boots) were plastered all over public square.
3. One realizes that the addition of outtakes, demos, remixes and so on can enhance a collection of frequently repackaged product. In our case, though, the shelf is pretty much empty. One decent find was a somewhat lame experimental version of “Everyone’s gone to the movies” that somehow survived storage in a damp, verminous locker for over twenty years. This might be added, not only for historical reasons, but also to give Flo and Eddie (who harmonized on the chorus) the proof they’ve worked with us in the “old days”. Furthermore the inclusion of this track (an unused B side from the original band’s first studio sessions, which predated “Can’t buy a thrill” by almost a year) might serve to curb the brisk trade in bootleg editions of this and various other demos, live recordings,etc, that now glut the “import “ racks of the very same stores that sell our legitimate albums.
4. By the way, please note that the above review fragment is excerpted from a piece you yourself wrote on one of our early albums. As you are now in a position to realize, you needn’t have worried back them that we would be ruined by all the money we were making because, at the time, we weren’t paid squat for our records and performances. Now, of course, quite well fixed, we most certainly have been ruined – but by time, not by money.
On the other hand we were heartily impressed by your understanding of the tradition of urban humor that nurtured our own sensibilities, as evidenced by the (Lenny) Bruce inflected lingo, the yiddishisms, etc in your piece. Reading this musty old quote allowed us to forget for a brief moment that we are even now, as another Bruce (Jay Friedman) once put it, “ Far from the city of class”. Trudging across the flyovers is the price the piper demands from fellows like us. Stranded and perplexed in our mid-forties, wildly eccentric if not actually crazy as dancing mice, we have thrown away reclusivity in a desperate late bid to insure our financial well – being. Casting our dignity aside, we plod from one sad town to the next, pitch our little tent and offer our crisp yet generous program to the locals, who inundate us with cheers and applause and generally set us awash in a sea of glory. The next day we are pelted with dungballs by the entertainment reviewers of the local rags, who are generally predisposed against our sauve, and dynamic renderings by years of hard drinking and coarse thinking, who are in many cases openly anti-Semitic, and who tend to view our humble efforts through the crusty lens of their own failed ambitions and dismal prospects for redemption. In spite of everything we carry on. We’re hoping the end of this tour will find us each perched on a modest mountan of moolah, down whose generous slopes we might coast smoothly past the millennium and on into the 21st century.
Finally, to you, our good friend and beloved colleague, a word of caution: like us, you’ve passed life’s halfway marker, you drift towards oblivion, wearing the bottoms of your trousers rolled up. Andy, don’t let the company rob you of your dreams. It happens to the best of sickies, y’know.
Yours always,
Donald and Walter.
Other quotes in the booklet on the band:
“America’s finest maybe rock non-band” – Robert Palmer, New York Times, 1977
“Steely Dan isn’t a group, its a concept” – Creem
“Steely Dan is the best band in America” – Richard Cromelin, Creem
“The lyrics baffle me. Maybe they know what they’re talking about but I can’t get a clue” – Stereo Review
“Steely Dan may not be the greatest American rock band (by a long shot) but it remains unquestionably the weirdest “ – Dave Marsh
“Its nice to hear the word ‘Muscatel’ in a song” – review quoted in Metal Leg
“ If there is one band around at the moment who deserve to make it without gimmicks, Steely Dan are they” – Melody Maker review of Countdown to Ecstasy
“They obviously sleep all day.. they don’t even own a scrabble game, as it turned out” – Rolling Stone
“ I was lucky enough to see them at Milwaukee’s Humpin’ Hannah’s that year (1972), a now somewhat unique experience, since they no longer tour, for fairly obvious reasons.” – Gary Peterson, Capital Times, Madison, WI
“ I like to think that Walter Becker and Donald Fagan have more class than that” – Mark Kmetzo, Scene
“Downer surrealism” - Frank Zappa
“ Dangerously close to the valium-jazz that has enervated so much of today’s pop music... enjoy it as it goes down, but be ready for the after effects” – Richard Cromelin, LA Times
“Rarely have such glossy petals concealed such sharp thorns” – Robert Palmer, NY Times
“They’re bound to either take off completely or become cult heroes. The latter seems more likely” – Downbeat
“They describe they’re song writing as junk sculpture and I won’t argue with that” – let it rock
“When we saw them live, they were awkward and uncomfortable” - Wayne Robbins and Georgia Christgau, Creem
“Finally they gave up” – Joseph Rose, Hit Parader. Guess he spoke too soonJ))))
“It would, I feel, be unfair to judge them on this display” – Melody Maker
“The Dan’s forte is more cha cha than churning chomp” – Jim Isaacs, Rolling Stone
“As is of natural consequence, the words have returned to the hermetic, collegiate inscrutability of’Can’t buy a thrill’” – Rolling Stone
“Some may find his arcane references bewildering, but to others it is food for thought” – anonymous
“Over the course of five albums, Steely dan have turned from being shrewd shapers of fetching hits to becoming insular craftsman of arcane concepts, a motion widely regarded as a sophisticated progression, but just as often interpreted as illusory aberration” – olling Stone
“They’re too damned perfect” – Peter Rodman, Colorado Springs Sun
“...sounds like it was recorded ina hospital ward” – Robert Palmer
“In fact, most of the tracks on the album, just don’t make the grade. Later with repeated listening, they approach average” – Disc
“Are Becker and Fagen trying to be , of all things, sincere? And are they capable of it?..Steely Dan’s initial premises have outlived their usefulness” – Ken Emerson, Boston Phoenix
“This album worries me. It worries me because so much of the music here is so blatantly lacklustre compared with the exhilarating standards already set by Steely Dan. The lyrics are often perplexing and inconsequential, the musicmanship just as often tardily professional in the appreciably arch-sessionman style.” “...things may deteriorate further” – Nick kent