Last month, after the death of Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker, surviving partner Donald Fagen stated that he intended “to keep the music we created alive as long as I can,” and to honor that commitment, he’s announced an eight city Steely Dan tour beginning in Oklahoma on October 13th 2017.
The duo’s 1972 debut album, “Can’t Buy A Thrill,” dazzled the music world and gave rise to a generation of fervent fans, who love the bands subtlety, sophistication, complexity, finesse, perfection, and clarity.
Even though most people describe Steely Dan as a fusion of jazz and rock, Becker was au contraire! In 1974 he told Rolling Stone magazine “I’m not interested in a rock/jazz fusion. That kind of marriage has so far only come up with ponderous results. We play rock & roll but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz.”
“Hey 19,” one of the bands bigger hits, from the “Gaucho” album, (1980), has a memorable opening line: “way back when in ’67”– the year that Donald Fagen met Walter Becker.