49 Fun Facts About Steely Dan

Donald Fagen first approached Walter Becker in 1967 after overhearing him practise which instrument in a campus café?

Electric guitar. Fagen thought the playing sounded professional and contemporary, walked in and asked, 'Do you want to be in a band?'

Steely Dan took its name from an object in which William S. Burroughs novel?

Naked Lunch. In the novel 'Steely Dan' is the name of a dildo, so a band famous for its polish and sophistication has gone through life named after a sex toy.

Which future comedy star played drums in one of Becker and Fagen's college bands?

Chevy Chase. He kept time for a campus band of theirs called the Leather Canary and stuck with drumming for a while: a later group of his, Chamaeleon Church, cut one psychedelic album in 1968 and split.

What was the title of Steely Dan's 1972 debut album?

Can't Buy a Thrill. Its two hit singles, 'Do It Again' and 'Reelin' In the Years', were both sung by Fagen, a reluctant frontman who took the job because the band had found no singer it liked better.

The title of Steely Dan's best-selling album, Aja, is pronounced like the name of which continent?

Asia. Fagen said he took the title from a Korean woman called Aja, who had married the brother of one of his high-school friends.

Which 1974 single was Steely Dan's most successful, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100?

Rikki Don't Lose That Number. Its opening riff is nearly identical to the intro of jazz pianist Horace Silver's 'Song for My Father'.

Steely Dan's Two Against Nature won the Album of the Year Grammy over which two heavyweights?

Eminem and Radiohead. Two men in their fifties, with their first studio album in twenty years, beat The Marshall Mathers LP and Kid A, and that album won four Grammys in all.

Two Steely Dan alumni, Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter and Michael McDonald, went on to join which band?

The Doobie Brothers. Baxter joined them first, and when their singer Tom Johnston fell ill mid-tour it was Baxter who proposed calling in his old Steely Dan colleague McDonald.

Steely Dan session players Jeff Porcaro and David Paich went on to form which band?

Toto. The two session men went on to write that band's biggest hit together: 'Africa' is credited to David Paich and Jeff Porcaro.

Which Steely Dan song did Kanye West sample on his 2007 track 'Champion'?

Kid Charlemagne. Becker and Fagen at first refused the request, then relented after West sent them a letter explaining what the song meant to him.

Who produced all of Steely Dan's 1970s albums, having hired Becker and Fagen at ABC?

Gary Katz. He brought the pair to ABC as staff songwriters, and when their songs proved too tricky for the label's other acts, he suggested they form a band of their own.

Before Steely Dan, Becker and Fagen toured in the band of which 1960s vocal group?

Jay and the Americans. The future studio perfectionists spent about a year and a half on the road as hired hands for what was, by then, an oldies act.

Which star recorded the Becker/Fagen song 'I Mean to Shine' on a 1971 album?

Barbra Streisand. She cut the song for her album Barbra Joan Streisand, a rare win for two writers who were otherwise getting nowhere selling songs in New York.

Steely Dan's withdrawn 1972 debut single, later called 'stinko' by its writers, was titled what?

Dallas. ABC pulled it soon after release, deciding its country feel was the wrong introduction to the band, and it was the one release left off their 1993 box set.

Which original Steely Dan lead vocalist was fired in April 1973?

David Palmer. He took it well, saying a band with a singer as good as Fagen did not need a second one, and soon co-wrote Carole King's hit 'Jazzman'.

'My Old School', from Countdown to Ecstasy, is a direct homage to events at which institution?

Bard. The song recalls a 1969 drug raid on the campus that swept up Becker and Fagen; the local prosecutor who directed it, G. Gordon Liddy, later became notorious in the Watergate scandal.

In 'Deacon Blues', the narrator measures himself against a winning college football team from which state?

Alabama. Fagen's idea was that if a football powerhouse could carry a grand name like the Crimson Tide, the losers of the world deserved a grand name too.

Which 1975 Steely Dan album's sound was compromised by a faulty DBX noise-reduction system?

Katy Lied. The then-new dbx system malfunctioned, and although the record still went gold, Becker and Fagen said they were never satisfied with how it sounds.

Which guitarist's prominent playing makes 1976's The Royal Scam the band's most guitar-driven album?

Larry Carlton. He did far more than solo: he played on most of the tracks, wrote out the charts and acted as Becker and Fagen's go-between with the other session players.

Which Aja single, with Michael McDonald on backing vocals, was released first and hit No. 11?

Peg. Michael McDonald sang every part of its stacked chorus harmony himself, and the guitar solo was attempted by at least seven top session players before one take was kept.

Why was the planned tour supporting Aja cancelled?

The rehearsals simply ended; Becker's leg was shattered years later, by a Manhattan taxi during the Gaucho sessions.

Steely Dan wrote the title song for which 1978 film, a flop that still yielded a hit single?

FM. Becker and Fagen wrote it to sound big through cinema speakers and gave it an overdubbed string section, something they had done on a record only once before.

Which song from the Gaucho sessions was accidentally erased by an assistant engineer?

The Second Arrangement. Most of the nearly finished recording was wiped in 1979; the band tried to cut it again and gave up, and a rough mix surfaced decades later on a cassette kept by their engineer.

Which jazz composer sued Steely Dan over Gaucho's title track and was added as co-writer?

Keith Jarrett. Becker and Fagen admitted to an interviewer that his piece 'Long As You Know You're Living Yours' had been a heavy influence, and he ended up with a co-writing credit.

Which guitar star played the solo on 'Time Out of Mind' from Steely Dan's Gaucho?

Mark Knopfler. He was hired on the strength of his playing on Dire Straits' 'Sultans of Swing', and later described the session as long and gruelling.

After Steely Dan disbanded in 1981, Becker moved to Maui and described himself as what?

An avocado rancher. He added that he was also a 'self-styled critic of the contemporary scene', and he used the quiet years in Hawaii to give up drugs.

Fagen's 1982 solo debut, which yielded the hit 'I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)', was titled what?

The Nightfly. Unlike his cryptic band songs it is openly autobiographical, a look back at his suburban boyhood of late-night jazz disc jockeys and fallout shelters.

In 'Hey Nineteen', the ageing narrator is dismayed that his young date doesn't recognise which soul legend?

Aretha Franklin. The two have so little in common that he ends the song counting on Cuervo Gold tequila, not conversation, to make the night a good one.

Denny Dias's solo on Steely Dan's first hit, 'Do It Again', is played on which unusual instrument?

An electric sitar. Dias, one of the band's founding guitarists, took the first break on it, and Fagen followed with a solo on a 'plastic' Yamaha organ.

Becker's 1994 solo debut, co-produced by Fagen, was titled what?

11 Tracks of Whack. It returned a favour: a year earlier Becker had produced Fagen's solo album Kamakiriad, and that summer the two went back on the road together as Steely Dan.

Which guitarist, also inducted that night, joined Steely Dan on 'Do It Again' at the 2001 Rock Hall ceremony?

Brian May. Queen entered the Hall that same night, and when Steely Dan's turn came, Becker used the acceptance speech to open the floor to questions from the crowd.

Which 2003 album was Steely Dan's final studio release of new material?

Everything Must Go. For once the studio-bound pair chased a live feel with a small core band, and Becker sang lead on a Steely Dan studio album for the first time.

Fagen's touring supergroup with Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs, formed in 2010, was called what?

Dukes of September Rhythm Revue. It revived the trio's early-1990s New York Rock and Soul Revue, mixing the three men's own hits with a wide variety of covers.

Walter Becker died in September 2017 from complications of which illness?

Esophageal cancer. It was found at a routine check-up in the spring of 2017; Becker played his last show that May and died just over three months later.

Steely Dan's late-2023 concerts were as special guest on the farewell tour of which band?

The Eagles. The pairing had history: Steely Dan had name-checked the band in a lyric, and Glenn Frey said a line in 'Hotel California' was a playful nod back.

Steely Dan nicknamed their favourite added-tone chord, an add 2, what?

The mu major. Becker said it came from wanting to enrich a plain major chord without turning it into a 'jazz chord': keep the third and add a second right beside it.

Which rock guitar hero has called the solo on Steely Dan's 'Reelin' In the Years' his favourite of all time?

Jimmy Page. The solo he prized was not played by a member of the band at all, but by a session guitarist, Elliott Randall.

'Home at Last', from Aja, was inspired by which classical work?

The Odyssey. The singer stays lashed to the mast, like Homer's hero sailing past the Sirens, even though the danger on the rocks seems to have passed.

In 1977 Rolling Stone called Becker and Fagen 'the perfect musical' what 'for the Seventies'?

Antiheroes. Reviewer Michael Duffy tied the label to the duo's 'extreme intellectual self-consciousness', which he felt was starting to show its limits on Aja.

What was 'Wendel', which engineer Roger Nichols built for Gaucho?

A drum machine. Becker and Fagen were unhappy with the timing of even top session drummers, so Nichols built a sampling computer that could replay real drum hits with perfect precision.

Where did Becker and Fagen try to peddle their songs after leaving college in 1969?

The Brill Building. Kenny Vance, a singer with a production office there, took an interest and got them work on the soundtrack of a low-budget film featuring Richard Pryor.

Which jazz saxophonist at first declined to play on Aja's title track until a studio manager vouched for Steely Dan?

Wayne Shorter. Until then he had worked only on jazz records; Dick LaPalm, who ran the studio where Weather Report recorded, vouched for the pair, and Shorter played the track's extended solo.

Becker and Fagen found the saxophone soloist for 'Deacon Blues' by watching the house band of which talk-show host?

Johnny Carson. Tonight Show saxophonist Pete Christlieb drove over after a taping, recorded two takes and, by his own account, was gone in half an hour; the second take is the one on the record.

Aja's 'Black Cow' is named after a popular term for what?

A root beer float. Fagen said the song grew from one remembered scene, a woman downing a black cow in a small luncheonette, the moment a relationship fell apart.

Which drummer talked Becker and Fagen into letting him play his own trademark shuffle on Aja's 'Home at Last'?

Bernard Purdie. Told that the pair wanted no ordinary Motown or Chicago shuffle, he offered his own half-time beat, which they had never heard of, and they used it.

Which powerful rock manager was brought in to raise Becker and Fagen's public profile before Aja's release?

Irving Azoff. Fagen said they had been 'ready to go blissfully through life without a manager'; Azoff's pull with record stores then helped make Aja their fastest seller.

What reward did Fagen and Becker offer in 1999 for Aja's missing multitrack masters?

$600. The offer sat in the liner notes of the 1999 remaster: without the lost tapes for 'Black Cow' and the title track, a surround-sound mix of the album could not be made.

Which hip-hop trio built their 1989 single 'Eye Know' on a sample of a Steely Dan song?

De La Soul. The sample comes from the Aja album, and in the same registry year the Library of Congress chose both Aja and the trio's debut, 3 Feet High and Rising, for preservation.

Which guitarist finally recorded the keeper solo for an Aja single after a string of other players' attempts were rejected?

Jay Graydon. Becker and Fagen held on to the attempts they turned down, and in the 1999 Classic Albums film they play several of the rejected solos back.