Pretzel Logic is unique in that Jeff “Skunk” Baxter plays all the guitar solos Steely Dan employed no ringers on this baby. I finally opted for Pretzel Logic for two reasons one, it includes two of my very favorite Becker/Fagen songs, “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” and “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” and two, I’d never been wild about the LP’s jazz-heavy later cuts, and I wanted to find out if I’d changed my opinion about them since I’d last listened to the record. But I’d be a poorer man I just wouldn’t know it. It’s no easy task, choosing between LPs that contain such classics as “Dirty Work,” “Reelin’ in the Years,” “Show Biz Kids,” “My Old School,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” “Any Major Dude Will Tell You,” “Barrytown,” “Doctor Wu,” “Everyone’s Gone to the Movies,” “Kid Charlemagne,” and “Don’t Take Me Alive.” Frankly, I don’t know where I’d be without these tunes. Finally, my history of Steely Dan ends with 1975’s Katy Lied and 1976’s The Royal Scam, both of which include scads of wonderful tunes.Īs do all of Steely Dan’s pre- Aja LPs, which is what makes picking a fave LP to review so tough. Then again, Boston’s Tom Scholz is said to have redone a single drum part 108 times, so compared to him Steely Dan is practically lo-fi. Next came 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy, then 1974’s excellent Pretzel Logic, at which point Becker and Fagen-much to the dismay of their band mates-opted to quit touring, preferring to hole up in the studio to pursue perfection, like Ahab, the great white whale of the perfectly produced LP, often by making their fellow musicians do as many as 40 takes of each track. The Steely Dan story is familiar to most Becker and Fagen met at ultra-liberal arts Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (where I once spent a weekend so dissipated that when I left my pal Dan, a Bard student, was pissing blood), formed a band they named after a dildo from William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, and in 1972 put out debut Can’t Buy a Thrill, which turned them into overnight sensations thanks to its songs “Do It Again” and “Reelin’ in the Years.” (I remember my eighth grade English teacher, a young and pretty flower child type, playing them for the class as examples of the “groovy new poetry” being “dug” by young people). Over the course of four years they released five albums that boasted great melodies, brilliant lyrics, and the best studio musicians money could buy, including guitarists Rick “All-American Boy” Derringer, Elliott “Total Fucking Genius” Randall, and Larry Carlton, which is why you’ll search in vain for a mediocre guitar solo on a Steely Dan record. Lots of people hate Steely Dan for this-I myself, a big Dan fan, want nothing to do with anything they released after 1976’s The Royal Scam, because they finally took the whole 50,000 coats of lacquer shtick a bit too far, while also moving towards a smooth jazz/pop fusion that left me cold-but I’ll stand by their earlier LPs to the end. They produced the most waxed wax this side of insane perfectionist Tom Scholz of Boston, who has been known to spend a good decade spiffing up an LP before it meets his impossibly exacting standards. The Kings of Studio Sheen were perfect examples of what could be done if you were willing to spend 4,000 hours creating LPs as high gloss as a Lamborghini just off the assembly line. Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen didn’t just polish their LPs they buffed, burnished, lacquered, and airbrushed them until they were as perfect as Andy Gibbs’ coif. Steely Dan was Thee Consummate anti-garage band of the seventies.
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