“Home At Last” is a restrained masterwork and as the centerpiece of the album Aja it is clearly inspired by the Ancient Greek writer Homer.
“I like it when songs develop in some way and four minutes usually isn’t sufficient time for something to develop musically. I’m still plugged into the Duke Ellington model, something akin to classical music, where you start with a theme, then expand on it, bit by bit, and veer off at tangents, and strive your utmost to book the listener on a mystery journey where he or she can’t quite guess the final destination and then, hopefully, they get caught up in the puzzle and stay on for the ride, because, when you get a decent groove going, time flies .” ~ Donald Fagen in a 2006 interview
When Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the duo that comprised Steely Dan, first went looking for a job as songwriters they showed up in the Brill Building in New York on 49th Street and Broadway. Kenny Vance, who played with Jay and The Americans, tells of meeting them that day in 1969. “They looked like insects, with no vibe coming from them. Like librarians on acid.”
The pair was so desperate to break into show business they begged for a chance to play Vance some of the songs they’d written. Their songs had crazy titles: “Bus Driver is A Fruitcake”, “Brain Tap Shuffle”, “Android Warehouse” and “Finah Mynah From China”, and were constructed with weird chord changes, complex and dense lyrics, supported by non-commercial and frightened singing from Fagen. Surprisingly, Vance was impressed with the tunes and arranged for them to be hired to work at a two-track studio upstairs.
They called themselves Steely Dan, a phrase taken from a pornographic Henry Miller novel. Their first record in 1972 was Can’t Buy A Thrill , and included a tasty track called “Do It Again” which sold well. Critical fave album Pretzel Logic, released in 1974, contained the hot-selling single “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”, and made them semi-famous.
They hired the best studio musicians and spent outrageous amounts of studio time and money in the 1970s urging them to come up with unique fills and tasty solos. The finished tracks were sophisticated, jazzy and memorable, and the mixing of the albums had a retro 1950’s feel reminiscent of classic jazz albums played back with the best tube amplifiers. The sonic quality on their albums is cherished by audiophiles.
Their greatest achievement is the Aja album from 1977. They strove for perfection in this work, and it shows; the songs are anything but spontaneous; every note is the equivalent of a Durer etching. In fact with Aja they moved way beyond rock music, and into the jazz arena of Fagen’s hero Horace Silver. These are art songs, the modern equivalent of lieder, and they will one day be recognized as such and they will be performed in creative settings that reveal and illuminate their sources and their musical complexity.
“Home at Last” deserves close consideration. It’s clearly based on Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, and the lyric lines “still I remain tied to the mast – could it be that I have found my home at last?” are a direct reference to Odysseus tying himself to the mast of his ship in order to avoid succumbing to the temptations of the beautiful sirens. The performance of the song is austere, the playing eloquent, and the singing by Fagen is brilliantly understated. “Home At Last” is a restrained masterpiece and is their most mature work.
Fagen hated to sing in public and didn’t particularly enjoy the fact that some of their tunes had become hit records. He was often heard to revile any of their singles that had sold well.
Becker on the other hand struggled with a major drug habit and for years was undependable. The strain showed when they went to record Gaucho, the expensive and poorly-received successor album to Aja. The passage of time has seen Gaucho rise in appreciation.
Their union dissolved in June of 1981 after fourteen years of working together and both moved on to solo albums, most notably Fagen’s Nightfly in 1982. Missing from that album was Becker’s lyrical input; the source of Steely Dan’s droll ironies was suddenly obvious to all. The album, though, was a standout for its superior sonics.
In 2000 they stunned their faithful fans with a new release: Two Against Nature showed they still had their groove and their wry lyrics. In 2003 they released Everything Must Go. That album sold well, better than any of their solo releases, and they were encouraged to begin touring again.
Walter Becker died in September of 2017 at the age of 67. In recent years Fagen has toured with Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs, two artists whom he greatly admires. He has been quoted as being skeptical that Steely Dan would thrive today where streaming of singles dominates. Fagen excelled in the creation of records meant to be listened to as a whole, in sequence, not randomly.
Steely Dan’s music is legendary among musicians and the millions of fans who love the musical precision, the cool hipster vibe and the lyrical mystery that characterized their albums.
