I never heard a Steely Dan song I didn't like. Even their off-cuts are stellar - Here at the Western World, FM, Dallas, American Lovers (a cover by Thomas Jefferson Kaye). Young Cultureberg's Mount Rushmore would have featured Walter Becker's profile, all grizzled beard and stringy hair, alongside those of Mr Dylan, Mr Morrison (the Belfast Cowboy or, as my Dad referred to him, The Singing Dustman) and of course Mr Fagen. More than other great songwriting duo Fagen and Becker were joined at the hip, and a very hip hip at that.
As time past, Mr McCartney and Mr Lennon became very different entities. Mr Forster and Mr McLennan's individual traits were visible to the cognoscenti long before The Go-Betweens split for the first time. Fagen and Becker, though, were an intimidating two-headed hipster, party to secret knowledge, inhabiting and observing a nocturnal boho-zone of midnite cruisers and pearls of the quarter. Even on most of their solo ventures Fagen would produce and play keyboards, Becker produce and play guitar (though neither appeared ontheir last solo ventures Sunken Condos or Circus Money .). The run of 7 albums from Can't Buy A Thrill to Gaucho maintains a level of quality and consistency to be found in no-one else's catalogue, and though the two "comeback" albums are not quite up there there are moments - let's say West of Hollywood - that are sheer class and breathtaking brio. And you still could not see the join between Fagen and Becker.
The Dan receded after Gaucho. Did they split up? Were they not really a group anyway? A foggy mist surrounded their doings as if an inevitable by-product of their clever-dickery. They seemed to spend so long in the studio finessing and equivocating, it seemed impossible to know what was going on, especially in the eighties, before total information overload and the fetish-isation of classic rock. Mr Fagen broke the silence first with The Nightfly, then Kamakiriad, both in their way statements of retro futurism, imagining a science fiction future set to warped jazz and r and b. It is often customary for vocalists to be credited with being the voice of their bands, and Fagen's solo albums seemed to inadverdantly claim authorship of the ouevre. Mr Fagen's singing voice, which has the highest visible co-relation to the word sardonic in all music journalism, is central to The Dan. Indeed, it seemed he and Mr Becker collaborated by hip-osmosis and his vocalising is undoubtedly the perfect channel for their wry and cryptic lyrics. However, consideration of Mr Becker's two solo albums - even without a spin through his literate and hilarious pieces over many years on the band's internet home page - makes the case that whilst both Mr Fagen and Mr Becker contribute more than 50% each, maybe Mr Becker has been terribly underappreciated.
If pressed Cultureberg would say that the best two Dan solo albums are Mr Fagen's Sunken Condos and Mr Becker's Eleven Tracks of Whack. The latter shades it for me. The wispy, cracking voice that Mr Becker unveiled here is the perfect instrument for these songs of wobbly romanticism and snarky hedonism, as the songs exhibit a more open and (it seems to me - you can never really know) autobiographical dimension without losing the capacity for trenchant observation. Take this from opener, Down in the Bottom
Saw your old lady in the park today
The legendary smile is wearing thin
Behind that guessing game you make her play
Now that she knows that she could never win
I guess you're never gonna take her down
Down to the bottom of your little black heart
and this from the even more downbeat, shoulders stooped with resignation, of Junkie Girl.
In the good old bad part of this college town
Men in grey limousines will drive you down
You take their money just like you take mine
Where does it get you on that thin blue line
Now I can hardly hear you anymore
Your eyes are empty and your voice is hollow
I see you waving from a distant shore
And where you're going I don't dare to follow
No foolin'. And that's just the first two tracks. Unlike with The Dan, the narrator is more involved and not the distant observer of, say, Charlie Freak. Mr Becker also abandoned the machine tooled burnish of The Dan's music and, indeed, of Mr Fagen's albums for a looser, funkier vibe. You can't hear tape hiss but you can hear the absence of over-polishing.
One can safely surmise that the self explanatory This Moody Bastard is a tacit, however tongue in cheek, recognition of the authors truculence, just as you do not doubt the sincerity of his song about his son Little Kawai, a chip off the old block serenaded in a far better song about fatherhood than, say, Mr Dylan's mawkish Forever Young. The songs Book of Liars and Hard up Case are bleak and unforgiving and quite likely directed into a mirror. I know little about Mr Becker's domestic arrangements, though his problems with intoxicants are no secret, but the key point for me is that Mr Becker is writing and singing songs that are honest, direct and enlightening. They have their own truth and the biographical backdrop is somewhat secondary to this. The concision, economy and delineation of a demi-monde is all there intact as in The Dan, but Mr Becker adds a doomed directness not previously seen.
Around this time (1993) The Dan reconvened for live dates - early dates had up to 5 Whack tracks, 7 solo Fagen tracks. This number reduced quickly and precipitously, replaced by The Dan Canon. This was what the people wanted no doubt, though the band stretched out and performed with invention, wit and, as they say, chops. The tours and shows continued until the man in The Bright Nightshirt appeared after Mr Becker underwent "a procedure." Opaque until the end. Quite right, too.
It was a long wait until Mr Becker's second album in 2008, Circus Money, a beguiling confection which vacillates in Cultureberg's affection. Apparently Mr Becker had intended to set lyrics to vintage jamaican reggae rhythm tracks, as he is a huge lover of 70s and 80s reggae. Who knew? In the end Larry Klein (former Mr Joni Mitchell, producer of Madeline Peyroux and others) was drafted in for an album almost entirely of white reggae played by LA session men, including alumni of The Dan's touring band. It is to their credit that the album feels natural and the loping and, yes!, skanking tunes indicates Mr Dylan (on Infidels), Mr Gainsbourg (on Aux Armes et Cetera) and Miss Jones (on most of her stuff) did not need to have phoned up Sly and Robbie when Mr Becker (on bass) and Keith Carlock (on drums) can essay an authentic jamaican jam of churning bass and echoed rimshots.
Circus Money is more refined than Whack, less gristle, more sparkle. At times the mix of rhthmic and laconic is unimpeachable. Take Bob's not Your Uncle Anymore - there aren't many songs that sum up that sobering realisation better, the descending bass shadowing the dawning awareness. The Cultureberg pick is Downtown Canon, where two hipsters move in together, unpack their totems, try and live for the moment before it all goes wrong in a hurry. As previously Mr Becker's engagement goes beyond the observational, he knows whereof he speaks, and if he doesn't he convinces the listener he does.
Circus Money isn't as varied or as undisciplined as Whack, and that is a pity, because Mr Becker has a range of voices and is more of a sonic adventurer than The Dan's image as epitome of jazz-impregnated rock would suggest. Circus Money is a great record at certain times and feels an authentic hybrid. The Walter Becker of Steely Dan remains an object of admiration and affection, but though he is at least half of that story, if you don't cock an ear to his two solo records you are certainly not getting half the picture.When, in Downtown Canon, he advises " Don't trade today for tomorrow, tomorrow for tomorrow night," he knows that that is only the superficial tip of the ice berg. There's a name for the winners in the world. He wants a name when he loses. In the solo albums he gives a voice to those who lose, often through their own actions and their own fallibities. He doesn't shrink from the obvious; people will think he's writing about himself.. In doing this he finds his voice, not sardonic, not cynical and worldly wise, but faltering and real, apologetic yet true.
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