Originally published in Uncut Take 187 (December 2012 issue)…
Ten blocks up from the $32 million mansion that Madonna calls home, and one street over from the Spence School – Gwyneth Paltrow’s alma mater – is the Hotel Wales. This century-old building is a little tarnished around the edges. The marble floors in the lobby are scarred and pitted, the wallpaper peeling in the corners, the murky water in the vase of blows pink roses gives the place a tawdry grace. It’s the location chosen by the less Steely half of Steely Dan, Donald Fagen, to talk about the release of his fourth solo album, Sunken Condos. He and his wife Libby Titus live in the neighbourhood, and it’s a short walk over to Madison Avenue, especially important on a day like today, given that the US Weather Service has issued a severe storm warning for New York’s five boroughs. Planes are grounded, trees upended, and water is streaming down some of the city’s most-traveled thoroughfares, but Fagen prevails.
It’s not exactly “the perfect weather for a streamlined world”, to quote the lyrics from “IGY” off Fagen’s first solo album, 1982’s The Nightfly, but it does speak to his state of mind. Both climate and life are less predictable for Fagen since he finished his autobiographical trilogy with Morph The Cat in 2006. If you don’t believe it, listen to “Weather In My Head”, perhaps the best song on Sunken Condos, and a tune that name-checks former US Vice President Al Gore for attempting to counteract man-made climate change, while doing absolutely nothing for the “weather” in Fagen’s head.
Fagen has long been plagued by demons, from writer’s block in the ’80s to recurring stagefright. He is uncomfortable in his skin, crossing and recrossing his legs, drumming his fingers on an imaginary piano as he talks, or pacing the hallway during a cigarette break. Still wiry, with a handsome, chiseled face and deep-set eyes, his words are fastidious, his explanations erudite and rather formal. In fact, he verges on this side of being socially awkward, which perhaps explains why he’s asked his co-producer Michael Leonhart to accompany him on the first of our two interviews. “I don’t really work well with other people, except for Walter,” explains Fagen, with a short laugh. “Even that started to get a little thornier as we got older.”
Fagen met Walter Becker in 1967. Despite leaving a trail of platinum records and slavish fans in their wake as Steely Dan, Fagen remains something of a loner.
“Walter and I are our ideal fans, and we figured fans would like what we like. And if they don’t, that’s really not our problem,” Fagen says while slathering cream cheese on a bagel. He spots me watching him, and stops for a moment, cocking his head to the side – much like when he sings and apologises. “I’m sorry, I’m hungry.”
But truthfully, the two of them never really cared what anyone else thought. They just wanted to craft an alternative world where vocabulary was high, concepts complicated and the sound pristine. And that’s exactly what Fagen is doing, individually and whenever he reunites with Walter Becker.
UNCUT: When you released The Nightfly, what pushed you to do a solo album? You knew it was the end of Steely Dan. What were your options at that point?
DONALD FAGEN: I was compelled to do it. I reached a certain age where I could feel some kind of internal dissonance compelling me to examine where I came from, who I was, that kind of thing. It was essentially an identity crisis – a little late-coming identity crisis, but it was that all the same. Musicians being a kind of perpetual adolescent, I was able to postpone my appointment with the reality principle. It just happened then.
What do you think you do solo that you can’t do with Steely Dan?
I can be more subjective and personal.
Between you and Walter, are you more likely to reveal?
Walter may be more defensive than I am, generally speaking, but his records are in a way more revealing. Kind of in a shocking sort of way. But it may be what he’s revealing is more shocking. He had a kind of rough childhood, so his worldview may be a little dimmer than mine.
Did you ever consider any other career path? Was there anything else that you wanted to do or could have done?
I figured I was going to go into academia, end up as some kind of teacher, something like a high school English teacher.
I read somewhere that Walter said that you would sacrifice meaning for the sound of words.
Maybe when we started. We were really into Bob Dylan and I think we saw a kind of surrealism as being valid at that time, which I think it was, and considering our state of mind and all that. But we were into a kind of a Mallarmé thing at the time. Yeah, I think you can have both.
When you’re writing, how do you designate where it’s going to go? Steely Dan or solo?
I don’t really. If Walter and I are about to do something, I check to see if anything that I have that’s unfinished is something that he might want to work on. Some things I say, ‘No, this is probably for me.’ I remember I had this idea for the song “What I Do” that was on Morph The Cat. I showed that to Walter when it was in its early stages and he said, ‘That sounds like more something you would do for yourself.’ He wasn’t into it. I’m pretty open. I really never put things in categories because that would stifle my writing. I just write whatever comes into my head because I figure it might be the last thing I ever think of.
Do you find that you work better in collaboration?
It’s not as lonely.
You say that, having worked with Walter for 40 years, but you really do come across as a loner.
Yeah, pretty much.
So how do you function on both levels?
With Walter, it’s more of a collaboration from early on. Because we’ve been together since when we were teenagers, we have a similar background from a musical aspect and also maybe a literary aspect, and we can kind of finish each other’s sentences. It’s like a collective persona.
Is this collective persona like a third being?
Yeah, I think that’s true. Really, from when we first started writing songs, it was like the narrator of the song was always like a character of some sort.
But you had to inhabit it, though.
In the beginning, I thought someone else would inhabit it because I wasn’t going to be the singer. At one point we were going to try to be a duo, but neither of us thought that we were good enough so we were always looking for a singer. But it just didn’t happen. Because I could carry a tune a little bit better than Walter, I became the singer.
You said you asked Loudon Wainwright to become the singer and he was underwhelmed.
He was definitely underwhelmed. Talk about a loner. Also he was so bossy it probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway.
Do you consider yourself bossy?
I’m bossy, yeah. I don’t throw fits, or anything. I try not to hurt anybody. I like to have fun so I just try to laugh people into doing things.
Are you the same in your personal relationships?
Unfortunately, I guess so, because I’m kind of blunt, which has gotten me in a lot of trouble in relationships. Although I also have a fear of confrontation when it comes to non-musical stuff. Firing somebody is not something I’m able to do. Also I always feel like it’s only music. Nobody gets hurt. It’s not like you’re losing your job or it’s not life or, you know? Who cares?
After you completed The Nightfly trilogy I thought you weren’t going to write autobiographically any more. Yet with Sunken Condos that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Yeah, that turned out to be false. I tried not to. But next time I’m going to make it. I’m going to go more Steely Dan with the next one.
OK, let’s look at “going Steely Dan”. Define the terms.
I want to go more journalistic, more objective with characters that are further away from myself.
Would this be a bad time to tell you I like your solo records better than the Steely Dan stuff?
Each to their own. Most guys like Steely Dan better, and most babes like my stuff better. I’ve heard that before.
What I remember was that Steely Dan was always considered a “boy’s band”.
Right. That’s because part of what makes Steely Dan Steely Dan is, it’s guys without chicks. Part of the sensibility is, it’s not us really, but it’s guys who have been rejected or guys looking for girls, or certainly guys speaking without girls in the room. So naturally, a lot of guys were in.
I was more of a Jackson Browne fan.
You and a whole army of babes.
Since we both agree [Steely Dan] wasn’t a girl’s band… was that reflected in the audience?
Sure. Yeah, we had very low female demographics.
Very much like a ’70s Metallica.
My stepson, who unfortunately passed away, was a huge heavy metal fan. Even though he’d listen to all these HM bands, he thought we were the most transgressive band ever. We didn’t set out to be that way. When Walter and I first got together, it was like two boys talking. My stuff isn’t exclusionary. Clubby. For males only. And if you listen to Walter’s stuff, even though it’s raunchy it’s not just a guy’s thing.
How do you keep up with new methods of recording given you’ve been at this so long?
I don’t like to interface with technology myself very much. I started out with sequencers very early on because Roger Nichols, our engineer, was into computers. But at a certain point I could see that the technology was going to overwhelm me. I was moving beats around in a sequencer and I’d stopped writing music. So I just gave up on it and had somebody else take care of that.
“AT A CERTAIN POINT I COULD SEE THAT THE TECHNOLOGY WAS GOING TO OVERWHELM ME.”
– DONALD FAGEN
Do you feel that the failure to keep up with technology makes you feel old?
Many other things make me feel old but that’s part of… I think technology is just part of a much larger cultural change.
There’s a line in “Slinky Thing” from the new album where you sing, “More light/More light/More light/More light”. Does that have to do with not being able to see in the dark without your reading glasses or something more esoteric?
“More light”? Those were Goethe’s last words before he died.
Why the title Sunken Condos?
None of the individual songs had a title that was appropriate so I came up with that after the fact. I thought it worked on different levels. An economic level, certainly. Sociological. And I thought as a metaphor for my current phase of life, it was appropriate.
How?
Because I’m 64, It’s a metaphor for broken dreams, in a way. Although a lot of things have worked out for me, obviously. There’s a Debussy piece called “The Sunken Cathedral”, so I just updated it.
Do things get better as you age or do they get worse? When you released Morph The Cat you said you were dealing with the end of life. Was something specific making you feel that way?
No, I was just being realistic. Although I’ve been married for 20 years, there’s a thing where I’ll see a good-looking waitress in her twenties, a skinny girl with a black apron on, and know how out of the running I am. It’s a realisation of how invisible I am. Not that I was ever very lucky in that regard, but just knowing now how invisible I am, to me, that’s one of the worst things about ageing. It’s like that Woody Allen line about the death of hope. You always figure you got a shot. Then all of a sudden you don’t. This is all in my head, of course.
You’re one of the few artists who actually addresses the subject of ageing.
I’ve read all Philip Roth’s books and I can’t get away from it. Yeah.
You said you go see the Stones and they’re still acting like adolescents, prancing around. Is that a bad thing?
No, no. I love it. They’re great. Mick Jagger puts himself through the wringer to do that. I saw him perform at one of these Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame things. I saw him before he went on and he looked like a deflated balloon or something. Then when it came time for him to perform he immediately became 22 years old. It looked supernatural, the way that he transformed. It was one of these terrible things that they used to do at these events, where they had 12 bass players on the stage, and the band was just a mess. But when he started singing, it sounded like a band all of a sudden. He forced them to become a band because of his phrasing and his body language. Then at the end, he went off on the side of the stage and I saw him collapse back into this deflated balloon. It was unbelievable, all these wrinkles suddenly reappeared in his face. I was really impressed that he could do that.
Is ageing in this business easier for people like you and Walter, who were seen as a cerebral, snarky band?
Walter and I always were, for better or worse, exactly that. Coming out of the Beat era with Ginsberg and Norman Mailer, I think for whatever reason it would have been impossible to masquerade as something we’re not. So I think we’re just more honest about everything. Even this.
In your twenties, you came off as world-weary. So what does world-weary become when you’re in your sixties. Has that changed?
I was world-weary. I always just complained a lot, really.
You didn’t start therapy ’til after The Nightfly, correct?
Except for a brief period when I got my draft notice, but that doesn’t count, right?
Did you feel that therapy changed the way you wrote?
Yeah, I had to get through that period of trying to go from being a non-functioning person to a functioning person. After that album, I kind of fell apart.
Because it was so successful, or because you were dealing with all those childhood issues?
I don’t think it was that album, but doing that brought certain things into relief, that I wasn’t ready to deal with. I think like a lot of people who were successful early, I really didn’t have to grow up. So when I was in my mid-thirties, I ran out of that youthful energy that was keeping me going without really dealing with anything. After I made that album, the energy was gone and I started to come apart a little bit. I started doing the therapy just so I could deal with that. I also had a lot of issues from my childhood that I had to work through.
Given that you got the Grammy for Album Of The Year in 2000 for [Steely Dan album] Two Against Nature, would you consider your best work is ahead of you?
I have no way of knowing that. It wouldn’t be scientific for me to say that my best work is in front of me.
How about just an intuition. An inner knowing.
It’s just the unknown. But I do know I’m no longer interested in my past work. I’ll never listen to this album again. All of my past work, it’s garbage to me, see. I’m only interested in the future. I’ve already started getting ideas about what I want to do next. And I’d like to think it would be my best work. But I don’t even think that. It’s just, I think it’ll occupy my mind so I won’t get depressed. So in that sense, I don’t really think of my best work ahead of me. It’s just: my work is ahead of me.
Do you miss Walter when you write lyrics on your own?
Yeah, for sure.
Do you two exchange ideas, and can we assume that there will be more Steely Dan?
We’ve been talking about it for a couple years. But he’s been spending a lot of time with his family. That’s what he’s into now.
When people say they’re spending a lot of time with their family I always think there’s some other covert reason they’re not saying.
Walter always tells me, what he likes best is to do nothing. He likes to hang.
And what do you like best?
Work.
What would be your advice to the 20-year-old you?
You don’t have to marry everyone you sleep with.
But you’ve only been married once.
Yeah, that’s true. Let me correct it: you don’t have to live with everyone you sleep with for 10 years.
You’re a romantic?
Isn’t that anti-romantic, though?
No, I don’t think so. No, it’s realistic. Half empty or half full?
I usually convince myself it’s half full, because it’s hard for me to work if I’m in a depressed mood. Although I’m not too much of a depressive. I usually am either feeling good or feeling angry. I can write when I’m angry. It’s a good motivator. I had an unhappy adolescence and early manhood, so it was hard to have a chock-full glass in those days. But I had a lot of neuroses and so on which I’ve mostly shed. But you have to be vigilant in order to keep them at bay. I’ve been to a hypnotist. Not for a while, but I used to.
Did you feel when Steely Dan reached that extreme level of success that it made up for having an iffy adolescence?
I really don’t think of success in those terms, or the idea of top of the heap, like…
You sold what, 30 million albums?
I never, never think of selling albums as having anything whatsoever to do with success.
OK, define success for me.
To me, it’s if you’re happy in work and love. If you’re vital in both those areas, I think that’s what being successful is. It gives you a centre to work from. The money thing, you know what, I don’t care too much for money because money can’t buy ya love.