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By PAUL ZOLLO
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 e're in Manhattan, a couple weeks before the final Christmas of the 20th century. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker have arrived together at the 12th floor Broadway office of their publicist. But not before going first to the fourteenth floor, where Fagen was sure the office used to be. It's the first time the two have ever been here together, as this is the first interview they are giving to herald their new album Two Against Nature. "It's pretty bleak up on the 14th floor," Fagen says darkly, clearly rattled by the experience. "There's nothing going on up there."
It's but one of the many struggles they've had to endure in order to create this, their first album of new Steely Dan songs since Gaucho was released some 20 years earlier. It's the reason they designated "Two Against Nature" as the title song: it has to do with their dual struggle against the elemental forces they fought to finish this album, as Becker and Fagen (herewith referred to as B&F) explained in this characteristically spirited exchange:
Donald Fagen: We made it the title cut because we thought it was descriptive of our condition at the present time. Because when you start to get older, you really are fighting nature all the time. And musically you're fighting nature, trying to organize atoms of sound. You're trying to manipulate or overcome obstacles in nature.
Walter Becker: You're fighting to tame the forces and bend them to your will.
DF: Right. You're fighting lethargy. You're fighting -
WB: Chaos.
DF: And laziness. You're fighting-
WB: The ordinary.
DF: And other people, even if they're on your side. You're fighting your own sloppiness, or lack of patience.
WB: Your own internal economy of time, energy, money, ideas, patience-
DF: Trying to balance your musical life with other parts of your life. It's essentially a classic struggle.
WB: Think of the Two Against Nature album as akin to the building of the Hoover Dam.
Although no humans actually sacrificed their lives during the making of Two Against Nature , as during the construction of the mighty dam, the creation of this album was hardly less monumental. Stretching three years from the writing of the first song to the completion of the final mix, it was a period ironically delineated by the visible progress of other people in the proximity of Fagen's studio on East 95th, where much of the record was recorded: "We'd been working on the album for about five months," Becker said, smiling, "and we looked out the window and noticed that they were starting to build a large high-rise 40-story apartment house on the corner across from the studio. And we actually went back in the studio a couple of days ago to add a part to the album, and we noticed that the building was finished. And people were living in it already! And here we were still putting parts on the album!"
Truth be told, Two Against Nature might very well stand longer than the new high-rise across the street. Like all previous Steely Dan albums, it's been built to last. As their fans know well, B&F have never followed any trends other than their own, and for this reason, as well as the tremendously high standard of artistry and musicianship they bring to every project they take on, their albums possess a distinct timelessness.
Two Against Nature extends this magic into the new millennium. It's got everything that makes the Dan great: supernaturally tight, soulful grooves, lyrics that are elegant, mysterious, funny, sardonic, even perverse (such as the lecherous "Cousin Dupree" ), melodies that are sophisticated and slinkily visceral set against tight textures of electric guitars, bass and keyboards, and all underscored by a dazzling counterpoint of horns and harmony vocals.
It's a stunning level of accomplishment they've achieved by being intricately involved with every aspect of the creative process, as consciously careful with each word of every line as they are with each beat of the kick drum and the snare. Though the ongoing brilliance of their seamless and soulfully singable songs might often seem to be the product of some kind of spontaneous genius, it's actually the result of a lot of hard work, as B&F explained. Take the flowing chorus of "West Of Hollywood," for example:
I'm way deep into nothing special
Riding the crest of a wave breaking just west of Hollywood
It's a single sentence that evolved through a profusion of lyrical permutations before the ideal form was discovered. "One trick of writing is to use the mechanics of typing things over and over again as a way of exercising and developing an idea," Becker said. To illustrate this technique, he shared some of the variations he and Fagen generated for this line:
I'm way deep into nothing special…
…coming from a place of power just west of Hollywood.
…with a base of support located just west of Hollywood.
…in a matrix with its nexus just west of Hollywood.
…situated as I am in the crescent just west of Hollywood.
…having as my target the citizens just west of Hollywood.
…in a cluster franchise operation just west of Hollywood.
…and business is booming in the triangle just west of Hollywood.
All of the songs on the new album went through this lengthy process of thought and revision, each the result of many pages of notes, character development, and explorations into the best ways to compel and conclude narratives. Each character emerges only after sessions of abundant B&F banter and discovery, resulting in a rich emotional subtext that serves as a foundation for all of these songs. In "What A Shame About Me," for example, they went through a series of variations before arriving at the appropriate climax for this tale of reminiscing college sweethearts. When the woman in the song boldly suggests a rendezvous at her hotel to rekindle their romance, the man sadly declines, admitting that any substance left to his soul is mostly spectral at this point. It's a confession that assures that this character, who takes his place now among Kid Charlemagne, Peg, Doctor Wu, Aja, and other fully-realized personages from the fertile fiction of B&F, shines with a spirit that is geniune and poignantly human.
I said, "Babe, you look delicious
And you're standing very close
But this is Lower Broadway
And you're talking to a ghost
Take a good look it's easy to see
What a shame about me…"
from "What A Shame About Me"
B&F were both born on the east coast of an America darkened by the shadow of war: Fagen came first, on January 10, 1948 in Passaic, New Jersey "amidst growing furor over Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb," according to B&F's self-written and often hilarious bio. Becker's birth in New York on February 20, 1950 occurred "as war loomed on the Korean peninsula." Though they wouldn't meet for decades, like separated identical twins they developed acutely similar artistic preferences, simultaneously gravitating towards the music of classic American jazz masters Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and others. At this point, according to their bio, "inexpensive saxophones were purchased forthwith."
At Bard they merged their love of jazz and black humor into songs, which they performed in a series of pick-up bands. After graduation they started peddling their songs at the Brill Building in New York, and succeeded in getting signed to two publishing deals, as well as joining the touring band for Jay & The Americans. They came to L.A. to work in a tiny office with an upright piano where they were expected to start churning out hits like Goffin & King. Instead they collaborated on a series of "classic but unrecordable cheesy pop songs" while secretly conspiring to start their own band.
With Fagen on vocals and keyboards, Becker on bass, Denny Dias and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter on guitars, Jim Hodder on drums and David Palmer sharing lead vocals with Fagen, they rehearsed for a few months in an unfinished office wing before recording their debut album, Can't Buy A Thrill. They named themselves Steely Dan after a sexual device described in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch.
From the first album on, B&F shared an explicit musical vision, swimming against the current of spontaneous, haphazard rock recordings to set a new standard in terms of record production. Disbanding their original lineup of musicians after their third album, they evolved to the essential core of B&F only, surrounded by the brightest satellites of the rock and jazz worlds, including Michael McDonald, Steve Gadd, The Brecker Brothers, Phil Wood, Bernard Purdie, and more others. Gaining reputations as studio tyrants (which both deem as inaccurate) they cooked up tracks that were at once burning and pristine; hot, sizzling jazz textures with the most precise and tight rhythmic foundations imaginable. And they created a succession of masterpieces throughout the seventies, following their debut with Countdown To Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied, The Royal Scam, and Aja. In 1979 came Gaucho, and the Dan was done.
During the eighties, B&F went their separate ways. Donald recorded his own solo masterpiece, The Nightfly, a huge critical and commercial success. Becker moved to Hawaii to become "a gentleman avocado rancher and self styled critic of the contemporary scene," but returned often to the mainland to produce albums for others, including the glorious Flying Cowboys for Rickie Lee Jones. (Rickie on Walter: "He's much smarter, you know, than most humans.")
The nineties found B&F at work on an assortment of solo projects and productions, including Fagen's second solo album, Kamakiriad and Becker's first, the triumphant 11 Tracks of Whacks (which a Swedish magazine recently named the "Best Album of the Decade." "I told my son that we're all moving to Sweden!" Walter said.) B&F also returned to the touring circuit as Steely Dan for a series of summer concerts, and in 1995 started writing songs for Two Against Nature.
Two against nature don't you know
Who's gonna grok the shape of things to go
Two against nature make them groan
Who's gonna break the shape of things unknown
From "Two Against Nature"
In person B&F project opposing personalities. Becker seems quite comfortable in his skin; bearded and beatific, he's happy to expound on any subject posed to him with a warmly gentle and somewhat professorial countenance. Fagen, who fidgets in his chair and distractedly pages through a book of photography on the desk before him, seems ready to ankle at any moment, but gets noticeably calmer as soon as the subject turns to music. Unlike other songwriting duos who have famously tired of each other after decades of collaboration, it's obvious that B&F truly enjoy each other's company. Rather than tune out when the other speaks, as is often the fashion, they seem as close as brothers -- hanging on their partner's every word, finishing each other's sentences, even laughing at each other's jokes.
The following discussion is a combination of our initial talk in New York on the second day of December, 1999 with a phone conversation that occurred soon thereafter, allowing us a generous measure of time to illuminate the perpetual mystery and marvel that is Steely Dan.
Bluerailroad: You've said that impatience is one of the natural forces you had to fight against to make this album. Yet you both must have a lot of patience to get your albums to the level that you have.
Donald Fagen: Well, it just means we're victorious over our lack of patience. I am impatient. I want everything to happen now!
Walter Becker: But on the other hand, having said that, you're able to work very patiently on something.
DF: Yeah. I'm more impatient about technical breakdowns.
WB: You're only impatient during delays. You're only impatient when you have to wait.
DF: Yeah, only when I have to wait. Yeah, when the band is learning a song, I'm impatient for them to already know it.
You have always had a tremendously high standards, both in terms of writing and production. Does the struggle to get it right ever get easier?
DF: Mostly it gets harder, I would say. Some of your techniques might prove to make things a little easier, but those can have their down sides.
WB: I don't know if it gets harder in general. I can imagine making a different sort of record where it would have been easier instead of harder. But we decided to do something that we knew was going to be hard to do, and it was. And depending on what the musical context something is going to be viewed in may make it harder to make something mean what you want it to mean. It makes it harder to make things that have the real feel of real musicians playing instead of the mechanical feel of machine tracks but that still has the same kind of consistency.
In most songwriting collaborations, it's usually pretty clear who writes what, yet in your work it's always been mysterious who does what, though a little less so since you have done solo albums-
WB: Although that might not be informative as to what we do when we are actually writing together. Because if we are writing separately, then each one of us perforce has to write the lyrics and the music and have the overall concept.
So the two of you actually do write the songs together, as opposed to bringing in separate fragments that you write individually?
DF: Usually, a lot of time, most of the time I will bring early music. I'll bring a chord progression or an idea for something. And sometimes Walter will have an idea for some music. A piece of something, and then we'll work on that together. And then we'll work on lyrics almost from the beginning together.
One of the things that has always been so impressive about Steely Dan is your chord progressions. Yet these would not be so effective without a strong melody over them.
Do you come up with chords first, before the melody?
DF: Well, they sort of come in a piece, usually.
WB: Sometimes they come in a piece and sometimes we'll have -
DF: A riff.
WB: Or vampy sort of things where you set up a vamp and then you have to develop a melody over it. Eight bars or sixteen bars over one chord, or over some sort of repeating figure-
DF: A lot of times we'll have music and a title. Sometimes not even a title but maybe just an idea, what the song is sort of about. And other times we'll have a title.
(continued ...)
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