new... donald fagen... solo album?!?

By FRED KAPLAN
Published: February 26, 2006

THIS is my death album," Donald Fagen said in his office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. "It's about the death of culture, the death of politics, the beginning of the end of my life." Then he mock-sobbed, "Boo hoo hoo."

Mr. Fagen, best known as the vocalizing half of the rock band Steely Dan, turned 58 years old in January. His new CD, "Morph the Cat," is his first solo album in 13 years, and he's kicking it off with an 18-city concert tour, starting this Wednesday — his first live shows with his own band ever.

He wrote "Morph the Cat" in the wake of Sept. 11, and it's an album about fellow New Yorkers dealing with the aftershocks — tales of love and dread in a time of terror.

One of its eight songs, a ballad called "The Night Belongs to Mona" is about a woman who stays cooped up in her Chelsea high-rise. At one point, Mr. Fagen, playing one of Mona's worried friends, sings, "Was it the fire downtown/ that turned her world around?" It's the album's only reference to the World Trade Center. But the attack lingers as a constant backdrop.

"The Great Pagoda of Funn" is about two lovers who stay together as shelter from the world's horrors, itemized by a choir of background singers: "Poison skies/ and severed heads/ and pain and lies ..."

"I wrote that after several beheadings in Iraq," Mr. Fagen said. "You can thank Mr. Zarqawi for that song."

"Security Joan" is a comic blues about a man who swoons for an airport guard while rushing to catch a plane.

When I felt her wand sweep over me
You know I never felt so clean
Girl you won't find my name on your list
Honey you know I ain't no terrorist ...

The album's finale, "Mary Shut the Garden Door," sounds like the score for a spooky political thriller. Mr. Fagen's liner notes describe it: "Paranoia blooms when a thuggish cult gains control of the government."

"I wrote that song right after the Republican Convention took over New York," he said. "I'm afraid of religious people in general — any adult who believes in magic." It's a gloomy number — the doo-wop background singers chant, "They won/ Storms raged/ Things changed/ Forever" — but it holds out a thin hope in its last line: "This ballad is for lovers/ with something left to lose."

That's a contrast to the most recent Steely Dan album, 2003's "Everything Must Go." It too was produced in the shadow of 9/11, but it responded to catastrophes with mordant retreat ("the long sad Sunday of the early resigned") or down-with-the-ship partying ("Let's switch off the lights/ and light up all the Luckies/ Crankin' up the afterglow").

All nine Steely Dan albums over the past 34 years — which Mr. Fagen wrote with Walter Becker, his musical partner since their undergraduate days at Bard College — dwell to some degree on destruction and doomsday, but usually with black humor or a diffident shrug. "Morph the Cat" has the familiar Steely Dan sound: the dense chords, jazz vamps, laser backbeat, skylark guitar riffs and sly lyrics — polished narratives of insouciant irony and cryptic allusions — sung by Mr. Fagen in a nasal troubadour's wail. But this time, he's staring at the darkness with open apprehension.

"Part of the difference," he said, "is that Walter's more snarky than I am. He's more realistic; I'm more of a fantasist, a romantic. Walter has that side, too. But when we write together, we assume this collective guise — this guy you could call Dan — who isn't either of us, really. Dan's a much colder dude. Or maybe he just seems cold. Maybe he's afraid to show his emotions; that's more likely."

Cut loose from Dan, Mr. Fagen writes songs that are "more personal," he said, "and, as it turns out, more autobiographical." The keys to this chapter of his chronicle are not just the attack on his city but also the death of his mother, in January 2003, after a long bout with Alzheimer's disease.

"It was a horrible death, very agitated toward the end," he recalled. The album is dedicated to her. "In memory of Elinor Rosenberg Fagen, a k a Ellen Ross," the liner notes read. "Ellen Ross was her stage name," he explained. "She was a professional singer from the age of 5 years to 15. She was the Shirley Temple of the Catskills. Her mother would take her up there in the summers to sing in a hotel. One time, the guy who owned the hotel took her over to an amateur-hour radio show. She had an anxiety attack. That was the end of her career."

While Mr. Fagen was growing up in the New Jersey suburbs, his mother sang show tunes around the house, encouraged him to play piano, and took him into Manhattan on weekends to see Broadway musicals. "I got most of my musical theory from her," he said.

"Morph the Cat" begins with the title song, which sounds like an R. Crumb cartoon theme about a cat named Morph who flies above Manhattan and seeps into apartments, spreading good cheer. But when the tune is reprised at the end of the album, after the songs about severed heads and so forth, Morph (as in Morpheus, god of dreams?) seems more menacing.

"Yeah, the cat is narcotizing the citizens," Mr. Fagen said. "I observe it in people, this mind-death, these layers of brain-washing that's gone on for so many years. It's in the techniques of political machines, the unbelievable stupidity on television." He stopped and raised his eyebrows. "Hey, maybe Morph is television."

Then he backed away, chuckling. "I refuse to take responsibility for any interpretation," he mumbled.

Last week, he was busy rehearsing for his tour. Steely Dan gave up live performance in 1974. "I burned myself out quickly, my voice was getting tired, I was in my mid-20's, my lifestyle wasn't very healthy." Mr. Fagen recalled. After he and Mr. Becker broke up the band in 1980 (a split that lasted 16 years) , "I didn't have the confidence in myself to organize a band and a tour without him."

In the late 80's, he met a producer, Libby Titus, whom he later married. "She was putting together what she called these 'horrid little evenings,' " he said, concerts with several big-name pop singers, performing one after another. Mr. Fagen joined them. At first, he just played piano; then, under her prodding, he sang again, too. "So," he said, "I got back into it a bit."

Still, his element is the studio. Last August, he sat in a booth at Avatar Studios, in Midtown, with his engineer, Elliot Scheiner. Mr. Fagen had spent a year recording the album's tracks. Now it was time to mix them. He and Mr. Becker were notorious perfectionists in mixing the Steely Dan sessions. That part hasn't changed.

"Mmmm, bring the snare down in those two bars by one-tenth," Mr. Fagen said, listening to the rhythm tracks of "Mona." He meant one-tenth of a decibel, a minuscule adjustment in volume.

Later, listening to the horn tracks, he said, "After the first bop-bop, you've got to bring up the da-bop."

Then the vocal tracks. Hearing himself sing the line, "To see how the story ends," he said, "The first syllable of 'story' is a little hard; bring it down two-tenths." Another line, "When you're already dressed in black," was a little soft. "Bring up the whole line one-tenth." He listened again. "Maybe only the end of the line — "dee dressed in black" — bring just that up one-tenth."

After five hours mixing, he said, "I'm wearying of this," in a stentorian tone. He got up, stretched, sat down, and went back at it for two more hours.

Soon, Mr. Fagen hopes to remix his previous solo disc, the 1993 "Kamakiriad." His voice on that album was buried: too soft and indistinct. "I was in my self-loathing period," he said.

The remix will be part of a three-disc box-set, which Reprise Records plans to release later this year, of all three Fagen solo albums, starting with "The Nightfly" (1982), his wistful look back at his cold-war adolescence. "I see them as Youth, Middle Age and Death," he said with a crooked smile.

But if "Morph the Cat" is "Death," what will he do for an encore?

In an e-mail note, Mr. Fagen replied, "just one of those cringe-worthy duet albums: you know, me and gwen stefani, me and tony bennett, me and gladys knight ... also some tricked-up duets with dead people: nat king cole, tiny tim, mae west, etc."

But those aren't booked. What is likely, he said, is another tour with his new band this summer and probably some gigs with his musical companion of youth and middle age, Mr. Becker. Just because you've done death doesn't mean you're done with Dan.

"In an e-mail note, Mr. Fagen replied, "just one of those cringe-worthy duet albums: you know, me and gwen stefani, me and tony bennett, me and gladys knight ... also some tricked-up duets with dead people: nat king cole, tiny tim, mae west, etc."

It is very laid-back, even by SD standards...

I love Donald Fagen so much

http://www.jordanhoffman.com/archives/2006/03/the_great_pagod.html

i know that guy!

Due to illness, the Donald Fagen show this evening, Thursday, March 9, 2006 at Boston's Opera House has been rescheduled for Saturday, March 11, 2006. All tickets for the Thursday night postponement at the Opera House will be honored on Saturday night, March 11, 2006, including those arranged through the VIP fan program "I Love All Access."

Lame, now I may not be able to go.

After a long wait, Gaucho was released to an eager audience. ...it should be noted that, drum-wise, this album is much simpler than previous ones. Except for a Purdie shuffle on "Babylon Sisters" and Porcaro's odd-meter forays on "Gaucho," the rhythms are all 8th-note grooves. No cranking shuffles like "Black Friday" or jungle grooves like "I Got The News." Part of this might have been Becker and Fagen's desire to fully explore their WENDEL, a sequencing tool that could quantite, sanitize, and generally sterilize a drum track.

"That was Roger Nichols and the computers," says Marotta, who played on "Hey Nineteen" and "Time Out Of Mind". "WENDEL wasn't perfected then, so occasionally it was a little stilted. They were experimenting, taking little snippets of what we played and looping it."

According to Porcaro, "That's at a point when drum machine technology was just rearing its ugly head. There was a lot of talk about the future of quantizing and sequencing in real time. To a perfectionist, that was all really cool stuff. The title track was done to a Urei click. In fact it was all Urei except 'Hey Nineteen,' which is WENDEL."

from http://www.granatino.com/sdresource/md1.htm

In 1978, Roger pioneered the technique of "digital drum replacement" by inventing the Wendel sampling drum machine, which was used to provide drum and percussion sounds on Steely Dan's acclaimed Gaucho album. This technology is now commonplace in music production around the world.

DNOALD FAGEN DO U LIEK REGGAETON???

um...there are "fundamentals of music" that work a particular way? news to me.

but yes, in fairness, fagen's argument is subtler and more specific than any that geir has ever made. however i still think he's misapplying a kind of "best practice" argument to a genre of music he probably isn't terribly invested in.

is the concept of two plus two making four also novel for you? 'cause if so I got all kindsa news you'll love

but i do think i see where jody is coming from.

thomas tallis's comment...well, explain yourself dude!

(as an aside: it doesn't take wisdom, ninja hollered, just slight bit of intellectual curiosity)

Some negative criticism: Security Joan seems more like a late Steely Dan tune than a Fagen solo one; the production feels really airless, so I was begging for some reverb to be plastered on something by the end; and the codas of some tracks go on and on without any building of tension or clever variation.

There's a lot of apocalyptic themes in the lyrics: the chorus of The Great Pagoda of Funn especially. Some of the lines in there really seize my attention, since they kind of tear at the edges of the slick little SD jazz/pop envelope by being disturbing.

It is. I wonder where he goes to unwind in the city. Must be difficult being a celebrity when you just need to go outside to take a walk and blow off some steam.

I wonder if his wife is okay.

ugh

I am so disappointed but perhaps not surprised by this--my stepdad used to hang slightly with him at the Lone Star Roadhouse because he was friends with Phoebe Snow when they were doing the rock and soul revue--didn't like DF at all as a person :(

I think she'll be giving him 'The Goodbye Look'...

gross, bro

Steely Dan is the soundtrack to the coked up narcissists of the world. Can't say I'm surprised.

yah maybe 35 years ago, grampa. steve aoki now fills that role.

Steely Dan is the soundtrack to the coked up narcissists of the world. Can't say I'm surprised.

― larry appleton, Tuesday, January 5, 2016 6:39 PM (

how much do you snort a week?

"Steely Dan is the soundtrack to the coked up narcissists of the world. Can't say I'm surprised."

unless you're taking the piss, I think you've missed the point

larry applebutt this is not a thing to get all schadenfreude about

goddamnit fagen

looks like steely dan have gone from hip to scum just like john lennon!

wow using a incident of domestic abuse as rockcrit point scoring, you have good character, son.

like i said in the other thread, assaulting your wife? definite dud!

delete ILM

Obviously this reminds me of Becker's accident around Gaucho that was pretty horrible too.

Oh right -- he dipped his mustache into a tomato bisque.

!