When ingenious US rock musician Walter Becker passed away two weeks ago, he left his Steely Dan partner of fifty years behind.
When Donald Fagen released his fab solo debut The Nightfly in 1982, his record company put a dumb sticker on its cover, saying “Donald Fagen is STEELY DAN”. Quite annoyed about it, I pulled the sticker off and hid it on the inner sleeve till this day.
When I posted about that sticker on Twitter, a comment said, that Fagen and Becker did tell an anecdote about one of their roadies on tour, who thought Donald Fagen was called Steely Dan, so he named Fagen’s keyboards “Dan’s piano” and some more.
So it’s possible, that this seemingly not so clever slogan was some kind of Steely Dan’s absurd insider jokes, hard to understand for anyone not being Donald Fagen or his creative partner and friend Walter Becker. But who knows for sure?
After his co-genius Walter Becker died untimely two weeks ago, aged only 67, that slogan however is the sad truth. Donald Fagen now is STEELY DAN.
Klaus Winningers Beat 