The three biggest influences on me and the music I make are Peter Gabriel, Lindsay Buckingham, and Steely Dan. The irony is I didn't see (or hear) that while making most of the music I had, but as time has given me the distance I need to understand that, their influences are clear to me.
All are iconoclastic in their approaches and all are instantly recognizable in their work. And I think they were deeply aware of this even if the press, and it's very interesting to go back and read the articles from music mags and the like to see the incomprehensibility of their music to a certain type of writer regardless of whether the publication was hip or not.
The big difference with Steely Dan, something they shared with the post '66 Beatles no less, was that unlike Gabriel and Buckingham, they stopped touring and through their most productive period from '74 to '77 were essentially recording artists and that was what they wanted to be. Beginning with Katy Lied through to Gaucho, their interest was in creating, as perfect as they could make them, records.
These weren't made to get butts in the seats when they toured, or to keep them in the public eye; they were notorious for making life difficult for the press, they were made to be listened to and appreciated as works, essentially, of musical art; something, I believe, they shared with Gabriel and Buckingham. They put an incredible amount of time, money and energy into their songs and it shows. The musicianship is outstanding as is the recording; even Katy Lied, whose masters were damaged by the Dolby unit they were using at the time (makes you wonder what the original must have sounded like).
Their genius, in my view, was that their records worked on many levels; song diversity, the initial dichotomy of a smooth seemingly straight forward pop tune, that was in fact exquisitely layered throughout and a listener rewarded each time the song played. They used any number of styles and genres; pop, rock, jazz, R&B to great effect. Their albums, whether planned or not; they would slyly say they created the songs independent of theme, but I'm not so sure; Aja and Gaucho are seeped in late '70's California.
Then there are the lyrics. Perhaps the most common thread in commentary about Steely Dan involved their lyrics; the problem being the supposed inscrutability within them, but that's a sham; all great artists have written lyrics that make no sense or are written such that the meaning, assuming there is one, is not clear to the listener. The difference with Steely Dan was simply that there was no sure connection with the artists themselves, Walter Becker, who died recently, and Donald Fagan. Whether the Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Gabriel, just to name a few, and no matter how diffuse the lyric, the common belief was that the lyrics reflected on the band and their lives. That could not be said of Becker and Fagan, and they knew this and reveled in it.
Not every writer feels the need to put themselves out there whatever the form. They may be in the minority, but they are not unknown. Steely Dan created a legacy of recorded material about their time, but not necessarily about them.
I think that's genius in a business that is so deeply naval-gazing.
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