It was followed by the multiple Grammy Award winning Two Against Nature in 2000, and Steely Dan's most recent album Everything Must Go in 2003. Their next album wasn't until 1995, when they released the live album Alive in America. Steely Dan's best-selling album was 1977's Aja, which was certified platinum. Becker and Fagen formed the core of the band and wrote all the songs, with Becker on bass, and later lead guitar, and Fagen on keyboards and vocals.Īfter the release of their third LP in 1974, the other members left or were fired from the band, which evolved into a studio project headed by Becker and Fagen. ) The group's first lineup was assembled in December 1971 in Los Angeles, where Becker and Fagen had relocated to work as staff songwriters for ABC/Dunhill. (Fans of Beat Generation literature, Fagen and Becker named the band after a steam-powered vibrator mentioned in the William S. Dias was immediately impressed by the pair's abilities, and especially that they already had a whole stack of original material.
In the early 1970s they worked as pop songwriters for ABC/Dunhill Records, which released all of Steely Dan's 1970s albums.īecker and Fagen began to form Steely Dan in the summer of 1970, responding to a Village Voice ad for "a bassist and keyboard player with jazz chops" placed by guitarist Denny Dias. The duo's early career included working with Jay and the Americans, for which they used pseudonyms. None of the groups lasted long, but the partnership between Fagen and Becker did. Fagen described his college bands as sounding like " the Kingsmen performing Frank Zappa material". Becker and Fagen attracted a revolving assortment of musicians including future actor Chevy Chase, to form the bands Leather Canary, the Don Fagen Jazz Trio, and the Bad Rock Band.
Īfter graduating from South Brunswick High School in 1965, inspired by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, he enrolled at Bard College to study English literature, where he met Walter Becker in a coffee house in 1967. He has also expressed admiration for the Boswell Sisters, Henry Mancini, and Ray Charles. In his late teens he was drawn to soul music, funk, Motown, and Sly and the Family Stone. He developed a lifelong fondness for table tennis. He learned to play the piano, and he played baritone horn in the high school marching band. He regularly took the bus to Manhattan to see performances by jazz musicians Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis. At age eleven, a cousin recommended jazz music and Fagen went to the Newport Jazz Festival, becoming what he called a "jazz snob": "I lost interest in rock 'n' roll and started developing an anti-social personality." In the early 1960s, beginning at age twelve, he often went to the Village Vanguard, where he was particularly impressed by Earl Hines, Willie "The Lion" Smith, and Bill Evans. The first record he bought was " Reelin' and Rockin' " by Chuck Berry.
įagen became interested in rock and rhythm and blues ( R&B) in the late 1950s. It was probably the first time I realized I had my own view of life." His life in Kendall Park, including his teenage love of late-night radio, inspired his later album The Nightfly. He later recalled that it "was like a prison. When he was ten years old, he moved with his parents and younger sister to Kendall Park, a newly constructed suburban section of South Brunswick, New Jersey. His family moved to Fair Lawn, a suburb of Passaic. Following Becker's death in 2017, Fagen has continued to tour as the only original member of Steely Dan.įagen was born in Passaic, New Jersey, on January 10, 1948, to Jewish parents, Joseph "Jerry" Fagen, an accountant, and his wife, Elinor, a homemaker who had been a swing singer in upstate New York's Catskill Mountains from childhood through her teens. In 2001, Fagen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Steely Dan. He began his solo career in 1982 with the album The Nightfly, which was nominated for seven Grammy Awards.
In addition to his work with Steely Dan, Fagen has released four solo albums. Donald Jay Fagen (born January 10, 1948) is an American musician best known as the co-founder, lead singer, co-songwriter, and keyboardist of the band Steely Dan, formed in the early 1970s with musical partner Walter Becker.
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