What does it imply as an example Steely Dan?
Illustrations by Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the College of Texas Press
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Illustrations by Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the College of Texas Press
What does it imply as an example Steely Dan?
Illustrations by Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the College of Texas Press
This interview initially appeared in NPR Music’s weekly publication. Subscribe to the publication right here.
Steely Dan is a paradox. As author Alex Pappademas places it, it is a “cult band whose catalog … contains at the very least a dozen enduring radio hits” — two guys who regularly discovered a option to “embed blue-ribbon misanthropy in music designed to go down as easy as creme de menthe.” And like many nice paradoxes, there’s extra to be taught concerning the band the longer you spend contemplating it. That is true even in case you solely know a number of of these enduring hits. You may acknowledge the refrain of “Soiled Work,” for instance — however do you know that the person singing lead vocals on that monitor, David Palmer, as soon as performed a highschool present alongside The Velvet Underground — its first beneath that title? Do you know that “Rikki Do not Lose That Quantity” was written for the spouse of a college member at Bard Faculty, the place Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen studied? Or that considered one of MF Doom’s earliest solo tracks samples the opening music on Aja?
Within the new e book Quantum Criminals, Pappademas and artist Joan LeMay give a roadmap to the Steely Dan prolonged universe via the lens of the characters on the coronary heart of the band’s songs. Alongside Pappademas’ explorations, LeMay’s work render touching portraits of Steely Dan’s influences and inheritors, and speculative illustrations of the personalities who populate its world. Their e book uncovers the huge constellation of lyrical references, creative influences and social and political contexts surrounding the band and its music. On this interview, Pappademas and LeMay answered a number of questions on their private histories with Steely Dan and the way Quantum Criminals got here to be.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
Marissa Lorusso: In one of many e book’s opening chapters, Alex particulars his evolving relationship with Steely Dan’s music, from delicate distaste to considerably ironic engagement to honest appreciation — a path he says has been adopted by many Millennial and Gen Z followers. Joan, what is the story of your relationship with Steely Dan — did your fandom comply with an identical street?
Joan LeMay: Listening to Steely Dan is, trustworthy to God, my first musical reminiscence. Rising up, my mother and father had a really restricted file assortment — a stack about 5 inches extensive or so. In it was your complete Steely Dan discography (later to incorporate [Donald Fagen’s solo debut] The Nightfly; no different Fagen solo information nor any Becker information made the minimize), plus a number of Linda Ronstadt, a few James Taylor information, The Better of the Doobie Brothers Vol. II, Carole King’s Tapestry and Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick. At 2 years outdated, I used to be what one would name a tall child. I might attain for issues. And I would get ’em, too. I clearly bear in mind the day I used to be capable of attain the turntable, my tiny arms at full stretch above my head, and heft an LP upon it till the peg snapped into the opening. That LP was Cannot Purchase A Thrill. I preferred it essentially the most out of all of my mother and father’ information due to the colours on the duvet. I plopped down on our diarrhea-brown shag carpet and was happy. It appears unlikely that I might bear in mind this so clearly, however I used to be studying the newspaper at that age — I peaked early.
How did you determine to strategy a e book about Steely Dan this fashion? Why inform the story of the band via the lens of those characters — and what impressed each of you to strategy this undertaking as an illustrated/written collaboration?
LeMay: In 2020, I bought again into the observe of constructing fanzines. I made two problems with a zine referred to as Mug Membership — I requested folks within the arts to ship me a photograph of their favourite mug and inform me a narrative about it, and I would paint the mug. The work and tales have been a option to explode the banal/micro into the elegant/macro and function a connective inventive undertaking within the midst of lockdown. After these, I began making a fanzine referred to as Danzine whereby I deliberate to color all 240-something characters within the Steely Dan universe. I bought so far as drawing the duvet, making a personality spreadsheet, doing a number of sketches and posting about it on Instagram, partially as a option to maintain myself accountable for making the factor.
Aja.
Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the College of Texas Press
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Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the College of Texas Press
Esteemed author/director Jessica Hopper, one of many editors of the College of Texas Press American Music Sequence and this e book’s doula, texted me and stated “Joanie? That is not a fanzine. That is a e book.” Earlier than I posted my factor, she had been speaking with Alex about what sort of e book he may like to jot down for the press and he’d responded by pitching a e book that was “Bluets, however Steely Dan” … and she or he put us collectively.
Alex Pappademas: Bluets is a group of brief items by the unimaginable poet and nonfiction author Maggie Nelson that stroll the road between autobiography and criticism and prose poetry. I had been studying lots of Nelson and different nonfiction writers who work in a very pared-down, aphoristic mode and when Jessica and I began speaking about me doing a Steely Dan e book for UT, I stated I needed to do one thing actually piece-y and fragmentary like that. I do not know that there was any particular Steely Dan-related motive I needed to do it that approach; I simply preferred the concept of writing these micro-essays the place every one could be its personal considered Steely Dan and their music and their place in popular culture/American tradition, and themes would construct and accumulate the way in which they do in Nelson’s work, or Jenny Offill’s or a few of David Shields’s stuff. By the point Jessica roped Joan into this undertaking, I had an overview for what would have been a Bluets model of this e book, however lots of it was fairly sketchy — like, “Chevy Chase” could be a line merchandise on the define, or “Dan and Race” or “Perfectionism.” I mulched on this for simply over a yr, on and off, earlier than Joan even engaged. After which we did not get to the proposal till September 2020 — deep COVID instances. E-book was carried out nearly precisely one yr from that date, however I would say many of the writing took about seven months.
As soon as we merged the concept for Bluets-but-Steely Dan with Joan’s thought to color all of the characters, it necessitated a change in my strategy; as an alternative of constructing a deck of playing cards and attempting to assemble them right into a narrative it was about seeing how a lot you could possibly grasp on the concept of a person Steely Dan character and how one can use these characters to border tales that illuminated Steely Dan’s legacy in some attention-grabbing approach.
The chapters on this e book give such deep research of the personalities who populate Steely Dan’s songs (and, by extension, of the musicians who introduced them to life). Did your relationship with any of those songs change whereas writing about them, illustrating them, or in any other case getting contained in the heads of those characters? Did you be taught something concerning the songs that genuinely stunned you whereas engaged on this undertaking?
LeMay: I realized a lot. On our weekly calls, Alex all the time excitedly ushered me into the doorway of a number of wormholes he’d been traversing, and it was a relentless delight. Pondering deeply about what these characters have been sporting, what they may’ve been doing within the narrative past the narrative, fascinated with their atmosphere, how they held their faces, how they held their our bodies — it was an immersive option to hear. I would had concepts in my head about so lots of the characters as a result of I are inclined to assume visually, however there have been a number of improbable surprises, like once we dug into Cathy Berberian, as an illustration. I would by no means seemed up what she seemed like earlier than.
Cathy Berberian.
Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the College of Texas Press
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Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the College of Texas Press
Pappademas: I believe what stunned me essentially the most as I dug deeper into these songs was how a lot empathy Donald and Walter appeared to have for his or her characters. It isn’t one thing they’re often given credit score for — the concept folks have about them is that they are all the time snickering amongst themselves, making enjoyable of the folks they write about, however I believe that is truly extra true of someone like Randy Newman than it’s of Becker/Fagen. I believe there’s all the time an actual sense of humanity’s plight beneath no matter coldness or archness is extra simply detectable of their work on first blush — even when the folks they’re writing about are doomed or deluded or wicked, you aren’t getting the sense that they are judging these characters, more often than not. There’s an consideration paid to the human longing that motivates folks to those bizarre actions and so they do not choose the longing, of, say, the man who’s hung up on a intercourse employee in “Pearl of the Quarter” — whereas Frank Zappa, given the identical storyline, would completely write about what a moron that man is.
Steely Dan’s lyrics are famously considerably cryptic, and Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have been fairly averse to having their lyrics learn as easy private narratives. It is clear that a lot analysis went into illuminating these songs, however there’s additionally a wholesome dose of inventive hypothesis, too, each in how the topics of the songs are described and the way they’re depicted.
LeMay: The one characters I painted that weren’t 100% inventive hypothesis (and actually, much less hypothesis and extra my private interpretation) have been these having to do with precise, residing folks, like Cathy Berberian, Jill St. John and G. Gordon Liddy. I had a folder on my pc referred to as “DAN CASTING GALLERY” stuffed with photos of individuals in my life, discovered photographs, ’60s and ’70s trend catalogs, commercials and stitching sample packaging. I painted from a melange of these photos blended with issues that had been in my head perpetually, in addition to from a ton of photographs of my very own physique posing in numerous methods for reference. A very powerful factor to me was getting the humanity — the profoundly flawed humanity — of those characters proper.
Pappademas: And it really works — I attempt to get throughout that humanity within the textual content, however having Joan populate this world with actual human faces made the completed product into one thing higher than I may have gotten to alone.
The Gaucho.
Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the College of Texas Press
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Joan LeMay/Courtesy of the College of Texas Press
Anyway, my reply to the query above is that after I’m writing criticism, for positive, but additionally after I’m writing reported items, I really feel like there’s all the time a component of inventive hypothesis in what I do. It is simply kind of constrained by info relying on what sort of piece it’s. Even in case you’ve sat in a room with someone for hours you are finally imagining their interior life based mostly on what they’ve instructed you, and generally on what they have not instructed you. When it comes to Quantum Criminals, yeah, Steely Dan positively tried to discourage any try to learn these lyrics autobiographically — and the truth that all their lyrics have been composed by (or at the very least credited to) two writers was their first line of protection in opposition to that form of studying, as a result of even once they’re writing within the first particular person you are aware that the “I” in each Dan music is to no matter diploma a fictional character and due to this fact a distancing gadget. However I believe it is human nature — or at the very least it is my human nature — to intuit the other and search for locations the place the artwork appears to correspond to what we all know to be the contours of an artist’s life. As a result of the opposite factor about Steely Dan is that they preferred to obfuscate; the truth that they not often owned as much as their music having an autobiographical part (with sure exceptions, notably “Deacon Blues,” which they admitted was fairly private) doesn’t suggest it wasn’t autobiographical. And at instances — as with “Gaucho,” a music a few duo torn aside by a 3rd social gathering who may be the personification of medication or different types of hedonism, recorded for the album Donald made largely with out Walter as a result of Walter’s dependancy points had pulled him away from the band — the correspondences turned too tempting to not discover. Which is what occurs whenever you write cryptically; it is human nature to decrypt.
I do not know; I assume I am doing the identical factor Taylor Swift’s followers do once they determine that some opaque lyric is an Easter egg about this or that relationship of hers, or what A.J. Weberman was doing when he determined “The solar is not yellow, it is rooster” was Bob Dylan confessing to faking his personal demise, or what the individuals who assume The Shining was Stanley Kubrick exorcizing his guilt over faking the moon touchdown. The distinction is that I believe I am proper and I believe these different individuals are all nuts, as a result of I am in my bubble and may’t think about the view from theirs.
Lastly, what do you hope readers — be they longtime devotees, newly transformed followers or Steely Dan skeptics — take away from Quantum Criminals?
LeMay: I believe that in lots of methods, this e book might be learn as one thing that is concerning the ridiculous cacophony of what it’s to be an individual on the earth, striving to do one thing you are proud of. In lots of different methods, it’s a actual invitation to really dive into what you like with reckless abandon — to dream about it exhausting, to see and listen to and admire the small particulars and the large methods you’re feeling because of giving your self the present of paying consideration. I hope that readers come away from the e book fascinated with all of the methods they’ve but to get pleasure from not simply Steely Dan, however something that strikes them.
Pappademas: I hope folks come away from this e book fascinated with how, though perfectionism can undo you as an artist and any e book about how one can make your artwork will inform you that time and again, there’s nonetheless one thing noble and helpful about aspiring to perfection — that there is magic within the falling-short but additionally within the reaching-for. I additionally hope these tales encourage younger folks to say no to medication.
