Steely Dan: Reelin' in the Years by Brian Sweet

Author:Brian Sweet [Sweet, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Rock musicians, Music, Rock, Biography & Autobiography, Pop Vocal, Genres & Styles, Composers & Musicians
ISBN: 9781846098819
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Published: 2008-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Aja received a million dollars’ worth of advance orders in the US alone and, while the LP was selling by the truckload on both sides of the

Atlantic, the rising tide of punk began to rock the boat for many older established groups. Aja, with its smooth, pristine production, was the absolute antithesis of the unproduced, raw-edged records being made by The Sex Pistols,The Clash and The Damned but Steely Dan went largely ignored by the punks, who spewed invective on the likes of Led Zeppelin, Yes and Pink Floyd, the old dinosaurs - or old farts - of rock, as they called them. Becker and Fagen did say that punk music was of no interest to them, though they did concede that as a sociological event the

upsurge may have had its benefits.

In truth, the punks’ scorn made little impact on the old guard’s record sales, especially in America, and by the end of the year Aja had become the third bestselling album in the country, surpassed only by Fleetwood Mac’s multiplatinum ‘Rumours’ and Linda Ronstadt’s ‘Simple Dreams’. It won a Best Engineered Recording Grammy for Roger Nichols and was

nominated for Best Rock Album of the Year by the National Academy

for Recording Arts and Sciences.

Aja received unprecedented initial airplay and sales. It entered the Billboard album chart after only three weeks and virtually every song on the album was being programmed while ABC were readying ‘Peg’ as the

first single. Eager Top 40 programmers even cast aside their usual reticence to play album cuts.

Eventually ‘Peg’‘I Got The News’ became the lead-off single from the album in November 1977, and justified its selection in the new year by providing Steely Dan with their first Top 40 hit for 18 months. It was also to be their biggest hit from the album. ABC wanted Steely Dan to edit ‘Peg’ - which was less than four minutes long anyway - but after a lot of consideration and one abortive attempt to do so, they refused.p>

Reflecting on the album’s phenomenally successful musical marriage

some years later, Fagen said, “I think the album reflected a wish on the part of a lot of players to do something a little more sophisticated, more mature, just expand the vocabulary of pop music.” But they were only expanding that vocabulary within Becker and Fagen’s parameters, and

Becker placed more emphasis on their own input: “The way we did it we were kind of the auteurs of the record, in the sense that a director is the author of his film.”

Becker put the success of Aja down to the fact that they now had the luxury of being able to throw away everything that didn’t work in the studio.

In the past, despite their perfectionism and because of budget constraints, they were often forced to allow certain things through that they

knew they - and indeed the studio musicians - could improve upon, given the time. On Aja, Fagen and Becker simply kept throwing material away until they had an entire album’s worth of wholly satisfying performances.

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