Subject
Steely Dan - Nabokov - a big influence ...
From
Date
Body
Complete interview at the following URL:
http://gothamist.com/2008/06/13/donald_fagen_steely_dan.php
June 13, 2008
Donald Fagen, Steely Dan
Since he began his fruitful collaboration with Walter Becker back at Bard College in 1968, Grammy award-winning musician Donald Fagen has steadily distinguished himself as one of the smartest and most imaginative contemporary songwriters. As Steely Dan, the innovative duo lays claim to an impressive catalog of hit singles that somehow manage to stay fresh despite their everlasting ubiquity on classic rock stations across America. For whatever reason, people still can't help cranking up the volume when My Old School comes on for the millionth time, to say nothing of indispensable classics like Caves of Altamira, Sign in Stranger, or the soulful Dr. Wu.
After some long "dark ages" without any live performances, Dan fans have been elated in recent years to find Fagen and Becker touring on a regular basis, now backed up by a rich eleven piece band. Tonight they kick off a six night stand at the Beacon Theatre with the Bill Charlap trio opening; ticket prices vary but are worth every penny.
[ ... ]
Do you have any theories about what’s made your collaboration with Walter so fruitful? We share a lot of the same interests. We met at Bard College in the late ‘60s and we were both jazz and blues fans as kids, which was kind of unusual at the time; I guess it still is. At the time there were a lot of different kinds of music and it was all novel at the time; soul music was basically invented when we were in high school and that grabbed our attention. And we just combined all those things into the kind of music that we like.
On the other hand, we were both also interested in literature. At the time, I guess we were of the generation that began what they used to call black humor, which they now just call humor. It was a kind of dark humor that was typical of the upcoming writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Bruce Jay Friedman and, on a more sophisticated level, Vladimir Nabokov, who was a big influence. We were both fans of those people and I guess our world view was kind of shaped by the subculture which we were a part of. Now the whole world sees everything the way we did back then, but at the time, coming out of the conformist ‘50s and so on, it was sort of unusual, I guess. But it’s not anymore.
[ ... ]
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/