June 27, 2022
Music journalist Jones (This Is Bop) presents a warts-and-all look at the life of Donald Fagen, cofounder of the legendary rock band Steely Dan. Born in New Jersey in 1948, Fagen came of age in the suburbs of South Brunswick and, at age 10, began “constructing elaborate defenses against his uncongenial surroundings” through music to escape the “wasteland of mud concrete.” From this came the “noir”-like songwriting that Steely Dan became known for, wherein baffled protagonists decried being trapped in trying and painful situations. Fagen’s passion for music led him to form bands while a student at Bard College, where he met Walter Becker and formed Steely Dan in 1970. As Jones traces the arc of Fagen’s career—which included a breakup with Becker in 1981, a subsequent reunion, and performing solo following Becker’s death in 2017—he does a solid job of conveying the marvel of Fagen’s music, but he sometimes has a tendency to get in the weeds, as when, in one section, he describes the tedious mechanics of a certain type of audio tape. Fagen doesn’t emerge with a halo, with Jones reporting on a 2016 domestic violence arrest that the writer explains was symptomatic of Fagen’s simmering rage over the years. Still, Fagen fans will find this detailed account a worthy complement to the singer’s own memoir, Eminent Hipsters.