Steely Dan plays the Mann September 21st. Tickets go on sale Saturday @ 10 am.
ALL MUSIC GUIDE: Most rock & roll bands are a tightly wound unit that developed their music through years of playing in garages and clubs around their hometown. Steely Dan never subscribed to that aesthetic. As the vehicle for the songwriting of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, Steely Dan defied all rock & roll conventions. Becker and Fagen never truly enjoyed rock — with their ironic humor and cryptic lyrics, their eclectic body of work shows some debt to Bob Dylan — preferring jazz, traditional pop, blues, and R&B. Steely Dan created a sophisticated, distinctive sound with accessible melodic hooks, complex harmonies and time signatures, and a devotion to the recording studio. With producer Gary Katz, Becker and Fagen gradually changed Steely Dan from a performing band to a studio project, hiring professional musicians to record their compositions. Though the band didn’t perform live after 1974, Steely Dan‘s popularity continued to grow throughout the decade, as their albums became critical favorites and their singles became staples of AOR and pop radio stations. Even after the group disbanded in the early ’80s, their records retained a cult following, as proven by the massive success of their unlikely return to the stage in the early ’90s. MORE
RELATED: With Fagen on keyboards and vocals and Becker on bass, they decide to sign up guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and drummer Jim Hodder. With the core band recruited, Donald and Walter need a 
name for their group. Since both of them were avid readers of 1950’s “Beat” literature, they decided to name the band “Steely Dan” after a dildo in William Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch.” MORE
RELATED: Mary is strapping on a rubber penis. “Steely Dan III from Yokohama,” she says, caressing the shaft.
“What happen to Steely Dan I?”
“He was torn in two by a bull dyke. She could cave in a lead pipe.”
“And Steely Dan II?”
“Chewed to bits by a famished candiru in the Upper Baboonsasshole. And don’t say ‘wheeeeeeee!’ this time.” — From Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs