Before the fourth album, Katy Lied, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had retained control of Steely Dan while the live band members were mostly replaced by session guys. One of the fresh hirings was a kid prodigy, Jeff Porcaro on drums. On the previous record, Pretzel Logic, they had outed themselves a major jazz fans, and so the new tunes had permission to experiment with wry chord changes, novel moods and Fagen’s twisted character studies.
He was at his best with Black Friday, the confessions of a white-collar felon, planning a financial heist and a hasty escape to Australia. There was a return to the landscapes of New York on Bad Sneakers, a moneyed freak on the streets of Manhattan, guessing that he’s set for a tragic end.
The record was produced in Los Angeles by Gary Katz. The tunes are rich and assured, bringing the listeners over the shiny, FM listening threshold. Often, the talent seems nonchalant. Doctor Wu starts modestly and then pulls out a splendid chorus from nowhere that entertains well.
Hindsight tells us that the record was front-loaded with big tunes and that side two is not so stellar. Fagen introduces a creepy figure for Everyone’s Gone to the Movies, planning his abuse against an expressly cheerful arrangement. Any World (That I’m Welcome To) is a study in disappointment and the yearning for a reboot. As such, it’s like a sketch for the exemplary Deacon Blue, two years later.
By 1975, Steely Dan had the capacity to be both inscrutable and popular, an enviable place to be. Walter Becker plays tremendous guitar, a practice he relegated on subsequent records. Katy Lied also marked the appearance of Michael McDonald on backing vocals, a sweet balance to Fagen’s careworn style. All of this would find perfect expression on the Aja album in 1977, but much of the adventure began here.
The quest for sonic perfection led Steely Dan to experiment with new audio formatting that went awry, stressing their deadline and causing the authors to be “mental puddles”, loath to actually listen to the final pressing. For this landmark vinyl reissue (apparently the first in 40 years), Fagen supervised the process. Hopefully, he liked the result.
