Steely Dan: There's A Cha Cha In My Soup

From Circus, written by Ed Naha

When is a rock band not a rock band? When the group in question is named Steely Dan.

Steely Dan is about the unlikeliest choice for a "rock band" label as you will ever find. The six-man group (consisting of bassist Walter Becker, pianist Donald Fagen, guitarist Jeff Baxter, guitarist Denny Dias, singer David Palmer and drummer Jimmy Hodder) welds together walls of electric piano, jazz-inspired guitar rhythms, slide guitar, electric sitar and a few horn riffs with skill and ease. The resulting music, however, isn't quite rock. Nor is it jazz . . . or pop . . . or anything else you can hang a name on.

During a recent gig at New York's famed Max's Kansas City, Steely Dan put on a perplexing performance which showcased their lightweight rock melodies and pseudo-Buffalo Springfield-ish vocal harmonies. The results were amazing, or rather, the audience was left amazed. Listening to the band hop, skip and jump through Latin-flavored rockers, country-inspired ballads and pop sagas, the crowds weren't quite sure of how to label this interesting potpourri. All they knew was that this music was tight and ex-citing-and worth coming back to hear again.

Basement sessions: Chief writers Walter Beck and Donald Fagan realize that their songwriting style is slightly off the wall, but they defend their tunes as being simply "traditional." "Well, we try to write songs as close to the same approach as the Beatles used, so the songs will be unified. You know, pop songs with some kind of structure that can be develop-ed. We're actually pretty traditional in that respect, but our chord structures are usually more interesting than in most rock and roll."

The history of the traditionally mysterious Steely Dan goes back to about five years ago, when Walt and Don met at New York's Bard College and decided to collaborate with songwriting duties. One resulting tune,. "I Mean To Shine," was recorded by an up-and-coming young singer named Barbra Streisand. The boys began working in studios and soon found themselves part of Jay and the American's back-up band, hardly an exciting start for the Lennon-McCartney inspired duo.

After eighteen months of bombarding America with "Cara Mia's," the team left Jay and took refuge in ABC Dunhill's L.A. office, where they be-came staff writers. It was there that Steely Dan came into being. Practicing secretly in the basement of the ABC offices, Walt and Don enticed struggling rockers to take up the Steely-ite cause, enlisting their musical services in the development of the fledgling band.

Boston underground veterans: First to join were Jeff Baxter and Jimmy Hodder. Jeff, better known as "Skunk" to friend and foe alike ("because I never change my socks"), was just recovering from the split of his Boston-based group, Ultimate Spinach, and Jimmy was about to leave another Boston band, Bead Game. Recalls Jim, "Bead Game was pretty raunchy. We never rehearsed. We just got onstage and were really sloppy. But people came to see us anyway." They both figured Steely Dan to be a musical panacea guaranteed to cure their rock ills, and so they commenced rehearsing.

The Steely Dan quartet soon realized that there was something missing from their sound. That "something" turned up in the persons of Denny Dias and lead singer David Palmer, a veteran of Middle Earth, Jake and the Family Jewels and the Quinaimes Band. David recalls that the only reason he joined Steely Dan was "I was at the low point of my life. I was working in a factory in New Jersey and I was scared. All my friends in New York were all down and out, they couldn't write, couldn't do anything. So I said 'Alright I'll join.'"

With the addition of Dave, Steely Dan was ready to step into the studio to record. On their debut ABC/Dun-hill release, Steely Dan, the group did their best to fuse together rock, pop, jazz and latin ideas. Sounding a bit like the old Electric Flag minus the horns or one of Boston's late sixties' rock mutations, Steely Dan pulls off musical surprises with the aplomb of pros. A pedal steel guitar will turn up in the middle of a cha-cha, a few jazz chords will tear through a rocker, and a Memphis horn line will suddenly appear in a ballad.

Off-the-wall realism: Crazy? Well, maybe. But Steely Dan is a group that's out to prove that it's music that still counts, not flash. Onstage at Max's, the group finishes a very laid-back set, highlighted by Steely's electric piano-dominated tunes and David's graceful body movements a la early Jim Morrison. No hype, no stage absurdity - just music. Watching them bound off the stage with enthusiasm, one can't help but remember the words of Walt Becker, who earlier in the day commented: "It's all a matter of everyone understanding that the music is the most important thing. Anything that detracts from that isn't worth doing."