When the Grammy Awards are telecast Wednesday on CBS-Ch. 2, the event will feature an even weirder assortment of characters than usual. But none will seem as out of place as Steely Dan.
Just imagine the nominees for Record of the Year and Album of the Year attending the same party — a college-dorm party, let’s say. Perched strategically in the prime flirting position near the stereo are the school cheerleaders, Destiny’s Child. Hovering nearby are the grinning, freshmen frat brothers, ‘N Sync, smelling like acne medicine in their soccer-team jerseys.
Never far from the beer keg is the kid telling dirty jokes in his turned-around baseball cap and slipping-down jeans, Eminem. Already dancing atop a table is the MBA student, Madonna. Scowling in one corner are the five eggheads of Radiohead, angry at themselves for coming to this stupid party when they could be in the library reading more Michel Foucault.
And there, leaning in the doorway, are Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, the duo better known as Steely Dan. But why are they smirking?
They’re smirking because they appreciate the joke of their situation better than anyone. Here they are — Becker at 49 and Fagen at 51 –thrown in among kids half their age, scrabbling for an Album of the Year trophy.
To make the joke even better, they are also getting a lifetime achievement award this year. They will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame March 19, less than a month after wrestling Eminem for an award. And all this fuss is over their first album in 20 years, an unexpected second act in a career long ago consigned to the history books. The whole situation is a perfect set-up for the princes of rock ‘n’ roll irony.
“It’s very flattering to get both these things [the Grammy nomination and the Hall of Fame induction] in the same year,” Fagen says in an interview, “but there’s also a suspicion on our part. Are they really rewarding the work or is it just more industry hype to sell records?” He snickers sardonically.
“In any case it should be fun. At least it will get us out of the house. We’re somewhat isolated socially, which I think is good for us. But every once in a while you have to get out there and see what the girls are wearing and meet your colleagues in our so-called community.”
“We don’t make the rules,” Becker chimes in. “We just play the game. These are opportunities for us to celebrate the glory of our fans. We’re only going to these events on behalf of our fans.”
“I may, however, have to take some pills for the Grammies,” Fagen says.
“I’m sure your fans will understand,” Becker assures him.
There’s more than a trace of sarcasm as he says this, but then again, there’s more than a trace of sarcasm in everything Becker and Fagen say. What’s more surprising are the hints of earnestness that poke through now and then, as if the duo might really want to meet their colleagues and fans.
In a way, the spectacle of Becker and Fagen crashing the Eminem-Radiohead party is a case of life imitating art because the album that Steely Dan was nominated for, “Two Against Nature” (Giant), is filled with songs about Baby-Boomer hipsters desperately trying to hold onto a youth that’s spilling through their fingers like sand.
There’s a song about an older guy picking up “Janie Runaway,” a homeless teen from Tampa, in New York’s Gramercy Park and dressing her up in heels like Holly Golightly. There’s a song about “Cousin Dupree,” a graying keyboardist from a rock ‘n’ ska band who has lost his day job and finds himself sleeping on his Aunt Faye’s couch. He nurses romantic fantasies about his young cousin Janine, but she just laughs in his face.
In “Jack of Speed,” a former Next Big Thing hears the verdict of the marketplace: “You maybe got lucky for a few good years, but there’s no way back from there to here.” That sentiment is echoed in “West of Hollywood,” where a middle-aged loner recalls a youthful love affair as “a weekend of bliss” followed by “the rainy season.”
In “What a Shame About Me,” a Boomer bumps into an old college girlfriend at a used-book store and has to endure her news about all their successful schoolmates before he’s forced to confess that he just got out of rehab and never finished his novel. “You’re talking to a ghost,” he tells her.
You almost expect there to be a hidden track at the end of the album called “Sunset Boulevard,” about an over-the-hill rock star who staggers up to the Grammy dais and croaks, Gloria Swanson-style, “I’m ready for my close-up, Ms. O’Donnell.”
These songs are ruthless about the dilemma of the aging hipster. And yet, underneath the satire is a curious affection for these decrepit protagonists, as if it might really be possible to be old and hip.
“Some people think it’s a downbeat album,” Becker notes, “but we think of it as a very upbeat album. Take a song like `Janie Runaway.’ What an exuberant view of life that is!”
“When an older man has an affair with a younger woman,” Fagen agrees, “it breathes new life into him. Everything he does seems fresh again. Though there is that suspicion that she’s going to leave him sooner or later. In the song, it’s almost like he’s trying to convince himself otherwise.”
“And he’s doing a pretty good job of it,” Becker says.
“We’ve had some women come up and say, `I really liked that song, but when I realized what it was really about, I was shocked,'” Fagen says. “We have a lot of public-radio fans who don’t realize what’s going on in the songs until it’s too late. If they had done their homework on our earlier records, they wouldn’t be so shocked.”
Reinforcing the notion that middle age and hipness aren’t mutually exclusive is the music on “Two Against Nature.” The sleek, tuneful jazz-rock picks up right where Steely Dan’s previous studio album, 1980’s “Gaucho,” left off. Chris Potter’s sax solo on “West of Hollywood” recalls Wayne Shorter’s similar solo on “Aja.” The insinuating melody of “Cousin Dupree” recalls hit singles such as “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number.” And the modulating chord changes in “What a Shame About Me” recall similar changes in “Deacon Blue.”
All suggest how to be cool at 50.
“Rock ‘n’ roll is obsessed with adolescence,” Fagen points out, “but blues, jazz and R&B have always been attentive to these adult themes of hard luck in life. That gave us a role model. Besides, if you’re going to be true to yourself and keep writing as time goes by, you don’t have any choice but to write through these narrators telling middle-aged stories — this is what happened and this is what didn’t happen.”
“What you want to avoid,” Becker argues, “is writing songs that go, `Gee, I’m old now,’ for the simple reason that those songs are boring.”
“So we create these fictional characters to tell the stories,” Fagen explains. “But even though our narrators are different from us — and from each other — they only work if they somehow fit in the context of our lives. Each one is a bit like us or friends we know. It would stop being fun unless it was about something meaningful, something close to us.
“Humor is a big part of it,” he adds, “because humor is something you need to gracefully age.”
“Not that either one of us is all that old,” Becker says, the self-mocking sarcasm returning in force. “The invigorating properties of the music we write and play keep us young.”
