During the pandemic, illustrator Joan LeMay came up with a list of every character in the songs of Steely Dan and then painted each one. The Steely Dan catalog consists of well over 200 proper-named characters, among them Dr. Wu, the Gaucho, Kid Charlemagne, and the Woolly Man Without a Face. LeMay’s detailed illustrations, combined with author Alex Pappademas’s astute analysis, form the basis for Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan (University of Texas Press).
Quantum Criminals brings to life the strangely compelling characters in the Steely Dan universe and provides plenty of fascinating factual information on the jazz-rock band founded by Donald Fagen and the late Walter Becker. In this second installment of a two-part exclusive interview, Pappademas discusses the meaning behind the song “Show Biz Kids,” the edge that Becker brought to Steely Dan’s lyrics, and more.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
360°Sound: What do you think attracted Fagen and Becker to the darker side of human nature? Why do you think they wrote about so many losers, drug addicts, and unscrupulous characters?
Alex Pappademas: They’re very much the sum of their early influences, and the thing that brought them together was that they liked a lot of the same things. They liked satire, and satire tends toward darkness – a gimlet-eyed, jaded view of human nature. They liked Thomas Berger, Vladimir Nabokov, Jean Shepard, and Tom Lehrer. They came out of a cynical tradition, and they were carrying that on in some ways.
Any friend who you share commonalities and a sense of humor with, you’re gonna riff off each other and feed that thing you have in common in each other. More than anything, I think that’s where it probably came from, this dark feeling about other people. It may have also been what they were observing as they looked at the world. They were young fogies. They had a real feeling that what was going on today was inferior to what was experienced in the past.
So much of it was about them having a conversation and amusing one another. They found it funny to write about these dark themes and self-deluded people, people who are doing terrible things but aren’t thinking about how terrible it is. There was something about that that they found hilarious.
“Show Biz Kids” is unique in that it’s the only song with “fuck” in the lyrics, and it has the meta “Steely Dan t-shirt” line. What’s your breakdown of that song?
They reluctantly moved out to Los Angeles because that was where the work was as songwriters. They’d gone to work for ABC as staff songwriters. That led to the formation of the band. At some point, they were writing these songs ostensibly for other bands on the label to record, and that didn’t really work out because very few of these songs were suitable for anyone but, as it turned out, Steely Dan. They had to form a band to play this music because they were being paid to write songs that nobody wanted.
“Show Biz Kids” is the beginning of them starting to recognize that they were part of show business and finding that hilarious. Also, finding that disturbing in some way. I think it’s a lot of those themes. It’s the banality of show business and the idea of entertainment. It’s distrustful of entertainment itself, but it’s also distrustful of young people, which is an important theme that runs through a lot of the key Steely Dan songs.
You think about “Hey Nineteen.” It’s about Donald and Walter in their 20s but already feeling a sense of a generation gap between them and people who were five to 10 years younger. It’s forward thinking because in the ‘70s, I think the generation gap was still really between generations, like between you and someone old enough to be your parent. Nowadays, I don’t know about you, but I’m 46 and I feel a generation gap with people in their 30s and early 40s. Language changes have accelerated. The way the culture changes so much, I feel like two to five years is enough for there to be a generation gap.
In “Show Biz Kids,” Donald has assumed the persona of someone who is reporting to you about what the people get up to in Los Angeles. I imagine him as some kind of preacher who’s experienced all that is to be had out there, the sensual and sinful pleasures, and is now singing about how terrible it all is in a way that kind of makes it sound good.
He’s singing about the temptations you will face out there in the world, and yet, he’s clearly a little bit drawn to it. That’s probably a very exaggerated and warped version of what their actual relationship to Los Angeles was, which is that they distrusted it and thought it was weird. They were experiencing this very much as jaded New Yorkers who had moved out there and didn’t love it. But they were also over time becoming rock stars and getting to indulge in some of the things that countercultural royalty out there in Hollywood got to indulge in. It’s about an aversion that is akin to attraction somehow.
Fagen has said that Becker would help him finish the songs he started. In general, what do you think Becker brought to the songwriting?
I think Walter was the dark one, which is saying a lot. He had an even darker sensibility. I think that he was even more of an intellectual. When you listen to 11 Tracks of Whack, his first solo album, there’s some really complicated lyric writing on there. I think he was an off-the-charts brain. I think Donald was equally brilliant, but Walter might have been even smarter.
Donald would have an idea and it would be Walter who would figure out how to take it home. He would instantly get it because they were so connected. There’s the story of them writing “Deacon Blues” together. Walter is like, “Like this guy who dreams of being this and this.”
In L.A., Walter started living the same lifestyle as other increasingly wealthy ‘70s rock guys like The Eagles. He became a hard drug user at a certain point. And so, he was actually kind of living like the people that they were singing about. He sort of became a Steely Dan character.
The fact that it was two people writing together allowed them to go to places that maybe as a solo artist either of them would have been a little uncomfortable with. Because even if we know that songs are made up, I think we assume that people are singing about themselves. We assume that James Taylor is singing about James Taylor because it’s one guy with a guitar. Our brain just makes that assumption. The fact that Donald had Walter as this foil and vice versa allowed them to explore aspects of human nature that might have been a little uncomfortable alone. Writing together allowed them to go to a different place and it gave them that freedom. It’s plausible deniability in that they could always point at the other guy, and say, “Oh, that was him.”
There are people who have done it solo, but we don’t know how we feel about those people sometimes. Like Warren Zevon, a great genius, but you listen to those songs, and you’re not like, “That seems like a good guy that I would trust with my car.” I think that it was a distancing device that allowed them to write all of these amazing and bizarre things because it was not necessarily them, it opened up the possibility of it being a fictional character.
Do you know if Fagen has read your book?
There is a possibility that it has made its way to him. Someone in his circle has definitely seen it and is aware of it. I have not heard anything back. I feel like he will probably like it, but I would be sort of disappointed if he were publicly effusive about liking it. That would cut against what I like to think about Donald Fagen as a person, that he would never give me the satisfaction.
If he hated it and thought I was an idiot, like if he talked about me the way that he talks about Fred Armisen when he’s making fun of Fred Armisen making fun of jazz, I would love that. It’s like you want Don Rickles to call you a hockey puck. If you’re gonna meet Rickles, you don’t want him to be nice, you want him to insult you.
I love Donald Fagan. And I don’t want him to feel like he has been misrepresented. Walter had passed away by the time I started writing this book, and I had to approach it as if Donald was not here either because if I was thinking about it from that perspective, you would never finish. I don’t want to know, on some level, how he feels about it. But at the same time, I feel like this book is very beautiful visually. It’s a really nice object, and I hope that it’s on his coffee table and he doesn’t hate it. But then again, it’s a book with his face on it, why would you keep that on the coffee table?
