It was a night when East Coast cynicism crashed head-first into Hollywood decadence, ’70s style.

    Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were in town, kicking off a four-night residency Monday at the sold-out Chicago Theatre by playing their most popular album, “Aja,” in its entirety, plus additional songs from their Nixon-era heyday. (The band ignored its studio creations from the current decade, including the Grammy-winning album “Two Against Nature.”)

    “Aja” was released in 1977 at a time when Fagen and Becker had ceased touring to focus on studio recordings. Master musicians were flown in to play solos, and the tandem developed a reputation for unrivaled precision and finesse. In an era when jazz-fusion albums by the likes of Weather Report and the Headhunters were selling nearly as well as rock releases, the jazz-like leanings of Steely Dan found an audience that bought “Aja” by the millions.

    Though there was no attempt to move the music out of its ‘70s mind set, the tunes endure, a mix of melody and swing, topped with the kind of lyrics that made jaded sport out of a culture steeped in surface pleasures. For Steely Dan, the songs on “Aja” in particular put the solo on a pedestal, with glorious moments by virtuosos such as guitarist Larry Carlton (who will join the band’s tour later in the week), pianist Victor Feldman and tenor saxophonist Tom Scott. The ultimate geek-out moment occurs in the middle of the title song, with saxophonist Wayne Shorter and drummer Steve Gadd counterpunching like Greek deities.

    That interlude was relived at the Chicago Theatre by drummer Keith Carlock and saxist Walt Weiskopf with eerie precision and acknowledged with a standing ovation --- confirming that Steely Dan’s solos are as well-known as the songs. The question remains, is a solo a solo anymore when it’s essentially replicated? Probably not, but it was still pretty thrilling to watch the interplay, especially when the “improvisation” is like a song in itself. And, above all, it was a tip of the hat to a broader vision, the Fagen-Becker style of composing and arranging – which, as the years go by, clearly stands as a one-of-a-kind blip in pop history.

    The duo’s 11-piece band was a precision instrument, though not everything it played was a note-for-note replication. The live mix somewhat muted Freddie Washington’s excellent bass playing, and nobody tried to reproduce Feldman’s spacious keyboard jabs on “I Got the News.” But the backing singers brought verve and guitarist Jon Herington kept weaving notes together like a master tailor, melody always at the forefront no matter how far out he ventured.

    The horn section split the difference between Stax-style strut and be-bop swing. Carlock and Washington kept things percolating; for all the high degree of difficulty in the playing, this was still essentially dance music at its core. The fans were bobbing their heads, and more than a few got up to shimmy during the neon funk of “Josie” and “Hey Nineteen.”

    As for the lead duo, they were typically taciturn. Fagen was the eternally cool hipster in his shades behind a keyboard, Becker the avuncular guitar whiz who stepped to the microphone to lay down spoken-word jive. Fagen hissed his vocals, the transplanted New Yorker crawling “like a viper though these suburban streets” of his dearly unloved California, while his backing singers carried the choruses.

    So was this better than sitting at home listening on headphones? Yes, especially because it afforded the opportunity to watch Becker and Fagen riff off each other. In the studio, they may have been tacticians orchestrating sonic perfection. And on stage they played it pretty tart and straight too. But they couldn’t mask their satisfaction as Becker’s guitar lines meshed with Fagen’s piano chords on “Josie.” In that moment, they were just a couple of twisted be-boppers, messing around with jazz and turning it into enduring pop. 

    greg@gregkot.com

View more photos of Steely Dan in Chicago.

Steely Dan set list Monday at Chicago Theatre
(first seven songs from “Aja”)

1 Black Cow
2 Aja
3 Deacon Blues
4 Peg
5 Home at Last
6 I Got the News
7 Josie
8 Black Friday
9 Time out of Mind
10 Daddy Don’t Live in that New York City No More
11 Bodhisattva
12 Babylon Sisters
13 Show Biz Kids
14 Hey Nineteen
15 Dirty Work
16 Love is Like an Itching in My Heart (Supremes)/band intros
17 Do It Again
18 Don’t Take Me Alive
19 My Old School
20 Kid Charlemagne

Encore
21 Reelin’ in the Years

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    Steely Dan famously quit touring to concentrate on recording meticulously crafted studio albums in the ‘70s. But in the last decade, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker have spent more time on the road than behind a mixing board. And now, with a dozen musicians, they’re performing some of those hallowed ‘70s albums song-for-song on stage.

        In a four-night residency at the Chicago Theatre next week, Steely Dan will devote an evening each to “The Royal Scam” (1976), “Aja” (1977) and “Gaucho” (1980), plus a fans’ choice set on the fourth night.

        Fagan and Becker once were notorious perfectionists who found concert sound sorely lacking in the ‘70s. They’ve loosened up a bit, but the realities of the music business have also dictated their decision to do it on the road rather than in the more controlled environment of a recording studio.

        “Those days, conditions were poor” and the tour packages with heavy metal bands and Texas outlaw bands were “mismatched,” Fagen says of Steely Dan’s ‘70s touring experiences. “We were sharing dressing rooms with guys who had the shower and a chainsaw going at the same time.”

        “We have our chainsaws now,” Becker adds.

        Fagen: “We have a band that’s been together long enough so that everyone feels the groove the same way. We stay in nice hotel rooms, we have cute backing singers, everything you could want.”

        Becker: “Plus the skill, organization and ability to create sounds live are much greater.”

        One thing clearly hasn’t changed: The dry, often dark sarcasm that has informed Steely Dan’s music ever since they bonded at Bard College in the ‘60s on Kurt Vonnegut novels and Blue Note label be-bop. That sensibility made the Dan unique among ‘70s rock bands. Their recordings from that era remain touchstones for several generations of musicians, often studied for their sonic innovation and peerless musicianship. Initially a relatively conventional rock-pop band, Steely Dan soon morphed into a Becker-Fagen collaboration with a rotating cast of musicians.

     The finicky pair would sometimes fly a musician across the country to play a particular solo on a particular track. “We would write a part with a specific person in mind,” Fagen says. “Once we stopped being a touring band, it opened up all sorts of possibilities for how the arrangements would work and who could play on them.”

    Becker and Fagen inserted be-bop chords and sly lyrics informed by Beat Generation literature into rock tunes, and even infiltrated the charts with some of the most harmonically sophisticated pop music ever made; “Aja” became one of the best-selling albums of the ‘70s even though its elliptical, jazz-stoked tunes came out months after the Sex Pistols were breaking in England.

    “That was the height of the punk era, when musical values became intertwined with social or political values,” Becker says. “It became all about what music was more radical or what kind of music had real working-class ‘authenticity.’ But in my experience of listening to music, nothing was ever as radical as jazz. Given a choice between Charlie Mingus and Eric Dolphy or Joe Strummer and Lou Reed, there was no choice. I like Reed and Strummer, but it’s kiddie music.”

        For Fagen, the music got better and more satisfying as the group  evolved, which explains why the band is choosing to perform the last three studio albums of its initial run (1972-1980) instead of the earlier stuff, which many fans would prefer: “Can’t Buy a Thrill” (1972), “Countdown to Ecstasy” (1973), “Pretzel Logic” (1974) and “Katy Lied” (1975).

            “The ones we’re playing have a more mature style; each of the others has a track that Walter and I think is a clinker,” Fagen says. He’ll also make the case for the duo’s comeback albums, the 2000 album “Two Against Nature” that bested Eminem for best album at the Grammy Awards and the 2003 follow-up, “Everything Must Go.”

            “But no one wants to hear those,” Fagen says with a laugh.

            The duo prided itself on standing outside the mainstream throughout its career, so the notion of playing some of its best-known albums front-to-back suggests an uncharacteristic embrace of nostalgia and trend-hopping. Lately, every band or artist with any sort of musical heritage seems to be hitting the road and promising to play a “classic” album as part of the set list, from Bruce Springsteen (“Born to Run”) to the Pixies (“Doolittle”).

    But Fagen and Becker have assembled an 11-piece band that can bop as much as rock. They suggest that the current tour is less about exactly duplicating their work as configuring it for the moment – in large measure because every album after “Countdown to Ecstasy” was conceived without touring in mind. The relative complexity of the material allows them to reinterpret a few passages while still hewing to the familiar outlines of the original work.  

        “Donald and I were in Jay and the Americans’ road band in the ‘60s, and that sort of oldies mentality can be a wee tad depressing,” Becker says. “But we didn’t play any of these songs live between 1974 and 1994 when we weren’t touring at all, so the repetitive aspect isn’t there for us. With the amount of money people spend these days to see a rock show, they expect to hear their favorite old Steely Dan songs, and this is a way for us to present it somewhat differently.”

        They also acknowledge being discouraged by the current landscape for releasing new music, because of the rise of Internet file-sharing and what they see as a lack of stimulating new music.

            “It’s true I’m attracted to a groove, and a lot of stuff has a pretty good groove these days, but they are often looped vamps where nothing ever happens, or they become novelty records for people to rap over,” Fagen says. “I want to see some harmonic development, some kind of denouement. I want to hear lyrics with wit and substance…”

            Fagen stops himself. He knows he sounds like a curmudgeon. But then he and Becker never were ones to embrace the sound of the Now. As transplanted New Yorkers recording in Los Angeles throughout much of the ‘70s, they spent a good chunk of their time creating their version of a noir movie about Southern California decadence. Now, they hope to do the same with the concept of the nostalgia show.

             “We’re not into note-for-note re-creation,” Fagen says. “There’s something depressing about that.”

            greg@gregkot.com

Steely Dan: 7:30 p.m. Aug. 31 (“Aja”), Sept. 1 (“Gaucho”), Sept. 3 (“The Royal Scam”), Sept. 4 (Internet request night) at Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State St., $144, $92.50, $72; ticketmaster.com.

Sponsored Link: Amazon's Steely Dan Store

Here are the albums Steely Dan will perform in concert Aug. 31 ("Aja"), Sept. 1 ("Gaucho") and Sept. 3 ("The Royal Scam") at the Chicago Theatre, with comments from Donald Fagen and Walter Becker on the creation of each:

“The Royal Scam” (1976)

Becker: “We had been recording in L.A. all along and decided to do this one in New York, looking for a more brash musical personality.”

Fagen: “We both had had it with L.A. by that point and we really wanted to play with certain people in New York, like [drummer] Bernard Purdie. We’re drummer freaks.”

“Aja” (1977)

Becker: “The harmonies became more overtly jazz derived. It didn’t seem like a formula for pop music, but it was the height of an era when the LP was a cutting-edge instrument. You could do anything.”

Fagen: “It was a surprise it was such a huge hit. I’m sure that our manager [Irving Azoff] had something to do with it. He was very good at promoting things that were difficult to promote. It had a kind of exclusivity about it that he helped make desirable.”

“Gaucho” (1980)

Fagen: “We were trying to do something that sounded as fresh as ‘Aja’ and of equal quality, and it didn’t feel as good, because we were working under that pressure. Some of the tracks sound a little too careful.”

Becker: “We broke up afterward, but I started breaking up in the middle of making it. The record has a really spooky quality for me, but that’s part of what we intended. We got caught up in that; it’s the risk you run of becoming captive of your own artistic vision.”

greg@gregkot.com

Sponsored Link: Amazon's Steely Dan Store