[music]

Alison Stewart: It has been more than 50 years since Steely Dan released his first album, 1972's Can't Buy a Thrill. Steely Dan was founded by the late Walter Becker, who was born in Queens, and New Jersey native Donald Fagen. The two shared credit almost every single Steely Dan song.

Steely Dan's footprint is large, and its impact on pop culture is undeniable. Like in this episode of The Sopranos, where Tony is singing along while driving.

[music]

I'm a fool to do your dirty work

Oh yeah

I don't wanna do your dirty work

No more

Alison Stewart: You know you're part of the pop culture cannon when you get a snarky shout-out on The Simpsons. Here's Homer.

Homer: Attention lovers of studio perfectionism, I've drugged all the concessions so you'll do what I say.

Donald Fagen: Drugs at a Steely Dan concert, I never thought I'd see the day.

Alison Stewart: Yes, that last voice was Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen himself. Recently there was an article in Timeout London titled, "Why is everyone in London obsessed with Steely Dan right now?" Part of the answer lies in the band's ability to deliver hooks that are earworms that are sample friendly helping the music live on, like in a pre-problematic Kanye's hit, Champion.

When you pop the hood on the lyrics, you enter another world. Their songs refer to things like squonks and people like the dandy of Gamma Chi and Chino and Daddy Gee. Gee or gee?

Alex Pappademas: Gee.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. It's this side of Steely Dan that is explored in the new illustrated book of essays called Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. It provides a roadmap through the world of Steely Dan and its influences. It's incredibly thorough, and often hilarious book.

Joining me now is author Alex Pappademas. Alex, welcome.

Alex Pappademas: Thank you so much for having us. Also in studio with us is Joan LeMay, who did the illustrations. Hi Joan.

Joan LeMay: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Alex, how do you describe Steely Dan?

Alex Pappademas: Perfectionist, studio wizard duo of the 1970s who-- and probably survived into the 2000s and beyond. I think you can still go see them to this day, they will be touring forever and probably long-lived '70s legends.

Alison Stewart: Would you read a sample from your book so people can get the tone in the flavor?

Alex Pappademas: I sure would. Donald and Walter began the process of accepting that they were old men when they were barely 30, which is the smartest way to do it because if you're efficient about it, you can get right with your youth's impermanence before it actually starts to skate away.

In their 20s, Donald and Walter wrote lyrics about children who scream and run wild and wondered, "Why do I tremble each time they ride by?" Near the end of the '70s, they wrote the mordantly funny, Hey Nineteen about no longer being able to talk to women just a decade younger than them due to cultural differences they perceived as fundamental.

On their reunion tours, they seem to relish having finally actually become the leathery cynical show business lifers they've presented themselves as for years, and on their reunion albums, they finally sound as old and weird as they've always claimed to feel.

Alison Stewart: The writing is great. When did you know you wanted to have a visual element?

Alex Pappademas: I mulched on a proposal for a Steely Dan book that would have contained many of these same ideas for like a year and a half and kind of didn't know where I was going with it. I knew that I had thoughts about this band and never got tired of talking about them, but it wasn't until Joan announced soft launch the idea of doing a zine of drawing all of these characters that one of the editors of this book, Jessica Hopper and I both started texting each other like, "That's a great rubric and structure for a Steely Dan book."

Once we had that one big idea, everything just snapped into place. It didn't take very long to write it once I finally got around to it.

Alison Stewart: Joan, what interested you about this project?

Joan LeMay: Well, I'm a lifelong Steely Dan fan.

Alison Stewart: There you go.

Joan LeMay: I also I love making art in series. This was early pandemic times. I made a spreadsheet of every named Steely Dan character and it was biblical in proportions.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Joan LeMay: It was something that I could immerse myself in that was going to take a very long time and I just started that project for myself. I've been envisioning these characters in one way or another if not specifically then sort of spiritually my whole life.

Alison Stewart: Alex, you and Joan did a Reddit Ask Me Anything a few days ago, and one of the questions was a very I won't say obvious, but important one. What inspired you to write the book?

You said, "I never get tired of listening to them and thinking about them and talking about them. Writing is hard and some portion of the time you spent writing a book is always going to suck, but I knew I wouldn't get sick of the subject matter, even in the depths of the process suck zone."

What is it about Steely Dan that made you want to write about them and why wouldn't you get stuck in the suck zone?

Alex Pappademas: I think that there's endless ambiguity and endless room to imagine and fill in the gaps because Donald and Walter left out so much. That was the essence of their art is giving you just that little snippet.

They talked about it like being in New York City and overhearing the conversation of someone passing you in the other direction, in a song like Through with Buzz, then you come away from it with this weird anecdote. You're like, "Why were they saying that?" I feel like that's what Steely Dan songs give you is, just that little piece of something that fires your imagination.

There was just so much to chase after and dig out. That was the main thing. That sums up what I said on Reddit. I did not expect to have that quoted back to me. That is very much my Reddit vernacular and not my WNYC voice.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan. My guests are author Alex Pappademas and illustrator Joan LeMay. Some people are real like Rikki from Rikki Don't Lose That Number's a real person. Did you see a picture of Rikki?

Joan LeMay: Sure did.

Alison Stewart: Tell me about your Rikki research.

Joan LeMay: Yes. The Rikki research just like all the other pictorial research was just deep, deep Googling, so much Googling. I made up her body, I made up her outfit. When I was painting all of these characters I had a folder on my desktop, that was called the Dan Casting Gallery. It was filled with found photos, photos of friends, photos of family, pictures from sewing catalogs and clothing catalogs from the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, and I would compile images through those reference points.

Alison Stewart: Tell us about Rikki.

Alex Pappademas: Rikki's name was Rikki Ducornet. She really did I think get Donald's number. I think Donald gave it to her, I don't know if she asked for it. I think she may have lost it on purpose because she was in a relationship at the time. It's an amazing story because she leaves the country for a while.

They meet at Bard College when Donald's a student there and she's I think married to a faculty member and then she goes off, leaves the country for a while, and comes back and there's a hit song with her name in it all over the radio. She's talked about how she would hear it at certain moments and it would always seem to be calling to her in moments of confusion or feeling lost or something. It would come on in the airport or the supermarket or something like that.

Also, that song created a notable demographic uptick for kids born in the '70s, girls born in the '70s being named Rikki. You can actually see it in the census records.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Actually the first person, Rikki's a little farther into the book, but the first person is Jack who we introduced as in, "You go back Jack, do it again" I'll let the song actually play rather than me singing it.

[music]

In the mornin you go gunnin'

For the man who stole your water

And you fire till he is done in

But they catch you at the border

And the mourners are all sangin'

As they drag you by your feet

But the hangman isn't hangin'

And they put you on the street

Yeah, you go back, Jack, do it again

Wheel turnin' 'round and 'round

You go back, Jack, do it again

Alison Stewart: All right, I'm going to describe your Jack a little bit Joan, and you can dive in. Jack is sitting there in your illustration, cards in front of him, a bottle of Jack Daniels, balding guy. He's looking sad, looking depressed. Got a cardigan on. Tell us about your rendition of Jack. How did you come to this Jack?

Joan LeMay: I wanted Jack to be a dejected figure. I wanted him to look tired. I wanted him to look like he'd been trying very hard, but also not so dejected that he wasn't going to get back up and--

Alison Stewart: Do it again.

Joan LeMay: Do it again. He's an archetype piece. He's like the fool in the tarot and he's you and he's me. There he's a real guy.

Alison Stewart: You write that Jack is a Steely Dan protagonist.

Alex Pappademas: Yes, an archetypal Steely Dan protagonist because he keeps making the same mistakes. He's maybe telling himself a story about how he's not doing that and this time he's going to win. He's going back to the table. It's the very first song on the very first Steely Dan album. It's the archetypal Steely Dan protagonist because he's somebody who he evades hanging, he's in some wild west scenario stealing people's water and then he's at the table and time after time he seems to play into fate's hands and then somehow escape from it.

They would tell that story over and over again in different forms throughout their career.

Alison Stewart: Joan, did you have one particular person you were excited to draw; Jack, Peg, Dr. Wu, Cousin Dupree? Was there one that you were just like, "I'm ready."

Joan LeMay: I was so pumped to paint Cathy Berberian. She was someone who I had not done a lot of research on previously, and when we started digging into the book and started learning more and I saw images of her, I was like, "Oh yes, caftan time."

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Joan LeMay: I wanted her to just be regal and magical and she was a delight.

Alison Stewart: Can you put her in context for people?

Joan LeMay: Yes. She's a avant-garde opera singer who worked with John Cage and a bunch of other folks and was peerless with what she did, and would make these crazy compositions using all kinds of sounds and [unintelligible 00:11:31] and yes. She just appears in one line of one song but boy.

Alison Stewart: Can I put you on the spot what the line is?

Alex Pappademas: Even Cathy Berberian knows there's one roulade she can't sing because she could sing anything. The joke is that even Cathy Berberian it's like can't pull the sword from the stone. A roulade is something, this is why I have not written a book about Cathy Berberian because I couldn't tell you what a roulade is, so in that sense.

There is a dessert but there's also a musical term, it means something. Yes, she's an amazing singer who had incredible range and incredible voice. I think the joke is that Donald Fagan is a very limited vocalist and thought of himself as a very limited vocalist, and it's funny to imagine him invoking Cathy Berberian.

Alison Stewart: Yes. That is a very specific detail.

Alex Pappademas: That's a deep cut.

Alison Stewart: What is a detail from your research Alex, which really did help you stay focused on what the mission of the project was? Sometimes you get a detail and you can put it on a post-it note, and you put it on your bulletin board so you know this is what this is about.

Alex Pappademas: I think the post-it that it's not a real post-it but it's a mental post-it, and the one that is most important I think is me saying, don't try to be funnier than Donald and Walter because if you are a Steely Dan fan, if you have read their writings in these the early aughts internet when they resurfaced and were blogging pretty regularly, or their liner notes, or even really their interviews, they're just effortlessly funny and incredibly intellectual and yet hilarious.

There were points where I was like, "I'm not going to outdo them. I need to just go straight down the middle on this because I feel like I'm competing with someone who's uncompetewithable." That's not a word but you know what I mean.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: When you think about when they're writing their lyrics, were they writing them for themselves? Were they writing them for the super fan?

Alex Pappademas: For each other I think. I think that you're listening to two very smart, very funny, very acerbic guys who found their soulmate in college. I think that these are two guys who are absolutely made for one another, and it's maybe I think Walter is the only person darker than Donald in some ways, and so that's their bond. I think that they were just making each other laugh was the number one priority throughout this artistic process.

Basically when Walter has to take some time off, that's the end of Steely Dan for a long time, and Donald has to relearn how to write for his solo records and they're very different as a result.

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes. What is a squonk as heard in any major dude?

Joan LeMay: Yes, as heard in any major dude. The squonk it turns out is a mythological character that is rumored, well, there are roots in Pennsylvania folk folklore. It's a creature that looks like a cross between a [unintelligible 00:14:30] and a deflated elephant. It's described as having warts and all kinds of unseemly things on its skin. It's so sad that it looks the way that it does that it cries and cries and cries.

The squonk cries so much that he dissolves into a puddle of himself. He was fun to paint but he was also sad to paint. When I was working, I had paintings around my area and I couldn't look at the squonk because you just want to hug the squonk even though you know he would be squishy.

Alison Stewart: I Just keep thinking drugs. I just do.

Joan LeMay: [laughs] Yes, that's fair.

Alex Pappademas: That's the safest interpretation; if you don't know what something is, it's probably drugs. It's probably a metaphor for drugs.

Joan LeMay: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Here are two takes on Steely Dan from two very different prolific record producers. A couple months ago, Steve Albini, who's the cool kid producer Nirvana, the Pixies, just went on this Twitter thread that included a lot of words you can't say on radio about Steely Dan and wrote, "Christ, the amount of human effort wasted to sound like an SNL band warm-up."

The counterpoint was Mark Ronson through the groove making machine, he tweeted, "Just realized Donald Fagan wasn't even 30 when Steely Dan dropped Aja. Happy birthday to our lord of irony imbued super jams." Why do you think Steely Dan is polarizing?

Alex Pappademas: I think let me say that I love that Steve Albini is holding this position and I don't ever want him to change his mind. I would be disappointed in him if he got on the Steely Dan bus at this point. I want him on the Big Black bus and the PJ Harvey bus and the Noise bus, the Shellac bus.

That's what I want from Steve because I love that he's in his own way such a perfectionist and so much about like there is one right way to do things, and so are Steely Dan but they otherwise could not be further apart aesthetically. I love that about him. There's something about, I came of age in the time though where Steve Albini's take was much more the prevailing take. I am a late Gen X person. I am in the alt-rock years.

Growing up there was nothing more uncool than Steely Dan. I feel like that kept them safe for me to discover later on because the retro-industrial complex didn't get ahold of them until much later if that makes sense. We've really strip-mined all the cool rock and roll from the '60s and '70s and hollowed it out and made it embarrassing now.

There's something about Steely Dan, they were freeze-dried from that point. You could find them like a secret because if other than about six or seven big classic rock radio hits, nobody really paid attention to what was going on on those records. At least nobody my age. It felt like I was discovering them when I found them.

Yes, I think people like Mark Ronson, now you're seeing later generations digging into this music without the same aesthetic prejudices and figuring out that there's so much to mine here both musically and lyrically, aesthetically, all of that.

Alison Stewart: Did your relationship with Steely Dan change over the course of this project, Joan?

Joan LeMay: If anything it deepened just in the way that whenever you start peeling the onion on something you love, the more you learn, the greater your appreciation is. Throughout the course of making the book, Alex and I would have Monday morning calls where we'd talk about ideas. He'd always be going down some wormhole that I would follow him into. It was just a joy and a delight.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a sample of Peg, which is from De La Soul's, Eye Know, and we can talk about it really quickly on the other side.

[music]

In this world of love that I have for you

It's true

Eye know I love you better

Alison Stewart: Alex, why are they one of the most widely sampled fans?

Alex Pappademas: Yes, they had the best players. It was two guys who basically after a certain point were just shuttling session musicians in and out of the studio all day long until they got what they wanted, and everybody wanted to play on these Steely Dan records. All of these incredible players showed up on these albums.

Then years later, DJ's looking for samples when you don't know if something's going to be dope or not, you can check for players and see who's on there and be like, "Oh, Steve Gadd, oh, whatever." This is like all of these people are heavy hitters and so you can look at that aspect of it.

It's just an incredible fount of samplable groove because there are all of these incredible musicians who often didn't get to play on stuff this complicated and interesting and really stretch out and bring their ideas to it. I think as much as their reputation for being perfectionists is true, Steely Dan also wanted the best ideas that these people had, and let them off the leash in a way that you would go and do a dog food commercial in the morning, and then play on a Steely Dan record at night.

That was your treat after working your day job in some ways.

Alison Stewart: The book is a great read and it's also beautiful to look at. It's called Quantum Criminals, Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Soul Survivors from the songs of Steely Dan. The author and illustrator will be at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn tonight at 7:00 PM if you have questions for them.

My guests have been Alex Pappademas and Joan LeMay. Thank you so much for coming into the studio and have a great event tonight.

Alex Pappademas: Thank you.

Joan LeMay: Thanks so much.

Alison Stewart: This is All of It.

 

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