Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors From the Songs of Steely Dan by Alex Pappademas & Joan LeMay
Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors From the Songs of Steely Dan
by Alex Pappademas & Joan LeMay
University of Texas Press, 2023; 268 pages; Hardcover $35 (US)
Reviewed by Brian Kaufman
Leiber and Stoller, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards... famous songwriting duos. And, of course, Becker and Fagen. Who? Although they sound more like a law firm, Becker and Fagen were one of the most successful songwriting duos of the classic rock era.
Unless you came of age in the mid-to-late-’70s (or you are part of the Millennial rediscovery of “The Dan”) you can be excused for not being aware of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen who, along with their rotating cast of top-flight musicians, formed the band that was collectively known as Steely Dan. Named after a robust dildo — Steely Dan III from Yokohama — from William Burroughs’ infamous novel, Naked Lunch “. . . Steely Dan conformed to the sonic vocabulary of commercial pop in order to smuggle their strange tales of troubled Americans into the mainstream.” And smuggle they did.
Architects of an original fusion of rock and jazz, Steely Dan was one of the Thinking person’s rock bands, intellectual anti-heroes crafting brilliant and complex compositions about “ramblers, wild gamblers, gentleman losers, luckless pedestrians,” and outliers of every stripe who found themselves trapped in capitalism’s human grinding machine. When talking about The Royal Scam (The Dan’s fifth studio album), Pappademas observes: “Half the characters are criminals, but more to the point they’re fugitives on the run from the consequences of their own decisions [. . .] Even the people who aren’t literally thieves or murderers have no innocence to lose; the title song paints America itself as one big criminal enterprise. . .” Not exactly love songs beneath a tequila sunrise.
Like an obsessive, coke-fueled archaeologist, Pappademas descends into the Steely Dan oeuvre, excavating the layers of myth, fact, and legend surrounding each song and the characters that populate them — Jack, the Babylon Sisters, the Major Dude, Rikki, the Gaucho, Babs and Clean Willie, Josie, the El Supremo, Chino, and Daddy Gee, they’re all here — giving the casual listener hitherto unimagined insights into the impetus for the stories that populate the songs. He catches the trail where one might expect — at the beginning and follows these two bard College friends from the shores of the Hudson River to New York City and the legendary brill building where they get jobs (to borrow a phrase from Joni Mitchell) “stoking the star-maker machinery / behind the popular song.” Then on to gathering musicians into a band, cutting demos, and releasing at least two early singles that failed to chart, and never appeared on any official Dan album. Finally, they’re on a jet plane to L.A. where a producer friend gets them jobs as staff songwriters at ABC Records (for a whopping $125 a week!) and before they know it these two New York boys end up becoming California Dreamers for most of the ’70s, releasing six albums in as many years and receiving one of the first platinum Record classifications for their 1977 release, Aja.
There are enough arcane details in Quantum Criminals to sate even the most steeped Dan fan, reminding us all the while that “all human activity is ultimately doomed to decay and failure. The best you can hope for is to document the wreckage of your best intentions while keeping some sliver of beauty in the frame.” And there is much beauty to be had here, including the 100+ playful, rich gouache paintings (see cover image) by artist Joan LeMay. She brings the Steely Dan characters — real and imagined — to life, transforming this first-rate rock bio into a collectible art book in its own right. The duo are currently working on a similar treatment of the Grateful Dead. Watch for it!