Q&A with Donald Fagen: ‘I’m Into My Post-Ironic Phase’

When it rains, it pours for drought-stricken Donald Fagen fans. For starters, this week brings to record stores his first new studio album in 11 years, “Kamakiriad.� While futuristically themed in part, the record will sound instantly familiar to fans of Steely Dan, with the kind of literate, jazzy pop Fagen describes as “laid-back, yet aggressive--junkie grooves.�

The album was produced by (and features the playing of) Fagen’s Steely Dan partner, Walter Becker. The two least-touring guys in rock will be teaming up for a bona fide Steely Dan road trip this summer, their first live performances since 1974 and first work of any sort under the group name since 1980. They’ve also been writing songs together for a future Steely Dan recording project.

One of pop’s preeminent cynics, Fagen, 45, seems like a happy camper nowadays: The Manhattanite got married a couple of months ago, inducing feelings of “terror and great relief,� and claims he and Becker are “better friends than ever� thanks to parallel growth during their time apart. He discussed the new album and upcoming tour in this recent conversation.

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Question: During the last decade, did you chafe at the pressure of knowing there were all those people out there quietly but impatiently waiting for you to produce a record?

Answer: It was really more internal than external. But it was kind of stressful that, for quite a few years, every other day someone would say, “So, when’s your record coming out?� Rather than give them some earnest, encyclopedic answer, I’d just say, “Well, I dunno, how’s your record coming?�

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Q: Obviously it’s not just the lighthearted fantasy album it might at first seem.

A: On one level this is a sci-fi story that is essentially not much different from any kind of mythological narrative, in which a hero goes on a journey and has to face ordeals in various passages of his life and comes to some moment of crisis. . . . But in another sense it’s an allegory for a sort of Everyman story. To some extent it could be seen as autobiographical.

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Q: Was inventing the futuristic elements of the lyrics fun?

A: Yeah, I think one thing about the sci-fi thing is you can use invented technology as metaphors. I used to like a lot of the kind of science fiction that also had a lot of parody and social comment. Frederick Pohl was one of my favorites. I like the idea of using the genre--you can write about personal things or you can do satire and you can remain pretty detached.

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Q: Are the rumors true that this summer might actually bring the first Steely Dan tour in 19 years?

A: We actually booked a month of dates in the U.S., Walter and myself, with a new band--doing some of this material from “Kamakiriad,� some of Walter’s new solo album, and some of the old things, which we’ll probably rearrange to keep it fresh.

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Q: Considering that you were legendary for loathing the idea of touring, what’s turned that around? Did it have anything to do with the dates you did leading up to the “New York Rock & Soul Revue� album two years back?

A: Yeah, I think I just got comfortable being on stage again. And the fact was, we always liked performing. A lot of it was the conditions at the time. We were usually opening for other bands--largely heavy-metal bands--and were the low man on the totem pole in those days. And although the band was good, it was put together very quickly, and we wanted to do things with other players. So the idea was we’d let the band go, because we couldn’t support them touring anyway, and we’d do a couple of records concentrating on composition and recording, and then go back out. But the inertia kept us in the studio till we never got around to it (laughs).

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Q: In many ways American pop culture caught up with Steely Dan. The level of irony in your old lyrics is prevalent in the type of writing you see now in music and film and TV. Yet it seems like the tone of your own writing has changed.

A: Yeah, I’m into my post-ironic phase . . . which of course would include irony as well.

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Q: Steely Dan was once accused of being mean-spirited, but your first solo album, “The Nightfly,� and especially “Kamakiriad� seem almost totally free of that, maybe being more playful or more bemused in their observational tone, or even sweet-natured to an extent.

A: Well, actually Walter and I are very sweet-natured lads. We were angry kids, there’s no doubt about it, and I think in that way we weren’t that much different from a lot of kids from our generation.

To a lot of people, the ‘60s is now some sort of incredible layer cake invented by the media. But I think we did have the attitude that we were brought up with inauthentic values, etc., and were trying to find some other kind of alternative values. We were looking for that in a very aggressive way. And as you get older, you’re not that angry anymore; you accept a lot of things.

On the other hand, we’re both very idealistic in that we’re at least trying to do something that’s not all bull----, trying to do something good, in a way that the guys who used to make rye bread wanted it to taste good and the shoemaker who made a pair of shoes wanted the shoes to be good instead of just do a quick rip-off deal. We still have that attitude, which is real American, in a way. I think we’re just not as aggressive--or not as arrogant about it, maybe.

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Q: So maybe you’re saying that back in the ‘70s you were more consumed with the disappointment that’s the underpinning of most cynics, and you dealt with that and have moved on to other things?

A: Yeah, the other things being first and foremost post-irony. And I’m not talking about the New Sincerity, of course, but rather Post-Irony. Or perhaps it’s the Pseudo-New Sincerity, or New Pseudo-Sincerity. Or maybe it’s the Pseudo-Post-Irony. I don’t even know anymore, it’s hard to say. You know what? As soon as David Letterman hit the airwaves, it was really all over for irony.