The eternal paradox, and ‘Quantum Criminals,’ of Steely Dan

Plus, a guide to Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest finals.

View this email online May 13, 2023 by Stephen Thompson This week, we’re thinking about the legacy of rock’s most undyingly ponderable band; plus, Glen Weldon breaks down Saturday’s Eurovision Song Contest finals and Louder Than A Riot looks at rapper Saucy Santana and the limits imposed by “virality.” Joan LeMay/Courtesy of University of Texas Press As writer Alex Pappademas describes it, Steely Dan is a paradox: a “cult band whose catalog … includes at least a dozen enduring radio hits” — two guys who continually found a way to “embed blue-ribbon misanthropy in music designed to go down as smooth as creme de menthe.” In the new book Quantum Criminals, Pappademas goes deep on the Dan, presenting a stylish, witty and thorough account of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen’s musical lives through the lens of the characters at the heart of their songs. Pappademas’ copilot on this journey is artist Joan LeMay, whose paintings throughout Quantum Criminals render touching portraits of the band’s influences and inheritors and speculative illustrations of the personalities who populate its world. Their book uncovers the vast universe embedded in Steely Dan’s music — a constellation of lyrical references, artistic influences and social and political contexts surrounding the band, including everything from William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch to the King James Bible, from De La Soul to Aretha Franklin and from the invention of LSD to the 2007 rom-com Knocked Up. In this interview, NPR Music contributor Marissa Lorusso asked Pappademas and LeMay a few questions about their personal histories with Steely Dan and how Quantum Criminals came to be. —Marissa Lorusso In one of the book's opening chapters, Alex details his evolving relationship with Steely Dan's music, from mild distaste to somewhat ironic engagement to sincere appreciation — a path he says has been followed by many Millennial and Gen Z fans. Joan, what's the story of your relationship with Steely Dan — did your fandom follow a similar road? Joan LeMay: Listening to Steely Dan is, honest to God, my first musical memory. Growing up, my parents had a very limited record collection — a stack about five inches wide or so. In it was the entire Steely Dan discography (later to include [Donald Fagen’s solo debut] The Nightfly; no other Fagen solo records nor any Becker records made the cut), plus lots of Linda Ronstadt, a couple of James Taylor records, The Best of the Doobie Brothers Vol. II, Carole King’s Tapestry and Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick. At 2 years old, I was what one would call a tall baby. I would reach for things. And I’d get ’em, too. I clearly remember the day I was able to reach the turntable, my tiny arms at full stretch above my head, and heft an LP upon it until the peg snapped into the hole. That LP was Can’t Buy A Thrill. I liked it the most out of all of my parents’ records because of the colors on the cover. I plopped down on our diarrhea-brown shag carpet and was pleased. It seems unlikely that I would remember this so clearly, but I was reading the newspaper at that age — I peaked early.  How did you decide to approach a book about Steely Dan this way? Why tell the story of the band through the lens of these characters — and what inspired both of you to approach this project as an illustrated/written collaboration? LeMay: In 2020, I got back into the practice of making fanzines. I made two issues of a zine called Mug Club — I asked people in the arts to send me a photo of their favorite mug and tell me a story about it, and I’d paint the mug. After those, I started making a fanzine called Danzine wherein I planned to paint all 240-something characters in the Steely Dan universe. I got as far as drawing the cover, making a character spreadsheet, doing a few sketches and posting about it on Instagram, partially as a way to keep myself accountable for making the thing.  Esteemed writer/director Jessica Hopper, one of the editors of the University of Texas Press American Music Series and this book’s doula, texted me and said “Joanie? That’s not a fanzine. That’s a book.” Before I posted my thing, she had been talking with Alex about what kind of book he might like to write for the press, and he’d responded by pitching a book that was “Bluets, but Steely Dan” — and she put us together. Alex Pappademas: Bluets is a collection of short pieces by the incredible poet and nonfiction writer Maggie Nelson that walk the line between autobiography and criticism and prose poetry. I had been reading a lot of Nelson and other nonfiction writers who work in a really pared-down, aphoristic mode and when Jessica and I started talking about me doing a Steely Dan book for UT, I said I wanted to do something really piece-y and fragmentary like that. Once we merged the idea for Bluets-but-Steely Dan with Joan’s idea to paint all the characters it necessitated a change in my approach; instead of making a deck of cards and trying to assemble them into a narrative, it was about seeing how much you could hang on the idea of an individual Steely Dan character and how to use those characters to frame stories that illuminated Steely Dan’s legacy in some interesting way. The chapters in this book give such deep studies of the personalities who populate Steely Dan's songs (and, by extension, of the musicians who brought them to life). Did your relationship with any of these songs change while writing about them, illustrating them, or otherwise getting inside the heads of these characters? Did you learn anything about the songs that genuinely surprised you while working on this project? LeMay: I learned so much. On our weekly calls, Alex always excitedly ushered me into the entrance of several wormholes he’d been traversing, and it was a constant delight. Thinking deeply about what these characters were wearing, what they might’ve been doing in the narrative beyond the narrative, thinking about their environment, how they held their faces, how they held their bodies — it was an immersive way to listen. I’d had ideas in my head about so many of the characters because I tend to think visually, but there were lots of fantastic surprises, like when we dug into Cathy Berberian, for instance. I’d never looked up what she looked like before. Pappademas: I think what surprised me the most as I dug deeper into these songs was how much empathy Donald and Walter seemed to have for their characters. It’s not something they’re usually given credit for — the idea people have about them is that they’re always snickering amongst themselves, making fun of the people they write about, but I think that’s actually more true of somebody like Randy Newman than it is of Becker/Fagen. I think there’s always a real sense of humanity’s plight underneath whatever coldness or archness is more easily detectable in their work on first blush — even when the people they’re writing about are doomed or deluded or depraved, you don’t get the sense that they’re judging these characters, most of the time. There’s an attention paid to the human longing that motivates people to these weird actions and they don’t judge the longing, of, say, the guy who’s hung up on a sex worker in “Pearl of the Quarter” — whereas Frank Zappa, given the same storyline, would absolutely write about what a moron that guy is.  Steely Dan's lyrics are famously somewhat cryptic, and Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were quite averse to having their lyrics read as straightforward personal narratives. It's clear that so much research went into illuminating these songs, but there's also a healthy dose of creative speculation, too, both in how the subjects of the songs are described and how they're depicted.  LeMay: The only characters I painted that weren’t 100% creative speculation (and really, less speculation and more my personal interpretation) were those having to do with actual, living people, like Cathy Berberian, Jill St. John and G. Gordon Liddy. I had a folder on my computer called “DAN CASTING GALLERY” full of images of people in my life, found photos, ’60s and ’70s fashion catalogs, advertisements and sewing pattern packaging. I painted from a mélange of those images mixed with things that had been in my head forever, as well as from a ton of photos of my own body posing in different ways for reference. The most important thing to me was getting the humanity — the profoundly flawed humanity — of these characters right. Pappademas: When I’m writing criticism, for sure, but also when I’m writing reported pieces, I feel like there’s always an element of creative speculation in what I do. It’s just more or less constrained by facts depending on what kind of piece it is. Even if you’ve sat in a room with somebody for hours you’re ultimately imagining their inner life based on what they’ve told you, and sometimes on what they haven’t told you.  Steely Dan definitely tried to discourage any attempt to read these lyrics autobiographically, and the fact that all their lyrics were composed by (or at least credited to) two writers was their first line of defense against that kind of reading. But I think it’s human nature — or at least it’s my human nature — to intuit the opposite and look for places where the art seems to correspond to what we know to be the contours of an artist’s life. I don’t know; I guess I’m doing the same thing Taylor Swift’s fans do when they decide that some opaque lyric is an Easter egg about this or that relationship of hers, or what A.J. Weberman was doing when he decided “The sun isn’t yellow, it’s chicken” was Bob Dylan confessing to faking his own death, or what the people who think The Shining was Stanley Kubrick exorcizing his guilt over faking the moon landing. The difference is that I think I’m right and I think those other people are all nuts, because I’m in my bubble and can’t imagine the view from theirs. Finally, what do you hope readers — be they longtime devotees, newly converted fans or Steely Dan skeptics — take away from Quantum Criminals? LeMay: I think that in a lot of ways, this book can be read as something that’s about the ridiculous cacophony of what it is to be a person in the world, striving to do something you’re happy with. In a lot of other ways, it is a real invitation to truly dive into what you love with reckless abandon — to dream about it hard, to see and hear and appreciate the small details and the big ways you feel as a result of giving yourself the gift of paying attention. I hope that readers come away from the book thinking about all the ways they have yet to enjoy not just Steely Dan, but anything that moves them.  Pappademas: I hope people come away from this book thinking about how, even though perfectionism can undo you as an artist and any book about how to make your art will tell you that over and over, there’s still something noble and useful about aspiring to perfection — that there’s magic in the falling-short but also in the reaching-for. I also hope these stories inspire young people to say no to drugs.   Newsletter continues after sponsor message More to read, watch and hear  Whether or not you revel in the Eurovision Song Contest’s unique mix of gaudy spectacle, profound earnestness and occasional self-mockery, I couldn’t more fervently recommend Glen Weldon’s annual finals preview. Glen’s knowledge and understanding of Eurovision runs deep, from his inevitable taxonomy of its songs (broken down into Bops, Ballads and Anthems) to his invariably correct artist rankings — listed in ascending order of quality rather than likelihood of winning. I’m not a betting man under the best of circumstances, and I’m admittedly a Eurovision tourist, but I’d say that if you’re betting on Sweden to win (as many are), it’d be foolish not to also account for the likelihood of a repeat win by Ukraine. Seriously, how much of a dimbulb would you have to be to underestimate Ukraine? In the latest episode of Louder Than A Riot, Sidney Madden looks at the career of Saucy Santana — a makeup-artist-turned-rapper who’s become a viral star — and examines the structural boundaries that box in queer artists and make “virality” a way for the music industry to dismiss unconventional artists as novelty acts. Listening to Louder Than A Riot got you wondering about other NPR Music podcasts? I don’t blame you! Here’s Bob Boilen hosting All Songs Considered (playing new songs by PJ Harvey, Rufus Wainwright and others), Robin Hilton hosting New Music Friday (profiling new albums by Madison McFerrin, Céline Dion and more) and, best of all, yours truly hosting Pop Culture Happy Hour (previewing an assortment of summer entertainment, including a new album by Kesha). A Baltimore basement used to house an incredible array of jazz concerts, organized by volunteers from a group called the Left Bank Jazz Society. Those shows, many of which featured legends of the genre, left behind countless memories and hundreds of recordings, which had been stored away for decades. Now, those recordings are starting to surface, with three of them from the ’60s and ’70s coming out just last month: Sonny Stitt’s Boppin’ at the Bank: Live at the Left Bank, Shirley Scott’s Queen Talk: Live at the Left Bank and Walter Bishop Jr.’s Bish at the Bank: Live in Baltimore. All Things Considered has a great story that sets the scene. The great and good Bilal Qureshi has thoughts on Beyoncé’s massively anticipated Renaissance tour, which remixes and reimagines the star’s latest album as part of a maximalist, career-spanning, unimaginably effort-intensive set that spans nearly three hours. The New Pornographers visited WFUV in New York City to perform tracks from the band's latest album, Continue As A Guest. Watch a great rendition of "Angelcover." Finally, I got to cross “Talk about Weird Al on-air with someone portrayed by Rachel McAdams in a movie that won best picture at the Oscars” off my bucket list! It’s about damn time. Tiny Desk Catie Dull/NPR It’s not often that Tiny Desk concerts revolve around a single, unbroken piece of music. But this stunning performance of “Eyes of the Endless” by Love in Exile — the trio of pianist Vijay Iyer, multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily and the incomparable singer Arooj Aftab — simmers, swells and washes over for you for 17 mesmerizing minutes, with a heavy assist from the woozy silences that hang between notes.  Also this week: Don’t miss Sid Sriram’s haunting, shockingly seamless mix of jazz, R&B and Carnatic music. One More Thing Joy Oladokun sings for everyone — especially herself. Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WUFT 89.1 (edit station). Need a new playlist? Follow NPR Music on Spotify and Apple Music What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: nprmusic@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Books, Pop Culture, Health and more! 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