Dystopian Devices: What is a Steely Dan?
The eminent jazz-rock band Steely Dan formed in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 1971. Revolving around the core duo Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, the band gained a vast following with the masterful and highly accessible debut album Can’t Buy a Thrill. Throughout the 1970s, the band prospered with subsequent releases like Pretzel Logic and Aja but began to meet heavy resistance from the punk rockers.
Like proponents of the same decade’s prog-rock movement, Steely Dan distinguished themselves with complexity. A cherry of jazz snobbery on top put them at odds with rock fans who preferred a heavier, less refined sound. With this established, I hope you will join me in snickering at the irony of punk guitarist Steve Jones’ recent admission to enjoying Steely Dan’s music.
In June 2022, the legendary Sex Pistols guitarist told The Telegraph: “I never really listen to the Pistols’ music anymore,” Jones admitted. “I’m fucking tired of it, to be honest with you. I’d rather listen to Steely Dan.” It seems that, over time, musical tastes follow a refinement trajectory comparable to alcohol, spanning from Sid Vicious’s White Lightning to Steely Dan’s Dom Pérignon.
As someone born several years after Steely Dan and Sex Pistols’ heydays, I’m able to enjoy aspects of both enduring minimal judgement. Fun as it might be to see Sid Vicious bashing seven bells out of a cymbal with the neck of his bass guitar, there’s nothing quite like popping a cork on a balcony in the south of France to the sound of ‘Do It Again’ and heeding the song’s advice.
Despite the apparent gulf that separates Sex Pistols and Steely Dan, they have a couple of things in common. While Fagen and Becker were never considered anarchistic crusaders, they stuck their oar in the waters of tomfoolery on occasion. For an example of the band’s wit, check out their comical exchange with Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson.
Another example of Steely Dan’s impish side has been staring us in the face with rigid impudence since 1971. The band’s name, after all, refers to a steam-powered, mechanical dildo. Alas, to my knowledge, this intriguing sex toy exists only in fiction, first alluded to in the pages of William S. Burroughs’ iconic 1959 novel Naked Lunch.
The ‘Steely Dan III from Yokohama’ is the strap-on worn by Mary during one of the book’s most sexually explicit scenes: “Mary is strapping on a rubber penis: ‘Steely Dan III from Yokohama,’ she says, caressing the shaft. Milk spurts across the room… I tie him up, strip off his clothes with a razor and fuck him with SteelyDan I.”
Indeed, not the name of a cold-eyed Daniel, Steely Dan surfaces as just the very tip of an iceberg of obscure objects and concepts that litter the Beat Generation proponent’s enduring dystopia. Burroughs also introduced his readers to repulsive humanoid creatures called Mugwumps, a drug derived from centipede flesh known as Black Meat and a garrulous asshole. If you ask me, Fagen and Becker picked the right name from a somewhat bizarre menagerie.
Listen to the classic Steely Dan song ‘Peg’ below.