For Steely Dan it was twenty years between Gaucho and Two Against Nature. The wait this time was only three years for the new one Everything Must Go. Neil Strauss interviews Becker and Fagan for the NY Times:
- Were you surprised, after making all those jokes about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to actually get voted in?
DONALD FAGEN That was really the happy ending we were looking forward to. And we did end up sending a case of honey mustard over to Jann Wenner. So I wanted you to know that he was properly paid off.
Is it strange that, 30 years after the bulk of your work, suddenly you're getting so many awards and accolades?
WALTER BECKER I think that's a pretty typical pattern. We're getting a lot of credit just for surviving and for persisting in doing more or less the same kind of music, which depending on who you talk to is either considered a kind of integrity or a failure of imagination or both.
But for you, your style came out of nothing except yourselves and your specific musical backgrounds and tastes, so it makes sense that you'd stay in that pocket you invented.
BECKER That's true. It's such an unusual kind of music. It's an indicator of how much music has become like fashion that people genuinely expect that you'll have some whole new approach every time out.
You do, however, sing, "Let's roll with the homies" on the new album.
BECKER That's exactly right. We may not be in the mainstream of musical thought, but we're willing to co-opt any catchy expression that comes along, however silly.
What made you decide to sing for the first time on the album?
BECKER I've been offering to sing for years. But the songs that we write have too great a range for me. So this time through, as we were getting to the end, I realized that we had a song that I could sing. So I called my own bluff and did it.
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