Donald Fagen Talks Candidly About Life on The Road

donald fagenDonald Fagen is one of the great songwriters of his generation.  He co-founded Steely Dan in the 1970’s and wrote and performed a string of great albums and songs like “Kid Charlemagne”, “Deacon Blues” and “Any Major Dude Will Tell You.”  He’s also had a great solo career, and continues to tour with Steely Dan, and as a solo artist.  He recently stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about his new book, “Eminent Hipsters.” Excerpts from the interview appear below, but you can hear the interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.

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Ron Bennington:  A lot of what this book starts about were the people who kind of formed your life – people that you sought out when you were younger and started to listen to the new, un-suburban opinions.  

Donald Fagen:  Mmm-hmm.

Ron Bennington:  Do you think everybody goes through that same exact experience – that what happens at those teen years is going to kind of form your path for the rest of your life?

Donald Fagen:  Yeah, I think to a large extent, as far as I know.  Some people might find their path in life later, I think some do.  But, at least for me it was definitely, say, between the ages of 11 and 16, something like that.

Ron Bennington:  11 and 16 I think is about right.  That’s just when you start to find different things on your own.  They’re not being presented to you, and you think to yourself, “Here’s something that’s just for me.”  

Donald Fagen:  Yeah, I think that’s when you start to really separate from your parents.

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Donald Fagen Talks About The Definition Of Hip

Ron Bennington:  David Chase was in not too long ago and he brought up a point to me that I’ve been thinking about a lot.  He said, “Does hip even exist anymore?”  And I think the difference is, that hip factor, you had to go looking for.  Where today, I think, because of the Internet, things are just brought directly to you.

Donald Fagen:  Well, yeah.  I think, for several decades now, what used to be hip – hip is now mainstream.  It goes through all the professions, it goes through every class.  I think it’s really lost its meaning, so you really can’t even talk about it anymore in that sense.  I try to make clear that what I’m talking about is the way, perhaps, “hipster” was defined back in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s.

Ron Bennington:  Yeah.  And of course, now, it’s – almost anything considered cool today is presented to you through a corporation of some type.  Where back there, I think, if you were to find any of the beats or something like that, they weren’t necessarily motivated by money as much as they were motivated by experience.

Donald Fagen:  Yeah, I think – you have to remember you’re coming out of an age of conformity and kind of post-war malaise, really, where I think the country just essentially was in a state of post-traumatic stress, I think, from the war.  It all sort of pulled into itself.  It was very conservative, there was a lot of fear of communism and of communist infiltration, and certainly of the hydrogen bomb.  Of course we all remember getting under the desk, and all that kind of stuff.  I think certainly my generation was probably one of the first generations to really distrust the older generation, the government, parents.  Especially because they told you to get under the desk.  As a kind of defense against the hydrogen bomb, that kind of thing just didn’t wash, there was no common sense about it.  Then, of course, I think when Kennedy was shot, that kind of violence, for an American, at least, was very unusual.  I think that was kind of the capper, really.

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Donald Fagen Talks About His Love For Science Fiction

Ron Bennington: You talk about being a kid and loving sci-fi stories, and science fiction has changed a little bit because of Hollywood where it’s all action based.  But back then it really was a lot more paranoia and, “What are they trying to do to us?  How are they trying to control us?”

Donald Fagen:  Yes, I think there was a lot more of that.  Especially writers like Philip K. Dick was especially into that kind of story. Although, it appeared in a lot of science fiction – Heinlein, also Frederik Pohl, C.M. Kornbluth… Actually, Pohl and Kornbluth used to write stories – they’d take something like, say the advertising business, and extrapolate from that and think what it might be in the future, if it was exaggerated beyond all thinking.  They came up with the space merchants, where the whole world was run by the advertising business.

Ron Bennington:  So, they’re not too far off, when you really think about it.

Donald Fagen:  No, they were very prescient, I think.  Yeah.

Ron Bennington:  Yeah, and that was always the feeling of sci-fi back then, it was like how do we keep our humanity with this kind of thought control?  How do we keep our humanity with this kind of technology?  And now it looks like, “Hey, there’s cool stuff that’s going to explode.  Everybody show up and see it.  There’s going to be a lot of bright, shiny lights in the movie theaters.”

Donald Fagen:  Yeah.  In a way, maybe not that much has changed.  And in fact, the situation is a lot worse in that I think even though people seem to be aware that they’re being brainwashed by advertising, and that they see all this new technology coming out, it doesn’t seem to matter that they’re aware of it.  They still buy it. It shows that something about the human mind wants novelty.  There’s something magical about technology, I think, and humans like magic.  It relieves them from their daily cares and so on, they can concentrate on something more superficial, and all the whiz-bang of all that kind of stuff just takes you out of your daily life.

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Donald Fagen Talks About Jean Shepherd

Ron Bennington:  There’s so many different subjects that you get in the new book.  But in the early part, the people that you were attracted to were somewhat outside of the mainstream of America.  Jean Shepherd is a guy who in New York City did overnight radio, and you were a big, big fan of it when you were a kid.

Donald Fagen:  Yeah, Jean Shepherd, if anyone knows him at all, it’s probably because he wrote stories on which a movie called “A Christmas Story” is based, that’s very popular every Christmas, and they show it on TV in sort of marathon showings.  And it’s the one about the kid who wants the Red Ryder rifle for Christmas, and all that.  And it’s very entertaining, actually, and Jean narrates the story.  But before he was known for that, he had this all night radio show.  By the time I was listening to it, he was on at 11:45.  He was only doing 45 minutes, weeknights for the most part.  He was just a great verbal improviser, and he used to tell stories about his youth in Indiana, and comment on the passing scene, and play the kazoo.  Generally speaking, he was a lot of fun, and a lot of kids related to him.  He had a huge following, and I was one of the kids who used to listen to him.  He was definitely an alternative voice.

Ron Bennington:  Sure.  The thing that was amazing about him, and again, the “Christmas Story” thing is a very sweet story and it’s nostalgic, but there were plenty of his stuff – and you can go and check these out on YouTube – plenty of his stuff that was angry, plenty of this stuff that was going up against things that were unfair.  But what was really great about that kind of talent is that – you look at George Carlin, and it would take him a year to put together a great hour special, and you’d do it once a year.  Shepherd had to go out and do this every single night.

Donald Fagen:  He did.  I can’t say that every night his show was a success, but an amazing percentage of his shows were great.  Even the ones that weren’t great, there was always something special about every night.  He definitely had a way of looking at things that was definitely an alternative to the stuff you heard on TV, other stuff on the radio.  There were no comedians really, except for maybe Lenny Bruce, who were doing it.

Ron Bennington:  And he wasn’t getting on TV.  You’d have to find that album.

Donald Fagen:  He actually had some aspirations about TV, but there wasn’t a good interface between him and TV.  They didn’t want him, and he had mixed feelings about TV himself.

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Donald Fagen Talks About A Career In Music

Ron Bennington:  Did you have any idea that you’d go so far in music, though? At what point did you think, “Alright, this isn’t just fooling around.  I’m definitely doing this for life now”?

Donald Fagen:  I still haven’t figured out that I’m not just fooling around, really.  I’m waiting for that moment, when I say I’m doing that for life.  Although, I feel better than I used to.  A couple of years ago, I had a kind of epiphany where I said, “Oh, wow.  I’m a musician, and I guess this is my career.”  But there’s still some – I don’t think I’ll ever be that sure of anything, really.

Ron Bennington:  But the fact that you still have an audience – and many of your peers had those really flashy, great two. three year… some hits, but could never draw a crowd today.  When you guys go out and play, the audience is there.

Donald Fagen:  Yeah, it’s amazing that we still have an audience.  I think Walter and I just wanted to make a living playing music.  We didn’t care that much how big an audience we had when we started.  I don’t know if we even still do.  I think we’d play in clubs if the audience shrunk somehow, because we love playing.  But it’s great that we can make a good living doing it.

(more on page 2)

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