Donald Jay Fagen (born January 10, 1948) is an American musician best known as the co-founder, lead singer and keyboardist of the band Steely Dan.
Now why the hell would I want to increase the volume of my ejaculation ? They can already hear me in the apartment next door.
Anthemic rock music is inherently fascist - anything intended to move huge masses of people is politically offensive to me.
I think of Steely Dan as being of its time, and it may be inseparable from its time.
What do you do with what you're given, and how do you transform it into something worthwhile?
I don't think you can escape the environment we live in now.
It's great to know that our old stuff still sounds good to our fans, just as it's wonderful to think that we've turned a few people on to jazz over the years.
Popularity has everything to do with business and nothing to do with music.
I'm starting to get older, and began to think about mortality a little more. My mother died in 2003 and that was a big shock. When your parents start to die off, that's going to be a revelation. So for me, this album - although it might sound quite cheery - is really talking about death.
Randy Newman seemed like an even worse singer than me. I liked Ray Charles, Levi Stubbs, Jack Jones, Joe Tex, Wilson Pickett.
I like it when songs develop in some way. Four minutes usually isn't enough time for something to develop musically.
Melodies can be good depending on the context. You can have a simple melody, and if the harmony behind it is interesting, it can make a very simple melody really different. You can also have a complex melody. The more complex it is, the harder it is to sing, and then sometimes it can sound contrived. You could write a melody that would be fine on a saxophone but if you give it to a singer, it can sound raunchy.
My style is a little quirky. I can't play as fast as most professional jazz players.
I took some lessons as a kid but trained myself by ear. I did it the way jazz musicians used to learn years ago, which is to play records and slow them down to figure out the notes. At first I tried to imitate Red Garland, who was my favorite jazz pianist.
My writing is really intuitive. As a kid, I went to school in New Jersey and hung out in New York, so the way kids used to talk got into our earlier songs.
When you get a groove going, time flies.