Can't Buy A Thrill

Which 70s band are named after a dildo and have sold over 30 million records? Which group (arguably) never penned a sincere love song and were such studio tinkerers that they used over forty musicians for a seven track album? The answer to both of the above is that most antithetical and least 'rocky' of all seventies rock bands - Steely Dan.


The Dan were an alien proposition to me until I recently acquired Can't Buy A Thrill, their 1972 debut.  This, as with any of their strong 70s LPs, plays like a cerebral smoke ring of erudition and lyrical obfuscation. A highbrow and highly danceable celebration of musicianship and general smart arsery. 


Formed at the prestigious upstate NY Bard College in the late sixties by Donald Fagen (keyboard, vocals) and Walter Becker (guitar/ bass), Steely Dan was the result of a shared love of jazz and, for Fagen at least, an immersion in all things 'Beat'; both its literature and lifestyle. The product, as one co-ed put it, of 'absolutely no activity, chain smoking - dope and Lucky Strike(s).'


Musically, The Dan were perfectionists whose precise jazz influenced compositions lent themselves to endless studio trickery. Renowned for distinctive time signature/ key changes, and their preference for jazz style 'major mu' chords, their sound was dynamic in the extreme. Somewhat unpredictably, the result of these multi faceted parts were strong, hooky melodies and seriously catchy choruses.


 'Reeling Back The Years' was their first major radio hit, and, possessing a chorus with an uncanny ability to adhere itself to even the most unwilling of brains, it's easy to see why. Catchy, yes, but it's certainly more interesting than today's FM fodder. For one thing,  its verses seem to be an exercise in how many syllables Fagen can humanly manage to squeeze in to his allotted space. It's also an extremely lean specimen, not one second wasted in pursuit of pop perfection. Containing a cracking Thin Lizzy style solo it is also atypically rocky, yet its hook is built around the above mentioned 'mu' chords on Fagen's keyboards which give a jazzy 'whole tone dissonance' characteristic of their sound. In short, it possesses enough ideas for a whole album let alone a meagre four minutes of streamlined FM rock; it's also typical of their experimentation within a deceptively conventional framework.


Convention is a word that naysayers use to refute The Dan's brilliance, viewing them somehow as the musical Ancien Regime of the 70s. Representing, so the argument goes, all that was bad about this decade: the pomposity, musical excess (eg complex solos), and turgid resistance to change. They are one of the beacons for the 'everything was shit before 76' school of thought, prior to the bloody punk revolution. While the Dan are, admittedly, not the most protean of groups (as a Pitchfork review of their 2000 'comeback' album witheringly observes) the nub of the argument, for me, concerns competence. They are just too good, too measured and methodical.


This is offensive to those of a punk predilection who value intensity of feeling over execution. The first take is the best take crew. While this approach can give a thrilling immediacy and lend itself to raw emotion (the B Side of Neil Young's On The Beach is, to my mind, the apotheosis of this method) it can just as often excuse sloppiness, laziness and an attitude of anti intellectual simplicity. It was also, evidently, just not how Steely Dan rolled.


Not every band can be innovators of the Can variety, coining new genres decades before anyone else via mind bending jams in abandoned Bavarian castles. Nor, indeed, can everyone be Iggy Pop or the Sex Pistols whose theatricality would have been anathema to Steely Dan. This band hated the stage so much that not only did they recruit an additional singer, James Palmer, to shield the spotlight from the reticent Fagen, but after the third album gave up touring completely. A live setting would never fulfil a band of this exactitude. They were more like scientists than rock stars: retreating to the studio to alchemize another slick masterpiece into existence.


Rather than view this slickness as a political gesture - an aristocratic musical competence which aligned itself in scornful opposition to the democratic thrust of punk- I see it as more of a personality trait: some people like to build pretty castles. Some like to rip shit up.


So while this may not be music to stir the soul in that wildly visceral way that only punk knows how, it is still rocks in its own chin stroking way. And, paradoxically, there is something unmistakeably punk about their ostrich like indifference to punk's anarchic ululations. They carried on jamming like it was 1970 late in the decade while all around them the musical landscape was erupting; becoming even more virtuosic, recruiting dozens of seasoned jazz/classical musicians for '77's Aja.


Regardless of context, Cant Buy A Thrill is a great album. Containing tracks such as 'Do It Again' with its samba beat and fine fizzing solos from Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter, and 'Turn That Heartbeat Over Again' a song that manages to turn an ironic philosophical conversation between Jesus and an angel into a snappy chorus. Gems abound, with influences ranging from jazz ('Fire In The Hole'), doo wop ('Dirty Work') and, of course, rock (small r).


This record captures a band brimming with ideas and musical verve. It's slightly rockier than the rest of their oeuvre, which I prefer. And, though jazzy and elegant, it is defiantly NOT PROG, which should surely be the true target for punk's wrecking ball. These are taut, honed songs befitting of both rigorous lyrical/ musical analysis and the dancefloor. Few bands have forged such success by sticking to their guns whilst retaining integrity.


So, dim the lights, maybe pour a cool drink (make it a 'double, sam'), bite the end off a Cuban cigar and enter the detached demi monde of The Dan. Sometimes, it's cool to be competent.