Christophe Delbrouck - Steely Dan (Book)

Steely Dan . Widely celebrated in the United States, the work of Steely Dan and Donald Fagen represents an unmatched jazz-pop crossover. This sophisticated music transcends conventional stylistic boundaries and lives on in a landmark discography, led by the popular successes of Aja and Gaucho. This book traces Donald Fagen's journey from a dreary New Jersey suburb alongside his friend Walter Becker, another reserved outsider. Despite their unease with social conventions and the spotlight, they built a remarkable career behind the identity of a famously refined band and an extraordinarily creative group of collaborators: Steve Gadd, Jeff Porcaro, Wayne Shorter, Jeff Baxter, Victor Feldman, Chuck Rainey, Jim Gordon, Larry Carlton, Tom Scott, Bernard Purdie, Mike Brecker, David Sanbom and Rick Marotta. Together they transformed the ambitions of seventies rock, with lasting influence on perfectionism and recording technology. The result was a string of Billboard Top 10 entries and distinctive hits. Fagen created a style of his own and became part of America's musical development, although he might once have been content to play piano unnoticed in a Greenwich Village club. History had other plans, and he went on to record under his own name with The Nightfly one of the landmark albums of the 80s.