Steely Dan
Entry updated 10 February 2025. Tagged: Music.
US band formed in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 1971 by keyboardist and vocalist Donald Fagen (1948- ) and guitarist Walter Becker (1950-2017), whose smooth, intricate jazz-inflected rock quickly achieved considerable international success. The band's name was taken from a Sex toy in William S Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959). Sf fans from youth, Fagen and Becker have acknowledged A E van Vogt, Cyril M Kornbluth and particularly Alfred Bester as lyrical influences. This has rarely manifested in explicit sf themes; an exception is the Post-Holocaust "King of the World" from the album Countdown to Ecstasy (1973). Fagen's solo album Kamakiriad (1993) is a loose concept album about travelling in a futuristic car (see Transportation) through a world of endless cocktail parties and jazz lounges, and his Morph the Cat (1996) includes "Mary Shut the Garden Door", which finds menace in vehicles driven by Automata. [CWa]
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