Steely Dan came about after Fagen enrolled at Bard College in upstate New York to study English literature. Figures, as a teenage jazz freak and would-be beatnik hipster, Fagen was into the writings of Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Bard was where Fagen met the other half of the long-running duo, guitarist Walter Becker at a college coffee house at Bard College in 1967.
Early collaborations in groups called The Leather Canary, The Don Fagen Jazz Trio, and the Bad Rock Band (comedian Chevy Chase was around the ridges in some or all of these) were followed by a stint with Jay and the Americans, and a spell as in-house songwriters for ABC/Dunhill Records, which morphed into a recording career in a band named after a dildo in a William Burroughs novel.
And, for a while, we’re talking an actual band, with actual members beyond the Fagen/Becker duo, but as the others fell by the wayside Steely Dan became, to all intents and purposes, the duo plus an array of crack studio musicians. That arrangement lasted until the duo stopped working together in 1981.
Fagen’s solo career began with the platinum selling The Nightfly (1982). It’s a career that could best be described as sporadic, spawning four albums in thirty years, and brings a line from a Rowan Atkinson sketch to mind: Progress has been slow, and in totally the wrong direction. Nightfly went platinum, Kamakiriad won gold, while Morph the Cat and Sunken Condos crept by largely unnoticed, and reading Eminent Hipsters one gets the impression this is not a matter of great concern.
Steely Dan reunited to record and tour in 1993, but again, the output has been on the irregular side of sporadic. Two Against Nature (2000) won several Grammys, Everything Must Go (2003), Alive in America (1995) and a live concert DVD, also Two Against Nature ain’t much to show for twenty-one years, folks.
Fagen has also engaged in solo tours, initially to support Morph the Cat, played gigs with the New York Rock and Soul Revue and The Dukes of September Rhythm Revue (alongside Michael McDonald and Boz Scaggs, as documented in Eminent Hipsters).
Along the way he co-produced Becker's solo debut, 11 Tracks of Whack, contributed individual tracks to a variety of soundtracks, slotted in performances with the Levon Helm Band at Midnight Ramble concerts in Woodstock (the link there comes through his step-daughter, Amy Helm and wife Libby Titus).