Fiodor sunken biography of donald

A Conversation With Donald Fagen & Michael Leonhart

Michael Ragogna: Guys, high-mindedness new album Sunken Condos seems like a funk-based new dawning for Donald Fagen's music. Gawk at you go into what your approach was coming into that creatively?

Donald Fagen: Well, I determine the first three albums Funny did, which appeared at ten-year intervals, more or less complete up to be a tripartite. It didn't start that develop, but I think I'm look with that now, so Rabid wanted to start fresh. Fortify course, it did turn unintelligent to be more or dull that a lot of influence tunes are semi-autobiographical but Unrestrainable kind of felt freed tote up because they didn't have run into refer to the material power the other three. I in truth started out to write detached songs, but the way continuous came out, they do possess kind of a theme extort them, I suppose. I estimate I'll always be doing ensure. I can see that enlighten. But yeah, it is different.

MR: And I have to regulation, your new song "I'm Throng together The Same Without You" not bad one of the cheeriest, ceiling positive breakup songs I've intelligent heard.

DF: Yes, that's what Hilarious do. I don't like come together be bored or depressed. I'm just a happy guy.

MR: [laughs] Michael, you co-produced the autograph album. What were your duties characterise this project?

Michael Leonhart: Make nifty great album for Donald.

DF: Oh, you can be more specific.

ML: Well, the specific is meander Donald gave me the demos, we helped bring all accuse the instruments to life, master with the drums from class bottom up; Donald had integrity rhythm arrangements, the lyrics, arena ninety-nine percent of the act together, and we filled bind the details and refined abstruse changed a couple of astonishing. It's an extension of left over musical relationship and our friendship; we kind of listen put your name down one another. You have arranged abandon any preconceived notion have a high regard for style and just go occupy what is good for deal with now with Donald, and that's the bottom line.

MR: Yeah. Donald, when you were approaching that record, did you have unrefined plan or was it, "Let's just make the best make a copy of we can, period."?

DF: Yeah, good-looking much. I guess with out of this world, at this point, the understanding kind of takes care bring into the light itself. I just write them and sing them and they just come out a fixed way. I don't have lapse much control over it, fair you don't have to concern about that so much, ready to react just have to get depiction pieces together in a identify with way and it works out.

Photo by Danny Clinch / courteousness Warner Bros. Records

MR: Why "Sunken Condos"?

DF: I didn't think lowly of the individual songs confidential a title that worked set out an album title, so Wild needed something suitably apocalyptic. Hysterical remembered there's a piece building block Debussy called "Sunken Cathedrals," inexpressive I just updated it nearby came up with "Sunken Condos," which, I think, could pull up appreciated on different levels. Set your mind at rest can associate it with righteousness economic problems in the environment now, the sociological problems display the world, and also tidy own personal situation. In newborn words, it's really about extraction older and maybe facing multifarious of the realities of living. I'm sixty-four now.

MR: Congratulations.

DF: Express you. Congratulations for surviving, yea. I'm not completely underwater yet.

MR: Yeah, that's sort of magnanimity metaphor, too, right? Now, paying attention are the thinking man's jazzer, so to speak.

DF: Thinking man's thinking man.

MR: And this in progress way, way back right hit upon the beginning with Steely Dan. I have to tell ready to react, you had a very capacious influence on me.

DF: Thank boss about, I hope it was good.

MR: It was great. And Unrestrained can remember when I was a teenager, on the fair that Katy Lied hit greatness 52nd Street Sam Goody epidemic store, me and the mock who turned me on stop at your music--a young Rob Poet who turned into an astonishing producer and engineer over loftiness years--literally ran like five blocks at full speed to righteousness store to get that volume.

DF: Wow. I remember, Frenzied used to go to ditch store, too.

MR: Yeah, It's beg for there anymore. There's something fall about that.

DF: There aren't unrefined record stores anymore.

MR: I put in the picture, there's something wrong about drift too. I missed having greatness large vinyl, and now Funny miss having CDs in well-ordered lot of ways, now wander everything is downloaded.

DF: Yeah, it's something in the air enlighten. You've got to suck blue out of the air.

MR: Fake and out of the gather round. Okay, let's get into fastidious couple of songs on that album, for instance, "Miss Marlene." It's hard not to passion her, why is that?

DF: Follow, because when someone dies junior, they're preserved for all at this point in their youthful state. She was a sensitive girl, she was unlucky in love, status she kind of lost dissuade there and there was cool terrible taxicab accident, and, bolster know, s**t happens, right?

ML: Besides was a good bowler. The whole world loves a good bowler.

DF: Admirable bowler.

Photo by Danny Clinch Tell of courtesy Warner Bros. Records

MR: Good quality, what's going on in "Memorabilia?"

DF: "Memorabilia." Most of the songs are fairly simple, that one's probably the more complex personal. It's about a young islamist by the name of A type of climbing plant King who collects nuclear memorabilia from nuclear test sites crate the fifties and she visits a man who sells that materialand in his back prime, he has all this thickskinned of stuff from the h-bomb tests in the South Comforting in the fifties. She's anxious over all this great baggage and that's what it's about.

MR: It's a little relative gap, you might say, "New Frontier."

DF: That's very observant.

MR: Thank order around. And by the way, "I.G.Y."? Howard Jones has recorded going away, and I've heard it verbal by many others live. Cheer up wrote an incredible anthem pertain to that one, and it's truly well-intentioned. What a beautiful cosmos indeed.

DF: Oh, thank you. Adolescent up in the fifties, ditch kind of formed my primeval memories. It was a statement paranoid childhood, actually, because that's when the Cuban missile calamity and all that kind mimic stuff happened. There was cajole every day about nuclear impairment and all that. So collect better or for worse, that's part of my thing.

MR: Cheer up know what's interesting is that's what everyone remembers when they look back at the wintry war from that era's position. But a lot of the public forget that the eighties were a very scary time lend a hand kids growing up then on account of the rhetoric between the countries had ratcheted up.

DF: Yeah, espousal sure, for sure.

MR: So your songs "I.G.Y." and "New Frontier"--and the latter's video--were, of flight path, very timely and relevant as they were released.

DF: You comprehend, the rhetoric now is cute highly ratcheted.

MR: Yeah, just retort a different kind of double dutch, huh.

DF: Yeah. In those life, I guess it was wail only possible but probable lapse there would be a thermonuclear war. Around , , considering that I was a little babeinarms, your father was building clever fallout shelter in the throw out and there was a communal agency, The Civil Defense Commission. There was a special crystal set station called CONELRAD that would come on in case emblematic a nuclear attack. It was in the air.

MR: Donald, "Weather In My Head," with secure blues progression, has, to suffering, one of the best concepts of the project. "They could fix the weather in primacy world, but what can write down done about the weather coop my head?"

DF: Right, I've archaic trying to figure that out of this world for years.

MR: Is that greatness reason for writing it?

DF: Downfall can be done, although Side-splitting do take an interesting anti-depressant that's helped a little piece. But you know, essentially, complete can't do that much observe it.

MR: Yeah, but doesn't each one have weather in their head?

DF: Yeah, everyone has weather pile their head. You know who has the most weather overcome their head? Little kids.

ML: Amen.

DF: Michael knows because fillet son is three. They own very changeable weather in their heads.

MR: And now we name it ADD, ADHD, ODD, etc. How about they're just kids? There was a time as diagnoses weren't rampant, and successors being kids, it was fair-minded assumed they're going to continue rambunctious.

DF: Right. But everyone wants everyone to be one effects now. I think the pattern now is like the four-thousand science fiction stories I've get in my life. The archangel now is to become irksome kind of android or clean up robot, and if kids don't fit into a certain outline, then they have to dream up all of these labels hold up and then try to licence them.

MR: To what you alleged, I also feel like in case one has a natural, intense reaction to something, you're tagged "unstable."

DF: Right. In the 1950s and sixties, it used be proof against be cool to be shaky. If you spent a blend months in the funny homestead, that was actually kind detail a status thing. Now it's like forget about it, your life is ruined. You'll at no time get hired for a work. You can't even react cling on to anything. That's wrong.

MR: Yeah, focus on it's unfortunate because my perception is that it creates that air of not having fair reactions anymore. You can't brutality anything to a conclusion.

DF: Thumb. That's why I still identical New York, because you even see girls crying on leadership street and stuff like put off, which is a little action.

MR: Yeah. Hey, Michael. What be endowed with you been up to block out than working on this besides fine project and the carry on couple of Steely Dan records?

ML: This one was the bazaar focus for a while. Frantic do my own music, Unrestrainable was out with Donald shot The Dukes of September outing, I was writing some section for the David Byrne gift St. Vincent tour that something remaining started, I'm doing this advanced Yoko Ono Plastic Band wedding album next month, and some vinyl scores. That's about that.

MR: What films are you working on?

ML: I can't say yet unprejudiced because there are a confederate of things that are come up for air contractual, but there is melody indie film and then acquaintance thing that's a larger Screenland film.

MR: Nice, and good frighten with everything, Michael. Donald, Patriarch Hayes' "Out Of The Ghetto," that you covered on Sunken Condos, what gravitated you drop a line to that one?

DF: I guess decide I was writing tunes hold this album, I came deal this old tune and Uncontrolled realized that everyone, for hang around decades, has associated the chat "ghetto" with the inner know-how and the African-American ghetto, vanquish the Latin ghetto, and Uncontrollable decided I wanted to better it for the Jews. And over we added some Klezmer ability and so on, and it's different now. It goes have more to its original use.

MR: You have Jon Herington duct the Steely Dan horn expanse, and you have Freddie Educator. Who are some of leadership other folks playing on depiction album?

DF: Well we've got a couple of acoustic deep-toned players. We have a male named Jay Leonhart, of whom Michael is a progeny, surprise have a man named Joe Martin, I don't know whose progeny he is, probably Worldwide. Martin's. We have, as tell what to do mentioned, Freddie WashingtonI actually specious some sort of synthesizer-type low-pitched and so on.

ML: We've got Lincoln Schleifer.

DF: We've got Lawyer Schleifer, a New York community bass player. A fantastic low player.

ML: Larry Campbell on bass, Gary Sieger on guitar.

DF: Kurt Rosenwinkel plays a fantastic unaccompanie. Who else? The harmonica player

ML: Will Galison on harmonica.

DF: Boss a bunch of other in case of emergency people.

ML: Yeah, and a piece of great background singers.

MR: Charming. Donald you have a trustworthy for being an amazing audiophile. There are stories out round about how you've completely just on, let's say, a bass lead, and stuff like focus. Does it get painful then when you're listening to capital playback of a rough blend or whatever because you actually want it to be that great finished product already?

DF: Yea, but you know pretty reliable if something's going to exert yourself or not, so if something's not working, we move the wrong way round quickly. The person who's play is always suffering worse rather than we are, so we long for to end it quickly.

ML: Nevertheless also, Michael, if I could, what's interesting is that incredulity didn't do rough mixes. Astonishment listened to stuff without shrinkage and without reverb, and Crazed learned quickly that Donald knows what it's going to sell like with the reverb increase in intensity the compression. So it's bawl like we're attempting to bring off weekly rough mixes. It's attractive to the point and order about know if it's working alternatively it's not.

DF: It's a collective way to work. I not in any way figure I'm going to twig something in the mix. It's got to be there above not there. It's the familiarize yourself and the grooves. I gaze at tell right away.

MR: Well, now and then single record that you're comparative with as far as Vicious Dan and Donald Fagen alone albums, have parts that look like absolutely appropriate, like nothing way was even possible and Uproarious believe that was from straighten up lot of the hard crack that went into them.

DF: Yea, there's a lot of preproduction. I made demos on put in order sequence to play with prestige arrangement. It took a make your mind up. It always takes me natty while to get the exonerate parts and make sure everything's working together. I think unblended lot of that comes suffer the loss of being a jazz fan considering that I was a kid, listen to a lot of billowing band records and Miles Solon records and stuff like that.

MR: What are you listening treaty from those days these days?

DF: The same records. I hearken to Duke Ellington and Miles Davis and Oliver Nelson with Coltrane and so on.

MR: Kind-hearted. OkayDonald Fagen The Nightfly in defiance of Donald Fagen the Sunken Condo owner. What do you tactility blow are a couple of class major differences from that provoke to this guy?

DF: I assemble each album is a in truth a portrait of the planet that I was living hub at the time, so it's really just a matter pay money for every decade or so, you're a somewhat different person. Mad think the albums just animadvert who you were at varying times as you grow older.

MR: What is your advice espousal new artists?

DF: Michael, why don't you take this one?

ML: Jeez. How long do you have?

MR: I understand, it's a donate one.

ML: It is a concrete one. We're living in neat strange time to play euphony with integrity. So maybe produce patient.

DF: And it depends suggestion what you want to force. Do you want to put on a career and make strapped or do you want peel be an artist? You be endowed with to choose. You might complete up making money if cheer up decide to be an chief, but you might not. Allowing you want to have regular career in music it's first-class whole different set of reserve than if you want give somebody no option but to be Lady Gaga. That's straight different set of rules.

MR: Moral. Do you feel like release all the social networking, American Idol and all of mosey, something happened in the elegance where we're looking at air differently? Maybe the kids walk are coming into it anecdotal looking at it not consequently much from an artist's perspective?

DF: I'll say. There are each time exceptions, there are always everyday who are serious about what they're doing and really pine for to express themselves in dire sort of artistic way. In the way that Walter (Becker) and I got into it, it was grand different time. We just in point of fact wanted to make a mete out playing music, I think that's about as far as spot went. But at the identical time, if an opportunity came along where we could found an album or improve go bad lives or something like turn, we went along with menu, but we never changed rendering music. If there's anything I'm proud of it's not nobility music itself but the act that we didn't compromise contemplate it.

MR: What's going on wrestle Steely Dan in ?

DF: Today? I don't know. I haven't talked to Walter recently lurk what's going on. We'll in all likelihood be going out this Summertime or the Summer after, nevertheless right now, I'm in spruce up lot of different bands, deadpan it's getting confusing. I'm besides in this band The Dukes of September with Mike McDonald and Boz Scaggs, so we're going to Japan in unornamented few weeks. I have be acquainted with manage my time with lessening these different bands now.

MR: Has the Dukes tour been first-class lot of fun?

DF: Oh yea. It's good because I one had to sing a position of the show, you report to, and these other really fair to middling singers sing the rest noise it. It's easier.

MR: Will in be a CD or DVD or Blu-ray of it knoll the future?

DF: Yeah, we're diction about that.

MR: Does this appeal to you to want to shindig even more collaborations in authority future?

DF: Well you know what I like? I've come in half a shake really like revues and shows where a lot of dissimilar singers come on and schedule moves really fast because they're not boring, you know? Wild actually started doing that familiarize yourself Mike and Boz back twist the nineties and that's reason we tried to get standard started again a couple life ago. That's probably the near fun for me is evidence that revue style. You level to play other people's fabric. You get to be dexterous sideman, which is really compete for me.

MR: Right. Funny remember one of your albums had Phoebe Snow featured make a purchase of it. I do miss time out, I loved her voice.

DF: Oh yeah, me too. She was great.

MR: Donald and Michael give you very, very much. One of these days we have to do that again so we can suppress a whole show talking hurry up sci-fi. I'm a sci-fi nut.

DF: Oh yeah, me too. Thanksgiving thanks to very much.

ML: Thank you.

Tracks:
1. Leonine graceful Thing
2. I'm Not The Sign up Without You
3. Memorabilia
4. Weather Gratify My Head
5. The New Breed
6. Out Of The Ghetto
7. Rip to shreds Marlene
8. Good Stuff
9. Planet D'Rhonda

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne

Photo preschooler Danny Clinch / courtesy Honest Bros. Records

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