'Quantum Criminals' by Alex Pappademas and Joan Lemay
Steely Dan fans should love this book. And if you’re not a fan of that non-band band, but love good writing about rock music, Quantum Criminals is still worth reading. Author Alex Pappademas (“The Big Hit Show” podcast), aided by Joan Lemay’s colorful illustrations, explores Steely Dan through the lives of its only true members—Walter Becker and Donald Fagen—and the characters (named or unnamed) who live in their songs.
Pappademas correctly identifies Steely Dan as the first “college rock” act. A decade before alt rock, Becker and Fagen drew from their Ivy League experience as smart (and sometimes smart aleck) liberal arts students. They were wary of ‘60s counterculture utopianism, literate (deriving their band name from a William Burroughs novel) and devoted to jazz from an era already expired. They weren’t Chicago or the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Pappademas points out. Steely Dan achieved a unique fusion of rock and jazz with sophisticated lyrics reflecting the sensibility of ‘70s pre-punk hipsters. Becker and Fagen existed in a “symbiotic-yet-satirical relationship with pop music and its formulas.”
Steely Dan was a paradox as a cult band (that ceased being a band after year one) with a string of Top 40 singles and platinum LPs. “They got to shrug their way into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in a gracious manner while also communicating clearly that they were not about to start respecting things like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Pappademas writes. Brilliantly put.
