Thirty-five years ago this month, Pretzel Logic, the album that alerted the world beyond LA and NYC to the thrillingly unpigeonholeable sound of Steely Dan, the hepcat bepop double-act Ian Dury would later thank for creating “the most upful music I know”, was released. To listen to it now is to be reminded how vehemently I disagreed with the euphoria that greeted it in my universe, the one presided over with dictatorial authority by Melody Maker, NME and Sounds.
Admittedly, this reaction may well have sprung from a trusty geyser of indignation, that sense of superiority a fan has over critics and members of the great unwashed who catch up on their precious idols without having supported them through the thin times. “So, you’ve finally got into ’em, eh? Took yer bleedin’ time, you Johnny Come Extremely Latelys. Think this one’s good? Hah! You haven’t lived, mate. You should hear the earlier, funnier ones. Infinitely better.” Pretzel logic? As in twisted, right?
The 16-year-old me found Pretzel Logic a severe, even savage disappointment after the one-two punch of Can’t Buy A Thrill and Countdown To Ecstasy. (And yes, England’s cricketers were in the Caribbean then, too. Given that they won the final Test to share the Test series against the odds, thrills and ecstasy were somewhat easier to find than they are now.)
After half a dozen listens – most of them competing with the radio commentary from Trinidad as Tony Greig’s newly-discovered off-breaks sent the West Indies spiralling to defeat – only “Parker’s Band” and the title track came anywhere near penetrating the steel ring of Smurfs guarding my pleasure zones. Plenty of blues, sure, but where was the rock? Where was the groove? Where was the bebop bravura of “Bodhisattva”, the irresistible salsa-esque shuffle of “Do It Again”? Look at all those skimpy two- and three-minute songs? Where were all those delicious extended solos? Why use a wah-wah guitar to ape a trumpet when you could just use a…trumpet? “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” was turgid as well as a darker shade of opaque. “Through With Buzz” and “Monkey In Your Soul” were a marginally lighter shade of awful. What in blazes were Don and Walt doing rewriting a Christmas carol (even after three and a half decades I still can’t quite decide between God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and In The Bleak Midwinter) and calling it “Charlie Freak”? And what in the name of Charlie and John were they doing with all those damned horns?
More important was The Guitar Situation (The Dan, after all, were the ultimate guitar band: from Mark Knopfler to Sammy Cahn’s son, they all wanted to join the gang). How come the sudden obsession with pedal steel? Why all those country licks? What was that thing kick-starting “With A Gun” and “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”? An acoustic, you say? Wimps.
The confusion, bordering on anxiety, was heightened by repeated examinations of the sleeve. Both were in the band pic on the gatefold, true, but where were Denny Dias and The Skunk on the skeletal credits? Not for a couple of years did the truth reach these ears: of the band I would see at The Rainbow a few weeks later, the only members to play on the album were the guv’nors, Fagen and Becker.
Dias would later describe his bosses as “one person with two brains – they finished each other’s sentences”. They had just become Woody and Allen, ringmasters and control freaks, their acts a repertory company chockful of the finest technicians, the guest stars direct from the gods. For Diane Keaton read Larry Carlton; for Mia Farrow read Chuck Rainey; for Judy Davis read Bernard “Pretty” Purdie; for Leonardo di Caprio, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem read Victor Feldman, Phil Woods and Wayne Shorter. Steely Dan, the band as opposed to the brand, were no more. At 16, betrayals of that order hurt bad, real bad. Fortunately, we also forgive our heroes quicker.
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ON, as is so often the way when one reconnects with memories, the good bits of Pretzel Logic sound even better and the bad a tad more tolerable. True, I still dislike “Through With Buzz” with a vehemence no other Becker/Fagen composition remotely approaches, mostly because of those ghastly strings and because Fagen’s “dry white whine” of a voice (c. Nick Kent) for once falls the wrong side of the line separating coy from fey, but those electric piano trills are really rather gorgeous. “Monkey In Your Soul”, moreover, oozes with a skin-tight funkiness even the JBs might have envied. Similarly, re-hearing the way Fagen sets a gentle piano against arguably his tenderest vocal invests “Rikki…” with an emotional depth unusual in pop hits of the period, let alone a love(ish) song totally devoid of nudges and winks.
The passage of time, armed with technological advances, can also heal prejudices. Back in March ’74 I had about 100 albums on my exposed-concrete bedroom floor but the only one featuring so much as a burp of brass was Dark Side of the Moon; not for another month would I buy Moondance. Which is why, now, the swashbuckling guitar-and-horns swordplay on “Night By Night” sounds even more inspired on my iPod than it did on my proudly mono gramophone. Ditto the black-streaked joie de vivre of the shamelessly Nashvillian “With A Gun”.
“Parker’s Band” rocks incredibly hard for a tribute to a jazz king, powered by a drum riff capable of launching a nuclear warhead and coda’ed by a rip-roaring battle of the saxes. The guitar solo on “Pretzel Logic”, blues-fuelled and graceful, sounds even more sinuous and sensual. Drums and piano entwine on “Charlie Freak”, giving Don and Walt’s most melancholic tune a deceptively upbeat veneer, but who noticed all those Yuletide bells, much less that snaky, kazoo-like synth? And if “Barrytown” isn’t at one and the same time The Greatest Tune George Gershwin Never Wrote and The Greatest Song Never To Soundtrack A David Lynch Movie, then Dan is assuredly not your man.
THE UPSHOT of this sudden splurge of revisiting (I’ve played it six times in its entirety today, and “Charlie Freak” and “Barrytown” 10 times apiece) is that Pretzel Logic has finally shifted from bottom on my personal Dan Mk I League table (only five tracks made my “Steeliest” playlist), thus trading places with The Royal Scam. Never again would The Dan sound so economical, so jaunty, so adept at sidestepping genre-fication. Never again would Don and Walt deploy a full-time band, much less a pedal steel. Never again would their songs sound so innocent, so young. Not a big pity, just a small one.
I’m not one to look behind
I know that times must change
But over there in Barrytown
They do things very strange
They don’t do things all that different in Don ‘n’ Walt Town.
11 Responses to Pretzel Logic Revisited
What made the rest of your “Steeliest” playlist? And Royal Scam on the bottom?!? *gasp* It constantly wrestles with Aja for my top slot.
It’s all relative – Dan albums (even Everything Must Go) constitute a canon apart for me, so when I say The Royal Scam is my least favourite it’s a bit like nominating my least favourite episode of Seinfeld. I still love it to bits.
I won’t bore you with my Steeliest playlist – it goes on far too bloody long – but suffice to say that the top of the Must-Have list reads (in almost random order):
1. Your Gold Teeth II
2. King of the World
3. Peg
4. Glamour Profession
5. Almost Gothic
6. Bodhisattva
7. Chain Lightning
8. Barrytown
9. Charlie Freak
10. Things I Miss The Most
For me, Pretzel Logic was where i lost interest in Steely Dan. Apart from a cute re-working of Ellington’s East St Louis Toodle-oo, I felt they’d lost their way, become self-engrossed and embarassing. (Germany was occupying my ears at that point, Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, just as Japan would a few years later.)
But Pretzel Logic? Where was the fire of Reeling In the Years?, the nail in the head impact of My Old School?
Katy Lied was a mess, Royal Scam was better but when we got to Fagan’s solo albums, oh dear. Slick lounge jazz-rock with its soul removed.
It was a horrible time for music, bloated prog rock, navel-gazing singer-songwriters and only the barest hint that something might be stirring in New York…
Reelin’ in the Years-the sound of the lunatics(Jeff’Skunk’Baxter and Elliot Randall)taking over the asylum.
Aja-when perfectionists reach perfectionism
No. On those later albums they reached a peak of musical perfection, or maybe even just musical sophistication.
But a song is much more than that. Any definition of perfection would have to include emotional content as well and those later albums just don’t have that socko.
And whereas the lyrics on the earlier Dan albums, though always wilfully obscure, made me think and seemed smart enough to be worth trying to figure out, the later ones seemed like exercies in how to write Steely Dan songs.
It’s the difference between Dylan at his best and Shaun Ryder at any point in his ‘career’. Mystifying lyrics are sometimes just gibberish or, in the case of those later Steely Dan albums, seemingly sophisticated but ultimately shallow.
How do I know these things? I don’t. They’re just opinions. Let’s not let any of this stuff keep us awake at night.
I think The Nightfly was the best album Steely Dan never made.
Katy Lied was wrecked by technical problems and a ghastly sound, but song-for-song it was terrific. Much underrated.
I love nearly every Dan album, though the second “side” of the vinyl P Logic always left me cold… the first side (the first 5 songs) is pure perfection.
Steely aside: I never like the false opposition of early vs late Dan. Can’t Buy a Thrill and Gaucho are profoundly different but both quite brilliant. And I have to take Mark’s side on the Nightfly question: it’s a masterpiece, Mr Black!!
Fair comment. It probably all just comes down to the ‘can’t please everybody all the time’ factor.
I don’t like those albums. You do.
As Bill and Ted would say, “Excellent!” (insert imaginary guitar twiddle here)
Anyone listened to the last Dan album from 2002 – Everything Must Go – recently? If it was released today the title track would be hailed as a masterpiece for the way it nails America’s current predicament
Let’s switch off all the lights and light up all the Luckies
Cranking up the afterglow
Cause we’re going out of business
Everything must go
Prescient? Not half. As for Pretzel Logic – bitty but brilliant at its best Second track Night By Night is their best ever juxtaposition of punchy brass section and rocking electric guitar – and yes, I know, that is saying something.
Taken as an extended draught during a late evening drive, I have to agree that “The Nightfly” is wonderfully streamlined pop for people who could never conceive of wearing open-toed sandles or listening to Phish. “…all graphite and glitter…”
Glad to hear I’m not alone in my admiration of Everything Must Go, Chris. “The Last Mall” occupies similarly prescient territory to the title track, “Things I Miss The Most” achieves the distinction of evoking a modicum of sympathy for a once filthy-rich divorcee, and “Blues Beach” is quite the most cheerful blues song I’ve ever clapped ears on. No album in my acquaintance, moreover, has been blessed with so many inspired codas while cutting them off at the knees.
Talking of criminally underrated, Fagen’s latest, Morph The Cat, tickled my fancy no end, especially H-Gang and Bright Nightgown.