Brian Sweet

This one took me a while to get through, but only because it was a thoroughly exhaustive look at Becker and Fagen's work both with, and outside Steely Dan.

I'm a massive Dan fan, and I count those first five albums (up to and including Aja) as perfect classics, with their sixth, Gaucho, coming damn close.

So, getting the detailed, inside scoop as to how they got started, and everything that subsequently went down until Fagen's last solo album and Walter Becker's death in 2017, was fascinating.

But the sheer volume of information could be a touch overwhelming, so there were times where I set the book down and picked up something lighter and shorter.

If I have any complaints about the book, it's these two things:

First, Sweet does occasionally repeat himself on some facts. I mean, it's unsurprising when you're writing a book that crammed with them, but when that same book has an index, you'd think they would have been caught and, if not removed the second time, at least rewritten more as a reminder than a straight re-telling.

Second, and this is a personal bugaboo, Sweet has a particular love of describing some of the musicianship or playing as "tasty" which is a term I've always hated when it comes to music. But hey, once or twice, I can just cringe and move on. But the number of times I came across it made me cringe more and more.

But seriously, other than those two minor points, I doubt there is another book on Steely Dan that comes close to this one.… (mer)