REPRINTED FROM THE EVENING STANDARD
September 1996
Killing Us Softly With Easy Listening
Steely Dan: Wembley Arena
Rating: * (Good)
Punk hadn't happened when Steely Dan were last in London; its major players
had yet to discover therapy and Hawaii. The young Dan were thrashing their
smart-arse repertoire into submission with two drummers, guitars supplied by
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, all fuelled by exotic chemicals.
At Wembley veterans Walter Becker and Donald Fagen killed us with a
different kindness, turning those ineffable deep-Seventies masterpieces into
hummable slices of hip, easy listening. You couldn't blame them for not
wanting to sound just like the records; you couldn't blame anyone else for
wishing they'd stayed home with those records.
Fagen's non-voice, his characteristic nasal twang, put an appropriately
morose gloss over "Do It Again". But while a fairly crack ensemble stuck to
some rigorous arrangements, the evening panned out as a series of vignettes;
the centre didn't hold.
This reunion wasn't blighted by nostalgia (Becker and Fagen always sounded
older than their years), and it was still possible to marvel at
coast-to-coast references that come dropped like litter for Brett Easton
Ellis and Jay McInerney to pick up a decade later. Moreover, their slinky
pseudo-jazz came into its own on several occasions; in the glorious "Babylon
Sisters"; in fragments of "Hey Nineteen", and the funky, loping "Chain Lightning".
Not too bad then, but as they once said: "You can't buy a thrill."
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