For longtime Steely Dan fans, it is still a treat to see the band live.
In the 1970s, the band, fronted by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, chose the perfection and polish of a recording space over live arenas and their potential for flaws and inconvenience.
And Steely Dan stayed in the studio for years before coming back to the stage. The Dan is currently on an unusual tour that has the band playing a couple of its signature albums in their entirety. When the popular group plays the Wells Fargo Theatre on Thursday, it will tackle the career-defining “Aja” — alongside some other familiar material.
We caught up with Fagen to talk about the dangers of nostalgia and the beauty of playing a decades-old song for the first time.
Q: How long has New York been home?
A: It’s been home for most of my life. When we started up Steely Dan, we were living in L.A. from ’71 to ’78. But other than that, I’ve been here.
Q: You and Walter aren’t supporting a new record — but you are playing “Aja” in its entirety here in Denver. Are you enjoying that form of touring, playing a record and letting that dictate the night?
A: It’s unexpected. It was the idea of somebody in our management, and we’ve been doing a lot of the songs from the albums over the years, but we’ve never actually played the albums all the way through. There are a few songs we’ve never actually played before.
Q: How does that feel?
A: The band plays the songs differently when they’re in order. A lot of the guys were kids when they first heard the albums. Maybe it’s their memories that click in on the grooves or something, or maybe it’s them conforming to the way the original band and drummer played them.
Q: Why were there songs you never ended up playing live?
A: We didn’t envision them that way. When we originally conceived them, they were record ideas — things you’d create in the studio but thought they wouldn’t be dramatic on stage. Maybe they had dance beats, which in those days seemed static. And sometimes we’d mess around with the arrangements to make them seem more interesting live. But almost everything can be made to work in one way or the other.
Q: Are things getting pretty nostalgic for you and Walter?
A: No, it’s anti-nostalgia. I don’t think nostalgia is a very healthy feeling. Abbie Hoffman once said that nostalgia is a mild form of depression. That’s true in a way. Nostalgia is something I associate with alcoholism, and I see nostalgia as sentimental.
Q: What about your fans who might get nostalgic over the songs they’ll hear at your shows?
A: I’m not responsible for them. But they love it, and for whatever reason, no one is immune to the power of music to evoke the power of times past when they were kids. When I hear songs that used to be on the radio when I was 14, I remember where I was, and it’s fun.
We like to try to remain contemporary and vital in some way, so we try to make it a musical experience. We don’t want to feel like the doo-wop bands on public television playing for strictly nostalgic reasons. We’re there to play for the people.
Q: On this tour you’re playing a couple records in their entirety, “Aja” and “The Royal Scam.” But it seems like there are more “Aja” dates than “Royal Scam” dates on your schedule?
A: There was more demand for tickets because (“Aja”), in its day, was a more popular album. It was a really big album. Generally speaking, people think of it as a groundbreaking album in our recording career. So it’s strictly by demand. When they put the tickets on sale, we were doing three albums originally, and we just ended up scheduling “Aja” the most, “Royal Scam” next and “Gaucho” was the third.
Q: The bill says “Aja plus,” so you, Walter and the band will be picking out some other tracks?
A: It takes about an hour or so to do an album, and usually we play for two hours. We play the album through without stopping, and then we open it up and play stuff from various times, from different albums we’ve done throughout the years.
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
STEELY DAN.
Rock. Wells Fargo Theatre, 700 14th St. Thursday. 8 p.m. $56-$146. or 303-830-8497
