Audio Archaeology, 1960s-1971: The Steely Dan & Becker/Fagen Songwriting Team Origin Story
Producer Richard Perry, leaning Barbra Streisand into a decidedly rock arena, discovers a song by a new duo that'll fit perfectly on an LP with songs by fellow rockers Carole King & John Lennon!
Streisand Sings Steely Dan: When Barb Met the Duo From Bard
This is the story of how a mainstream belter came to record a song in 1971 by two fledgling (and quite unlikely) songwriters in their early 20s, a year before they began their own multi-decade, Award-winning rocket to rock and hit stardom as Steely Dan.
To watch their career lift off the ground, an eye-opening music-making journey takes us from Elvis-era ‘50s to ‘60s pop chart-toppers, from a future film comedian to a young, unknown singer whose promising career debut is tangled up in legalities for over half-a-century, as she is forced to sit by and watch a legend take off with what should have been “her song.” We start here, with the superstar.
In 1967, Barbra Streisand was already eight albums into her singing career with Columbia Records when the label actually released two Babs albums in October of that year: Simply Streisand and A Christmas Album, the first of many Streisand holiday vinyls the label would see fit to release in the ensuing decades.
Confident they’d both meet with eager buyers, it’s still astounding to contemplate the dual release by a label of any artist!
As it happens, though, Simply was Streisand’s first LP that failed to chart in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 Albums when it peaked at the lowly-for-her #12. The album, nevertheless, sold a quarter-of-a-million units in its first week in stores.
This Hugh Martin/Ralph Blane standard, “The Boy Next Door,” made its 1944 debut with Judy Garland in her Meet Me in St. Louis film musical.
Streisand was seen, early on, as the new belter-of-standards, as Judy passed that mantle to the 25-year-old Brooklynite. Judy would be gone two years later. Two years before, in December 1965, I saw Judy (with The Supremes opening) in concert at The Astrodome:
Conversely, A Christmas Album is one of Streisand’s best-selling albums, and is ranked as one of the best-selling Christmas albums of all time. A year-end conference-table confab at CBS Records (aka “Black Rock”) in NYC, though, might have yielded the observation that dueling artist releases might chew into corporate profits over time, at least where La Streisand is concerned.
In other words, release Simply in July, have it do what it’ll do (likely Top 10), then be all about A Christmas Album come autumn. Fifth floor Sales and Promotion will thank you, and both albums’ sales can be maximized with fewer perceived choices to be made by consumers.
The Road From Barb to Bard
That same year, 1967 (while Babs was perusing charts for two albums), fledgling New York-based songwriters Walter Becker (17) and 19-year-old Donald Fagen, met at The Red Balloon coffee house while attending Bard College.
In an interview, Fagen once recounted the experience of walking by the café, and hearing Becker play his bluesy electric guitar: “I hear this guy practicing, and it sounded very professional and contemporary. It sounded like, you know, like a black person, really.”
The two cobbled together several ragtag bands with names like Leather Canary (featuring Bard mate and eventual SNL comic actor and drummer-with-perfect-pitch, Chevy Chase), the Don Fagen Jazz Trio, and the Bad Rock Band.
In fact, Chase managed to land with a Boston psychedelic rock band, Chamaeleon Church, who recorded one album for MGM Records in 1968, playing drums and keyboards (Alan Lorber produced, arranged, and orchestrated). That’s Chevy (and you’re not), second from the right, on the back cover of the self-titled album, above.
In the song above, “Blueberry Pie” (written by guitarist, Ted Myers, formerly of Boston’s mid-’60s The Lost, with Willie “Loco” Alexander, who recorded two late-’70s albums for MCA with his “new wavey” Boom Boom Band), Chase can be heard singing background vocals, with lyrics including, “I’ve been to the zoo, and Max’s Kansas City, too,” as Myers name-drops the legendary Manhattan rock club that opened in 1965.
Buffalo native, Terence Boylan, another Bard musician (shown above), formed a band with his older brother, John, called The Ginger Men, and frequented the stage at Greenwich Village’s Night Owl Café, by this time (1966-67) a regular haunt for the likes of James Taylor and His Flying Machine, the Lovin’ Spoonful, and Richie Havens.
Terence remembered that Fagen (picured above in 1967) took to the beatnik life rather easily while attending college: “They never came out of their room, they stayed up all night. They looked like ghosts—black turtlenecks and skin so white that it looked like yogurt. Absolutely no activity, chain-smoking Lucky Strikes and dope.”
John Boylan and brother, Terence, recorded an album, Playback, in 1967 for Verve Records under the name, the Appletree Theatre. John Boylan, a Bard grad who majored in Theatre Arts, ended up moving to L.A., and, while hanging around West Hollywood’s Troubadour circa 1970, was instrumental in gathering together the musicians who filled out Linda Ronstadt’s stage band, in much the same way he assembled Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band in the late ‘60s.
Linda’s back-up band famously became The Eagles, and signed with David Geffen’s management firm, as well as his new Asylum Records.
John Boylan also became the producer for Boston’s Epic Records 1976 debut album, helping shield Tom Scholz (who sonically created the album) from the Epic suits who ordered him to “record the album in a proper studio with a proper producer.” That story here:
