50 Years Later: Steely Dan Introduced Its Brainy Rock Side On ‘Countdown To Ecstasy’

Hardly the commercial success of its predecessor Can’t Buy A Thrill, the second Steely Dan album, Countdown to Ecstasy, (released July 1973) was the only record of the group’s written and arranged for a live band. Not that the two factors are inextricably intertwined, but the sophomore Dan is permeated with the sense of unity in performances by an ensemble that was touring at the time, albeit sporadically and only begrudgingly (at least in the minds of the group’s emerging titular co-leaders Donal Fegen and Walter Becker). 

In fact, the lineup that appears throughout this album is actually a pared-down version of a previous configuration. An increasingly glaring chasm between vocalist David Palmer and the remainder of the band led to the singer’s departure and the group recorded the now half-century-old album with Donald Fagen singing lead on every track. The continuity of the core five musicians’ sound was not so apparent in the preceding title and would inexorably dissipate over the course of subsequent releases.

During these sessions too, the plethora of session players and hired studio pros that would come to populate the eccentric group’s records were few and far between. A notable exception is ex-McCoy and Johnny Winter collaborator Rick Derringer’s slide guitar part for “Show Biz Kids. Otherwise, a trio of background singers shine with a taunting vocal tone on “Show Biz Kids” and a foursome of saxophonists on “My Old School” elevate to euphoria the bitterness that otherwise permeates the song’s narrative. 

Redoubtable jazz bassist Ray Brown’s turn on his chosen instrument during “Razor Boy” is practically the only overt nod to the jazz milieu on the eight tracks. Still, Steely Dan otherwise repeatedly alludes to the idiom in which that man made his name: the fleet jump of “Bodhisattva” is only one instance and tellingly, it is the very first five minutes or so of these forty-one plus. 

Elsewhere, Fagen and Becker ever-more-firmly establish themselves as the main composers of the enigmatic collective. For instance, the pair incorporates the structure of pop song conventions with tricky time changes and melodic twists during “The Boston Rag,” an unpredictable route the players navigate with panache. And the lyrics the duo compose mirror those deceptive musical constructs: with a suitably irascible, tongue-in-cheek tone–fully reflected in guitarist Denny Dias’ scathing solo–the images of “Your Gold Teeth” predate the economic and social cataclysm described in “Black Friday” as well as this tune’s direct sequel on the same Katy Lied album.

In the end, the practically indecipherable wordplay on Countdown To Ecstasy is just another one of its addictive attractions. Yet it’s one rendered all the more tantalizing to decipher by the alternately emotive and removed delivery in Donal Fagen’s singing. On “Pearl of the Quarter,” he passionately and straightforwardly intones those lines from which he should remain healthily distant and vice versa. Such a contrary approach would be exceedingly unnerving if the cut, like so much of its surroundings, weren’t so otherwise infectious. Implausible as it sounds, it’s nigh on impossible not to sing along with that nasally voice (as with the aforementioned opener). 

The sum effect of the evolving stylization on this half-decade-old LP would carry through increasingly forcefully on future Steely Dan albums, all of which, like this one, would be produced by Gary Katz. Largely via “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” Pretzel Logic represented a commercial rebound and while it still featured the touring group, its credits also note significant contributions from many prominent Los Angeles-based studio musicians. Meanwhile, following the aforementioned ultra-polished 1975 issue, on the detached and deceptively funky likes of The Royal Scam of 1976, only Fagen and Becker remained as the increasingly obsessive masterminds that would foist the epochal Aja on an unsuspecting but ultimately reverent world. 

The twists and turns of Steely Dan’s career took circuitous paths comparable to one of their knottiest compositions. A formal breakup in ’81 occurred in almost as unspoken a fashion as the reunion twelve years later. The reentry into the marketplace known as Two By Nature won a Grammy,  the award an outright certification that all the hooks in those earlier songs had become deeply embedded (and accepted) in mainstream music culture. Contrary to the group’s outsider status as depicted (and undermined) roughly two decades prior by a Rolling Stone Magazine cover story, the smooth sound of Steely Dan also helped give birth to the banal categorization of ‘dad rock’. 

As if to disprove this unlikely evolution was the work of real human beings, legal disputes regarding use of the name ‘Steely Dan’ arose in the wake of Becker’s passing in 2017. These were resolved in such a remarkably timely manner, however, (as such things go anyway), there was hardly any interruption in the touring cycle the group had adopted in the post-reunion years (see Peter Jones’ book Nightfly for a surfeit of detail on that period). 

Still, the greatest of all ironies given birth through the work of Steely Dan may be the announcement the band–as currently overseen by Fagen alone–is billed as the opening act on the farewell tour of the Eagles. Far beyond the last fifty years, have there ever been any popular creative institutions more jaundiced than these two about the success they’ve achieved (or more willing to embrace it)?