Happy Birthday Donald Fagen
Donald Jay Fagen was born January 10, 1948 in Passaic, New Jersey and raised somewhere in the suburbs of NJ. Fagen hated the suburbs and lost all faith in his parents judgement.
Donald was a young hipster doofus and was quite fond of berets and jazz. Fagen considered himself the Jewish Ray Charles and often hung around coffee houses snapping his fingers while listening to spoken word bongo players.
In his late teens, Fagen developed a lifelong love of table tennis, (or as you might say ‘Ping-Pong’ ) and Sly and The Family Stone. In 1972, Fagen was lucky enough to play a game of Ping-Pong with Sly Stone. Sly Stone beat him 21-5. “I thought I could beat him” said Fagen, “But he whipped my ass. He whipped it good, and he was high on cocaine.”
Fagen met Walter Becker at Bard College as the two were reaching for the last ‘bear claw’ at the college ‘Rathskeller’. They formed Steely Dan, threw out all the band members and hired extremely talented black studio musicians and stopped touring until they ran out of money.
Color Me Steel
Steely Dan sold millions of albums and were inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. VH1 ranked Steely Dan at No. 82 on their list of the 100 Greatest Musical Artists of All Time, right behind Color Me Badd. Steely Dan began touring again when they realized you get more chicks on the road than in the studio.
In the song ‘Black Cow’, Fagen sings, “I saw you in Rudy’s, You were very high.” He’s referring to Rudy Giuliani’s Bar and Grill, an old school dive on Ninth Avenue in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. “We used to go there all the time” said Fagen, “There was an after hours speakeasy open from 4AM. We saw the sun come up many a night with Rudy.” Cheers Donald!
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