FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Donald Fagen – The Nightfly
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I realise I have featured….
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
a few Steely Dan albums here and there but, when it comes to Donald Fagen solo work, I have been a bit shy. There are a number of reasons why I am putting his debut solo album, The Nightfly, into Vinyl Corner and recommend people buy a copy. It is a wonderful record and one that is renowned for its textures, layers and brilliance. For audiophiles and those who want their stereos tested, The Nightfly is the perfect record! Many people know Donald Fagen from Steely Dan but some might not be aware he has a successful solo career - his most recent album, Sunken Condos, came out in 2012. I am a huge fan of Fagen’s work and feel his solo material does not get enough coverage. The Nightfly was produced by Gary Katz and was released on 1st October, 1982. Steely Dan’s last album before their split was 1980’s Gaucho. The band broke the year after and Fagen decided to go solo. It is amazing to see the leap in quality between the uneven Gaucho and the sublime, flawless The Nightfly! Maybe Fagen was keen to head in a new direction or had a few songs ready for a solo project. Whatever the truth, The Nightfly is a treasure trove of incredible sounds and moments. Unlike Steely Dan’s work, The Nightfly has an autobiographical nature and many of the songs relate to the optimistic mood of Fagen’s childhood in the late-1950s and 1960s. Everything from fallout shelters, Jazz D.J.s and tropical escapes are covered across the album.
To listen to The Nightfly is to be transported back to a time when there was fear in the air but there was also hope of a better future; a period of transition when America was looking forward. That seems alien today but, actually, I think The Nightfly is a work that is relevant today. We are facing perils and an uncertain world but, really, there seems to be little optimism. America transitioned through a period when nuclear annihilation seemed likely and, whereas our global crisis cannot be fixed instantly, I do think there is a way we can all come together and find a new hope; a fresh frontier on the horizon. Back in 1981, digital recording was quite new. Maybe that is why The Nightfly has a freshness and shine that embeds it in the mind. It is a gloriously produced record that is finely engineered and honed. There is looseness in the music, but it is the passion and fastidiousness of the production team, musicians and Donald Fagen that means The Nightfly such a classic. One of the reasons Steely Dan went into hibernation is the perfectionist tendencies of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Maybe having two perfectionists in a room was too much: on his own, Fagen was allowed to step away from the confines and strains in the Steely Dan camp – Becker’s drug problems exacerbated tensions between the two. In total, thirty-one musicians were employed for The Nightfly’s sessions. I think Gaucho had ambition, but its compositions often wandered and failed to connect.
Conversely, The Nightfly seems more focused, refreshing and nuanced; full of songs that stand up to endless plays and are ripe with inspiration! If The Nightfly demonstrated a new peak in Fagen’s writing, there was a period of writer’s block following the album; Fagen finding it hard to transition and adapt without Becker’s input and voice. There are some welcome changes from the Steely Dan days in terms of the lyrics and style. The music is more Jazz-influenced whereas the lyrics are more personal, less cutting and, yes, more optimistic! As Fagen was recalling childhood memories and writing from a new perspective, loading an album with sarcasm, cynicism and dread would not have sounded right. He wanted The Nightfly to sound fun and enjoyable. Indeed, Fagen’s debut album is among his most uplifting work. I think Fagen downplayed the purely autobiographical tones – saying it was more a composite of various versions of himself from the past -, but there is a warmth and personal relevance that makes The Nightfly so compelling and engaging. As one can imagine, the reviews for The Nightfly are universally positive. I want to bring in a couple of reviews that highlight different points. AllMusic, in their review, had this to note:
“A portrait of the artist as a young man, The Nightfly is a wonderfully evocative reminiscence of Kennedy-era American life; in the liner notes, Donald Fagen describes the songs as representative of the kinds of fantasies he entertained as an adolescent during the late '50s/early '60s, and he conveys the tenor of the times with some of his most personal and least obtuse material to date. Continuing in the smooth pop-jazz mode favored on the final Steely Dan records, The Nightfly is lush and shimmering, produced with cinematic flair by Gary Katz; romanticized but never sentimental, the songs are slices of suburbanite soap opera, tales of space-age hopes (the hit "I.G.Y.") and Cold War fears (the wonderful "The New Frontier," a memoir of fallout-shelter love) crafted with impeccable style and sophistication”.
When they assessed The Nightfly, Albumism were full of praise:
“The Nightfly also remains a curious case in build-up. The title track doesn’t appear until the second song on the B-side, and the A-side has some of the album’s weaker tracks. “Green Flower Street” has all the patter of a rain-slicked street and a swingin’ cover of the Drifters “Ruby Baby,” closing with the lovelorn (but musically sparse) “Maxine.”
But it just further sets the stage for the B-side, where all the real action is. The album kicks into gear with “New Frontier,” a raucous party in an abandoned bomb-shelter. “It’s just a dugout that my dad built / in case the Reds decide to push the button down.” It seems almost worth building a bomb shelter just to limbo and listen to Dave Brubeck records, plus the added benefit of surviving the nuclear blast. It’s that sort of cheeky look at the apocalypse that makes Fagen so goddamn wonderful.
IN THIS PHOTO: Donald Fagen in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
The album winds down with “The Goodbye Look,” which is perhaps the darkest song on the album. There’s a twinge of his late musical partner Walter Becker in here, a sinister quality that is missing from the rest of the album, all feathered over with Fagen’s increasingly-anxious vocals. And it’s in sharp contrast to the album’s upbeat closer, “Walk Between the Raindrops,” an easy, lovely little tune that wouldn’t have been out of place in any Manhattan ballroom or cocktail party of the time.
(In addition to “I.G.Y.,” Fagen performed “The Nightfly,” “Green Flower Street,” and “New Frontier,” during his solo tour earlier this summer. I am not in the slightest bit ashamed to say that I wept with breathless, nearly-orgasmic bliss through most of the first verse. Though he rarely performs his solo work live, he played “Green Flower Street” with the Dukes of September and has been playing “New Frontier” during his current tour, along with Becker’s “Book of Liars” from 11 Tracks of Whack.
Fagen would follow up the album with two more in the “Nightfly Trilogy,” Kamakiriad in 1993 and Morph the Cat in 2006. But 35 years later, The Nightfly couldn’t be more perfect. It remains a record collection essential, a sonic delight. Thanks for calling. I wait all night for calls like these”.
For someone like me – born a year after the album came out -, it is hard to identify directly with the scenes of childhood/adolescence in the 1950s and 1960s. As powerful and evocative as any drama set in the time, The Nightfly is this snapshot into a past time; a better world maybe but, even with looming uncertainty, there is a sense of hope and betterment – Fagen does dip into negative territory at times but the mood is largely beautiful and hopeful. The Nightfly is not an album reserved for Jazz fans or those who are who are explicitly aware of Fagen’s cannon. In this feature, the writer discusses the album in more detail:
“Everything about the clear-eyed, merrily nostalgic The Nightfly is resonant from that time. Fagen's No. 26 hit "I.G.Y.," the album's first single, referenced the International Geophysical Year – an global scientific project held from 1957-58 – while looking ahead to a hoped-for time when technology will work in concert with man. "New Frontier," a follow-up single named after a term used by John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic convention, took place during a teen's party inside his family bomb shelter. Period groups like the Drifters and the Four Freshmen had a notable influence in "Maxine" and "Ruby Ruby," respectively, while "The Goodbye Look" seemed to build off the era's revolutionary upheaval in Cuba.
The Nightfly would eventually be part of triad of albums that were meant to represent the three stages of life – youth, middle age and death. First, however, Fagen would have to endure a lengthy layover between the first and second installments as he battled with a crisis of creative faith.
You could blame The Nightfly, he said. "I had come to the end of whatever kind of energy was behind the writing I had been doing in the '70s, and The Nightfly sort of summed it up for me in a way," Fagen told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. "And although I would work every day, I essentially was blocked because I didn't like what I was doing. I'd write a song and then a week later I just wouldn't connect with it at all. It seemed either I was repeating myself, or it just bored me. It wasn't relevant to what I was going through at the time".
I am a huge Steely Dan fan and I can hear a lot of them in Donald Fagen’s work (obviously). That being said…Fagen does not repeat himself: his solo work is a different sensation, even if he used a lot of the same musicians on The Nightfly as he did on Steely Dan’s final (before they reformed) album. The Nightfly is perfect on vinyl! It is a deep, rich and exciting album that provides so much story, detail and colour. If you have not heard the album then I would urge people to buy it on vinyl – if not, then go and stream it now! On I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World), the words “What a beautiful world this will be” are sung. In these hard times, listening to The Nightfly gives one hope and…
MAKES you believe.