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Viking
November 2013
On Sale: October 22, 2013
177 pages
ISBN: 0670025518
EAN: 9780670025510
Kindle: B00C1N5WPW
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
A witty, revealing, sharply written work of memoir and
criticism by the cofounder of Steely Dan
Musician and songwriter Donald Fagen presents a group of
vivid set pieces in his entertaining debut as an author,
from portraits of the cultural figures and currents that
shaped him as a youth to an account of his college days and
of life on the road.
Fagen begins by introducing the
“eminent hipsters” that spoke to him as he was growing up in
a bland New Jersey suburb in the early 1960s, among them
Jean Shepherd, whose manic nightly broadcasts out of
WOR-Radio “enthralled a generation of alienated young
people”; Henry Mancini, whose swank, noirish soundtracks
left their mark on him; and Mort Fega, the laid-back,
knowledgeable all-night jazz man at WEVD who was like “the
cool uncle you always wished you had.” He writes of how,
coming of age during the paranoid Cold War era, one of his
primary doors of escape became reading science fiction, and
of his invigorating trips into New York City to hear jazz.
“Class of ’69” recounts Fagen’s colorful, mind-expanding
years at Bard College, the progressive school north of New
York City, where he first met his future musical partner
Walter Becker. “With the Dukes of September” offers a
cranky, hilarious account of the ups and downs of a recent
cross-country tour Fagen made with Boz Scaggs and Michael
McDonald, performing a program of old R&B and soul tunes
as well as some of their own hits.
Acclaimed for the
elaborate arrangements and jazz harmonies of his songs,
Fagen proves himself a sophisticated writer with a very
distinctive voice in this engaging book.
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