When Steely Dan released its debut album, Can’t Buy a Thrill, 50 years ago, in 1972, who could have imagined that the band would be a marquee touring act in 2022? But here we are, and they are. This summer has seen the band traveling the Eastern Seaboard on its Absolutely Normal Tour, which concludes next week in Port Chester, New York, running from August 10 to 13.
In the beginning, Steely Dan’s references were deliberately obscure and their chord changes came from jazz, a stubbornly unpopular genre. If you wanted to get the harmony, the jokes, the attitude, you had to come to them. It worked. Co-founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen named their band for a dildo in Naked Lunch, and that was just their opening move.
