Donald Fagen

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Donald Fagen (2017)
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (2007)

Donald Jay Fagen (born  January 10, 1948 in Passaic , New Jersey ) is the singer and keyboardist of the American duo Steely Dan .

Musical career

Steely Dan

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker met in the 1960s at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. In 1972 they founded the Steely Dan group . Fagen and Becker were the core of the group and wrote all the titles together. Becker played electric bass and later lead guitar at studio recordings and concerts . Fagen played keyboard instruments and was usually the group's singer.

After Steely Dan had released their third album in 1974, the other musicians gradually left the group, and it became a duo project by Beckers and Fagens, who from then on began recording their albums with outstanding studio musicians of the jazz and rock genre. Her biggest success was the 1977 album Aja , which reached platinum status . In 2015, Rolling Stone listed Fagen and Becker at number 71 of the 100 best songwriters of all time . Fagen's duo partner Walter Becker died on September 3, 2017.

solo

Between the band's breakup and their reunification, Fagen released two solo albums, and later two more.

Fagen (like Becker) received an honorary doctorate in music from the Berklee College of Music in 2001.

In October 2012, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung published an interview with Fagen, in which, among other things, it was about his new record Sunken Condos .

Solo albums

The Nightfly

The first concept album, The Nightfly , released in 1982 and produced by Gary Katz , achieved great popularity and reached number 11 in the US charts.

Kamakiriad

In 1993, Kamakiriad appeared , in which Steely Dan partner Walter Becker was involved as a musician and producer and which led to the reunion of the band. This is also a concept album, as all the songs revolve around a character who drives around the world in her new eco-high-tech car, a Kamakiri . The funky album does not include a track that is less than five minutes.

Morph the Cat

In 2006 the third solo work Morph the Cat was released , which, like its predecessors , is kept in a pop - jazz mixture. The musical homogeneity of the three releases was important to Fagen so that they could be included as an album trilogy. Lyrically he cuts into political issues, reports on security checks at the airport ( Security Joan ) and lets a giant alien cat float into Manhattan in the title track . H Gang was released as a pre- single in the USA .

Sunken Condos

In October 2012, Donald Fagens fourth solo album was released under the title Sunken Condos . The album was co-produced by Michael Leonhardt, who had been involved in Steely Dan projects as a trumpeter since the late 1990s. Fagen played the song Weather in my Head live on November 15, 2012 on Late Night with David Letterman . I'm not the same without you was released as a single. Fagen mentioned a possible tour before the release, but in the end there were no concerts.

Private

Fagen has been married to the singer Libby Titus (* 1947) since 1993, with whom he has been in a relationship since 1987.

Discography

Steely Dan

Solo career

Studio albums

year title Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK US US
1982 The Nightfly DE56 (4 weeks)
DE 		- - UK44
platinum
platinum

(16 weeks)UK 		US11
platinum
platinum

(27 weeks)US
First published: October 1, 1982
1993 Kamakiriad DE24 (12 weeks)
DE 		- CH27 (4 weeks)
CH 		UK3
gold
gold

(9 weeks)UK 		US10
gold
gold

(19 weeks)US
First published: May 25, 1993
2006 Morph the Cat DE53 (3 weeks)
DE 		- - UK35 (2 weeks)
UK 		US26 (4 weeks)
US
First published: March 7, 2006
2012 Sunken Condos DE29 (3 weeks)
DE 		AT69 (1 week)
AT 		CH53 (1 week)
CH 		UK23 (2 weeks)
UK 		US12 (4 weeks)
US
First published: October 16, 2012

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

more publishments

  • 2007: Nightfly Trilogy
  • 2017: Cheap Xmas: Donald Fagen Complete

Singles

year Title
album 		Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK US US
1982 IGY (What A Beautiful World)
The Nightfly 		- - - - US26 (14 weeks)
US
First published: September 1982
1983 New Frontier
The Nightfly 		- - - - US70 (6 weeks)
US
First published: January 1983
1988 Century's End
Bright Lights, Big City (OST) 		- - - - US83 (5 weeks)
US
First published: March 1988
1993 Tomorrow's Girls
Kamakiriad 		- - - UK46 (2 weeks)
UK 		-
First published: June 1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. Rolling Stone , August 2015, accessed August 7, 2017 .
  2. ^ Berklee College Award Ceremony 2001
  3. ↑ No woman looks after me anymore
  4. ↑ USA Today, Jazz.com, UltimateClassicRock.com: 'We'll see what happens': Donald Fagen considers doing a solo tour behind Sunken Condos. In: Something Else! October 20, 2012, accessed January 10, 2017 .
  5. ↑ digitalspy.com: Steely Dan star Donald Fagen's assault and harassment case isn't going ahead, at least for now
  6. ↑ rollingstone.com: Steely Dan: Return of the Dark Brothers
  7. ↑ a b Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
  8. ↑ Music Sales Awards: US UK
personal data
SURNAME Fagen, Donald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fagen, Donald Jay (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American singer and keyboard player
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Passaic , New Jersey