JoJo’s Bizarre Musical Adventure: Dirty Work, Steely Dan

What’s the most well-known Part of the epic that is JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure? The most common answer would be Part 3 aka Stardust Crusaders. Part 3 saw the inclusion of Stands (the physical manifestation of the soul), the return of the primary antagonist of Part 1, DIO and the transition of the narrative to what we all know and love today. Most, if not all the music references in Part 3 are found in the slew of villains sent by DIO to thwart the Joestar group. While a lot of them are minor antagonists, a few of them make quite an impact, one such being Steely Dan.

Steely Dan (JJBA) is a Stand user who threatens Jotaro (the third JoJo) into doing all his dirty work by holding Joseph Joestar hostage. If Jotaro were to threaten, harm or not comply with Steely Dan’s orders, then Joseph would pay the price by death.

Steely Dan gets his name from American music group Steely Dan.

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker first met at Bard College, New York, in 1967. Fagen, who played the piano, heard Becker playing blues guitar in the student lounge. They soon discovered that in addition to their taste in music (Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane) they also shared the same sense of humor and enjoyed similar literature. Putting their heads together they decided to write songs. They went on to form several college bands like the Leather Canary and The Donald Fagen Trio, which never found much success.

Both Fagen and Becker were fans of the Beat Generation Literature that emerged in the 1950s post-war era, they decided to name their group after a steam-powered dildo in William S. Burroughs’ book Naked Lunch. And so, Steely Dan was born.

Steely Dan is not a band in a traditional sense. A stellar cast of musicians were bought in by Fagen and Becker — the central duo — ranging from Larry Carlton and Steve Gadd to Bernard Purdie and Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter to Chuck Rainey, Joe Sample, Jim Keltner and Wayne Shorter.

In the later albums, each and every track had different musicians coming in and going out. Some of them were regulars who appeared sporadically in various albums like Joe Sample of The Crusaders. Wilton Felder, who was a saxophone player for The Crusaders sat in as a bassist for Steely Dan in Pretzel Logic (1974) and Katy Lied (1975). Bringing in such diverse musicians contributed to the wide sound palette and hinted at the wide range of their listening to other musicians.

Steely Dan was never a mainstream band, but they have a very fierce and dedicated cult following. They have an interesting sound, not quite rock, not quite jazz. Incorporating a lot of jazz references into their music, the closest one can categorize them would be jazz-rock.

Their lyrics are works of poetic art with abstruse references to their own upbringing. There’s a lot of sarcasm, irony, witticism and illusions in the lyrics. “Deacon Blues” (1977) is a song about a man in the suburbs who dreams of becoming a jazz saxophonist, quite like Fagen and Becker once did.

“Many people have assumed the song is about a guy in the suburbs who ditches his life to become a musician. In truth, I’m not sure the guy actually achieves his dream. He might not even play the horn. It’s the fantasy life of a suburban guy from a certain subculture.” – Fagen on “Deacon Blues.”

“The protagonist in ‘Deacon Blues’ is a triple-L loser – an L-L-L Loser. It’s not so much about a guy who achieves his dream but about a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life.” – Becker on “Deacon Blues.”

In contrast, “Hey Nineteen” (1980) is one of the more straightforward songs by Steely Dan. It revolves around the theme of the generation gap. A man who is presumably in his thirties contemplates a romance with a younger woman, but the relationship is doomed to end in failure. And so, instead of going out dancing with the younger crowd, he spends his evenings drinking tequila. At the time of its release, tequila was not a popular drink among the college-going generation, further cementing the distance between the mindsets.

Steely Dan’s first hit was “Do It Again” (1972) released as a single from their debut album Can’t Buy a Thrill. Fagen at that time was uncomfortable doing the lead vocals so David Palmer was brought in to be the frontman and perform live. While touring, however, producer Gary Katz and Becker decided that Fagen’s version of the songs better portrayed the sound Steely Dan was going for, leading to Palmer’s departure from the band.

Their second album Countdown to Ecstasy (1973) was recorded while the band was on tour. Fagen and Becker felt that recording the album during tour stops was the reason that it was not as commercially successful as Can’t Buy a Thrill. This is also the only album by Steely Dan whose tracks are better written and arranged for a live session, unlike their usual meticulously arranged tracks. Among the tracks in this album, is “My Old School,” drawing inspiration from their lives. It details the story of a drug bust during their days at Bard College.

For their next album Pretzel Logic (1974), Becker and Fagen brought in a lot of sessions musicians like Chuck Rainey and Victor Feldman because they found that their core band could not realize the sound they wanted to go for. 

This was the first album to see Becker shift from bass to guitar. “Once I met Chuck Rainey, I felt there really was no need for me to be bringing my bass guitar to the studio anymore” – Becker’s explanation for the change.

This would also be the final album that saw Steely Dan as a touring band. Becker and Fagen decided that life on the road was not for them, writing and recording were to be the focus of the band. This was what prompted Baxter to leave and join the Doobie Brothers.

Katy Lied (1975) was the band’s first album as a strictly studio unit. They brought in a lot more musicians with a jazz background rather than rock, like saxophonist Phil Woods and guitarist Larry Carlton. Despite the album’s success, neither Fagen nor Becker listened to it in its final form due to its sound fidelity being compromised via a faulty tape machine used during recording.

Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, who had joined Steely Dan while they were a touring band, returned to provide the backing vocals on this album. He became a studio regular and would continue to collaborate with the band throughout.

“I literally threw my piano in the back of my Pinto and drove down to where they were rehearsing and auditioned. Remarkably I got the gig, not because of my keyboard playing but because I could sing all the high parts. I could tell that appealed to Donald—’cause I could sing like a girl” – Michael McDonald on how he joined Steely Dan.

Steely Dan’s most guitar-oriented album is The Royal Scam (1976) mostly due to Carlton on guitar. Especially his solo on “Kid Charlemagne.”

The process was meticulous as Carlton explained, “I did maybe two hours’ worth of solos that we didn’t keep. Then I played the first half of the intro, which they loved, so they kept that. I punched in for the second half. So it was done in two parts and the solo that fades out in the end was done in one pass.”

Their next album Aja (1977) was their most jazz-fueled album yet. Aja is also the album that was referenced in Part Two of JJBA: Battle Tendency and the first reference from Steely Dan to appear in the series.

Gaucho, released in 1980, was the most troubled production that the band faced. With 42 sessions musicians brought in to get the sound just right and spending over a year recording, Gaucho overshot the budget by a good mile. Tom Scott of the L.A. Express did the saxophone solo on Gaucho and had Steve Gadd on drums. To get an idea of how difficult it was to realize the sound Fagen and Becker had in mind, here’s what Mark Knopfler, who performed the solo on “Time Out of Mind,” said about his experience working with the band, “I was really pleased to have gotten to be in the first place. I certainly wasn’t expecting to walk out at the end of that day and have anything on the record that they would keep…I must have played those chords a thousand times in the studio.”

Steely Dan then faced a series of unfortunate events that delayed the release date of the album.

Becker was hit by a car and hospitalized. Unable to be in the studio just as they began the final mix, he had to communicate via telephone. Meanwhile, an assistant engineer accidentally erased most of the recording for the track “The Second Arrangement.” Becker and Fagen, being perfectionists, were never satisfied with subsequent recordings of the song. It was thought to be lost forever until it was rediscovered in 2020.

It would be twenty years later, in 2000 that Steely Dan got together after their hiatus to make Two Against Nature. The album also features the band’s longest song, “West of Hollywood,” clocking in over eight minutes with a three-and-a-half-minute sax solo by jazz saxophonist Chris Potter. Originally meant to be a guitar solo, Potter asked if he could take it home and work on it. When he returned to the studio and started playing, “West of Hollywood” turned into what we know today.

Coming back to JJBA, this isn’t the first time Steely Dan would find a reference in the epic, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Though Stardust Crusaders would be the only time the character Steely Dan would make an appearance in the story, the band’s songs find home in the most unexpected of places in the journey that follows.

Steely Dan’s Playlist

“Dirty Work” (Album: Can’t Buy a Thrill, 1972)

“Reelin’ in the Years” (Album: Can’t Buy a Thrill, 1972)

“My Old School” (Album: Countdown to Ecstasy, 1973)

“Any Major Dude Will Tell You” (Album: Pretzel Logic, 1974)

“Bad Sneakers” (Album: Katy Lied, 1975)

“Hey Nineteen” (Album: Gaucho, 1980)

“Jack Of Speed” (Album: Two Against Nature, 2000)