Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 35 minutes ago
Released in 1974, the third album by New York jazz-rockers Steely Dan was something of a departure. The band's ringleaders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker side-lined their own musicians to various degrees, inviting a gang of session musos into the studio and beginning the process that would eventually culminate, three albums later, in the super-sleek 'Aja'.
However, 'Pretzel Logic' would retain a certain earthiness, its sordid tales of losers, drug addicts, assassins and middle-aged would-be-seducers couched in music that was bluesy and gutsy yet glittering with jazzy harmonies borrowed from the likes of Henry Mancini and Duke Ellington.
Join me as I tell the story of this unique record from The Dan's glorious early period - an early peak for sure and a harbinger of what was to come.
Released in 1974, the third album by New York jazz-rockers Steely Dan was something of a departure. The band's ringleaders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker side-lined their own musicians to various degrees, inviting a gang of session musos into the studio and beginning the process that would eventually culminate, three albums later, in the super-sleek 'Aja'.
However, 'Pretzel Logic' would retain a certain earthiness, its sordid tales of losers, drug addicts, assassins and middle-aged would-be-seducers couched in music that was bluesy and gutsy yet glittering with jazzy harmonies borrowed from the likes of Henry Mancini and Duke Ellington.
Join me as I tell the story of this unique record from The Dan's glorious early period - an early peak for sure and a harbinger of what was to come.
