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A review by tobin_elliott
Nightfly: The Life of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen by Peter Jones
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.75
The book is billed as "the life of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen" however, it really is the biography of Steely Dan, as well as Fagen and, to a slightly lesser degree, Becker. How could it not?
The things I did find interesting were, the author's assessments of all the output by Steely Dan, Fagen, and Becker pretty much aligned with my own, which is a rarity. Also, it was nice to see that Jones didn't shy away from the negatives. We saw no Saint Fagen here, and a couple of times, Jones almost got as snarky as Fagen would, which was fun.
Overall, I don't think I learned much new from the original Dan years, but this did fill in a lot of the gaps from the ensuing forty-odd years after the initial breakup.
A decent book.
The things I did find interesting were, the author's assessments of all the output by Steely Dan, Fagen, and Becker pretty much aligned with my own, which is a rarity. Also, it was nice to see that Jones didn't shy away from the negatives. We saw no Saint Fagen here, and a couple of times, Jones almost got as snarky as Fagen would, which was fun.
Overall, I don't think I learned much new from the original Dan years, but this did fill in a lot of the gaps from the ensuing forty-odd years after the initial breakup.
A decent book.