Steely Dan: Can't Buy A Thrill

Two names in particular are associated with Steely Dan: Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Both had already discovered similar musical preferences together in various bands at college at the end of the 1960s and subsequently worked as a songwriting duo before their breakthrough in 1972 with Steely Dan (the name goes back to William Burrough's novel The Naked Lunch) and the band's debut album, Can't Buy A Thrill. The album stayed in the Billboard charts for over a year, and the single Do It Again easily made it into the top ten. This was the beginning of an extraordinarily successful career, in which each of the seven studio albums was certified gold or platinum until the group's temporary dissolution in 1981 (in the meantime there is a brand new opus, Two Against Nature). "Can't Buy A Thrill is not as "smooth" as later albums, such as Aja or Gaucho, that inimitable mixture of melodic rock with a hint of soul, jazzy rhythms and sophisticated instrumental solos clearly sets Fagen and Becker's first album apart from the musical environment of the time - think of the Eagles or the Doobie Brothers. And apart from the songs that have long since become classics, such as Dirty Work, Midnight Cruiser, Reelin' The Years and of course the indestructible Do It Again, the other tracks also have all the qualities that make Steely Dan so unique.