We recently participated in a teleconference call with Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan, who took the opportunity to have a bit of fun with the questions that a group of journalists asked about their upcoming tour, which they’ve called Mood Swings: 8 Miles to Pancake Day Tour. Here are our favorite 10 questions and answers from the truly bizarre interview. The band is in town tonight and plays a sold out show at Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica at 7:30.
1. Have you and the bipolar all-stars considered Paxil?
Donald: Considered Paxil?
Walter: No, I’m not in the mood anymore.
2. How did the name Mood Swings: 8 miles to Pancake Day come about?
Walter: How did it come about? We made it up.
Donald: In truth, we put up Mood Swings,that was the easy part. Then we were reminiscing about the old television show Route 66 and we remembered how in those days they used to name TV episodes using very eccentric titles like Who’s Afraid of the Muffin Man, things like that. So, we decided we were going to have a subtitle for our Mood Swings tour. In fact, we’re thinking we might change the subtitle every few weeks.
Walter: In a way, you may have wasted your question in that we may do exactly as Donald says there. The other thing is 8 Miles to Pancake Day is—this is a reconciliation of the classic space time dilemma, in other words, time versus distance. In other words, like the Russian army sergeant says, “You will dig me a ditch from here to dinner time.”
This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2013.
“Donald: Also, because you find when you get older that there are not many people who understand your references anymore so that we’re the only audience we have pretty much for our cultural references and so on. Like no one remembers the TV themes we remember anymore because they’re just too old…”
Right. I wonder how many people realized that they finished the show with the theme from “The Untouchables”…the Desilu series that ran for four years on ABC-TV (1959-63)? I don’t think anyone around me even caught that. Hell, even my wife didn’t, because she never watched it. I guess she didn’t like seeing and hearing people who were being choked to death.
Chuckles the Clown