Feb. 2, 2006

American popular music doesn't often embrace the intricate, which is why Donald Fagen's critical and commercial successes might seem like anomalies. As one half of Steely Dan's creative team with Walter Becker, Fagen's voice was on some of the biggest FM hits of the 1970s, such as "Do It Again" and "Rikki Don't Lose That Number." The album "Aja," Steely Dan's 1977 commercial peak, was ironically their most sophisticated work to that point, as Fagen and Becker gratified their jazz influences with just enough rock to catch on.

Fagen went solo in 1982 with the album "The Nightfly," an audio landmark that was one of the first albums to be fully digitally recorded. Its technical accomplishment was so great that Fagen's lyrical shift was nearly overlooked. Drawing on impressions of a suburban upbringing in the nuclear age, Fagen broke from Steely Dan's aloofness with songs that sounded cautiously personal. In one of the greatest quickie liner notes ever, Fagen said the album was about "certain fantasies" of a young man at the time, "i.e., one of my general height, weight and build."

"Morph the Cat," Fagen's new, third solo album could be that same kid's impressions of the 21st century; clearly whatever naïve optimism the kid might have had in the '50s has been tempered by time and the march of progress (or something like progress). Between "Nightfly" and "Morph," Fagen released the science-fictional "Kamakiriad" in 1992 and reunited with Becker for two new Steely Dan albums. One of them, "Two Against Nature," won a surprise Grammy for Album of the Year in 2001, the same year Steely Dan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Fagen spoke with MSN about "Morph the Cat" and Steely Dan's peculiar but deserved place in the pop music record.

MSN Music: You envisioned "Morph the Cat" as a trilogy with "The Nightfly" and "Kamakiriad."

Donald Fagen: Yeah, it's a long trilogy, over a long period of time.

What's the running theme?

I guess the life of a human.

With Steely Dan there seemed to be a jaded quality to the lyrics. But with your solo stuff, it seems as if there's more of an innocent viewpoint.

Well, I kind of think that when Walter and I were together, over the years, we kind of developed a collective persona. The narrator of the various songs is a guy with problems. We think of him as a guy without a girl. It's guys without girls -- sort of the way guys talk to guys, although it's more complicated than that. Once in awhile he breaks down; he has a lot of male defense patterns. What I'm writing on my own is sort of a created persona, but it's closer to myself, more subjective.

Did you find in Steely Dan that you kind of resisted talking about things from your personal side of view?

Well, yes -- intentionally, really. I think it could be more journalistic, and you can maneuver the character more, when you're more distant from it.

Is your writing as a solo musician different than as a collaborator?

Not really. [When writing with Walter Becker] I'd come up with a song or an idea that was more personal, or seemed to fit into the project I was doing, [and then] I'd just put it away. Or sometimes I'd show a song to Walter, and he'd tell me, "You know, I think that's more for you than for Steely Dan."

Let's talk about "Morph the Cat." The title track and "H Gang" felt like there was a cinematic quality to them; in fact "H Gang" mentions the existence of a film. Did you approach these songs with a cinematic quality in mind?

No, not really, although I think I tend to see songs in a visual way, generally speaking. When you tell stories as I do, or when Walter and I do when we write songs, they tend to have a visual quality to them.

What was the idea behind the title track? It seems like that cat -- or something like it -- returns at the end of the album.

That was the last tune I wrote, and I wanted to have something that tied the album together. Since the album takes New York almost as a character, I wanted to have something with an aerial view of the city. Morph is this sort of ghostly cat figure that comes out of the sky, peeks in people's windows and threads itself through the skyline and all that. So I had to kind of bookend the album.

This benevolent figure hovering over the city, but with an element of creepiness to it, reminded me of a stranger's possible impression of New York.

Yeah, in a way. It started out with just the benevolent part. But as I was writing it, I realized that there was something creepy about it: It kind of makes everyone feel good and narcotizes the citizenry, but there would be a price to pay somewhere along the line for that.

Read more of this exclusive interview on page 2