Farewell, Walter Becker: Remembering the Elusive Genius of Steely Dan

Walter Becker once explained Steely Dan's most affectionate satire, "Deacon Blues." "The protagonist is not a musician. He just sort of imagines that would be one of the mythic forms of loserdom to which he might aspire. And you know, who's to say that he's not right?" Mythic loserdom was the turf Steely Dan chronicled like no other rock & roll band. They dwelled in Raymond Chandler's L.A., not Brian Wilson's or Jackson Browne's. (Although they shared plenty with Wilson and Browne as we