"You're going to like this [music] in a year or so, so why don't you start now and save yourself some time?" -- Becker's college attitude toward the reluctant hep-cat. And if "Comedy is tragedy plus time"* Becker's (and Fagen's) impulse was to get the laughs in as early as possible.
Similarly, his musicianship -- Becker had his own guitar sound, and it suited his character. clean, precise, funny.
Yep: funny.
My friend says the first time he put Two Against Nature into the family CD player and gave it a spin, his six-year-old daughter burst out laughing when Becker ripped the guitar solo on "Gaslighting Abbie."**
Me too, kid.
*"Tragedy plus Time equals Comedy" -- Steve Allen, in 1957, apparently.
**"Gaslighting" -- in his reluctant pan of the album, Nick Hornby rather grumpily cited this [to him, at that time] baffling, opaque term as an example of Fagen and Becker's gleeful willingness to court listener alienation. Who knew it would become a contemporary vernacular mainstay? Here is just the most current example.
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