Donald Fagen - Early Life

Early Life

Fagen was born in Passaic, New Jersey, on January 10, 1948 to Joseph "Jerry" Fagen, an accountant and his wife Elinor. From the age of 12 to 17, Elinor sang in a hotel band in upstate New York's Catskill Mountains until bouts of stage fright (a condition her son would later be afflicted with) forced her to discontinue performing live. Fagen would later recall: "I can't ever remember when there was silence around the house. She was either playing records or singing."

Around 1958, the Fagen family moved from Passaic first to the suburb of Fair Lawn, and then quickly moved and settled into a ranch-style house in Kendall Park, New Jersey. The transition greatly upset Donald: he detested living in the suburbs. He would later recall to an interviewer that it "was like a prison. I think I lost faith in judgment… It was probably the first time I realised I had my own view of life." His life in Kendall Park would later inspire tracks on his album The Nightfly.

In the late 1950s, Fagen became interested in rock and R&B music; his first record purchase being Chuck Berry's "Reelin' and Rockin'". Around age 11, after receiving musical recommendations from a cousin and attending the Newport Jazz Festival, he quickly became a self-declared "jazz snob. I lost interest in rock n' roll and started developing an anti-social personality." Fagen would regularly take the bus to Manhattan to see Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis perform. Soon afterwards, he learned to play the piano, and also played baritone horn in the in high school marching band. Fagen also began a lifelong fondness for table tennis during his teenage years.

After graduating from South Brunswick High School in 1965, Fagen enrolled at Bard College to study English literature, having been inspired by Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. While at Bard, Fagen met musician Walter Becker. The duo, along with a revolving assortment of musicians which included future actor Chevy Chase, formed various groups called The Leather Canary, The Don Fagen Jazz Trio, and the Bad Rock Band. Fagen would later describe his college bands as sounding like "The Kingsmen performing Frank Zappa material". None of the groups lasted long, but the partnership between Fagen and Becker would continue for decades. The duo's early career included a stint with Jay and the Americans (where they went by pseudonyms), and in the early 1970s, as pop songwriters for ABC/Dunhill Records, which would go on to release all of Steely Dan's 1970s output.