The songs on this album represent certain fantasies that might have been entertained by a young man growing up in the remote suburbs of a northeastern city during the late fifties and early sixties, i.e., one of my general height, weight and build. D. F.
- Liner notes
It was 1982. I had just moved up to the Bay Area from Los Angeles, and nothing felt right. I couldn't find a radio station I liked, and all the television stations were a little off. For some strange reason, I settled on KFOG a lot. They played the right amount of current and what they now call classic rock, though they played way too much of the Who at that time. Anyway, once in a while they premiered new albums. This was before record companies got all tweaked out about bootleging albums.
One night, in the middle of autumn, KFOG played this album that totally blew me away. It was called the NightFly, by Donald Fagen. I don't know why I became obsessed with it, but I did. How could this man's reflections on his teenage years, when he was a nerdy little introvert listening to late-night jazz stations in the suburbs of New Jersey relate to a nerdy Mexican kid from East L.A.? I don't know, but I guess that's the power of music. I admit it, I illegally recorded it, including the DJ's stupid comments when he flipped the record over, and listened to it over and over again, until my roommate threatened to kill me. That was okay, by that time I discovered Prince's 1999. But that's another story.
The songs on this album represent the vast array of musical styles that influenced Donald Fagen in his youth. As in his previous work with Steely Dan, he brought together many of the finest studio musicians available. The musicianship is first rate, the vocal arrangements perfect, almost too perfect. It's the loopy romanticism that saves this album, it's parody of the optimism of the early sixties that clashed wonderfully, cynically, with the violence and criminal neglect of the Reagan years. One song, New Frontier (also the nickname of the Kennedy administration) is about a party in a bomb shelter. Another song, The Goodbye Look, laments the loss of the good old days in pre-Castro Cuba, without ever saying it. It's all suggested in it's synthesized marimba sound, it's references to nocturnal guerrilla activity and the evacuation of all the amerikkkans on the island.
My favorite song is the title track, The Nightfly. It's about a late-night DJ for a jazz station. I think it's a great song for anyone who ever had to work the graveyard shift:
You'd never believe it
But once there was a time
When love was in my lifeI sometimes wonder
What happened to that flame
The answer's still the same
It was you. It was you. It was you.
Tonight you're still on my mind
What else do you think about when you're alone at 3 a.m.? For me, I guess the "you" in the song has changed over the years, but the longing never does. Ever.