(Credit: Press)
Tue 20 January 2026 21:15, UK
A common misconception within music is that a good live performance has to somehow replicate the recorded version perfectly. But that is in fact the complete opposite of a great live performance, for it needs to be different and unpredictable, straying away from the painstakingly produced formula that the studio creates. It is ultimately that truth that made Steely Dan a band less suited to the live context.
While everyone around them was taking advantage of a culture built around sex, drugs and rock and roll, Steely Dan spent time protecting the safety of their studio environment. They were less concerned with using it as a vehicle to get out on the road and more as a safe haven, where they could laboriously work on each texture of a song to a point where all creativity was, in fact, lost.
Because Steely Dan were sticklers for perfection, and it was the studio where they showcased that best. Mark Knopfler soon realised that a day spent with them in the studio could rapidly evaporate your love for music, while the seven session guitarists fired during the recording of ‘Peg’ would also attest that a Steely Dan studio is the antithesis of joy.
Their detailed outlook on the minutiae of any given song meant that designing a live show became an almost unnecessary headache for the band. The myriad variables presented by a live context, plus the cost of recruiting all the necessary touring musicians to provide the textures of each of their songs, proved how difficult it was to truly translate their songs live, and so, they refused to where they could.
They announced a live show hiatus in 1981, which came after five years of touring inactivity anyway, having not played a show since 1976. They then didn’t return until 1993 when they toured between August to October, to play a string of huge venues across America.
Satiating the appetite of Steely Dan fans, they smashed through a collection of their hits and received overwhelming adoration from the crowd while doing so, and that’s not to mention the glowing critical reviews that came to boot. However, that still didn’t turn the tide for the band, as Becker glumly responded to the question of how tour life was treating him with: “Well, not too good. It turns out that show business isn’t really in my blood anyway, and I’m looking forward to getting back to working on my car.”
They continued on, though, touring intermittently during the twilight of their career, before playing their last ever show together as an original pair in 2017, before Walter Becker passed away.
So, what was the last song they ever performed together?
The pair wrapped up their American tour in 2017, with a show at Roger Sherman Baldwin Park, Greenwich, CT, USA. Taking place just four months before Becker’s death, the pair had no idea that the final tune of that night would be their last, for the European leg was set to begin in the Autumn.
But that night, after closing the main set with ‘Reelin’ In The Years’ followed by ‘Kid Charlemagne’, the pair came out to deliver one last song in an encore. Taking from their 1974 album of the same title, Becker and Donald Fagen delivered a rendition of ‘Pretzel Logic’ before the backing band descended into a cover of Nelson Riddle’s ‘The Untouchables’.
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