Description
Book SynopsisIn Eminent Hipsters, musician and songwriter Donald Fagen, best known as the co-founder of the rock band Steely Dan, presents an autobiographical portrait that touches on everything from the cultural figures that mattered the most to him as a teenager, to his years in the late 1960s at Bard College, to a hilarious account of a recent tour he made with Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald.
Fagen begins by introducing the ''eminent hipsters'' that spoke to him as he was growing up (and desperately yearning to be hip) in suburban New Jersey in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The figures who influenced him most were not the typical ones Miles Davis, say, or Jack Kerouac but rather people like Jean Shepherd, whose manic, acidic nightly radio broadcasts out of WOR-Radio had a tough realism about life and enthralled a generation of alienated young people'; Henry Mancini, whose chilled-out, nourish soundtracks, especially to films by Blake Edwards utilised the unconventional, spa
Trade Review
Nerdishly clever, entertainingly original and even a moving reconfiguration of the memoir format. -- Bernadette McNulty * Sunday Telegraph *
Fagen, as you might expect, is an elegant and erudite writer. -- John Mulvey * Uncut *
If you're a Dan fan you should read this book. If you're not a Dan fan you should read it anyway. * The Afterword *
Part memoir, part personal dissertation, and it makes for an enjoyable, if brief, read. -- Dylan Jones * GQ *
A curious little autobiographical volume by another hero of long ago, Donald Fagen, once and again of Steely Dan. * Spectator *
Eminent Hipsters is regularly funny and insightful. * Sunderland Echo / Dorset Echo *
I would like to be given Eminent Hipsters. -- Sebastian Faulks * Observer *
An excellent, albeit slim, collection of essays about the Steely Dan singer’s formative teenage influences as "a subterranean in gestation with a real nasty cast of otherness". -- Andy Gill * Independent *
A memoir of inspired essayism and darkly comic recollection which barely touches on Steely Dan yet utterly satisfies. -- Mat Snow * Mojo *
This is moaning of the highest order — jazz moaning, you might call it — and Fagen keeps it up for 70 brilliant, hilarious pages. For the intelligent, grumpy old music fan, only one of these books needs to be bought as a present this Christmas, and it’s not Morrissey’s. -- Markus Berkmann * Spectator *
Eminent Hipsters is regularly funny and insightful…whether you know who Fagen is or not, it’s still worth anyone’s time. * Yorkshire Evening Post *
The writing is sharp, wry and elegant, without a single wasted word. -- Aidan Smith * Scotland on Sunday *
This book is a piece of pure bliss. -- Anthony Quinn * Guardian *
An unalloyed joy. -- Les Gofton * Times Higher Education *
Constantly surprising, and recalled with great elegance. * Financial Times *
A terrific and easy read. -- Jonathan O'Brien * Sunday Business Post *
Wry, funny and forensically observant. * Saga *
A terrific music memoir. -- Tony Clayton-Lea * Irish Times *
