Trivia / The Nightfly

• The Invisible Band: Fagen doesn't appear in the video for "New Frontier," but a poster of him, taken from the album cover of The Nightfly, is visible on the wall of the fallout shelter.
• Killer App: This album was the earliest release to seriously entice people towards CDs. Recorded and mixed digitally and based in a genre that leaned heavily into audiophilia, the album's rich, clear sound made it a popular demonstration title and a must-buy among audiophiles. So much so, in fact, that Warner (Bros.) Records had trouble keeping up with the demand and initially sourced CD copies from safety tapes, to the consternation of buyers and even engineer Roger Nichols. After Nichols published a scathing essay against this practice, Warner started using the digital master for CD reissues of The Nightfly in 1984, which, again, quickly became popular among audiophiles.
• Troubled Production: The making of the album was a difficult affair due to a mix of Donald Fagen's perfectionism and his insistence on using digital equipment at a time when the technology was still nascent. The engineers took extensive courses to learn how to use digital recorders so that they didn't need to constantly call up 3M for maintenance, Fagen struggled with writer's block thanks to the absence of Steely Dan bandmate Walter Becker and insisted on overdubs instead of live recording (to the consternation of the session musicians and engineers), and the staff faced problems with the studio building itself, including humming from a nearby subway and the stench of a dead rat in a drainage pipe. The Nightfly took eight months to finish, and its turbulent making contributed to the 11-year gap between it and Kamakiriad (which tellingly reunited Fagen and Becker).
• Working Title: The album was initially produced under the name Talk Radio.

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