Fact #156097

Donald Fagen : I really put everything I knew into that album. I wanted to do an autobiographical album. And after that I really wasn't inspired to do anything. I fell into a bit of a depression for a while, and I started going to therapy. I think that like a lot of artists, especially in the music business, I was successful and young, and I was basically still and adolescent. I was trying to get out of that with The Nightfly, it was kind of self-examination of my childhood. It took me a long time to go through a kind of transformation. Until around '86, '87, I felt I had some energy and some new things to write about. I worked every day, but I didn't like what I was doing, I'd play the songs back next day and didn't much like them.

I basically had to figure out how to have an actual life - I was a workaholic 'till the end of The Nightfly, the only life I had was in the studio. A lot of it had to do with my not wanting to address certain things that I had to address personally, and working gave me the chance not to do any kind of self-examination. I'm very introspective person as it is, so always working is a kind of therapy in itself.
(Source : Not known)