The jazzy rock band Steely Dan went platinum several times, achieving popular success while somehow simultaneously gathering a cult-like following usually inspired by less prominent acts. They’re also familiar to a legion of hip-hop fans from the catchy way they’ve been sampled by acts like De La Soul and Notorious B.I.G.

Looking at the variety of influences and inspirations that inspired Donald Fagen, it’s no surprise that the band he created would straddle multiple worlds, appealing to a variety of audiences. Half of the brain trust (with Walter Becker) that founded Steely Dan, Fagen has penned a memoir made up of little essays about his influences and a travel journal from the nineties.

In Eminent Hipsters, released this week, he writes about inspirations ranging from Ike Turner to Henry Mancini, from humorist Jean Shepherd to the cryptic sci-fi author A.E. van Vogt. He covers formative musical experiences, like saving his allowance for trips to New York so he could see Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, or John Coltrane play at places like the Village Vanguard. He even treats us to the transcript of his 1989 interview with Ennio Morricone, creator of iconic spaghetti westerns scores. Morricone may have been a kindred spirit, as he drew on various influences, an “eerie catalog of genres -- Hollywood western, Japanese samurai, American pop, and Italian opera.”

These artists and thinkers are just as much a part of his biography as are the times and places in which he discovered them, whether he was a suburban kid retreating to his room to read, or a self-described jazz snob at Bard College, where he’d chase numerous ill-fated relationships, maybe because he “felt more comfortable with girls who made me feel like my own degree of lunacy was less severe.” Fagen has always had trouble fitting in, but he found some close friends at Bard, and theorizes that “the class of ‘68 was the last bunch of kids not seriously despoiled in their youth by television (with its insidious brainworm commercials) and drugs.” Bard was also where he started playing in bands and met Walter Becker and Chevy Chase (yes, that Chevy Chase), with whom he’d form Steely Dan. Chase didn’t stick around.

This all gives way to the last third of the book, which is made up of Fagen’s grouchy journal from touring with the Duke of September Rhythm Revue last year. His wry sense of humor, familiar to fans of Steely Dan, implies that all of this inspiration and innovation outlined in the front of the book has resulted in a grumpy introvert holed up in his hotel room between playing dusty classics for people too old to dance.