Trivia / Steely Dan

• Black Sheep Hit:
  • The band's biggest UK hit is "Haitian Divorce", which is atypical of their style, showcasing reggae influences that never otherwise appeared in their discography before or since. It peaked at #17, and is one of only two Top 40 hits the band managed in the UK (the other is "Do It Again", which managed #39). Compare to the United States, where "Haitian Divorce" is an obscure album track which was never issued as a single.
  • "Dirty Work" is an unusually Beatlesesque hit for the jazz-rock band, also unusual for them in that David Palmer, the co-vocalist on their first album only, sings lead rather than Donald Fagen.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: "FM (No Static at All)" was a top 30 hit in 1978, released at the height of the band's popularity. The movie it was written for, FM is now obscure.
• Channel Hop: Steely Dan were originally signed to ABC Records, the parent label of the iconic jazz imprint Impulse! Records. When MCA bought out and absorbed ABC in 1979, the band were moved over there, releasing Gaucho through MCA before splitting up. In the aftermath of their breakup, Donald Fagen signed with Warner (Bros.) Records to release The Nightfly, and his contract with Warner meant that when the Dans of Steel finally reunited and put out Two Against Nature in 2000, it was handled by Reprise Records (who previously put out Fagen's Kamakiriad) in conjunction with Giant Records, an imprint that Warner created in 1990 to fill the void after the sale of Geffen Records to... MCA. Reprise would handle Everything Must Go themselves three years later.
• Creator Backlash:
  • The band states in the liner notes for the remastered edition of The Royal Scam that they despise the album's cover, which was repurposed from an unreleased Van Morrison album. In the same breath, they also state that they're not too fond of the cover for Can't Buy A Thrill either.
  • The band have called their first single, "Dallas" b/w "Sail the Waterway", "stinko," and called their first album, Can't Buy a Thrill, "juvenilia". However, in the latter case, they still like the album, it's just that they didn't know what type of music they were going for.
• Cut Song: Due to the group's obsessive perfectionism there are numerous examples:
  • Can't Buy A Thrill had many outtakes including Pearl Of The Quarter, Any World That I'm Welcome To, Everyone's Gone To The Movies, Dallas, Sail The Waterway, Megashine City, Running Child, Gullywater, Sakka Joweda and a full band version of Roaring Of The Lamb to name a few. These are all out there except for the demos of Pearl Of The Quarter and Roaring Of The Lamb which have only been mentioned in interviews.
  • Countdown To Ecstasy had This Mobile Home which was performed on tour but the band never felt they could do it justice in studio. The band attempted the song again for Pretzel Logic and continued playing it on tour and several recordings can be found on bootlegs. For their 2011 rarities night, they performed the song one final time.
  • Katy Lied had Black Cow, I Got The News, Mr Sam and Funky Driver, all of which have leaked. The first two were rerecorded for Aja, although both were considerably rearranged. The band considered releasing Mr Sam on The Royal Scam, but the song was damaged by the noise reduction process they had used on Katy Lied and they didn't feel like doing it over. Funky Driver is an instrumental that sometimes is mislabelled as Gullywater, which was an unreleased Can't Buy A Thrill outtake.
  • The Royal Scam had Here At The Western World, The Bear and Were You Blind That Day. Western World was further worked on in the Aja sessions but still didn't make the album, instead having backing vocals added and being a 'new' track on their 1978 Greatest Hits album. Both the other songs were considered in the Aja sessions but didn't make the album, brought over to Gaucho, with Were You Blind That Day finally making the album as Third World Man, and The Bear being a popular leaked outtake. It isn't clear whether these two versions of the songs are actually Gaucho era or earlier. Not even Fagen seemed to be completely sure.
  • Aside from the previously mentioned Royal Scam outtakes, "Aja" had a track called "Stand By The Seawall" which was said to be a jazzy reworking of an earlier Steely Dan instrumental, and also has similar riffs to a live track they would open with in the reunion era, "Cubano Chant". When they needed to fill out the title track "Aja", some sequences of "Seawall" were incorporated into it and the track was cut. A high quality transfer of it has leaked however thanks to a fan buying a reel.
  • Gaucho had numerous outtakes in the form of "Kind Spirit", "Kulee Baba", "Talkin' Bout My Home", "I Can't Write Home About You", "Heartbreak Souvenir", and the infamous "The Second Arrangement", which was going to make the album but the multitracks were accidentally wiped. All of these tracks have leaked along with the Royal Scam/Aja outtakes "The Bear" and "Were You Blind That Day", except for "Heartbreak Souvenir" which is known for then-guitarist Steve Khan mentioning it in interviews.
  • Two Against Nature had several outtakes, most notably "Wet Side Story" and "Cash Only Island" which the band had played on tour in 1996. By the time of recording the album, they had gotten bored of them, and the studio versions have never been released.
  • Everything Must Go had several tracks under consideration that Walter felt would be better released as Donald Fagen solo tracks, notably "H Gang" and "What I Do".
• Development Hell: Two Against Nature was in development for 14 years. Becker and Fagen began work on new material in 1986 after reconvening while recording Rosie Vela's album Zazu. They composed early versions of a few tracks, but decided to put a few of them on solo albums released years later. When the band started touring again in 1993, they worked on the remaining songs and wrote new ones while on the road, but it took until 1997 for them to start dedicated work on a studio album. Two Against Nature eventually released in 2000, and the band riffed on its prolonged development in an accompanying DVD release:
  Interviewer: It took you 19 years to release this album. What is up with that?
  Donald: We didn't do much for the first 17 and a half years.
• Defictionalization: A somewhat inevitable example. The line from Showbiz Kids "They got the Steely Dan T-Shirts" was meant to be an ironic statement - the band wasn't very interested in their image or merchandising at the time, so didn't have t-shirts available. However, when they resumed touring in the 90s, and especially in the 2000s, the merch table had become of vital importance to touring acts, and numerous Steely Dan t-shirts have become available since then. One of which, in a meta example, even features the line "The Steely Dan T-Shirt" on it.
• He Also Did:
  • Original guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter moved onto The Doobie Brothers after he left the band after Pretzel Logic. He's now a missile defense adviser.
  • Backing vocalist Michael McDonald also became a member of The Doobie Brothers and later had a successful solo career, all while continuing to provide backing vocals to Steely Dan albums up through Gaucho. He still occasionally tours with them (usually with his own solo band as the opening act) from time to time as well, most notably on their 2006 tour.
  • Drummer Jeff Porcaro went on to become a founding member of Toto and played on many records as a session musician, such as Pink Floyd's The Wall, Michael Jackson's Thriller and Madonna's Like a Prayer. He is considered to be one of the most recorded session musicians in music history, and was constantly in-demand for his drumming virtuosity throughout his life. Unfortunately, he died in 1992.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The two songs on the band's first single, "Dallas" and "Sail The Waterway" have never been released on CD. May also be true of their discography as a whole, if the band's fears about their master tracks' loss in the 2008 Universal fire are justified.
  • Many outtakes have leaked that are unlikely to ever see official release, and often disappear from YouTube. These include "Running Child", "Megashine City", "Sakka Joweda", "Gullywater", "Mr Sam", "Funky Driver", "Stand By The Seawall", "The Bear", "The Second Arrangement", "Kind Spirit", "Kulee Baba", "Talkin' Bout My Home" and "I Can't Write Home About You". Numerous demos of tracks have leaked too.
  • Walter Becker however, endorsed this trope in his will - asking his estate to release his many private solo recordings for his fans after his death (on a site called walterbeckermedia.com). Whilst he didn't consider the songs to have commercial potential in his lifetime, he still liked them and didn't want them to be lost.
• Missing Episode: By accident, the final version of 1980's "The Second Arrangement" was nearly completely erased by the engineer. Only a small fragment remains. The band regarded the song as the centerpiece of the album at the time. They were so upset about the loss of this 'perfect take' that they cut the song from the album Gaucho entirely, and did not rerecord it later on. It was either replaced by "Third World Man" or "Hey Nineteen" depending on what you read. However, demo versions of the song have been bootlegged and the band finally performed it live once in 2011. Donald Fagen mentioned that they actually did have a backup copy of the final song, but the sound quality wasn't as good as the other tracks on the album, and attempts to rerecord it did not produce as good results.
  • Following chief engineer Roger Nichols' death, his daughters cleaned out his place and found a backup copy of the song with better quality.
• The Pete Best: Chevy Chase was the drummer for Fagen and Becker's Bard College proto-Steely Dan band The Leather Canary. This promptly satisfies the mandatory requirement to mention Chevy Chase in any article or entry on Steely Dan.
• Real Song Theme Tune: There was a syndicated classic rock radio show in the 80s and 90s called Reelin' in the Years. Guess what the theme song was.
• Referenced by...:
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has no less than four references to the band.
    • In Battle Tendency, the MacGuffin that needs to be kept out of the main antagonists' hands lest they gain ultimate power is known as the Red Stone of Aja, referencing the titular album.
    • In Stardust Crusaders, the assassin sent by DIO bearing the Lovers card is literally named Steely Dan. Bonus points for being a Dirty Coward who makes Jotaro do his dirty work.
    • In Steel Ball Run, one of the participants in the Steel Ball Run race is a native Mexican named Gaucho, after both the album and song of the same name, whereas his horse is named Peg, also after the song by Steely Dan.
    • In JoJolion, the Stand of Dr. Wu Tomoki is named Doctor Wu, both of which are named after the titular song, and allows him to transform his body into any stone material.
  • The SpongeBob SquarePants episode "A Day Without Tears" has SpongeBob listening to a song by Eely Dan immediately following a song by Lionel Fishie.
  • In The Fairly OddParents! episode "The Odd Couple," a distraught Vicky screams after her departing ex-boyfriend, "Ricky! Don't lose my number! You don't wanna call nobody else! Send it off in a letter to yourself!"
• Troubled Production: Gaucho. Among the things that caused the production to be a living hell include:
  • Becker was hit by a car before recording was to begin, and while recovering from leg injuries which delayed production, developed other infections.
  • Becker and Fagen becoming control freaks in production, demanding dozens of takes from studio musicians and continuous tweeks to already recorded material (Becker, Fagen and their longtime producer Roger Nichols recorded 55 different fade-outs for "Babylon Sisters" before deciding on one they liked).
  • A song called "The Second Arrangement" — which the band had slaved over moreso than any other track — was accidentally wiped by a recording assistant and eventually had to be scrapped. Made more frustrating (for them) by the fact they'd recorded countless versions of it to get the take they liked, had a backup copy (in inferior quality, apparently), and couldn't 'regain the magic' when attempting to record it with a different band. Most bands would use one of the existing takes they had regardless of quality, but not Steely Dan.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Becker and Fagen have said that if they'd met Michael McDonald before their debut album, they probably would have hired him as their full-time lead singer. By the time he fell into their orbit, McDonald already had other commitments and could only do backing vocals.
  • According to Steve Lukather, there were plans at one point to tour behind Aja in 1977. The lineup would have included Fagen, Becker (on bass), Lukather and Denny Dias on guitar, David Paich on keyboards and Jeff Porcaro on drums. The plans were scrapped when the horn section demanded more money.
  • Gaucho was originally planned to be recorded digitally, with Donald Fagen and Gary Katz experimenting with the technology to see what it was capable of. However, the album was ultimately recorded on standard analog tape; Fagen would eventually use digital recording and mixing equipment for his solo debut, The Nightfly, following favorable results from further experiments conducted by engineer Roger Nichols.

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