So I got turned on to Steely Dan by my girlfriends little brother and I have to say they kick some serious ass! Every song really grooves and they play tight as a drum, I also think they have some quality lyrics and this is where my question comes into it: What do their lyrics mean? I figured that ‘Doctor Wu’ is about smack/drug addiction and ‘Deacon Blues’ is about living fast and dying young through the medium of drink driving but can someone explain some of the others? They all seem to be very meaningful but I am either to thick to work them out or have not listened to them enough…
“Hey Nineteen” is about a middle-aged guy realizing he has nothing in common with a tight, young 19 year old hottie that he lusts after.
Can’t think of any others off the top of my head right now, but I’ll add that while I generally think Steely Dan is pretty awsome, “Show Biz Kids” is one of the worst songs in the history of music. How that turd got pinched off by the same guys who gave us “Aja”, “Dirty Work” and countless other gems is beyond me.
I am no great scholar of theirs, but I think Babylon Sister is about a romance with an underage black girl.
Steely Dan have amazing lyrics. They are my second favorite “intelligent” artist, after Pink Floyd. They mess around so much with point of view, though, and rarely give enough context to detemine even what gender the speaker is, much less anything else.
But I always thought that Deacon Blue was about what it sounded like it was about, namely, someone wallowing in self pity wanting to play in nightclubs. I do think, however, that the speaker is likely black, due to both saying “this brother is free”, and the numerous semi-humorous speech deviances (“Scotch whiskey?”) that seem to be a part of a lot of african-american vernacular.
Similarly, I question whether certain of their songs are sung from a female perspective rather than male(“I got the News”…whats that about?)
“Time out of Mind” (from Gaucho) is most likely about some opiate, since “Chase the Dragon” denotes using opiates, (i forget, most likely opium?) Heck, most of their songs are about drugs, at least on Gaucho and Aja. It’s hard to find a song of theirs that does not mention them.
Babylon Sister always seemed to be about a group of guys ragging on another guy about his new, young boyfriend. The reason I really believe that is because they nearly always use the male pronoun. I could be wrong though. But what’s more important is that it’s overplayed on Muzak :mad:
“Kid Charlemagne” is about an Owsley-type drug maker.
“The Goodbye Look” is about getting the hell out of Cuba at the time of the revolution.
(Just a partial bit of lyric therefrom):
I know a fellow with a motor launch for hire
A skinny man with two-tone shoes
Cause tonight they’re arranging a small reception just for me
Behind the big casino by the sea
WILLASS, you have asked a question the answer to which has been occupying Dan fans for decades. Fagen/Becker lyrics and their meanings are notoriously obscure. There are Steely Dan fan sites and message boards where the different possible meanings of Steely Dan songs and/lyrics are debated or discussed endlessly. I doubt that you’ll ever find definitive answers to your questions about their songs. Most people are only guessing, and Fagen/Becker aren’t talking.
I agree with you about their being a serious ass-kicking band. They’ve been my favorite rock group (if they can even be called that) for years. One amazing thing to realize about them is that, with the exception of their last two albums, all their work was created when they were in their twenties. These guys are serious musical geniuses!
About Show Biz Kids, I think it is just a fun, satirical, knock-off type of song with a great hook and I love it.
Aja is about a dude ranch. Gaucho is about an interloper horning in on the singer’s girlfriend.
My favorite Steely Dan song is Any World (That I’m Welcome to). If I’m not mistaken, Michael McDonald sings on this cut; he’s one of my favorite singers.
At the Grotto
In the greasy chair
Sits the Charlie with the lotion
And the kinky hair
When she smiled she said it all
The band was hot so
They danced the famous merango
Now we dolly back
Now we fade to black
The Dan rules! But I wouldn’t recommend getting too hung up on the “meaning” behind the lyrics; I get the impression that Fagen just likes the way the words sound together more than he worries about literal meanings, although you can certainly pick up themes. Sort of like a verbal impressionism. At least, that’s been my take on them since I started listening about 20-some years ago (precocious child that I was).
I have nothing to add, other than that I’ve seen them three times. 
Seen 'em once, played Aja with a jazz band in high school. IMHO, they use more jazz abstractions than any other “rock” band out there. Aja has a ton of meter and key changes; it was definitely the hardest piece we played that year. They draw on a large base of jazz and rock and the album Aja is certainly one of the better records out there (Deacon Blues, Black Cow, Peg, Aja, and Josie are all on there).
switches the iPod from Franz Ferdinand to Steely Dan
That’s the one with only one chord, right? I think they were trying to prove something, namely, that they could write music that wasn’t harmonically complex. Well, they succeeded, and that’s the ONLY S.D. track I will invariably skip over.
Excepting, of course, Two Against Nature. What a terrible mistake. It had already been done, and surpassed. A sellout album if there ever was one.
“The Goodbye Look” is, of course, not strictly Dan, but from a Donald Fagan solo album. However, since the personnel of Fagan’s solo albums is practically identical to Dan personnel, I think they can be safely classified as an extension of Steely Dan – Steely Dan under Fagan’s total creative control. Which presumably they were, anyway. I don’t get the Fagan solo phase, what with hiring all the old players and sounding remarkably like the original group.
By the way, I am a homosexual. :eek: Just mentioning that, defying any other faggot on the SDMB to come in here and admit love of Dan. As far as I can make out, it simply isn’t done. Prove me wrong.
Listening to ‘Deacon Blues’ on the way to work this morning I realised it is about a gambler on a losing streak…maybe. I think. What other ‘Dan’ albums do you recommend? Has ‘Aja’ got ‘Green Earings’ on it? I really love that song.
Nope. Actually, I think the album with “Green Earrings” on it may be called “Green Earrings.”
Is the rest of the album good? What essential ‘Dan’ albums should I purchase?
WILLASS (and everyone else for that matter, it’s just that you’re from the UK) a lot of great info on The Dan including lyrics and lots of inside info is available on their site. You can also click a link to play their latest album, Everything Must Go, song by song in it’s entirety. One of the best band sites I know of.
Hell, get them all. As has been mentioned, there is some phenomenal music-making going on with these cats, and every album is sure to reward you with several mind-bending epiphanies. This will prove to be rue even on the albums that harbor a stinker or two.
That said, should financial considerations force you to limit yourself to some of the high points, you could do a lot worse than A Decade of Steely Dan.
I’m lesbian ( ) and like them. Does that count?