What does it sound like?:
By 1975, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen retired from touring, kicked off their shoes, ensconced themselves in their studio and amused themselves putting crack session musicians through their paces recording their weird and peculiar songs. They’d had three Billboard top ten singles, still getting radio plays, and three well-received albums that sold well. The first, Can’t Buy A Thrill, sounded like a various artists showcase for their songwriting, with multiple lead vocalists and a bewildering range of musical styles, from Bossa Nova through Rock and Pop to Jazz and show tunes. Countdown To Ecstasy featured a tight band that really cooked with spectacular twin guitars. Pretzel Logic was polished and slick and damn near peerless.
They reinvented the notion of Rock band as a faceless entity, one without any kind of frontman. For many, the only photo of the band was in hazy black and white on the back of Countdown To Ecstasy, and that charisma-free collection of hairy herberts tells you everything. Their songs demanded an arms-length semi-detachment. They were criticised for emotional sterility but if your subject matter includes ruthless corporate greed, alienation, a sordid affair, a missing drunken father, a washed up Dr Robert, paedophilic grooming, gambling with your life, nazi youth, more alienation, and the vitcissitudes of the music business, you have to protect yourself somehow. Chart songs in the early seventies were commonly about sex and drugs but very few concerned the issues Becker and Fagen brought up. They knew how to make records good on the radio, with hooks, choruses, sweet melodies, grooves, bridges and all kinds of musical loveliness. True, they liked to slip a bit of their true love, jazz, in there but their whole act was subversive, delivered with a dark sense of humour and a dose of cynicism. 10cc were their British equivalent. Chic, the Steely Dan of Disco, talked about DHM, deep hidden meaning. Becker and Fagen were the pioneers of DHM.
Effectively, they put together a band just for the studio. For Pretzel Logic, they’d already employed Jeff Porcaro on drums and Victor Feldman on vibes, Michael Omartian and David Paich keyboards and Chuck Rainey and Wilton Fender bass. Never keen on the limelight, these musicians allowed Becker and Fagen to retreat further behind the console desk, safe in the arms of the producer, Gary Katz and superhuman engineer, Roger Nichols, both of whom are more prominent on the back cover than any musician. They ventured out to play the occasional part and Fagen had to sing but he has always been a great harmoniser and with Michael McDonald the result is heavenly. The big miss was Jeff “Skunk” Baxter whose scorching guitar and supple peddle steel lit up their records. In the end, Katy Lied features no less than seven different guitarists to replace him.
Twenty-one year old Porcaro storms like a veteran jazz great on Your Gold Teeth II. Phil Woods saxophone is fierce and sleazy on Doctor Wu. Larry Carlton’s rhythm guitar gives Daddy Don’t Live In New York No More a stylish R&B chassis. Omartian’s piano triads in the closing moments of Throw Back The Little Ones are a delicious conclusion to the whole album. The bass lines are sumptuous throughout. Of course, every track is full of musical excellence but it’s the founding Dan members who shine. Denny Dias’s solo soars so high on Your Gold Teeth II, Becker and Fagen allow him to add a second, the best on the whole album. Becker provides two very different lead guitar solos himself on the opening tracks, scabrous for Black Friday and wistfully nostalgic on Bad Sneakers. McDonald’s presence draws Fagen’s best vocals across a whole album. He croons quite beautifully on Chain Lightning and sounds personally invested in Any World (That I’m Welcome To), Bad Sneakers, Doctor Wu and Throw Back The Little Ones. These songs are less observational and more autobiographical, as though they are about things Fagen has experienced himself.
Katy Lied did not land well. There was a problem with the mix due to a then new dbx noise reduction system. Initially, the result was lifeless and flat. Becker and Fagen issued an apology on the cover and did not listen to it again for decades. There was no big single. Black Friday scraped in to the top fifty. Bad Sneakers failed to gain traction. All ten Katy Lied songs are tight and beautifully constructed, clocking in between three and four minutes. Any one of them could have been a single. Perhaps, they should have gone with Any World. Rose Darling could easily be mistaken for a straightforward love song but the frothiest pop song, Everyone’s Gone To The Movies, is too disturbing and perverse and Doctor Wu too close to home. It was the first album they did not tour.
The sound quality improved with each reissue. It was remastered on vinyl in 1978. The CD came out in 1985. Its step for 1993’s Citizen Dan box was lost in the mist of disappointment over other aspects of that box. Finally, the 1999 remaster on CD revealed all its hidden glories and an album often regarded as the runt of Steely Dan’s litter could hold its head high. Now, Katy Lied is remastered again, specifically for vinyl, by Bernie Grundman. It’s as lush as you expect. Listen closely and you can hear the ghost of the dbx gremlin in the cymbal crashes as they degrade too quickly There are no extras and the price is top of the range, in keeping with the record company’s view that Steely Dan are a premium act.
Katy Lied is the middle of their initial run of seven albums and sits between Pretzel Logic and The Royal Scam in a compelling trilogy, before their snark and distance became predominant. It harks back to the past, the calypso beat of Everyone’s Gone To The Movies recalls Do It Again, and heralds the future, the cool Jazz Blues of Chain Lightning is the template for The Nightfly. But, it’s far more than a pivot or transitional album. Scattered among the clever character songs are personal and soulful DHM. It’s an album with the warmth of two human hearts beating at its core, a Steely Dan peak, more exposed than it first appeared. Time to listen again.
What does it all *mean*?
The music of Steely Dan endures. The number of young fans is growing and will help shift this new vinly off the shelves
Goes well with…
Top class stereo equipment.
Release Date:
24th January 2025
Might suit people who like…
The highest quality 20th Century Rock Music.
Doctor Wu. Their finest song?
Yes. If I’m ever asked on Desert Island Discs (as if) that would be one of my choices.
One of my favourite Fagen stories is about this song. Phil Woods played the sax solo and stepped back knowing it was a keeper. Fagen came on the talk back and said “Can you do it again?” Woods played another perfect solo and Fagen seemed happy. Back in the control room Woods asked what was wrong with the first take. “Nothing, it was perfect. I just wanted to see if you could do it again” came the reply. Cue much laughter.
I used to go an acupuncturist called Doctor Wu. I played him that song.
Did he think that you were just needling him?
Was he with you? Or were you just a shadow of the man he once knew?
Could he hear the song?
Don’t know this album in full, but have heard most of the tracks. Lovely write up, I didn’t realise you were a vinyl guy. Are you saying all previous vinyl pressings are poor?
I bought the original in 1975 and was very disappointed. They changed labels in 1978 and the dbx people helped them with a fix. Of course, I wasn’t going to buy it a second time back then. Later, the first CD sounded a lot better to my years but the 1999 remaster was revelatory, as it was for all their albums. They are all being mastered again, specifically for vinyl. This release is the latest in the sequence. Part of me believes that the purpose of hi-fi is to play Steely Dan records. Katy Lied has the same magnificent sound as the rest.
Katy and the gremlin
https://sdarchive.com/dennys3.html
Nice write up. It’s probably my favourite SD album, although that tends to change. I’ve got the original vinyl, the box set and the 99 cd remaster so I will give this release a miss.
Great review @Tiggerlion. It was subject to some harsh reviews at the time which I never understood as it is a great album. Dr Wu and Everyone’s gone to the movies would feature on any Dan playlist I compiled.
I always thought the cover was amusing. The insect is a katydid hence the droll title Katy lied.
The quality of the Dan album covers was a standing joke. I do like this cover, though it’s blurred. Nice colouring. I also like Pretzel Logic. I think they liked it a bit too much as well, so made every effort to make The Royal Scam their worst. 😃
The latter artwork being a leftover from an abandoned Van Morrison album of course.
I’d heard about the Katydid being the insect on the cover, but can anyone see anything else? I always thought the cover art would benefit from a remastering!
You are me.
This is usually my favourite Steely Dan album – and I also have the three versions, so won’t be buying it again. But I enjoyed reading the review, Tiggs.
Interesting that this was originally regarded as a disappointment because of the sound quality. As a 15-year-old I loved it, have played it a lot over the years, and was not aware of the various remasterings. Now you have me thinking I should spend on a new version.
My favourite SD record. At the time I had pretty near the top end HiFi and got to say I never really noticed any sound quality problems. For a long time I thought the apology in the cover notes was some kind of in-joke.
Nothing to play vinyl on, my “proper” HiFi gone to a more deserving home so I’m guessing most of the “improvements” will be lost on me and my aged ears
And, yes, Dr Wu is a definite Desert Island choice.
Well. You know. The key thing is ears.
🤓
It always seemed to lack life. Flat. The songs were better than they sounded. I didnt play it that much for this reason.
Lacking life is the last thing I’d have said about Katy Lied, I just revelled in its magnificence.
Do I remember turning off the Dolby On button? I think I do. I hated Dolby with a passion.
And, of course, back in those early days of raising two young kids, most of my listening was through headphones aided by the odd late-night spliff.
Was that so you couldn’t hear them screaming?
I love this album like all the others. You didn’t mention my favourite track “Daddy don’t live in that New York city” with Becker wailing away on the city blues licks on the right and Larry Carlton sitting tight but loose in the pocket on the left. And classic Dan lyrics:
“Daddy don’t live in that New York City no more
He can’t get tight every night, pass out on the bar room floor
No, and daddy can’t get no fine cigar
But we know you’re smoking wherever you are
Daddy don’t live in that New York City no more”
No more”
I do mention Larry Carlton’s work on that track. 😀
There isn’t a weak song, is there!?
One can’t help but suspect that if Everyone’s Gone To The Movies was released today, social media would get Don & Walter cancelled so quickly their heads would spin. The lyrics still make me feel uncomfortable, even after all these years.
I know exactly what you mean. Hey Nineteen is another disconcerting listen. But what a groove!
Janie Runaway and Cousin Dupree.
Just thought I’d mention them here.
Indeed, and both much later songs so they can’t have been unaware by then of the potential for public outrage the lyrics could cause. They get away with it because the tunes are just great anyway, and the fact that Steely Dan are always associated, unfairly I think, with obtuse and dense lyrics that Joe Average just won’t understand. They have sadly become a band for music snobs like us.
Nothing disconcerting about them. It is art and not everyone likes the same thing.
The World is full of much more horror than Steely Dan lyrics. Southport being just one example.
I see their lyrics as documenting certain characters in a certain milieu without judgement, like short stories and novels. A certain dark humour resides there obviously. They observe what goes on around them. Art definitely.
I think there’s a deep joke in offsetting the dark lyric to Movies with the jolly music and the double entendre of the hook. You probably have to be Becker and Fagen to really find it actually funny.
Wonderful record, nice to see it reviewed so well.
I must be in a tiny minority that thinks Pretzel Logic the weakest of all their albums.
Yes. I think you are. But, are any of their albums the weakest??! 😜
Ah I think Gaucho is the weakest. But we’re taking matters of degree.
If we are talking about the initial run up to and including Gaucho then I would probably agree with you but with Twang’s caveat about degrees.
If we include the ones after they reformed then it could be any of those in my opinion because I think they are all weak. Two or three songs on each that are up to the original standard and then a lot of filler that’s no doubt immaculately played and produced but lacks a decent tune.
My assessment of Gaucho includes the final two, both of which I think are excellent.
I love Everything Must Go. If I have to rank their albums, it’s top three. As for songs, The Things I Miss The Most, Godwhacker, Green Book, Pixeleen and Lunch With Gina are tremendous, among their very best. The opener and closer sum up where they were at the time.
Agreed. Godwhacker is simply a work of genius, and Things I Miss The Most is a beautiful song with clever as hell lyrics.
Things I Miss The Most is indeed excellent. Everything Must Go is by far the best of the latter phase for me, I must dig it out for another listen for the first time in a long time.
You probably won’t agree but I think the same applies to Donal Fagen’s post Nightfly records. Can we agree that Eleven Tracks of Whack is crap or do I need to listen to that again?
Not crap exactly, but certainly it fails to hold my attention for very long.
Yes me too. My vinyl copy is magnificent.
Can’t Buy a Thrill for me. Two lead vocalists and, for me, they hadn’t quite found the formula yet which makes it more interesting to me
This was the first Steely Dan album I heard and it’s always had a special place for me, maybe partly because it has always been under the radar compared to most of their other albums. Notwithstanding the indifferent review from the NME at the time, I loved it then as I do now.
Excellent review of an extremely strong album.
Being a whippersnapper, until my conversion in the early 2000s the Dan to me were 3 LPs in my older Sis’s collection – Countdown, Pretzel & Katy Lied & their opaque covers had no appeal for my younger Sid Snot take on the world.
I eventually snapped up all the remastered albums from Fopp for a pittance – one of the great bargains of my music buying life – so experienced them out of sequence but the joy was they were ALL fresh to my ears & had no visual or nostalgic associations for me.
Katy Lied perfectly sums up their appeal for me- flawless musicianship & production combined with song subject matter unlike any other band, frequently as dark as hell & happy to wade into highly queasy territory.
Notably, barely a love song in the whole catalogue, too.
Not hard to see why young ‘uns ‘discover’ them time & time again as they continue to impress.
Only other to add is I’ve always taken ‘Daddy Don’t Work’ as being about the death/ disappearance of a pimp who pushed his luck too far & the Lucy in the song as one of his ‘stable’ who’ll now have to fend for herself. A testament to songwriting that it can be read more than one way, I guess.
I think Ross Darling might be a love song. Pearl Of The Quarter is the other candidate. Peg involves some kind of love. But, there are layers upon layers upon layers in the songs. It would be a mistake to take them literally.
I totally concur.
The lyrical density is central to my enjoyment – if they were easily decipherable there would be far less to ponder on repeated listening.
I thought for example, that I’d clearly figured out ‘The Boston Rag’ years ago, but reading others’ takes online made me think again.
The gift that keeps on giving, eh?
I’ve never quite worked out the lyric writing process. I know that both wrote but not if they wrote together, one at a time and edited or what.
Anyone know?
Fagen said they’d go for a walk in the city and when they made each other laugh they’d make a note and work on that. I think they did collaborate most of the time rather than the John/Paul mostly solo approach.
Fagen’s solo lyrics are less layered with meaning and less dark. Becker’s solo tunes are less catchy with fewer melodic twists and turns. They are a match made in heaven.
Ross Darling, the hidden track added to later CD versions of the album as a paean to Don’s favourite TV comedy show?
Arf
Lyrical density, like it. Here at the Western World is for me the peak for that. It’s clearly about three different subjects!
So is Dr Wu!
Funnily enough, I have a clear narrative (that makes sense to me, at least) for HATWW & it is very uncomfortable to conjure- probably the darkest material in their canon IMO, which definitely going some!
It has always been a favourite of mine and I never understood the negativity it attracted. Possibly because it didn’t have a standout ‘hit’’ on it, or indeed anything I don’t care for, it is just a brilliant collection of songs from start to finish. It’s my general default SD album to pull out.
I much prefer it to The Royal Scam that came next – partly I think because of Haitian Divorce, which I never much liked (also I associate that song with Dave Lee Travis playing it a lot on the radio, for some bizarre reason, which doesn’t help!).
The regular radio plays that Haitian Divorce had at the time was my initial introduction to the Dan, and triggered my lifetime devotion to them. It’s an irresistible song I think; catchy , commercial, but also not unrepresentative of their music generally.
Anyone know if this remaster is/will be available digitally anywhere?
I’m sure it will be, all of the other recent remasters have been available in 24/192.
PSA – the 2025 remaster is now on streaming at 96/24
That’s on Tidal – maybe a higher res elsewhere
PSA??
Public Service Announcement
Phew!!
When you are in the MRI scanner, they’ll play Katy Lied through headphones.
I generally go for something louder – so far, I’ve had a Motorhead comp and PF Relics…
How can you resist hi res Steely Dan? Next time, eh?
Well, the headphones are a bit leaky – so I’d rather have something that I can hear above the machine noise.
24/192 on Qobuz
What difference this makes, of course, is anyone’s guess, but the download is only £6.79 should you be interested
Here’s a confession that might get me expelled from The Afterword – I have never heard Katy Lied.
You know what you need to do then!
Picturing Carl reprising Chuck Connors’ role in the ’60s US TV series “Branded”.
Insignia torn from his tunic and his sabre broken, he is expelled from Fort Afterword and the gates are closed behind him.
I love Steely Dan, but I’d struggle to hum one of the songs on it. I don’t know what is about Katy Lied, but it doesn’t ‘stick’.
I love Sunken Condos, but Kamakariad and Morph the Cat I struggle to remember.
I like Becker’s solo albums, but they are not up to the standard of SD or Nightfly (or SC).
Snowbound is a 1993 Steely Dan record. Becker co-writes, produces and plays bass:
Not seen that before
You’ve going me going here @tiggerlion you scamp. I made a playlist of all the Dan studio albums which is brilliant on random play. Hearing their songs in unfamiliar sequence highlights the different textures of the various eras. Amazing consistency of course.
Steely Dan. The gift that keeps giving…
Really is. Lyrics pop out again.
That’s her style, to jerk me around
First she’s all feel, then she cools down
She’s pure science with a splash of black cat
She’s almost Gothic, and I like it like that
🫢
What I don’t like about Gaucho are the drum machine tracks. Where it’s a real drummer it’s great. Wendel. I’m afraid. Is horrible. Fagen also said years later that a machine loses something a real drummer brings. Finally they managed to find a real drummer who kept perfect time who wasn’t Jeff Porcaro.
Gaucho somehow doesn’t quite do it for me in the way the previous albums did. I never realised that some of the drumming wasn’t ‘real’, so maybe that is part of the problem, however I just think it was a disappointment after the magnificent Aja.
I bought it when it was released and have the 1999 remaster, but it has never grabbed me.
There are times in my life when only Gaucho will do… 🙁
I don’t mind saying that Gaucho is my fave Dan album & I definitely listen to the later stuff as much as the classic run that established them.
Seems plenty of young folk gravitate to Gaucho as well & this ‘new generation’ of fans regard it as timeless ‘RnB’ ish, but can regard the ‘early’ stuff as a bit classic rock ‘70s nostalgia’ .
Certainly an indication that the obsessive production values are appreciated by a whole new crowd , who can’t believe something ‘this old’ can still sound ‘this good’.
I’m with you. A few acts moved towards this kind of sleek groove that seems to lead us into the eighties. Like Roxy Music. It’s a trend. I definitely favour the period from Royal Scam to Gaucho, if I were to choose.
Another vote for Gaucho here, but for sentimental reasons, as my now wife introduced me to it early on. I knew she was a keeper 😊
That is the same for The Nightfly for me and the reason I much prefer the live version from a couple of years ago.
I play my vinyl live version often. A friend of mine refuses to listen to it as he thinks the original can’t be improved.
Make him. An organic band of human beings does wonders for the music.
– I picked up the live version of the Nightfly cheaply, on the back of Tigger’s recommendation. And yeah – it’s great! Greater than the studio version? I dunno … but it’s still marvellous.
– I love the way that “Ruby Baby” is integrated into the album so seamlessly. It sounds just like it’s an original track written for the record, rather than the one cover version on the album.
Just a thought – “Any World (That I’m Welcome To)” is one of their weaker songs.
I find there are some SD albums that have one, sometimes two tracks that I don’t think very much of.
Any World (That I’m Welcome To) and Throw Back The Little Ones on “Katy Lied”, Everything You Did on “The Royal Scam”, My Rival on “Gaucho”, Gaslighting Abbie on “Two Against Nature”. In all cases there are other tracks that I absolutely Love, so no deal-breakers.
I’ll also add I’m not a fan of the way the snare drum has been recorded on most of “Two Against Nature”. Too prominent and rather unnatural-sounding.
More than a couple on Pretzel Logic.
Wot!!??
There are a couple I think a little less of on Pretzel Logic.
“Through With Buzz” and “Monkey In Your Soul”.
But I wouldn’t skip either of them when playing the album.
I think they are great.
Through With Buzz is exceptional, being less than two minutes long and, unusually for the Dan, features strings:
You know I’m cool, yes I feel alright
‘Cept when I’m in my room and it’s late at night
Monkey In Your Soul is a great kiss off to close the album:
Won’t you turn that bebop down
I can’t hear my heart beat
Where’s that fatback chord I found?
Honey don’t you think it was wrong
To interrupt my song?
I’ll pack my things and run so far from here
Goodbye dear
Yep those two, and I can live without East St Louis Toodle-Oo too.
An affectionate cover with a vocoder solo. A warm up for Haitian Divorce and a storming Parker’s Band that follows. Their one and only studio cover
Can I be the first to point out that it’s not a Vocoder? It’s a “talk box” or “voice box”, à la Peter Frampton, showing us the way…
👍
Yes… and? (as all the hip kids are saying) 😉
“Duke Ellington!! Let’s go listen to some of that!” they will say with great enthusiasm.
I have to say I reckon ‘My Rival’ is a tremendous song & one I really enjoy singing along to.
I do think ‘Slang Of Ages’ from Everything Must Go is rather weak, but I attribute that mostly to Walt’s less than stellar vocal.
If there was some kind of poll of Steely Dan songs, I’m pretty sure Slang Of Ages would come last.
Much as I love & respect Walt & in no way think of him as any kind of junior partner to Don, I just can’t get on with his solo stuff & don’t like his vocal style at all.
I really tried with ’11 Tracks’ & ‘Circus Money ‘ but to no avail, however lush the production was.
Agreed that Walter Beckers solo albums don’t really stand up.
Having said that, it ought to be acknowledged that, for the most part, Donald Fagen’s solo album tracks are not on the same level as the best of the Becker/Fagen collaborations.
Relatively speaking I very much enjoy the Fagen solo albums though. And not just The Nightfly. They are all excellent.
I used to think the cover of Out Of The Ghetto was a clunker in an otherwise brilliant Sunken Condos LP. Then, you pointed out the klezmer horn arrangement – a style developed in the Jewish ghetto and diaspora.
Yes it’s very clever and very Fagen.
I guess it’s a bit Groucho Marx. However, it is sung with such desperation. Normally, the Dan revel in outsiderism but, here, Fagen sounds genuinely distraught.
Shame on me for spotting this thread so late. Ive always loved this album and never recognised any audio issue at the time (it still sounds fine to these old lugholes). Definitely in my top 3 Dan albums and as I mentioned on our Podcast episode from many years ago Dr Wu is probably my favourite song of theirs.
BTW personally I love ‘Any World’ but would agree ‘Throw Back’ is not one of their finest moments.
The Dancast was over ten years ago
I think you might be talking about The Beckercast, recorded shortly after he died in 2017
Both classic episodes.
It is testament to the Massive’s love affair with Ver Dan that this thread keeps chugging along and is now 10 past hamper level.
1. Yeah – here at the Afterword, we break out the hats and hooters when Tiggerlion writes about the Dan!
2. One thing I like about the album title “Katy Lied” is that it’s named – well, almost named – after a LINE in one of the songs (in this case, Doctor Wu) rather than the title of one of the songs. I always like this in an album title. I’m sure you can think of hundreds of other examples. The first one that came into my head was the Only Ones’ “Even Serpents Shine”, which is named after a line in “From Here to Eternity”, rather than the title of any of the tracks.
Thank you, duco.
Talking Heads Little Creatures album is named from a line in the song Creatures Of Love.
Yeah – there are lots of them. R.E.M.’s mini-album “Chronic Town” is named from a line in the song Carnival of Sorts (Boxcars).