Wal­ter Beck­er and Don­ald Fagen met in a cof­fee shop at New York State’s Bard Col­lege in 1967, dis­cov­ered that they had sim­i­lar tastes and opin­ions about music, and soon start­ed writ­ing songs togeth­er. After a stint ped­dling songs in Manhattan’s famous Brill Build­ing, the duo moved to Los Ange­les to try their luck on the west coast. Real­is­ing their songs were too com­plex for oth­er record­ing artists, they formed Steely Dan, and with pro­duc­er Gary Katz, would go on to pro­duce sev­en fab­u­lous albums of sophis­ti­cat­ed jazz rock between 1972 and 1980.

Their quest for per­fec­tion is leg­endary, and the duo’s shared aes­thet­ic meant that Steely Dan would soon enough became less “band” and more Beck­er and Fagen backed by a series of ses­sion musi­cians. They would audi­tion musi­cian after musi­cian and com­mis­sion take after take in a fas­tid­i­ous search for just the right sound, just the right style, to com­ple­ment their vision. But boy, did it pay off, as they got to har­ness the tal­ents of such leg­ends as gui­tarist Lar­ry Carl­ton, bass play­er Chuck Rainey, and drum­mer Bernard Pur­die, not to men­tion one Michael McDon­ald of Doo­bie Broth­ers fame on back­ing vocals.

Their well-craft­ed songs were large­ly crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess­es and many would become radio sta­ples: Reel­in’ In The Years, Do It Again, Rik­ki Don’t Lose That Num­ber, Hait­ian Divorce, Peg. For me, one song in par­tic­u­lar sums up not only the genius of the music but Fagen’s won­der­ful sto­ry­telling abil­i­ty: Kid Charle­magne, the lead sin­gle from 1976’s The Roy­al Scam album. The song tells the sto­ry of the rise and down­fall of counter-cul­ture fig­ure­head Owsley Stan­ley (nick­named “Bear”), the Grate­ful Dead audio engi­neer and self-pro­claimed “King of Acid”. Bear’s clan­des­tine lab­o­ra­to­ry was respon­si­ble for sup­ply­ing the major­i­ty of the bur­geon­ing Cal­i­forn­ian LSD scene of the six­ties, and in him, Fagen found the per­fect char­ac­ter to weave a typ­i­cal­ly noir sto­ry around.

Take a look at the lyrics; they are full of deft touch­es. Fagen describes one of Bear’s par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful LSD for­mu­la­tions: “Just by chance you crossed the dia­mond with the pearl”. And on Bear’s ded­i­ca­tion to his craft: “On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene, but yours was kitchen clean”. And when things start to unrav­el (Bear was inevitably bust­ed of course), we can sense the para­noia: “Clean this mess up else we’ll all end up in jail, those test tubes and the scale, just get it all out of here”. And when the brown stuff is about to hit the fan, the cli­mac­tic ques­tion-response “Is there gas in the car? Yes, there’s gas in the car”. At this point I’m not only engaged with the sto­ry, I’m pos­i­tive­ly will­ing them to get the hell out of there!

Fagen’s lyrics over­lay a musi­cal pack­age that boasts a won­der­ful funk back­beat cour­tesy of Rainey and Pur­die, razor sharp rhythms and melodies from Beck­er and Fagen them­selves and from jazz pianists Paul Grif­fin and Don Grol­nick, and an astound­ing gui­tar solo (and out­ro) from Lar­ry Carl­ton. It is musi­cal alche­my of the high­est order.

Here’s the best live ver­sion I can find, in which the duo seem to have exer­cised the same rigour with this set of musi­cians as they did mak­ing the album!

While the music played you worked by can­dle­light
Those San Fran­cis­co nights
Were the best in town
Just by chance you crossed the dia­mond with the pearl
You turned it on the world
That’s when you turned the world around

Did you feel like Jesus
Did you real­ize
That you were a cham­pi­on in their eyes

On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene
But yours was kitchen clean
Every­one stopped to stare at your tech­ni­col­or motor home
Every A‑Frame had your num­ber on the wall
You must have had it all
You’d go to LA on a dare
And you’d go it alone

Could you live for­ev­er
Could you see the day
Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away
Get along, get along Kid Charle­magne
Get along Kid Charle­magne

Now your patrons have all left you in the red
Your low rent friends are dead
This life can be very strange
All those day­glow freaks who used to paint the face
They’ve joined the human race
Some things will nev­er change

Son you were mis­tak­en
You are obso­lete
Look at all the white men on the street
Get along, get along Kid Charle­magne
Get along Kid Charle­magne

Clean this mess up else we’ll all end up in jail
Those test tubes and the scale
Just get them all out of here
Is there gas in the car
Yes, there’s gas in the car
I think the peo­ple down the hall
Know who you are

Care­ful what you car­ry
’Cause the man is wise
You are still an out­law in their eyes
Get along, get along Kid Charle­magne
Get along Kid Charle­magne