What's your favorite line from a Steely Dan song?

skate a little lower now

 

in the night you hide from the madman
you're longing to be
but it all comes out on the inside
eventually

 

When the joker tried to tell me
I could cut it in this rube town
When he tried to hang that sign on me
I said Take it down
When the dawn patrol got to tell you twice
They're gonna do it with a shotgun
Yes, I'm cashing in this ten-cent life
For another one

 

Ha ha. That's a classic. Think i tracked down the 45 years ago. Wasn't it a B side?

I thought he said " Santa Monickda has been set on Fi-ya....ha ha ha ....

 

LOL I think you're right. I always thought it was "pants", which kind of makes sense as well. Either way, it's Surrealist dark humor that is SD's lyrical trademark

 

It's funny my vinyl always skipped at that part, what I've heard is "I can smell the.(click)..at the top of the stairs" - so that's what he sang!!

 

yes.

<note: Jerome Aniton's live intro has been posted and linked elsewhere on the Forum in its entirety. with history and discussion

 

That's a great line, never could figure out if it was the band or the football game

 

Katie lies, you could see it in her eyes

 

One of my favorite SD lines from my favorite SD song "FM (No Static at All)"

"Nothing but blues and Elvis
and somebody else's favorite song..."

How true, that line gets me every time

 

The classic bridge from "Sign In Stranger"

"Love or leave her, yellow fever
Sure, it's all in the game
And who are you
Just another scurvy brother..."

 

I am terrible with lyrics. Here are 2 I’ve always misheard until reading this thread just now...

“...Dine behind the wheel”
“All those dago freaks...”

As for one of my favorites that hasn’t been mentioned yet (i think)....

“They’re gonna break out the hats and hooters when Josie comes home”.

Hope I have that one right at least.

 

<who are these children who scheme and run wild

 

They got a name for the winners in the world
And I want a name for when I lose
They call Alabama “The Crimson Tide”
Call me Deacon Blues

 

And all the jive asses and the true believers,
the bull***t givers and receivers -
here today
tomorrow gone,
to the triage tent in the great beyond,
wherein the angel tangoes with the infidel.

From Walter Becker's Medical Science.

 

She calls me daddy and I just go numb,
down in the bottom where the love comes from.

From Walter Becker's Cringemaker.

 

And oh the heartache of the thief,
strung out on his own stash of grief.
A line for you,
a flake for me -
but now it's ancient history.

From Walter Becker's Upside Looking Down

 

She takes the taxi to the good hotel
bon marché as far as she can tell (Haitian divorce)

 

Is there any way to tell which of those two guys wrote those lyrics? With the Beatles I guess we have a pretty good idea who penned just about every word.

 

If I had to choose just one line:
"The mechanized hum of another world"

I'd say you're safe going with Fagen. From my perspective it's 95% Fagen and 5% Becker. You get a sense of it by evaluating The Nightfly and other Fagen solo outings, as well as Becker's. The quotes of his sings above seem totally antithetic to what Steely Dan did.

 

A nice complementary topic for another day might be: What's your favorite chord from a Steely Dan song? I'm thinking of the G7#9 that opens Don't Take Me Alive.

 

"Mechanized hum" sounds like Fagen. Maybe I'm reading it wrong...are you saying you think SD's lyrics are 95% Fagen?

 

Yes. I think Becker's contributions amount to moral support and minor suggestions. To me, SD is basically all Fagen.

 

Hmmmm, okay....thanks for clarifying

 

It certainly became that way, but not for the first couple of albums. But as the years went by, yeah, definitely Fagen became the dominant force and Becker faded into the background.