I’m guessing this is one of the least representative songs in the Steely Dan canon but it’s the first one I heard, back in 1972.
I don’t think I’ve ever bought a Steely Dan album but this song has stayed with me, mostly because of the two incendiary guitar solos that are played by a bloke who’s not even in the band – putting it in much the same category as Goodbye To Love by The Carpenters.
That features the fantastic solo by session man Tony Peluso and this has one by another session guitarist, Elliott Randall.
It has been reported to be the favourite solo of all time of none other than Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, who knows a thing or two about guitar solos himself (and might have learned a thing or two about brevity from this one).
Randall had first played with Walter Becker and Donald Fagan in 1968 when they made a demo together in New York, and the trio reconnected in LA along with childhood friend Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter to record the first Steely Dan album Can’t Buy A Thrill.
Randall turned down offers to join the band – and several other bands – but played on three of their albums. Steely Dan formed after Becker and Fagan met as fellow beatnik musicians at arts college in upstate New York, playing in a series of other groups, one of which rejoiced in the name Leather Canary and famously featured Chevy Chase on drums.
There is an excellent clip that surfaced not long ago of this song being performed live, with Baxter – looking frankly demented, and like someone from a completely different band who wandered through the wrong door and started jamming with some laid-back dudes – taking the solos.
I became familiar with this album four or five years after its release, when I first moved away from home and shared a flat with my friend Ben Buchanan, which exposed me to the extensive record collection of his mum, Gretchen.
The first two Steely Dan albums featured prominently, though I never could tell my Can’t Buy A Thrill from my Countdown To Ecstasy and I was always more of a fan of this uncharacteristically lively number than the rest of their stuff, which was a bit mellow for my tastes, with the first knockings of punk just around the corner.