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From Mike’s Record Collection:
Steely Dan - The Royal Scam (1976)
The Dan’s fifth studio album that is a platinum seller and it landed at #15 on Billboard’s Top LP & Tapes chart.
The album was received with mixed reviews—some liking it (Rolling Stone gave it 5*) while others panned it as a mediocre collection of cynical songs about outlaws, cheats and criminals. Donald Fagen assessed that critics just become harder to please the longer a band survives.
Every Steely Dan album is stellar including “The Royal Scam.”
Side one
1. "Kid Charlemagne" was the lead single and it didn’t make a dent in the charts at #82 on Billboard.
Larry Carlton is featured on guitar. The song is loosely based on the counter-culture character and LSD chemist Owsley Stanley, who was the sound guy for the Grateful Dead and the West Coast drug purveyor of the 1960’s.
2. "The Caves of Altamira" featuring John Klemmer on tenor saxophone.
The title refers to a famous prehistoric cave located in northern Spain renowned for its Paleolithic cave paintings.
3. "Don't Take Me Alive" with a great guitar intro and solo by Larry Carlton.
The impetus for this was the boys noticing in newspapers a wave of police confrontations with people with arsenals holing up in bars & apartments.
4. "Sign In Stranger" with Elliott Randall on guitar & Paul Griffin on piano.
Decide for yourself but is this song The Dan’s own sci-fi version of the Eagles' "Hotel California," where the newcomer has shown up on an outlaw planet for hedonistic reasons?
5. "The Fez" was the second single that didn’t chart.
The narrator sings he won’t “do it” without “the Fez” on. Is this a prophylactic reference?
Fagen speculated that ABC Records released "The Fez," because it was a danceable tune during the disco fever of the times.
Side two
6. "Green Earrings" with guitars by Denny Dias on the bridge and Elliott Randall on main licks. This song is a concert and radio staple.
7. "Haitian Divorce" features Dean Parks on talk box/guitar.
It was inspired by a recording engineer wanting time off to fly to the Caribbean to obtain a quickie divorce. Fagen and Becker asked for details and made it about a woman with a twist at the end.
8. "Everything You Did" with Larry Carlton on guitar.
It’s a song about a couple’s quarrel over infidelity. There’s a line which references “The Eagles” (maybe because Walter Becker’s girlfriend liked the band). “The Eagles” would musically return the favor.
9. "The Royal Scam" with Larry Carlton on guitar.
It’s the title track and grand finale. Is this song about the Puerto Rican migration to NYC in the 1950’s and the harsh realities they faced attaining the American dream?
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