Steely Dan had no time for one of their biggest hits: “Dumb but effective”
Steely Dan were always subversive, rising to prominence when American rock was flirting with all the excess and glam the likes of David Bowie and The New York Dolls ushered in.
They stepped outside the tight confines of rock to introduce jazz and Latin influences to their sound, and although ‘Reelin in the Years’ might be their most popular track, it was also founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s least favourite.
That contradiction captures the essence of Steely Dan’s relationship with success. While audiences embraced their most immediate and accessible material, Fagen and Becker were often more interested in pushing beyond conventional songwriting, favouring complexity and nuance over crowd-pleasing simplicity.
Much to their surprise, the song from 1972’s Can’t Buy A Thrill raced up the pop charts, reaching number 11 on the Billboard chart, with the upbeat outlook and tight guitar proving the perfect earworm. But the band was less than impressed with their own lyrics, with Fagen telling Rolling Stone it was a “dumb but effective” song and Becker dismissing it entirely, saying: “It’s no fun”.
The song tells the story of a romance gone wrong, a suitably 1970s break-up anthem that blends lovesick poetry with slight scorn: “I’ve spent a lot of money and I’ve spent a lot of time, the trip we made to Hollywood is etched upon my mind, after all the things we’ve done and seen you find another man, the things you think are useless I can’t understand.”
During the recording of the track, Elliott Randall wound up in the studio on the invite of another Steely Dan founder, Skunk Baxter. Randall, a reputable session musician who also appeared on Irene Cara’s ‘Fame’, ended up playing the guitar solo.
It was Becker and Fagen’s first time using studio musicians, and by their fourth release, nearly every player on their songs would be a session musician. Randall would reunite with the band again on Katy Lied and The Royal Scam, and his extra guitar fills can be heard on the quadraphonic mix of the song that didn’t make it onto the stereo version.
This shift marked a turning point in how the band operated, moving away from a traditional group dynamic towards a more controlled, studio-centric approach. It allowed them to chase a level of precision that would become a defining feature of their later work.
For all the band’s criticism of the song, Randall’s guitar solo was held in high esteem in rock circles. In 1999, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page declared it his favourite solo of all time. It’s all the more baffling when you consider that not only did Beck and Fagen not like it, but that it was recorded in one take.
By the time Randall stepped into the studio, most of the song, bar its crucial solo, was already complete. Randall set up his Strat, plugged it into an Ampeg SVT amp and miked it with a single AKG 414. You can listen to his masterful solo below.
