The songs Steely Dan and Eagles wrote about each other: “I think it drove him nuts”
Music rivalries are built into the very fabric of rock and roll. The Beatles were pitched against The Rolling Stones. Oasis and Blur shared a genuine dislike for one another. Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd fell out of and back in favour with each other through song. Motörhead vs sobriety was a battle that the band always won. These are some of the most epic tales that ever graced the history books. However, one quasi-rivalry was much more low-key during rock music’s height in the late 1970s, when Steely Dan and the Eagles started to trade shots.
The two groups wouldn’t seem like the most contentious couple of bands on the face of things. They may have been from slightly different points in the rock spectrum, but both of those locations were on the good side of the river, blessed with musicality and genuine success, which meant they rarely tried to cause a fuss or grab headlines without cause.
The Eagles tried to position themselves as a rock band, especially once Joe Walsh joined their ranks, but they were always best at country-tinged soft rock ballads. Steely Dan, on the other hand, were pasty jazz nerds who probably never got in a collective fight in their lives, save for the numerous drummers they fired along the way. However, as many bookmakers would tell you, such equal deficiencies make for an interesting bout.
So why were these two bands sparring, or at the very least making references to each other in song? It was Steely Dan who made the first blow, referencing the Eagles directly on the song ‘Everything You Did’ from their 1976 record The Royal Scam. Whether “Turn up the Eagles, the neighbours are listening” is truly an insult or not is up to the listener’s interpretation, but the song itself is a pretty severe indictment about a less-than-loyal lover.
“Apparently, Walter Becker’s girlfriend loved the Eagles, and she played them all the time,” Glenn Frey is quoted as saying in Gavin Edwards’ Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed. “I think it drove him nuts. So, the story goes that they were having a fight one day, and that was the genesis of the line.”
So the anger definitely isn’t directed towards the Eagles, but the association probably isn’t a celebratory one, either. In any case, there didn’t appear to be any ill will. The groups shared the same manager, and future Eagle Timothy B. Shmidt would contribute backing vocals to Steely Dan albums like The Royal Scam and Aja. There’s even a chance that Schmidt sings on ‘Everything You Did’. The Dan would bring in Don Henley to try and record some backing vocals, but that didn’t end well.
When speaking about the track to Uncut, Don Henley spoke candidly and with a great degree of humour: “I know them pretty well, and it was like he was sort of saying, ‘Everybody’s in LA’s playing this fuckin’ record, and I’m sick of it!’ It was a little bit of an acknowledgement and a little bit taking the piss, because we had the same management – still do — but you know, they’re very droll, Fagen in particular.”
Just to return the favour, Frey and Henley decided to reference the Dan in the lyrics to their mammoth hit ‘Hotel California’. Originally, the line “stab it with their steely knives” had the band’s full name in it, but according to Frey, “We just wanted to allude to Steely Dan rather than mentioning them outright, so ‘Dan’ got changed to ‘knives,’ which is still, you know, a penile metaphor.”
The jazz-inspired band’s handle on lyrics would also inspire the gibberish in ‘Hotel California’, as Frey explained: “One of the things that impressed us about Steely Dan was that they would say anything in their songs, and it didn’t have to necessarily make sense.”
While hoping to pay homage to The Twilight Zone and create an eerie ‘happening’ instead of a direct narrative, Frey explained: “You just have one line that says there’s a guy on the highway,” Frey added, “the next line says there’s a hotel in the distance, then there’s a women there, then he walks in. It’s just like all one-shots just strung together, and you sort of draw your own conclusions from it. [We] were sort of trying to expand our lyrical horizons and just take on something in the realm of the bizarre, as Steely Dan had done.”
The reality is that the two bands enjoyed far too much kinship to have actually partaken in any kind of fierce rivalry. Instead, they both just went about their business filling the airwaves of American rock radio for decades to come. This camaraderie would be cemented as the groups would come together in 2023 to share a touring schedule, a trip around the globe culminating with the Eagles retiring entirely in 2025.
Check out both songs below.
