The song Steely Dan refused to release: “Too country”
Steely Dan are one band who can rarely be categorised with ease.
Not many bands can lay claim to having released one of their strongest albums on their first attempt, but given how adept both Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were at writing songs, it’s hardly surprising that Steely Dan’s debut, Can’t Buy A Thrill, was loaded with hit after hit and some of the most intelligent jazz and blues-infused pop-rock that had ever entered the mainstream.
While not necessarily taking the world by storm upon its release, songs like ‘Do It Again’ and ‘Reelin’ in the Years’ received plenty of radio airplay and saw the band enter the top 20 in the US charts, while tracks like ‘Dirty Work’ and ‘Only A Fool Would Say That’ have become cult favourites in the years since the album’s release. Not only that, but retrospective opinion of the album has seen it enter the conversation of being one of the greatest debut albums of all time and sits alongside the likes of Pretzel Logic and Aja as being one of the group’s finest efforts.
However, despite the ten songs that feature on the album all being flawless, there was one song that Fagen refused to have as part of the release, believing that its dramatic difference from the rest of the tracklist would have completely disrupted the flow of the album and derailed it. ‘Dallas’ was released as Steely Dan’s first single, but it was denied a place on the album after Fagen insisted that it be dropped from the release.
While it doesn’t feel too far removed from the band’s signature style, ‘Dallas’ has pedal steel guitars lying atop Fagen’s light electric piano touches that make it feel more like a Desperado-era Eagles track than it would be a Steely Dan track, and Fagen’s dismissal of the song was down to this country and Americana slant that it took on. Upon listening to the track, you’d think there’s no reason why it couldn’t have sat comfortably among the soft-rock leanings of the rest of Can’t Buy A Thrill, but the band’s co-leader put his foot down on the matter.
Recorded in 1972 with the band’s extended initial lineup, the song sees drummer Jim Hodder assume lead vocal duties, something he would also offer on the album track ‘Midnite Cruiser’ while Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter played the pedal steel and David Palmer and Tim Moore offered backing vocals in addition to Fagen and Becker’s contributions. However, Baxter was the one who revealed Fagen’s dislike for the track, claiming that he felt the style was too disparate.
Speaking to Mason Marangella during an interview for his Vertex Effects guitar pedal tech series, Baxter said: “I think it was Donald who was afraid that with a name like Steely Dan, and the fact that in a lot of ways it had a lot of country flavour to it, that people would mistake the band as a country band.”
While ‘Steely Dan’ might have a bit of a country ring to it in as much as it shares part of its name with the instrument Baxter plays on the track, any Dan fan would be able to tell you that they’re named after a sex toy in William S Burroughs’ Naked Lunch novel – about as far removed from country music as one could get.
“I, for one, didn’t think that would happen,” Baxter contested. The group struggled to be categorised, but what they did know with quite some ease is exactly what they didn’t want to be. Meticulous in the studio, their efforts were designed to the nth degree, and slips into unwanted genres were never a part of the game plan.
While the song itself was scrapped and only ever released on the Japan-exclusive Steely Dan compilation in 1978, as well as the UK-only EP Four Tracks From Steely Dan in 1977, there’s a case to be made that it would have offered a slight change of pace to Can’t Buy A Thrill, but with the album as it is, I’m not sure that many Steely Dan aficionados would complain too much that their debut didn’t feature this country excursion.
