What does “They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, call me Deacon Blues” mean?
Steely Dan has never been known for taking the easy route regarding their music. Whether it was making a song with three different drummers or spending hours tracking the right guitars, it was clear that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were going for the kind of perfection that either didn’t exist or would take years to actually put together. But for all of the strengths that they had shown throughout their glory years, their lyrics have never been the easiest thing to figure out.
Outside of their penchant for strange characters in songs like ‘My Old School’ or ‘Kid Charlemagne’, it’s clear that all of the people they talk about in their songs are far from the most upstanding members of society. There might be the odd song like ‘Peg’ that feels more straightforward, but very few have been able to write about people who have an absolutely terrible personality and then manage to give them a little bit of sympathy towards the end of the tune.
When looking at ‘Deacon Blues’, it is evident that the character in this track was not going to have a happy life. This might have been their way of teaching about the life of a working musician, but hearing about this man coming to a grizzly end after drinking for the night and then dying in a car crash is more than a little bit jarring, especially since Fagen is singing the lyrics the same way he would if he were talking about what he wanted on his sandwich.
But the title drop mentioning ‘The Crimson Tide’ and having ‘Deacon Blue’ juxtaposed on top always had people scratching their heads a little bit. While the band were clearly experienced in every single musical format that they touched, it turns out they were avid football fans when it came to putting their lyrics.
So, what does “Call Me Deacon Blues” mean?
As Steely Dan was making Aja, The University of Alabama had been on a winning streak for the ages on the college football circuit. While the school’s team was nicknamed ‘The Crimson Tide’, Fagen explained that ‘Deacon’ had come from Los Angeles Rams player Deacon Jones, who had been known for being extremely aggressive whenever he played.
But since this is a song all about the melancholy side of living, hearing Fagen consider himself ‘Deacon Blues’ may as well be the inverse of ‘The Crimson Tide’. Whereas the University of Alabama was having one of their all-star seasons, this character referring to himself as ‘Deacon Blues’ felt like coming from the worst possible place he could, pretty much taking its cues from the kind of blues that most artists get when they are scraping at the bottom of the barrel in every one of their songs.
And listening to the rest of the track, it’s not hard to see why Jones was a good place to start. As much as the song is about someone who is kept in the shade in the modern age, he does still seem to have a chip on his shoulder, as if he’s convinced that there’s some way for him to go down as legendary even if it means him going out in a blaze of glory.
While many of us have come across people like ‘Deacon Blues’ in our lives who are their own worst enemy half the time, it’s still easy to empathise with him in some respects. There are always going to be the ‘Crimson Tides’ that are better than him in everything they do, but the point is to realise that going out with a bang is never the answer when it comes to people remembering your name.
