Any Major Dude Will Tell You

I’ve been spending some time with the Citizen Steely Dan box set lately, and I’m finding myself obsessed with the song “Any Major Dude Will Tell You”. Aside from the typically groovy Dan arrangement (I love the way the guitar and electric piano double each other on the hook), it’s just about the only number in the whole Steely Dan songbook that doesn’t reek of doom:

Never seen you looking so bad, my funky one
You tell me that your superfine mind has come undone

Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning it won't be there no more
Any major dude will tell you

Have you ever seen a squonk's tears? Well, look at mine
The people on the street have all seen better times

Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning it won't be there no more
Any major dude will tell you

I can tell you all I know, the where to go, the what to do
You can try to run but you can't hide from what's inside of you

Any major dude with half a heart surely will tell you my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning it won't be there no more
Any major dude will tell you

A lot of folks can’t relate to Steely Dan. And, y’know, to each their own. It works for me, but I can understand why it doesn’t work for everybody.

Yacht rock is the term that usually gets trotted out, and while I think that’s actually somewhat justified when applied to their later work (Aja, for example), the lyrics are a little too subversive to fit that; all their songs are populated by junkies, hustlers, pervs, small-time crooks and other assorted human flotsam awash in the wake of seventies culture. That was part of the fun – the clueless masses were grooving to these tales of degradation and desperation without actually catching on to it. It’s kinda like the suburban moms who used to come into my record store to buy Village People albums for their preteen sons. Anyway, to me yacht rock means The Eagles or later Doobie Brothers.

Then you’ve got the “it’s just smooth jazz” thing, too. Again, there certainly is an element of that on the later albums, but for my money their earlier stuff still has enough funk and grit to keep it from sliding right off your ears. It’s much denser than what gets played on The Quiet Storm, that’s for sure. Every song is like a musical matryoshka doll. There’s layer upon layer of things that you only hear subliminally.

Here are Messrs. Becker and Fagen themselves, dissecting “Peg” and “Deacon Blues”. Make of it what you will.