Katy Lied

"Doctor Wu" redirects here. For the character from Jurassic Park, see Henry Wu (Jurassic Park).

Katy Lied
Studio album by
Steely Dan
ReleasedMarch 1975
RecordedNovember 1974–January 1975
StudioABC, Los Angeles, California
GenreJazz rock
Length35:37
LabelABC
ProducerGary Katz
Steely Dan chronology
Pretzel Logic
(1974) 		Katy Lied
(1975) 		The Royal Scam
(1976)
Singles from Katy Lied
  1. "Black Friday"
    Released: May 1975[1]
  2. "Bad Sneakers"
    Released: September 1975

Katy Lied is the fourth studio album by American rock band Steely Dan, released in March 1975, by ABC Records. Reissues have been released by MCA Records due to ABC's acquisition by MCA in 1979. It was the first album Steely Dan made after they stopped touring. Katy Lied is the recording debut of singer/keyboardist/songwriter Michael McDonald,[2] who contributed prominent backing vocals to four songs.

In the United States, the album peaked at number 13 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart, and it has been certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).[3] The accompanying singles had relatively little success; "Black Friday" charted at number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100,[4] and "Bad Sneakers", though it has since become the most widely recognized song on the album, failed to enter the Hot 100 at all, peaking at number 103.[5]

Background and recording

The album was the first one recorded by Steely Dan after guitarists Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Denny Dias and drummer Jim Hodder were dismissed from the group as a result of band leaders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's decision to stop touring and focus solely on recording with various studio musicians. Becker explained, "We found ourselves in an uncomfortable position with some of our early bandmates of constantly not wanting to do things that they wanted to do. You end up being this sort of un-generous collaborator who's constantly pissing on somebody's parade. In a way, it was very liberating not to have to deal with that afterwards. To be able to say, 'Let's not work for a while,' or 'Let's hire this guy to play the drums.'"[6]

Dias contributed to the album as a session musician, as did singer Michael McDonald and drummer Jeff Porcaro, who were both members of Steely Dan's final touring band.[7] Though the liner notes credit three keyboardists with no delineation of how much each contributed, according to Steely Dan biographer Anthony Robustelli the overwhelming majority of the keyboards were played by Michael Omartian, with Porcaro's frequent collaborator David Paich playing only support parts on a few songs and Fagen playing hardly any keyboards at all.[2] Given the choice of piano for the sessions, Omartian purchased a Bösendorfer for $13,000, to the dismay of ABC executives when they received the bill.[8] Then only 20 years old, Porcaro played drums on every track on the album except "Any World (That I'm Welcome To)", which features session drummer Hal Blaine.

Porcaro became so frustrated trying to find the perfect "pocket" for the album's lead single "Black Friday" that at one point he told Becker and Fagen that they should have used Jim Gordon (who played most of the drums on Pretzel Logic) for the album.[9] He experienced even more difficulty with "Your Gold Teeth II". "Your Gold Teeth II" changes time signatures multiple times, from 3/8 to 6/8 to 9/8, and after a full day of working on the song Porcaro still could not get down the swing groove. Rather than get another drummer, as he usually would in such circumstances, Fagen gave Porcaro a copy of a Charles Mingus album with Dannie Richmond on drums which had a song in 6/8 and 9/8. After listening to it for a few days, Porcaro went into the studio and played the part successfully.[10]

The instrumental section which opens "Your Gold Teeth II" is completely unrelated to the rest of the song in feel, melodic content, and origin. It was originally used as the five-minute-long instrumental intro to "Reelin' in the Years" during live shows in 1974.[10]

Phil Woods's saxophone solo on "Doctor Wu" was done in one take.[11]

"Everyone's Gone to the Movies" and "Any World (that I'm Welcome To)" were written before the formation of Steely Dan, with the latter having been offered to both Linda Hoover and Dusty Springfield, neither of whom recorded it.[12]

The last track to be completed was "Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More". The song was initially more piano-based, but after some rethinking the piano part was dropped entirely. Becker and Dean Parks laid down guitar tracks, with Becker taking two solos and Parks one, but it was felt that a third guitar part was needed. After trying out numerous guitarists and not getting the desired feel, Becker and Fagen requested Larry Carlton, who became a regular collaborator of Steely Dan, on the strength of his work on the Joan Baez album Diamonds & Rust. According to Carlton, he nailed the part so quickly that he was out of the studio within an hour.[13]

Becker and Fagen said they were dissatisfied with the album's sound quality because of an equipment malfunction with the then-new dbx noise reduction system.[14] Accounts of how the issue was addressed differ. According to Dias, the original 24-track masters were still in good shape, so they remixed the album using the older Dolby noise-reduction system and produced vastly superior results to their initial attempt, while Becker has asserted that even the original masters were affected by the dbx system.[15]

Lyrics

"Black Friday", which features Michael Omartian on piano and David Paich on Hohner electric piano and was released as the first single from the album, relates the story of a crooked speculator who makes his fortune and absconds to Muswellbrook, New South Wales, Australia, as, according to Fagen, "It was the place most far away from LA we could think of". The town also "fit[s] the metre of the song and rhyme[s] with 'book'",[16] though Fagen did not realise that locals pronounce it "Musselbrook" (omitting the "w").[17]

Title and packaging

The album's title comes from the lyrics of "Doctor Wu" ("Katy lies / You can see it in her eyes"), and the album cover is a picture of a katydid, a "singing" (stridulating) insect related to crickets and grasshoppers,[a] as a pun on the title. The back cover photograph of Donald Fagen (in reindeer sweater) and Denny Dias (in overalls and sombrero and holding a tank of helium) was taken by Becker during the session (sometime in 1972-73) for their Schlitz beer jingle.[18]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusicStarStarStarStarStar[19]
Chicago TribuneStarStarStarHalf star[20]
Christgau's Record GuideA−[21]
Encyclopedia of Popular MusicStarStarStar[22]
The Great Rock Discography8/10[23]
MusicHound Rock4/5[24]
Pitchfork9.1/10[25]
The Rolling Stone Album GuideStarStarStarStarHalf star[26]
SelectStarStarStar[27]
Tom Hull – on the WebA[28]

Reviewing the album in 1975 for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau said that, while Katy Lied might be Steely Dan's "biggest" album to that point, he found it "slightly disappointing" on a musical level, citing the loss of lead guitarist Baxter and what he perceived as "cool, cerebral, one-dimensional" jazz guitar influences. Nonetheless, Christgau admitted that he played the album frequently,[29] and he voted it the third-best album of the year on his ballot for the 1975 Pazz & Jop critics poll,[30] on which it placed sixth.[31] John Mendelsohn was more critical in Rolling Stone, writing that "however immaculately tasteful and intelligent" Steely Dan's music may be in theory, it did not register with him emotionally and remained "exemplarily well-crafted and uncommonly intelligent schlock". Mendelsohn found the lyrics interesting, but inscrutable, the musicianship tasteful and well-performed, but not stimulating, and Fagen's singing unique-sounding, but seemingly passionless.[32] In a review in Rolling Stone from 1977, Cameron Crowe called the album "anonymous, absolutely impeccable swing-pop" with "no cheap displays of human emotion".[33]

Retrospectively, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described the album as "a smoother version of Pretzel Logic" and "another excellent record" by Steely Dan.[19] Travis Elborough wrote in his 2008 book The Long-Player Goodbye: The Album from LP to iPod and Back Again that Katy Lied, while not on par with Pretzel Logic (1974) or Aja (1977), was still "up there as jazz rock staples go".[34] In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Rob Sheffield said the album completed a trilogy of Steely Dan albums (the other parts being Countdown to Ecstasy (1973) and Pretzel Logic) that is "a rock version of Chinatown, a film noir tour of L.A.'s decadent losers, showbiz kids, and razor boys".[26] Jazz historian Ted Gioia cited the album as an example of Steely Dan "proving that pop-rock could equally benefit from a healthy dose of jazz" during their initial tenure, which coincided with a period when rock musicians frequently experimented with jazz idioms and techniques.[35]

Of lead single "Black Friday", Cash Box said that it contains elements that made earlier Steely Dan singles successful, such as "Hot Fender Rhodes piano tracks, lead guitar work, rhythm that won't stop cooking and identifiable vocals and mix that lets you know Gary Katz has been hard at work on the knobs."[36]

Track listing

All tracks are written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.

Side one
No.TitleLength
1."Black Friday"3:40
2."Bad Sneakers"3:21
3."Rose Darling"3:06
4."Daddy Don't Live in that New York City No More"3:17
5."Doctor Wu"3:56
Side two
No.TitleLength
6."Everyone's Gone to the Movies"3:46
7."Your Gold Teeth II"4:15
8."Chain Lightning"3:02
9."Any World (That I'm Welcome To)"3:57
10."Throw Back the Little Ones"3:17
Total length:35:37

Personnel

Steely Dan
Additional musicians

Charts

Album

Singles

Year Single Catalogue number Peak
position 		Chart
1975 "Black Friday" (B-side: "Throw Back the Little Ones") ABC 12101 37 US Billboard Hot 100[4]
1975 "Bad Sneakers" (B-side: "Chain Lightning") ABC 12128 103

Notes

  1. ^ However, at the time Katy Lied was released, katydids were usually classified as a type of grasshopper.

References

  1. ^ Strong, Martin Charles (1995). The Great Rock Discography. p. 782. ISBN 9780862415419.
  2. ^ a b c Robustelli 2017, p. 144.
  3. ^ a b "Steely Dan Chart History: Billboard 200". Billboard. Retrieved November 8, 2021.
  4. ^ a b Katy Lied - Steely Dan > Charts & Awards > Billboard Singles at AllMusic. Retrieved 27 October 2004.
  5. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 140.
  6. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 93.
  7. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 136.
  8. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 137.
  9. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 139.
  10. ^ a b c Robustelli 2017, p. 142.
  11. ^ a b Robustelli 2017, p. 141.
  12. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 141-144.
  13. ^ a b Robustelli 2017, p. 140-141.
  14. ^ Dias, Denny (2000). "Katy and the Gremlin". Archived from the original on September 28, 2017. Retrieved May 24, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 137-138.
  16. ^ Sweet, Brian (2000). Steely Dan: Reelin' in the Years. Omnibus Press. ISBN 9780711982796.
  17. ^ "How to Pronounce Muswellbrook (NSW)" – via YouTube.
  18. ^ Malooley, Jake (July 21, 2023). "Hear Steely Dan's Schlitz beer jingle". Expanding Dan. Retrieved August 16, 2023.
  19. ^ a b Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. Katy Lied at AllMusic. Retrieved 27 October 2004.
  20. ^ Kot, Greg (August 16, 1992). "Thrills, Scams and Nightflys". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 15, 2017.
  21. ^ Christgau, Robert (1981). "Consumer Guide '70s: S". Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies. Ticknor & Fields. ISBN 089919026X. Retrieved March 9, 2019 – via robertchristgau.com.
  22. ^ Larkin, Colin (2011). "Steely Dan". The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th concise ed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8.
  23. ^ Strong, Martin Charles (2002). "Steely Dan". The Great Rock Discography. The National Academies. ISBN 1-84195-312-1.
  24. ^ Graff, Gary (1996). "Steely Dan". In Graff, Gary (ed.). MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide. Visible Ink Press. ISBN 0787610372.
  25. ^ Richardson, Mark (November 20, 2019). "Steely Dan: Katy Lied". Pitchfork. Retrieved November 24, 2019.
  26. ^ a b Sheffield, Rob (2004). "Steely Dan". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. Simon and Schuster. pp. 778–9. ISBN 0743201698.
  27. ^ Prendergast, Mark (September 1990). "Steely Dan: Katy Lied". Select. No. 3. p. 106.
  28. ^ Hull, Tom (n.d.). "Grade List: Steely Dan". Tom Hull – on the Web. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
  29. ^ Christgau, Robert (April 21, 1975). "What Kind of a Best Rock and Roll Band in the World Is This?". The Village Voice. Retrieved February 15, 2017.
  30. ^ Christgau, Robert (December 29, 1975). "It's Been a Soft Year for Hard Rock". The Village Voice. Retrieved February 15, 2017.
  31. ^ Anon. (December 29, 1975). "The 1975 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll". The Village Voice. Retrieved February 15, 2017.
  32. ^ Mendelsohn, John (May 8, 1975). "Steely Dan Katy Lied > Review". Rolling Stone. No. 186. Archived from the original on December 17, 2007. Retrieved August 28, 2007.
  33. ^ Crowe, Cameron (December 15, 1977). "[no title]". Rolling Stone.
  34. ^ Elborough, Travis (2009). The Vinyl Countdown: The Album from LP to iPod and Back Again. Soft Skull Press. p. 322. ISBN 978-1593763480.
  35. ^ Gioia, Ted (2011). The History of Jazz. Oxford University Press. p. 332. ISBN 9780199831876.
  36. ^ "CashBox Record Reviews" (PDF). Cash Box. May 17, 1975. p. 23. Retrieved December 11, 2021.
  37. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 139-141.
  38. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 140, 144.
  39. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 142-143.
  40. ^ Robustelli 2017, p. 139-140, 143.
  41. ^ Kent, David (1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992: 23 years of hit singles & albums from the top 100 charts. St Ives, N.S.W, Australia: Australian Chart Book. p. 292. ISBN 0-646-11917-6.
  42. ^ "Top RPM Albums: Image 3974a". RPM. Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved December 21, 2024.
  43. ^ "Charts.nz – Steely Dan – Katy Lied". Hung Medien. Retrieved December 21, 2024.
  44. ^ "Official Albums Chart on 27/4/1975 – Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved December 21, 2024.
  45. ^ "Official Scottish Albums Chart on 7/2/2025 – Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 7 February 2025.
  46. ^ "Top RPM Albums: Image 6489b". RPM. Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved December 21, 2024.

Bibliography

  • Robustelli, Anthony (2017). Steely Dan FAQ: All that's Left to Know about this Elusive Band. Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books. ISBN 9781495025129.
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