{"id":818527,"date":"2026-07-22T12:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T12:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/818527\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T12:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T12:04:13","slug":"reelin-in-the-years-by-steely-dan-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/818527\/","title":{"rendered":"Reelin’ In The Years by Steely Dan: The story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking back on Steely Dan<\/a>\u2019s immense success and impact, it\u2019s hard to envision a time when the supremely honed and highly original jazz-rock group weren\u2019t at the top of their game. But when the core duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were starting out, recognition for their talent and approach would take some time \u2013 and some getting used to.<\/p>\n

Keyboard player Fagen had stumbled across Becker practising guitar in the campus cafe at New York\u2019s liberal arts school Bard College in 1967. Fagen wanted to start a band, but he\u2019d struggled to find a guitarist who could play jazz and blues the way he wanted to, not \u201clike Dick Dale\u201d, as was the trend, he said.<\/p>\n

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Becker was playing a wild blues-based style, and Fagen had \u201cnever really heard anything like that\u201d. The duo soon started writing together and played in various musical configurations. They found incongruous employment as part of the touring band for doo-wop crooners Jay & The Americans, whose lead singer Jay Black recalled his impression of the pair as \u201cyoghurt-skinned\u201d beatniks who seemed to surface only at night. \u201cThe Manson and Starkweather of rock\u2019n\u2019roll,\u201d he called them.<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From Louder<\/p>\n

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Graduating in 1969, Fagen took the duo\u2019s songs to Manhattan\u2019s legendary Brill Building, the hub for popular songwriters and publishers of every stripe, from Burt Bacharach to Lou Reed<\/a>, Carole King<\/a> to Ellie Greenwich.<\/p>\n

Becker and Fagen had little success there. The musical climate was not quite ready for their hipster hybrids. However, a Jay & The Americans connection clicked. Group member Kenny Vance was now a Brill resident, and he commissioned from them a soundtrack to 1971 screwball hippie film You\u2019ve Got to Walk It Like You Talk It Or You\u2019ll Lose That Beat, which starred Robert Downey Sr and Richard Pryor.<\/p>\n

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Their style caught the attention of young producer Gary Katz, who\u2019d begun his career working with pop and rock entertainer Bobby Darin and was newly installed at ABC\/Dunhill Records, where he looked after acts including the Mamas And The Papas, Three Dog Night, the James Gang and Steppenwolf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have much to do with the songs,\u201d Katz told RecordProduction.com in 2000, \u201cbut I can spot talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Katz would later A&R Jim Croce and Chaka Khan, and while at Warner Bros Records would be instrumental in the signing of Prince<\/a>. Katz concluded that Becker and Fagen\u2019s stuff was too weird for anyone to handle but them, and their own band. Becker and Fagen were private, introverted creators, and Katz recognised that their work would be best cultivated in a small social bubble.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey weren\u2019t outwardly public\u2026 they had their own relationship,\u201d he told broadcaster Denny Saunders. \u201cThey were totally bound to each other. The expression \u2018soul brothers\u2019 applies. There was very little fighting in the studio because\u2026 no matter what was going on, in the end, Donald was mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having relocated from New York to LA, by day they wrote for the label roster; by night they had a group that included jazz guitarist Denny Dias, ABC-signed drummer Jim Hodder, session guitarist Jeff \u2018Skunk\u2019 Baxter and vocalist David Palmer, brought in due to Fagen\u2019s lack of confidence when it came to singing live.<\/p>\n

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In August 1972, Katz took the group, now named Steely Dan (a nod to their beatnik roots, using the moniker of the steam-powered strap-on dildo from William S Burroughs\u2019s mind-bending 1959 novel Naked Lunch), into Village Recorder studios in Los Angeles to make their debut album, Can\u2019t Buy A Thrill<\/a>. The album began with the chilled Latin groove of Do It Again: glossy with its slick musicianship, arch lyrical commentary and pristine production, and blending soft rock, jazz, blues and soul in a singular 70s \u2013 and very Steely Dan \u2013 fashion.<\/p>\n

Reelin’ In The Years – Steely Dan | The Midnight Special – YouTube
\n\"Reelin'<\/p>\n

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The highlight of the album was Reelin\u2019 In The Years. Fagen stepped up to the mic for an effervescent \u2013 perhaps autobiographical \u2013 break-up narration (\u2018The trip we made to Hollywood is etched upon my mind\/After all the things we\u2019ve done and seen you find another man\u2019) as the band galloped along in shuffle time.<\/p>\n

The main guitar part needed something special, and this marked the Dan\u2019s first time of what would become a regular ploy of bringing in hand-picked aces. They called another old contact from Jay & The Americans, Elliott Randall, who was just out of the orchestra pit playing for the Broadway version of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar and now getting some freelance muso rep.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was my first session for them,\u201d Randall told Produce Like A Pro. \u201cI thought they were really special, and they must have thought I was special too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were having trouble finding the right \u2018flavour\u2019 solo for Reelin\u2019, and asked me to give it a go,\u201d he told Guitar World<\/a>. Randall read the lyrics and got a sense of what the song was about. Unable to find a guitar amp in the studio, he plugged his 1965 Strat into a bass amp and played. Afterwards Katz called to the recording engineer: \u201cDid you get that?\u201d But he\u2019d missed it, thinking it was a practice run.<\/p>\n

For take two, Randall recalled that his imagination was fired up. \u201cSomething got me going,\u201d he told Produce Like A Pro. He jazzed up the chorus for the intro, and, using a sprinkling of salsa, pulled off the most joyous, expressive musical conversation, from start to finish.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was it! Nobody said: \u2018Can we try that again?\u2019,\u201d Randall remembered. \u201cI was delighted, they were happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The track has made millions of others happy too, including Jimmy Page, who knows a thing or two about guitar licks. In Classic Rock in 1999 he said the Reelin\u2019 In The Years solo was his favourite, and in 2016, in conversation with YouTuber Oliver Patrick Loughnan<\/a>, Page rated it 12\/10.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m flattered [by that],\u201d Randall said in 2021. \u201cIt was actually very easy [to do]\u2026 The song virtually played itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Today’s best Steely Dan: Can\u2019t Buy A Thrill deals<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Looking back on Steely Dan\u2019s immense success and impact, it\u2019s hard to envision a time when the supremely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75],"class_list":["post-818527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}