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Katy Lied

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"Doctor Wu" redirects here. For the character from Jurassic Park, see Henry Wu (Jurassic Park).
Katy Lied
Studio album by
Steely Dan
ReleasedMarch 1, 1975
RecordedNovember 1974–January 1975
StudioABC, Los Angeles, California
GenrePop rock
Length35:20
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 since been released by MCA Records due to ABC's acquisition by the former in 1979. It was the first album the group made after they stopped touring, as well as their first to feature backing vocals by Michael McDonald.

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).[2] The single "Black Friday" charted at number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100.[3]

Recording

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The album was the first one recorded by Steely Dan after guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and drummer Jim Hodder left the group as a result of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's decision to stop touring and focus solely on recording with various studio musicians. Guitarist Denny Dias, a founding member of Steely Dan, contributed to the album as a session musician, as did vocalist Michael McDonald and drummer Jeff Porcaro, who were both members of Steely Dan's final touring band. 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. Larry Carlton, who became a regular collaborator of the group, made his first appearance on a Steely Dan album playing guitar on "Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More".

Band leaders 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.[4] The damage was mostly repaired after consulting with the engineers at dbx, but Becker and Fagen still refused to listen to the completed album.

Lyrics

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"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'",[5] though Fagen did not realise that locals pronounce it "Musselbrook" (omitting the "w"), which makes the song grating for Australian fans. [6]

Title and packaging

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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, as a pun on the title. Walter Becker told Rolling Stone, during the band's 2009 tour: "It's about that uneasy relationship between the patient and doctor. People put faith in doctors, yet they abuse their power and become dangerous."[7] 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.[8]

Critical reception

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Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[9]
Chicago Tribune[10]
Christgau's Record GuideA−[11]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music[12]
The Great Rock Discography8/10[13]
MusicHound Rock4/5[14]
Pitchfork9.1/10[15]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[16]
Select[17]
Tom Hull – on the WebA[18]

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,[19] and he voted it the third-best album of the year on his ballot for the 1975 Pazz & Jop critics poll,[20] on which it placed sixth.[21] 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.[22] 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".[23]

Retrospectively, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described the album as "a smoother version of Pretzel Logic" and "another excellent record" by Steely Dan.[9] 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".[24] 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".[16] 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.[25]

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."[26]

Track listing

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All tracks are written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen

Side one
No.TitleLength
1."Black Friday"3:40
2."Bad Sneakers"3:16
3."Rose Darling"2:59
4."Daddy Don't Live in that New York City No More"3:12
5."Doctor Wu"3:59
Side two
No.TitleLength
6."Everyone's Gone to the Movies"3:41
7."Your Gold Teeth II"4:12
8."Chain Lightning"2:57
9."Any World (That I'm Welcome To)"3:56
10."Throw Back the Little Ones"3:11
Total length:35:20

Personnel

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Steely Dan
Additional musicians

Charts

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Album

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Chart (1975) Peak
position
Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)[27] 28
UK Albums (OCC) 13
US Billboard Top LPs & Tape[2] 13

Singles

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Year Single Catalogue number Peak
position 		Chart
1975 "Black Friday" (B-side: "Throw Back the Little Ones") ABC 12101 37 US Billboard Hot 100[3]
1975 "Bad Sneakers" (B-side: "Chain Lightning") ABC 12128 103

References

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  1. ^ Strong, Martin Charles (1995). The Great Rock Discography. p. 782. ISBN 9780862415419.
  2. ^ a b "Steely Dan Chart History: Billboard 200". Billboard. Retrieved 8 November 2021.
  3. ^ a b Katy Lied - Steely Dan > Charts & Awards > Billboard Singles at AllMusic. Retrieved 27 October 2004.
  4. ^ Dias, Denny (2000). "Katy and the Gremlin". Archived from the original on 2017-09-28. Retrieved 24 May 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ Sweet, Brian (2000). Steely Dan: Reelin' in the Years. Omnibus Press. ISBN 9780711982796.
  6. ^ "How to Pronounce Muswellbrook (NSW)". YouTube.
  7. ^ "Dr. Wu by Steely Dan - Songfacts".
  8. ^ Malooley, Jake (July 21, 2023). "Hear Steely Dan's Schlitz beer jingle". Expanding Dan. Retrieved 16 August 2023.
  9. ^ a b Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. Katy Lied at AllMusic. Retrieved 27 October 2004.
  10. ^ Kot, Greg (August 16, 1992). "Thrills, Scams and Nightflys". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved February 15, 2017.
  11. ^ 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.
  12. ^ Larkin, Colin (2011). "Steely Dan". The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th concise ed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8.
  13. ^ Strong, Martin Charles (2002). "Steely Dan". The Great Rock Discography. The National Academies. ISBN 1-84195-312-1.
  14. ^ Graff, Gary (1996). "Steely Dan". In Graff, Gary (ed.). MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide. Visible Ink Press. ISBN 0787610372.
  15. ^ Richardson, Mark (November 20, 2019). "Steely Dan: Katy Lied". Pitchfork. Retrieved November 24, 2019.
  16. ^ 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.
  17. ^ Prendergast, Mark (September 1990). "Steely Dan: Katy Lied". Select. No. 3. p. 106.
  18. ^ Hull, Tom (n.d.). "Grade List: Steely Dan". Tom Hull – on the Web. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
  19. ^ 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.
  20. ^ Christgau, Robert (December 29, 1975). "It's Been a Soft Year for Hard Rock". The Village Voice. Retrieved February 15, 2017.
  21. ^ Anon. (December 29, 1975). "The 1975 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll". The Village Voice. Retrieved February 15, 2017.
  22. ^ Mendelsohn, John (May 8, 1975). "Steely Dan Katy Lied > Review". Rolling Stone. No. 186. Archived from the original on December 17, 2007. Retrieved 28 August 2007.
  23. ^ Crowe, Cameron (December 15, 1977). "[no title]". Rolling Stone.
  24. ^ Elborough, Travis (2009). The Vinyl Countdown: The Album from LP to iPod and Back Again. Soft Skull Press. p. 322. ISBN 978-1593763480.
  25. ^ Gioia, Ted (2011). The History of Jazz. Oxford University Press. p. 332. ISBN 9780199831876.
  26. ^ "CashBox Record Reviews" (PDF). Cash Box. May 17, 1975. p. 23. Retrieved 2021-12-11.
  27. ^ 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.
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