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, 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). 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.

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.

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

"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.

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.

One song, "Mr. Sam", was recorded during the sessions but not used. Steely Dan again eschewed the practice of releasing unused album recordings on singles, and both of the album's singles simply reused tracks from the album for their B-sides. There was also a song which Steely Dan started recording during the sessions but did not finish, "Funky Driver"; the unreleased recording includes only drums, bass, and piano.

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. 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.

Music and 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." However, locals pronounce it "Musselbrook" (omitting the "w"). Fagen has said that the song is about the Wall Street crash of 1929, but that crash is commonly referred to as "Black Tuesday" or "Black Thursday", and Steely Dan biographer Anthony Robustelli has concluded that the song is more likely about the gold panic of 1869, since the historical details more closely match the lyrics, including the fact that the event is commonly referred to as "Black Friday". Another Steely Dan biographer, Brian Sweet, argued that "there is no evidence to suggest that Becker and Fagen were referring to any particular occasion. They had simply used their collective imaginations to create a fictitious incident."

"Everyone's Gone to the Movies" uses a Latin-flavored arrangement and elements of funk. The lyrics are about a lecher who lures underage teenagers into his den and shows them pornographic films.

Robustelli described "Your Gold Teeth II" as "arguably the most 'jazz-like' song Steely Dan ever recorded", with the main rhythm being a John Coltrane-like waltz in multiple time signatures.

According to Becker and Fagen, "Chain Lightning" is about two men attending a fascist rally during Adolf Hitler's rule and, following the guitar solo, furtively revisiting the site 40 years later to reminisce.

The closer, "Throw Back the Little Ones", is a piano-driven song with a backbeat.

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. Their stridulation is often interpreted as the self-contradicting chant "Katy did, Katy didn't", an obvious link to the title, though Steely Dan have not said whether it inspired the "Doctor Wu" lyric or they drew the connection afterwards. 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.

Critical reception

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, and he voted it the third-best album of the year on his ballot for the 1975 Pazz & Jop critics poll, on which it placed sixth. 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. 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".

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

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."

Track listing

Personnel

;Steely Dan

  • Donald Fagen – lead vocals, keyboards
  • Walter Becker – bass guitar, guitar (including solos on 1, 2, and 4), personnel photos

;Additional musicians

  • Denny Dias – guitar (including solo on 7), electric sitar (2 and 10, uncredited)
  • Rick Derringer – guitar (including solo on 8)
  • Dean Parks – guitar (including solos on 3 and 4)
  • Elliott Randall – guitar (including solo on 10)
  • Hugh McCracken – guitar
  • Larry Carlton – guitar (4)
  • Michael Omartian - keyboards (including solos on 6 and 8)
  • David Paich – keyboards
  • Chuck Rainey, Wilton Felder – bass guitar
  • Jeff Porcaro – drums (all tracks except 9), dorophone
  • Hal Blaine – drums (9)
  • Victor Feldman – percussion, vibraphone
  • Phil Woods – alto saxophone (solo on 5)
  • Jimmie Haskell – horn arrangement (10)
  • Michael McDonald – backing vocals (1-3, 9)
  • Sherlie Matthews, Carolyn Willis, Myrna Matthews – backing vocals (6)

;Production

  • Gary Katz – producer
  • Roger Nichols – engineer, personnel photos
  • Stuart "Dinky" Dawson – sound consultant
  • Bob DeAvila – real time analysis
  • Rick Collins – mastering
  • Dorothy White – cover photo

;Reissue

  • Vartan – art direction
  • Michael Diehl – design
  • Daniel Levitin – consultant

Charts

Album

Weekly charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"

|-

! scope="col" | Chart (1975)

! scope="col" | Peak<br />position

|-

|align="left"|Australian Albums (Kent Music Report)

|align="center"|28

|-

|-

|-

|-

|align="left"|US Billboard Top LPs & Tape

|align="center"|13

|-

|}

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"

|-

! scope="col" | Chart (2025)

! scope="col" | Peak<br />position

|-

|-

|}

Year-end charts

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"

|-

! scope="col" | Chart (1975)

! scope="col" | Position

|-

|}

Singles

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

! Year

! Single

! Catalogue number

! Peak<br />position

! Chart

|-

|1975

|style="text-align: left;" | "Black Friday" (B-side: "Throw Back the Little Ones")

|ABC 12101

|37

|rowspan="2" | US Billboard Hot 100

|-

||1975

|style="text-align: left;" | "Bad Sneakers" (B-side: "Chain Lightning")

|ABC 12128

|103

|}

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Complete lyrics