Prior to the release of The Royal Scam, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen took a European vacation of sorts. During their travels, the boys behind Steely Dan finally found the time to meet Napoleon, something they’d been threatening to do since recording the song “Pretzel Logic” a couple years earlier.
“There’s the Napoleonic museum in Monaco,” Fagen tells London DJ Nicky Horne, appearing alongside Becker on the Capital Radio program Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It in May 1976. “We just got back from there, and, uh, we saw England and we saw France and we saw Bonaparte’s underpants.”
Listening to the nearly two-hour show today, it’s clear Becker and Fagen’s recent holiday in the French Riviera—including such destinations of leisure as Nice and Antibes—has done little to dull the duo’s weisenheimer edge. A transcript of a bootleg recording of the program first appeared in the February 1988 issue of the Steely Dan fanzine Metal Leg, but the tape’s audio (warbles and all) has not been available until now. Between cuts from their latest album, they take questions from callers and spin singles from the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, Van Morrison, and others.
They find moments for mischief, too, with Becker sending up the local weather report and Fagen caricaturing the California drawl of Steely Dan’s frenemies, the Eagles. In one recurring bit, they complain theatrically about what they characterize as Horne’s opposition to their playing jazz records on the air. “I understand this, because it is the music of tomorrow, as far as we’re concerned, but it all seems to have happened a long time ago,” Becker says before dropping the needle on Duke Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo.”
They also entertain themselves by mock-antagonizing callers, among them a young fan who poses a provocative question, apparently related to Steely Dan’s unwillingness to tour: “What would you say to the accusation that you’re the laziest band in the world?”
Whoever said that, Becker replies, “we’re gonna find that person and—”
“Have his legs broken!” Fagen interjects. “You know, we know some people in Chicago.”
This piece is part of the series “From the Archives of Brian Sweet,” in which Expanding Dan joins forces with the author of the definitive Steely Dan biography, Reelin' in the Years, to explore his extensive trove of unpublished interviews.
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Transcript
Nicky Horne: Good evening. I’m Nicky Horne.
Donald Fagen: And I’m Donald Fagen.
Walter Becker: And I’m Walter Becker.
Horne: And we’re gonna play some music that your mother wouldn’t like.
[Plays “King of the World” by Steely Dan.]
