The everlasting summer of "Reelin' in the Years"

As Steely Dan's 1973 hit turns 50, guitarist Elliott Randall talks about the solo that is now etched upon our minds.

On a recent afternoon, I was listening to Steely Dan’s 1973 single “Reelin’ in the Years” and thinking about Richard Linklater’s 1993 film Dazed and Confused. Not long ago, I read Melissa Maerz’s 2020 book Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused. The writer-director’s original intention was to make an anti-nostalgia film, but somehow Dazed became the ultimate ’70s nostalgia vehicle. (Blame the slow-mo shots of GTOs?)

“When I was making Dazed, I was thinking about how nostalgia can be a dangerous thing,” Linklater tells Maerz. (Nostalgia, as the author defines it, involves “misremembering your own life on purpose.”) “People are nostalgic for times that never fucking existed. When you think about the past, you have to try to remember what was really going on. When people say, ‘Oh, those were the good times!’ I always have to remind them, ‘No, that time sucked.’”

There is no Steely Dan on the Dazed and Confused soundtrack. Which is a shame because Donald Fagen, like Richard Linklater, is preoccupied with the vicissitudes of memory. Fagen, in particular, has a knack for writing anti-nostalgia songs that a large, uncurious public misperceives as having the precise opposite meaning. “Reelin’ in the Years,” for decades misheard as a giddy celebration of the good ol’ days, now plays over the P.A. at anniversary and retirement parties. (Blame the rollicking refrain?)

Or take “I.G.Y.” from Fagen’s first solo album, The Nightfly. Back in 1988, when Fagen appeared on NBC’s Night Music jazz showcase, guest producer Tommy LiPuma in his introduction expressed his pleasure in ending the show on the song’s “positive note.” Apparently Tommy hadn’t picked up on Fagen’s skewering of the ’50s-era faith in technology to save the world. (Blame the toe-tapping beat?)

“It’s essentially mock sentimental. In a way, it’s even more cynical,” Fagen said of “I.G.Y.” in a 1991 interview. “In the chorus, when you hear, ‘What a beautiful world this will be / What a glorious time to be free,’ I wouldn’t necessarily take that literally.” That’s sound advice from a trusted source, folks.

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When Elliott Randall recalls playing on “Reelin’ in the Years,” he is, to his credit, remarkably unsentimental. As he told me over video conference from his home in England, he was called in on a whim, almost as an afterthought. He showed up with his guitar only to find there wasn’t an amplifier in the studio; he would end up plugging into a found bass amp. We’ll never hear his reportedly brilliant first take, because an assistant engineer forgot to hit record. And after the session, when Becker and Fagen asked him to join Steely Dan, he politely declined and doesn’t regret it.

It was 50 years ago this month that “Reelin’ in the Years” entered Billboard’s Hot 100 chart at No. 82. Studded end to end with Randall’s exuberant guitar licks—which he modeled after a saxophone solo—the song was a surprise single. (Producer Gary Katz has said he “totally discounted” its potential until radio programmers took an interest.) Still, it steadily climbed the chart, peaking in the middle of May 1973 at No. 11.

“When ‘Reelin’ in the Years’ became a hit,” Randall says, “the phone wouldn’t stop ringing for years.” Once again, he remembers the whole picture, the good and the not so great: “Sadly, a lot of people just wanted me to recreate that sound.”

(Hear Randall tell the whole story below.)