Hear Steely Dan's Schlitz beer jingle
The long-lost ad is the latest artifact exhumed from the archive of Roger Nichols.
One day during the eight-month gap between Can’t Buy a Thrill and Countdown to Ecstasy, Steely Dan gathered in Studio A at the Village in Los Angeles to record the kind of tune they would never again attempt: a jingle.
Specifically, a song about “the beer that made Milwaukee famous”—Schlitz.
The session would be immortalized in a photo taken that day of Donald Fagen (wearing a reindeer-print sweater) and Denny Dias (overalls and sombrero) that later appeared on the back cover of Katy Lied. As for the ad, it never aired, and has long been considered lost. Until now.