| The Royal Scam | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Steely Dan |
| Cover: | The Royal Scam album cover.jpg |
| Released: | May 1976 |
| Recorded: | November 1975–March 1976 |
| Studio: |
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| Genre: | |
| Length: | 41:12 |
| Label: | ABC |
| Producer: | Gary Katz |
| Prev Title: | Katy Lied |
| Prev Year: | 1975 |
| Next Title: | Aja |
| Next Year: | 1977 |
The Royal Scam is the fifth studio album by American rock band Steely Dan, released in May 1976, by ABC Records; reissues have since been released by MCA Records due ABC's acquisition by the former in 1979. It was produced by Gary Katz. In the United States, the album peaked at number 15 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart, and it has been certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
In common with other Steely Dan albums, The Royal Scam is littered with cryptic allusions to people and events, both real and fictional. In a BBC interview in 2000, songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen revealed that "Kid Charlemagne" is loosely based on Owsley Stanley, the notorious drug "chef" who was famous for manufacturing hallucinogenic compounds, and that "The Caves of Altamira" is about the loss of innocence, the narrative about a visitor to the Cave of Altamira who registers his astonishment at the prehistoric drawings.[3]
"The Fez" has the distinction of being, other than the instrumental "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" on Pretzel Logic (1974), the only Steely Dan song with a credited writer other than Becker and Fagen. Of keyboardist Paul Griffin's contribution to the song, Becker has said that "There is an instrumental melody that Paul started playing in the session, and when we decided to build that melody up to a greater position, since we had some suspicion that perhaps this melody wasn't entirely Paul's invention, we decided to give him composer credit in case later some sort of scandal developed and he would take the brunt of the impact", while Griffin has said that Fagen already had the keyboard riff, and he just took it in a different direction.[4] Fagen later said of Griffin, "There are some musicians who are hacks, and then there are guys like Paul who can create something so different and unique they make the record."[5] Chris Willman described the song in an August 22, 1993, article in Los Angeles Times as "a cheerful ode to the importance of always wearing a condom".[6]
"Everything You Did" features the lyric: "Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening." About the origin of the reference, Glenn Frey of the Eagles said: "Apparently, Walter Becker's girlfriend loved the Eagles, and she played them all the time. I think it drove him nuts. So, the story goes that they were having a fight one day and that was the genesis of the line." Later in 1976, in a nod back to Steely Dan for the free publicity,[7] and inspired by the group's lyrical style,[8] the Eagles included the line: "They stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the beast", in their hit-song "Hotel California". Frey explained: "We just wanted to allude to Steely Dan rather than mentioning them outright, so 'Dan' got changed to 'knives', which is still, you know, a penile metaphor." Given that the two bands shared a manager (Irving Azoff) and the Eagles have proclaimed their admiration for Steely Dan, this was more likely part of a friendly rivalry than a feud.[9] Timothy B. Schmit, who sang backing vocals on The Royal Scam, joined the Eagles in 1977, after being a featured vocalist and bassist with Poco.
The album's cover features an image of a man in a suit sleeping on a bus stop bench in Boston and dreaming of skyscrapers with monstrous animal heads at the top. Zox originally created the painting of the skyscraper/beast hybrids for an unreleased Van Morrison album, and designer Ed Caraeff suggested superimposing a photograph of a sleeping vagrant taken by Charlie Ganse to make the cover for The Royal Scam.[10] In the liner notes for the 1999 remastered reissue of the album, Fagen and Becker jokingly called it "the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none (excepting perhaps Can't Buy a Thrill)."
Upon its release, the album was not met with as much critical acclaim as its predecessors, with many reviewers finding that it did not show any musical progress. The original Rolling Stone review was more positive, however,[11] and the magazine later gave the album five stars out of five in a Hall of Fame review.
In 2000, the album was voted number 868 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums.[12]