The Royal Scam is the fifth studio album by Steely Dan, originally released by ABC Records in 1976. The albumwent gold and peaked at #15 on the charts. The Royal Scam features more prominent guitar work than the prior Steely Dan album, Katy Lied, which had been the first without founding guitarist Jeff Baxter. Guitarists on the recording include Walter Becker, Denny Dias, Larry Carlton, Elliott Randall and Dean Parks. 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, Becker and Fagen revealed that "Kid Charlemagne" is loosely based on Augustus Owsley Stanley, the notorious drug "chef" who was famous for manufacturing hallucinogenic compounds, and that "Caves of Altamira", based on a book by Hans Baumann, is about the loss of innocence, the narrative about a visitor to the Cave of Altamira who registers his astonishment at the prehistoric drawings. It is also influenced by Plato's Cave Allegory and Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn". The album was re-issued by MCA Records in 1979 following the sale of the ABC Records label to MCA.
Cover
The album cover shows a man in a suit, sleeping on a radiator, and apparently dreaming of skyscraper-beast hybrids. The cover was created from a painting by Zox and a photograph by Charlie Ganse, and was originally created for Van Morrison's unreleased 1975 album, Mechanical Bliss, the concept being a satire of the American Dream. In the liner notes for the 1999 remaster of the album, Fagen and Becker claim it to be "the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none."
In the song "Everything You Did", a lyric says, "turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening." 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." Given that the two bands shared a manager and that the Eagles proclaimed their admiration for Steely Dan, this was more friendly rivalry than feud. Later that year in a nod back to Steely Dan for the free publicity, and inspired by Steely Dan's lyric style, the Eagles penned the lyrics, "They stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the beast" in their hit "Hotel California". Frey commented, "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.". This comment refers to the name's claimed origin in William S. Burroughs' book Naked Lunch. Timothy B. Schmit, who sang background vocals on "The Royal Scam" would later join the Eagles.
Reception
The album was not as highly rated upon its release as its predecessors with most reviewers finding that it did not show any musical progress. In contrast, the original Rolling Stone review was more positive, and ultimately the magazine gave it five stars in a later Hall of Fame review. In 2000 it was voted number 868 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums.
Track listing
Personnel
Steely Dan
Donald Fagen – keyboards, vocals, background vocals
