Pretzel Logic (1974)

Pretzel Logic is the third studio album by American rock band Steely Dan, released on February 20, 1974, by ABC Records. It was recorded at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, California, with producer Gary Katz. The album was the last to be made and released by the group while it was still an active touring band, and the last to feature the band's full quintet lineup of Walter Becker, Donald Fagen, Denny Dias, Jim Hodder, and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (who subsequently left to join the Doobie Brothers), though it also features significant contributions from many prominent Los Angeles-based studio musicians, and consequently the five band members all have reduced roles compared to their previous albums. No individual track on Pretzel Logic uses all five members of Steely Dan, and some only use two or three.

A commercial and critical success, the single "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" helped restore Steely Dan's radio presence after the disappointing performance of its predecessor, and became their biggest hit. The tour accompanying Pretzel Logic's release was extremely stressful for Becker and Fagen, who then retired Steely Dan as a touring act and dissolved the original quintet. Pretzel Logic was reissued on CD in 1987, and remastered in 1999, to retrospective acclaim.

Recording and production

Like Steely Dan's previous albums, Pretzel Logic was recorded at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, produced by Gary Katz, and written primarily by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.

The album marked the beginning of Becker's and Fagen's roles as the sole members of Steely Dan; the pair enlisted prominent Los Angeles-based studio musicians to record numerous overdubs. Before production began, Becker and Fagen met with Jim Hodder, Steely Dan's founding drummer, and told him they planned to use session musician Jim Gordon to record the drums for the album. Although Hodder still received financial compensation as a band member, being sidelined deeply upset him, and he would often attend the recording sessions for Pretzel Logic despite not being allowed to play. Becker and Fagen did allow Hodder a shot at playing drums on one track, "Night by Night", but despite numerous takes he was unable to deliver a performance that had what Becker and Fagen wanted, and they decided they needed another drummer. With it now the middle of the night, Denny Dias, one of Steely Dan's two guitarists, suggested nineteen-year-old Jeff Porcaro, who showed up at the session with his friend and frequent keyboardist collaborator, David Paich. Hodder's sole contribution to Pretzel Logic was some background vocals on "Parker's Band".

Becker and Fagen were having difficulty coming up with new songs, so in addition to recording a cover song ("East St. Louis Toodle-Oo") for the only time in Steely Dan's history, they used three older songs, written before Steely Dan was formed: "Barrytown", "Parker's Band", and "Charlie Freak". Though credited jointly to Becker and Fagen, "Barrytown" was written solely by Fagen, and is about Barrytown, New York, a small town near Fagen's alma mater of Bard College. "Parker's Band" has drums by both Porcaro and Gordon, who was one of the young Porcaro's musical heroes. The composition of "Charlie Freak" is unchanged from Becker and Fagen's 1960s demo recording of the song, though the arrangement on the Pretzel Logic recording is more elaborate.

In addition to electric guitar, Jeff Baxter played pedal steel guitar and percussion. The string section-like sounds on "Charlie Freak" were created by Baxter's pedal steel guitar, with distortion applied.

Becker had been playing around with the Duke Ellington tune "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" for years. For the recording, Becker used an electric guitar with a talk box to imitate Bubber Miley's plunger-muted trumpet part, Baxter used his pedal steel guitar to imitate Tricky Sam Nanton's trombone solo, and Fagen played the clarinet solo on piano.

After costs grew prohibitive at the Village Recorder, the project moved to the new Cherokee Studios in Chatsworth, Los Angeles.

Becker and Fagen wanted the album to have a title connoting the seedy, sexual side of life, but could not come up with anything they liked, so they just named it after one of the songs on the album.

Music and lyrics

Pretzel Logic contains shorter, more concise songs than Steely Dan's previous album, Countdown to Ecstasy (1973), as the group had decided to attempt to produce complete musical statements within the three-minute pop-song format. Music critic Robert Christgau wrote that the album's solos are "functional rather than personal or expressive, locked into the workings of the music".