Steely Dan and Donald Fagen Drop Schlitz Beer Jingle Song

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Photo: Chris Walter/WireImage

Well, they did it again. You can almost hear Tony blasting it from his car while being chased by the feds. Weeks after the holy grail of Steely Dan recordings, The Second Arrangement, was unearthed from the audio abyss, another seemingly lost track has found the light of day. This one is a short jingle made for the beer company Schlitz, henceforth known as The Schlitz Jingle, made during some downtime before the sessions for Countdown to Ecstasy began. According to Expanding Dan Substack, Donald Fagen agreed to take the corporate gig on the condition that they write the jingle themselves and not be bothered by the company’s ad men in suits. Have a little taste:

I come home from hard work

He said he likes to grab for all the goodies he can get

Because you only go around once.

While we were doing this, someone from the Schlitzs ad agency you know came in, a guy with a powder-blue sweater tied around his neck and literally a stopwatch in his hand, said Gary Katz, the bands longtime producer. He walked into the control room and thought he was going to take over, and that wasn’t going to happen. He started asking questions about the song. Donald said loudly to me, Is your hand by your side near the red button? Then he confronted the ad guy: If you say another word about this song, were just gonna erase it. So the man left. The jingle was ultimately disapproved by Schlitz due to an accidental translation issue: Its spoken Spanish interlude included the word grab, which sounded too close to fuck in the language. Like The Second Arrangement, the jingle tapes were held by Roger Nichols, the bands chief engineer, and have now been released by his daughter for fans to enjoy. Who wants cold?

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