Any Major Dude Will Tell You

Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has been spinning "Any Major Dude Will Tell You" off Pretzel Logic, and it still lands like a quiet hand on the shoulder when the road gets crooked. Released as the B-side to "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," this one never chased the charts the way its flip side did, yet it turned into a favorite for people who know the catalog past the singles. Donald Fagen once told Rolling Stone that when he and Walter Becker first moved out to Los Angeles, folks kept calling each other "dude," and the two East Coast guys found the habit funny enough to borrow the language for a song. What started as a joke about California slang grew into something warmer than most of the Dan's usual wry observations. The narrator is talking to a friend whose world is coming apart, offering the simple observation that any major dude with half a heart will tell you the pieces fall back together again. It is one of the rare tracks where Becker stuck to the lyrics and left the music to Fagen, giving the whole thing a slightly different shape inside the Pretzel Logic sessions.

The squonk line is pure Steely Dan mischief mixed with something almost kind. "Have you ever seen a squonk's tears? Well, look at mine." That creature comes from Jorge Luis Borges, a mythical woodland animal so ashamed of its own ugliness that it dissolves into a pool of tears when hunters corner it. The session musicians had never heard of the thing. They kept asking each other between takes, trying not to let on to Fagen and Becker that they were lost. The reference sits there beside the California slang, turning a hippie-ish pep talk into something literary and a little strange. Stewart Mason at AllMusic noted that the wise-ass attitude keeps the comfort from turning sticky, and Brian Sweet's biography frames the whole song around themes of madness and insecurity without ever naming the cause. Listeners still pull it out when a friend is having a rough stretch, because the advice arrives without lectures or pity. Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again, and the demon at the door is gone by morning. It is the closest the early Dan got to plain empathy while still sounding like themselves.

Pretzel Logic itself marked the point where the band was shifting from the road to the studio full time. Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Denny Dias weave their guitars through the track with that easy California glide, while the rhythm section keeps everything unhurried. The album still sits in the official discography as one of the records they reissued with fresh liner notes, and the song continues to surface in fan conversations whenever someone wants a deep cut that feels like a conversation instead of a puzzle. The Zoo Crew has always liked the way it rides the line between the sarcastic and the sincere, the way a long-haired biker DJ might pass a bottle and a story around the fire without making a speech out of it.

The two men who wrote it first crossed paths at Bard College in 1967. Donald Fagen was walking past the Red Balloon cafe on campus when he heard a guitar that sounded professional and contemporary, almost like a player from the city rather than another college kid still figuring out the blues. He stepped inside, introduced himself, and asked if the guitarist wanted to be in a band. Walter Becker said yes. They discovered they had been listening to the same jazz stations out of New York, the same blues records, the same black humor, and the same novels. Within a day they were writing songs together on an upright piano in the lobby of Ward Manor, the old mansion the school used as a dorm. Fagen later remembered those early tunes as nutty little things, and he has said it was probably the only stretch of his life when he actually had friends around. They played in pickup groups that included Chevy Chase on drums, covering Stones and Moby Grape numbers alongside their own material, then took the songs to the Brill Building and eventually landed as staff writers for ABC Records out in Los Angeles.

Once they had the office with the piano, they started assembling a band in the unfinished wing of the building after hours. Denny Dias and Jeff Baxter on guitars, Jim Hodder on drums, Fagen on keyboards, Becker on bass. They named the group after a prosthetic device in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, cut Can't Buy a Thrill, and hit the road behind it and the next two albums, including Pretzel Logic. By the end of that run they had already decided the live circuit was not the point. The real work was in the studio with whatever players could deliver the parts they heard in their heads. That partnership, begun with a casual question outside a campus cafe, carried them through the classic records, the long hiatus, the reunion, and everything that followed. Fagen has said he intends to keep the music they made together alive for as long as he can.

You can follow the reissues, the liner notes, and whatever else they post over at the official Steely Dan website, where Pretzel Logic is listed right alongside the rest of the catalog. The verified page on Facebook and the official account on Instagram keep the updates coming for anyone who wants the news straight from the source. Active fan groups on Facebook, including the long-running Steely Dan Fans gathering, give listeners a place to trade stories about the deep cuts and the tours. The Zoo Crew keeps spinning the records for the Zoo Freaks right here on THE ZOO, commercial-free and freeform, the way the old album rock stations used to do it when the night was long and the deep tracks mattered most. Any major dude will tell you the song still works when you need it.