(Admin Note: That’s a playlist of the complete album. Yes, yes we do have that the ability to make that work! It’s more complicated than it looks, but that should work on all browsers that support YouTube.)
Pretzel Logic is the third studio album by Steely Dan, released on February 20, 1974 by ABC Records. It was written by principal band members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.
They recorded the album at The Village Recorder in West Los Angeles with producer Gary Katz. It was the last album to feature the full five-member band of Becker, Fagen, Denny Dias, Skunk Baxter, and Jim Hodder. Although on this recording, drummer Hodder appeared on vocals only. It also featured significant contributions from many prominent Los Angeles–based studio musicians.
The album was a commercial and critical success upon its release. Its hit single “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” helped restore Steely Dan’s radio presence after the disappointing performance of their 1973 album Countdown to Ecstasy. Pretzel Logic was reissued on CD in 1987 and remastered in 1999 to retrospective acclaim from critics.
It was produced by Gary Katz and written primarily by Walter Becker and bandleader Donald Fagen, who also sang and played keyboard. The album marked the beginning of Becker and Fagen’s roles as Steely Dan’s principal members.
They enlisted prominent Los Angeles–based studio musicians to record Pretzel Logic, but used them only for occasional overdubs. Steely Dan’s Jeff “Skunk” Baxter played pedal steel guitar and hand drums.
Steely Dan often incorporated jazz into their music during the 1970s. Baxter’s guitar playing drew on jazz and rock and roll influences. On Duke Ellington’s “East St. Louis Toodle-oo”, he imitates a ragtime mute-trombone solo.
Certain songs incorporate additional instrumentation, including exotic percussion, violin sections, bells, and horns. Music critic Robert Christgau wrote that the solos are “functional rather than personal or expressive, locked into the workings of the music”
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