The Royal Scam
The Royal Scam is the fifth studio album by American rock band Steely Dan, released on May 31, 1976, by ABC Records; reissues have been released by MCA Records since ABC's acquisition by the former in 1979. Like all of the band's previous albums, it was produced by Gary Katz. In the United States, the album peaked at number 15 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart, and it has been certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The album was remastered and reissued on standard black vinyl, on UHQR vinyl by Acoustic Sounds, and digitally on June 6, 2025.
Music and lyrics
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, songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen revealed that "Kid Charlemagne" is loosely based on Owsley Stanley, the notorious drug "chef" who was famous for manufacturing hallucinogenic compounds, and that "The Caves of Altamira" is about the loss of innocence, the narrative about a visitor to the Cave of Altamira who registers his astonishment at the prehistoric drawings."The Fez" is one of three Steely Dan songs with a credited writer other than Becker and Fagen, the others being "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" on Pretzel Logic and the title song from 1980's Gaucho. Of keyboardist Paul Griffin's contribution to the song, Becker has said that "There is an instrumental melody that Paul started playing in the session, and when we decided to build that melody up to a greater position, since we had some suspicion that perhaps this melody wasn't entirely Paul's invention, we decided to give him composer credit in case later some sort of scandal developed and he would take the brunt of the impact", while Griffin has said that Fagen already had the keyboard riff, and he just took it in a different direction. Fagen later said of Griffin, "There are some musicians who are hacks, and then there are guys like Paul who can create something so different and unique they make the record." Chris Willman described the song in an August 22, 1993, article in Los Angeles Times as "a cheerful ode to the importance of always wearing a condom".
Packaging
The album's cover features an image of a man in a suit sleeping on a bus stop bench in Boston and dreaming of skyscrapers with monstrous animal heads at the top. Meant as a satirical take on the "American Dream", artist Larry Zox originally created the painting of the skyscraper/beast hybrids for an unreleased Van Morrison album, and designer Ed Caraeff suggested superimposing a photograph of a sleeping vagrant taken by Charlie Ganse to make the cover for The Royal Scam. In the liner notes for the 1999 remastered reissue of the album, Fagen and Becker jokingly called it "the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none."Reception
Upon its release, the album was not met with as much critical acclaim as its predecessors, with many reviewers finding that it did not show any musical progress. The original Rolling Stone review was more positive, however, and the magazine later gave the album five stars out of five in a Hall of Fame review.In 2000, the album was voted number 868 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums.
Singles
- "Kid Charlemagne" spent three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, reaching a peak position of number 82 in July 1976.
- "The Fez" spent five weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 59 in October 1976.
- "Haitian Divorce" spent nine weeks on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 17 in January 1977.
Track listing
Personnel
;Steely Dan- Donald Fagen – keyboards, lead vocals, background vocals
- Walter Becker – guitar, bass guitar
- Paul Griffin – keyboards
- Don Grolnick – keyboards
- Larry Carlton – guitar
- Denny Dias – guitar
- Dean Parks – guitar
- Elliott Randall – guitar
- Chuck Rainey – bass guitar
- Rick Marotta – drums
- Bernard Purdie – drums
- Gary Coleman – percussion
- Victor Feldman – percussion, keyboards
- Chuck Findley – trumpet
- Bob Findley – trumpet
- Dick "Slyde" Hyde – trombone
- Jim Horn – saxophone
- Plas Johnson – saxophone
- John Klemmer – saxophone
- Venetta Fields – backing vocals
- Clydie King – backing vocals
- Sherlie Matthews – backing vocals
- Michael McDonald – backing vocals
- Timothy B. Schmit – backing vocals
- Garry Sherman – horn arrangements
- Gary Katz – producer
- Roger Nichols – engineer, mixing engineer
- Elliot Scheiner – engineer
- Barney Perkins – mixing engineer
- Brian Gardner – mastering engineer
- Stuart "Dinky" Dawson – sound consultant
- Karen Stanley – nurse
- Ed Caraeff – art direction and design
- Charlie Ganse – cover art
- Zox – cover art
- Tom Nikosey – typographic design
- Roger Nichols – remastering engineer
- Beth Stempel – coordinator
- Vartan – art direction
- Mike Diehl – design
- Daniel Levitin – consultant
Charts