Pretzel Logic

Pretzel Logic is the third studio album by the American rock band Steely Dan, released on February 20, 1974, by ABC Records. It was written by principal band members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, and recorded at The Village Recorder in West Los Angeles with producer Gary Katz. It was the final album to feature the full five-member band of Becker, Fagen, Denny Dias, Jeff Baxter, and Jim Hodder, and also featured significant contributions from many prominent Los Angeles-based studio musicians.

This article is about the album. For the song, see Pretzel Logic (song).
Pretzel Logic
Studio album by
Steely Dan
ReleasedFebruary 20, 1974
RecordedOctober 1973 to January 1974
StudioThe Village Recorder in West Los Angeles
Genre
Length34:02
LabelABC
ProducerGary Katz
Steely Dan chronology
Countdown to Ecstasy
(1973)		 Pretzel Logic
(1974)		 Katy Lied
(1975)
Singles from Pretzel Logic
  1. "Rikki Don't Lose That Number"
    Released: April 25, 1974
  2. "Pretzel Logic"
    Released: June 20, 1974

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.

Recording and production

Pretzel Logic was recorded at The Village Recorder in West Los Angeles.[3] It was produced by Gary Katz and written primarily by Walter Becker and bandleader Donald Fagen, who also sang and played keyboard.[4] 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,[5]except for drums, where founding drummer Jim Hodder was reduced to a backing singer, replaced by Jim Gordon and Jeff Porcaro on the drum kit for all of the songs on the album. Steely Dan's Jeff "Skunk" Baxter played pedal steel guitar and hand drums.[4]

The cover photo featuring a New York pretzel vendor was taken by Raeanne Rubenstein,[6] a photographer of musicians and Hollywood celebrities.[7] She shot the photo on the west side of Fifth Avenue and 79th Street, just above the 79th Street Transverse (the road through Central Park), at the park entrance called "Miners' Gate".[8]

Music and lyrics

Pretzel Logic has shorter songs and fewer instrumental jams than the group's 1973 album Countdown to Ecstasy.[9] Steely Dan considered it their attempt at complete musical statements within the three-minute pop-song format.[4] The album's music is characterized by harmonies, counter-melodies, and bop phrasing.[9] It also relies often on straightforward pop influences.[10] The syncopated piano line that opens "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" develops into a pop melody, and the title track transitions from a blues song to a jazzy chorus.[9]

Steely Dan often incorporated jazz into their music during the 1970s.[11] "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" appropriates the bass pattern from Horace Silver's 1965 song "Song for My Father",[11] while "Parker's Band" features Charlie Parker–influenced riffs and a lyric that invites listeners to "take a piece of Mr. Parker's band."[12] 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.[4] Certain songs incorporate additional instrumentation, including exotic percussion, violin sections, bells, and horns.[4] Music critic Robert Christgau wrote that the solos are "functional rather than personal or expressive, locked into the workings of the music".[12]

Marketing and sales

Pretzel Logic was released by ABC Records on February 20, 1974,[13] to high sales.[10] It charted at number eight on the Billboard 200 and became Steely Dan's third gold-certified album.[14] After the disappointing performance of Countdown to Ecstasy, the album restored their radio presence with the single "Rikki Don't Lose That Number",[15] which became the biggest pop hit of their career and peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100.[16] On September 7, 1993, Pretzel Logic was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), having shipped one million copies in the United States.[13]

Critical reception
Retrospective professional reviews
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[9]
Chicago Tribune[17]
Christgau's Record GuideA+[12]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music[18]
The Great Rock Discography9/10[19]
Music Story[19]
MusicHound Rock4.5/5[19]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[20]
Tom HullA+[21]
Uncut[22]

Pretzel Logic was praised by contemporary critics.[10] Bud Scoppa from Rolling Stone magazine found the album's "wonderfully fluid ensemble sound" unprecedented in popular music and said that the ambiguous lyrics "create an emotionally charged atmosphere, and the best are quite affecting."[4] Down Beat asserted that "there are no better rock recording groups in America, and damn few worldwide."[5] Christgau found the record innovative, writing in Creem: "The music can be called jazzy without implying an insult, and Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are the real world's answer to Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia."[23] In a mixed review, Noel Coppage of Stereo Review was impressed by the music, but said that "the lyrics baffle me; maybe they know what they're talking about, but I can't get a clue."[24]

At the end of 1974, Pretzel Logic was named NME magazine's album of the year,[25] and it was also voted the second best record of 1974 in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of prominent critics published by The Village Voice.[26] Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it number one in his own list.[27] He later wrote that the album encapsulated Steely Dan's "chewy perversity as aptly as its title", with vocals by Fagen that "seem like the golden mean of pop ensemble singing, stripped of histrionics and displays of technique, almost ... sincere, modest."[12]

In The All-Music Guide to Rock (1995), Rick Clark gave it five stars and said that, with the album, Steely Dan "most successfully synthesized their love for jazz into their dense pop/rock sound."[2] Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine called it their "richest album" and wrote that Becker and Fagen's songwriting had become "seamless while remaining idiosyncratic and thrillingly accessible."[9] Stylus Magazine's Patrick McKay said that the "superb" album found them "relying instead on crack studio musicians that could realize their increasingly complex compositions."[28] Rob Sheffield, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), said "Steely Dan's songwriting and Fagen's singing were at their peak of fluid power: The whole album is flawless".[20]

Pretzel Logic has appeared on many professional listings of the greatest albums.[29] In 1994, it was ranked number 67 in the All Time Top 1000 Albums by writer Colin Larkin, who felt the album's mix of jazz, R&B, and pop styles was "highly inventive" and "greater than the sum of its parts"[30] (in the following edition of the ranking in year 2000, it fell to number 292).[31] In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked Pretzel Logic number 385 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time,[32] and 386 in 2012.[33] Based on such rankings, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists Pretzel Logic as the 377th most acclaimed album in history, as well as the 110th most from the 1970s and the sixth most from 1974.[29]

Track listing

All songs written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, except where noted.

Side one
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Rikki Don't Lose That Number" 4:32
2."Night by Night" 3:40
3."Any Major Dude Will Tell You" 3:05
4."Barrytown" 3:17
5."East St. Louis Toodle-Oo"Duke Ellington, Bubber Miley2:45
Side two
No.TitleLength
1."Parker's Band"2:36
2."Through with Buzz"1:30
3."Pretzel Logic"4:32
4."With a Gun"2:15
5."Charlie Freak"2:41
6."Monkey in Your Soul"2:31

Personnel

Charts

Album[35]

Year Chart Position
1974 Pop Albums 8

Singles[36]

Year Single Label & number Position
1974 "Pretzel Logic" (3:59 edit) (B-side: "Through With Buzz") ABC 12033 57
1974 "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" (B-side: "Any Major Dude Will Tell You") ABC 11439 4
gollark: I mean, death won't happen forever.
gollark: Also taxes.
gollark: At least at some levels.
gollark: A lot of it is based on memorizing random information rather than thinking.
gollark: The problem is that knowledge of random stuff is different to intelligence or whatever, *access* to knowledge of stuff is still different to that, sorting through information is still very hard, and the education system often prioritizes remembering random nonsense instead of problem-solving and all that.

References
  1. Varis, Chris (July 7, 2000). "Steely Dan revival a mix of fun surprises, letdowns". The Cincinnati Enquirer. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
  2. Clark, Rick; et al. (October 1995). Erlewine, Michael (ed.). The All-Music Guide to Rock. Miller Freeman, Inc. ISBN 087930376X. On Pretzel Logic Steely Dan most successfully synthesized their love for jazz into their dense pop/rock sound.
  3. "Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic CD Album". CD Universe. Muze. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
  4. Scoppa, Bud (May 23, 1974). "Pretzel Logic". Rolling Stone. New York. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
  5. Morse 1998, p. 189.
  6. Sweet, Brian (2015). Steely Dan: Reelin' In the Years (Updated ed.). London: Omnibus Press. p. PT126. ISBN 978-1-78323-529-2.
  7. "Photography: Meeting Country Music's Superstars: Behind Each Portrait, A Story". NPR. 2014-09-27. Archived from the original on 2015-03-13. Retrieved 2016-04-10.
  8. "Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan (1974)" at popspotsnyc.com
  9. Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan". Allmusic. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
  10. Bacon, Tony (February 1981). "The Royal Scam". Hi-Fi News & Record Review. London. 26 (2): 71.
  11. English 2007, p. 12.
  12. Christgau, Robert (1981). "Consumer Guide '70s: S". Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies. Ticknor & Fields. ISBN 089919026X. Retrieved March 9, 2019 – via robertchristgau.com.
  13. "American album certifications – Steely Dan". Recording Industry Association of America. If necessary, click Advanced, then click Format, then select Album, then click SEARCH. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
  14. Rees & Crampton 1991, p. 501.
  15. Uslan, Clark & Solomon 1981, p. 392.
  16. English 2007, p. 13.
  17. Kot, Greg (August 16, 1992). "Thrills, Scams and Nightflys". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved September 30, 2019.
  18. Larkin, Colin (2007). Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th ed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0857125958.
  19. "Pretzel Logic". Acclaimed Music. Retrieved September 30, 2019.
  20. Sheffield et al. 2004, p. 798–9.
  21. Hull, Tom (n.d.). "Rock (1970s)". tomhull.com. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
  22. "Review: Pretzel Logic". Uncut. London: 88. October 2000.
  23. Christgau, Robert (July 1974). "The Christgau Consumer Guide". Creem. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
  24. Coppage, Noel (July 1974). "Steely Dan: Pretzel Logic". Stereo Review. 33 (1): 94.
  25. "Pictures of NME's albums of the year, 1974-2011". NME.com. IPC Media. Archived from the original on December 29, 2011. Retrieved May 4, 2013.
  26. "The 1974 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll". The Village Voice. New York. January 20, 1975. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
  27. Christgau, Robert (January 20, 1975). "Our Own Critics' Poll". The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
  28. McKay, Patrick (August 27, 2007). "Top Ten Obscure Steely Dan Lyrics". Stylus Magazine. Archived from the original on 12 October 2007. Retrieved 1 March 2019.
  29. "Steely Dan – Pretzel Logic". Acclaimed Music. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
  30. Larkin, Colin (1994). Guinness Book of Top 1000 Albums (1 ed.). Gullane Children's Books. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-85112-786-6.
  31. "Rocklist". Retrieved July 22, 2018.
  32. Levy, Joe; Steven Van Zandt (2006) [2005]. "385 | Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan". Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (3rd ed.). London: Turnaround. ISBN 1-932958-61-4. OCLC 70672814. Retrieved 5 March 2006.
  33. "500 Greatest Albums of All Time Rolling Stone's definitive list of the 500 greatest albums of all time". Rolling Stone. 2012. Retrieved September 5, 2019.
  34. http://www.toto-music.net/jeff_tribute/prasa/prasa25.php
  35. Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan > Charts & Awards > Billboard Albums at AllMusic. Retrieved 27 October 2004.
  36. Pretzel Logic - Steely Dan > Charts & Awards > Billboard Singles at AllMusic. Retrieved 27 October 2004.

Bibliography
  • English, Timothy (2007). Sounds Like Teen Spirit: Stolen Melodies, Ripped-Off Riffs, and the Secret History of Rock and Roll. iUniverse. ISBN 0595906923.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Morse, Tim (1998). Classic Rock Stories: The Stories Behind the Greatest Songs of All Time. Macmillan. ISBN 1429937505.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Rees, Dafydd; Crampton, Luke (1991). Rock Movers & Shakers. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 0874366615.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Sheffield, Rob; et al. (November 2, 2004). Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.
  • Uslan, Michael; Clark, Dick; Solomon, Bruce (1981). Dick Clark's The First 25 Years of Rock & Roll. Dell Publishing. ISBN 044051763X.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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