Welcome to the Steely Dan Lexicon. Buttons at the bottom of each post enable navigation through the parts of the analysis.
Any fan of Steely Dan, a successful jazz/rock band who released their first album, Can't Buy A Thrill, in 1972, can verify that there is hardly a single song written by band members Donald Fagen (vocalist and keyboardist) and Walter Becker (guitar), which doesn't leave the listener baffled as to its full meaning. The song Only A Fool Would Say That, appears on the album Can't Buy A Thrill. In the first three parts of the Steely Dan Lexicon, we will be analyzing the lyrics of this song.[b]
Only A Fool Would Say That (henceforth: Only A Fool) has the appearance of being an 'answer song' to John Lennon's hit song Imagine (released in 1971), with references to Lennon, and the band which he was formerly a member of, the Beatles,[c] placed throughout (links to the lyrics of Only A Fool and Imagine are provided at the bottom of each post in this analysis). In Lennon's song, the narrator calls himself "a dreamer", and speaks of a (supposedly) idyllic world in which there are no wars, and no separate countries or religions. Only A Fool starts out on a dismal note - "A world become one / Of salads and sun / Only a fool would say that." The "world become one" is a reference to Imagine's narrator's 'utopia' ("And the world will be as one"), and "salads" is a reference to Lennon's own vegetarianism. "Fool" here is a reference to the Beatles' hit song The Fool On The Hill (1967), with Imagine's narrator being the fool for proposing an ideal world.
Only A Fool continues, "A boy with a plan / A natural man / Wearing a white Stetson hat." "Natural" refers to John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, appearing nude on the cover of their Two Virgins album (1968); and, it is also a reference to the concept of a natural man who lives a virtuous, uncomplicated existence - this fitting with Imagine's notion of an ideal world.
Only A Fool Would Say That
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Lyrics (scroll about half way down in the separate window that opens)
Imagine
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Lyrics
a. Cover for the album Can't Buy A Thrill by the artist Steely Dan: The cover art copyright is believed to belong to the label, ABC, or the artist(s) who produced the recording or created the cover artwork.
b. Steely Dan consisted of other members, in addition to Fagen and Becker, at the time that Can't Buy A Thrill was recorded, but these two men have been the only steady members, from the time the band was founded up through current day. In essence, these two are the band.
c. The Beatles no longer existed at the time Lennon recorded Imagine.
All song lyrics in this post are believed to be used in accordance with the U.S. Copyright Fair Use Act (Title 17 U.S. Code).
