On this site will be posted analyses of popular media productions. These analyses will have to do with determining the underlying meanings of various movies, songs, and certain novels. Methods used to analyze a given production will include exploration of the creators' use of symbolism, allegory, metaphor, etc., and deciphering any arcane or obscure references that it may contain.
[Image at left from the Wikipedia 'Can't Buy A Thrill' page; "Cant buy a tcant buy a thrill" [sic][a], licensed under fair use via Wikipedia.]
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 Listen on YouTube Lyrics (scroll about half way down in the separate window that opens)
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).
This post consists of a list of observations on the meanings of the lyrics to some of the songs on Donald Fagen's 1982 album, The Nightfly, and how they relate to Stanley Kubrick's 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Certain items in this post will be best understood by those who have read the analysis of 2001 on this blog.
Above left: The cover of Donald Fagen's 1982 album, The Nightfly.[a] Above center: Italian explorer
Giovanni Battista Belzoni.[Image from the Wikipedia 'Giovanni Battista Belzoni' page, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.] Above right: The camera 'eye' of A Space Odyssey's HAL computer.
Songs on The Nightfly album
1. I.G.Y. (What A Beautiful World) (listen on YouTube): According to the NASA IGY page, it was from the IGY (International Geophysical Year) rocket and satellite research that the US developed its space program. Therefore, it is not completely surprising that the lyrics in this song have to do with 2001: A Space Odyssey's (fictional) voyage in space.
I.G.Y. begins with the lyrics, "Standing tough under stars and stripes / We can tell / This dream's in sight." The way that Fagen, the song's vocalist, says, "We can tell", sounds similar to the words 'we count down'; this, taken together with "stars and stripes", is a reference to Discovery One, the spaceship in A Space Odyssey, and to the fact that it is a United States spaceship. It is aboard Discovery One that the two main characters in Kubrick's film, astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole, are voyaging toward Jupiter. "This dream's in sight" is a reference to how a portion of Kubrick's movie depicts a dream David Bowman experiences, and to how the movie is dominated by visuals ("sight"), with relatively little dialogue.
In the verse of I.G.Y. that reads, "Under sea by rail", "Under sea" refers to the fact that part of Bowman's journey on Discovery One, is symbolic of the three days that the biblical prophet Jonah spent in the belly of a whale.
Top left: A Space Odyssey's Discovery One spaceship, viewed from the rear. Top right: Frank Poole (left) and David Bowman, aboard Discovery One. Above left: By the point in A Space Odyssey pictured here, Bowman is the only living man left aboard Discovery One. Bowman is here about to leave Discovery One in an EVA pod, symbolically depicting the biblical Jonah (represented by Bowman) being vomited out from the whale's belly, the whale here being represented by Discovery One itself. Above right: This room appointed in Louis XVI-style is part of a dream Bowman experiences, late in A Space Odyssey.
The I.G.Y. lyrics that say, "Get your ticket to that wheel in space / While there's time", are to be interpreted as follows: The "wheel in space" is a reference to the round, rotating space station from A Space Odyssey, and the "ticket" being referred to is a movie ticket - to A Space Odyssey. The lyrics that read, "The fix is in / You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky", refer to how the odds are stacked against Bowman and Poole, who have been set up to fail in their mission to Jupiter, by mission control on Earth and by HAL, the Discovery One on-board computer. These lyrics are also a reference to the billiard ball 'metaphor' in A Space Odyssey ("game of chance"): Frank Poole, wearing a yellow spacesuit, is hit by the white EVA Pod, which looks like a billiards cue ball, and which is here under the control of HAL. This attack sends Poole drifting off into space. In the British-style version of billiards known as blackball, the object balls (the balls to be pocketed) are solid red and solid yellow.
Above left: The round, rotating space station from Kubrick's film, orbiting Earth. Above right: Frank Poole and his EVA Pod go careening off into space, after Poole has been struck by the pod (which is here under HAL's control). Note that Poole is wearing a yellow spacesuit.
Above left: In accordance with the above-mentioned billiard ball metaphor in A Space Odyssey, David Bowman wears a red spacesuit. Here, he is getting ready to perform a repair on Discovery One's communications satellite antenna. Above right: The rack set-up for the billiards game known as blackball.[Image from the Wikipedia 'Blackball (pool)' page, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.]
The lyrics, "A just machine to make big decisions / Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision", are a reference to the computer ("machine") HAL, who has control over almost all aspects of Discovery One's operations. HAL is intelligent enough to make decisions. However, he has been intentionally wrongly programmed for the mission by scientists on Earth, who have evil intent, so "just" and "compassion" in the I.G.Y. lyrics are being used sarcastically.
"We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young" is a reference to the end of A Space Odyssey, when the 'starchild' (the fetus inside an orb of light, shown at left) is born (thus "young") - with "eternally free" being spoken sarcastically, since the reality is that in A Space Odyssey, one thing being symbolized is Kubrick's prediction that we'll eventually be controlled by certain evil parties (elite elite hermaphroditic Jews, certain evil high-ranking Mormons and Freemasons, and certain other groups, as detailed in the Space Odyssey analysis).
2. The Nightfly (title song) (listen on YouTube): The lyrics at the very beginning of the song, "I'm Lester the Nightfly / Hello Baton Rouge", indicate that the D.J., Lester, is in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but he (voiced by Fagen) later says, "With jazz and conversation / From the foot of Mt. Belzoni ", and Mount Belzoni isn't in Louisiana, it's in Mississippi. The fact that Lester is 'fooling' us about his geographical location, is a reference to how the Space Odyssey Jupiter mission, which is being broadcast to audiences on Earth, is designed to fool these audiences, in the sense that not all of the mission is actually being broadcast from Discovery One - some of it is being televised from the above-mentioned space station. Also, the way Fagen says, "foot of Mt. Belzoni", makes it sound like 'foot-in-mouth Belzoni'; Giovanni Battista Belzoni (shown in the center screencap at the top of this post) was famously clumsy. "So you say there's a race / Of men in the trees": The second verse here can also be heard as, 'Of men in latrines', which is a reference to Heywood Floyd preparing to use the zero-gravity toilet in A Space Odyssey (by reading its instructions).
Heywood Floyd reads the instructions for the zero gravity toilet in A Space Odyssey.
3. Ruby Baby (Fagen's cover of the song originally performed by The Drifters) (listen on YouTube): The use of the word "Baby" in the song's title, and the use of it in the lyrics as well, are references to Kubrick's 'some women are childlike' theme in A Space Odyssey. The verse, "I'm gonna steal you away from all those guys", is a reference to Kubrick's 'women is space as prostitutes' theme in the same film. Note that The Drifters originally released Ruby Baby in 1956, before Kubrick's movie was released; but nevertheless, Fagen included the song on his album and intends for the lyrics, as he sings them, to be the references to Kubrick's film as described.
The fact that this stewardess takes small 'baby-steps' as she walks around the circular passageway in the lunar lander spacecraft in A Space Odyssey, is meant by Kubrick to be a metaphor for the idea, that certain women are childlike. (see YouTube video here).
a. Image from the Wikipedia 'The Nightfly' page; "Donald Fagen - The Nightfly", licensed under fair use via Wikipedia. The cover art copyright is believed to belong to the label, Warner Bros., or the artist(s) who produced the recording or created the cover artwork.
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).
The song under analysis is Steely Dan's Only A Fool Would Say That (from the album Can't Buy A Thrill). As we have observed, the song addresses John Lennon's hit Imagine, in which the narrator seems to describe how he imagines an ideal world would be; whereas Only A Fool 'responds' to Imagine's narrator, in part by depicting a cynical view of the real world. In part 2 of the analysis, we left off with the part of the Only A Fool lyrics that say, "The man in the street / Draggin' his feet / Don't wanna hear the bad news." As described in part 2, these are references to certain parts of the Beatles' song, A Day In The Life (1967). "Bad news" refers to the part of the Beatles' song that mentions the narrator reading a news article in the paper, about a man shooting himself while sitting at a stoplight in his car.
The next verses of Only A Fool say, "Imagine your face / There in his place / Standin' inside his brown shoes / You do his nine to five / Drag yourself home half alive / And there on the screen / A man with a dream." "Nine to five" and "drag" are additional references to A Day In The Life, in specific, to the part of the Beatles' song in which the narrator is a man who begins by describing his activities upon first awakening for work: "Woke up, fell out of bed / Dragged a comb across my head..." Shortly after this, the man arrives at work: "Found my way upstairs and had a smoke..." Evidently, the narrator of this part of A Day In The Life is a workaday man.
The first five of the above-quoted seven verses of Only A Fool, directly address the narrator of Imagine, i.e., the man imagining an ideal world - the verses are meant to suggest to this man that he'd be viewing things with a more cynical perspective, if he were an 'ordinary' man. (As an aside, "Brown shoes" is a reference to the Beatles' song Old Brown Shoe (1969)). Only a Fool's "And there on the screen / A man with a dream" suggests that when our workaday man gets home from work, he watches TV, and on it, he sees Imagine's narrator, or someone like the narrator. Following this point in Only A Fool, the chorus is repeated (the chorus was deciphered in part 2 of the analysis).
Following the second playing of the chorus, the lyrics of Only A Fool are, "Anybody on the street / Has murder in his eyes / You feel no pain / And you're younger / Then you realize." The first two lines taken together are a 'rebuke' of the 'no killing'/'no wars' aspects of Lennon's narrator's ideal world. "You feel no pain" and "You're younger" are, again with the lyrics of Only A Fool directly addressing Imagine's narrator, meant to suggest that this narrator is too young and naive to realize that there can be no world without war. "Then you realize" implies that once this person (Imagine's narrator) has gotten older, he will see how the real world is, that it is not at all like the one he imagines.
At the end of Only A Fool, the chorus is repeated.
Generally speaking, Only A Fool is an answer to the narrator of Imagine, not an answer to Lennon himself; for John Lennon himself could not have been as naive as his song's narrator. In this respect, the Steely Dan song serves to elucidate the fact that Lennon was knowingly having his narrator depict a naive world-view. One way to think of things is that Only A Fool is, in reality, a 'hint song', in that it suggests that Lennon was only being sarcastic or satirical by having his narrator speak as idealistically as he does. Note that in this scenario, the use of the word "I" in the lyrics of Imagine is the narrator's "I", not Lennon's.
This concludes the analysis of Only A Fool Would Say That.
Only A Fool Would Say That Listen on YouTube Lyrics (scroll about half way down in the separate window that opens)
We finished up part 1 of this analysis by interpreting the part of the Only A Fool Would Say That lyrics that go, "A boy with a plan / A natural man / Wearing a white Stetson hat." The next few verses of the song read, "Unhand that gun begone / There's no one to fire upon / If he's holding it high / He's telling a lie." These verses are references to the line "nothing to kill or die for" in Lennon's Imagine (in Imagine's narrator's ideal world, there are no wars or killing).
The next lines in Only A Fool are the chorus: "I heard it was you / Talkin' 'bout a world / Where all is free / It just couldn't be / And only a fool would say that." "You" is used because Donald Fagen (the lead vocalist on Only A Fool) is directly addressing Imagine's narrator here. A "world where all is free" is, of course, another reference to the ideal world suggested in Imagine; and in the last verse is heard another reference to the Beatles' The Fool On The Hill.
The stanza following the first singing of the chorus of Only A Fool begins, "The man in the street / Draggin' his feet / Don't wanna hear the bad news." "Man in the street" refers to the 'average man', i.e., a man who has, for example, a workaday job. The two lines after that are references to the Beatles' hit song A Day In The Life, the final track on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (released in 1967). In specific, "Draggin'" is a reference to the use of the word "dragged" in the part of the Beatles' song that says, "Dragged a comb across my head", and "bad news" corresponds to the part of the A Day In The Life lyrics that say, "I read the news today, oh boy."
Only A Fool Would Say That Listen on YouTube Lyrics (scroll about half way down in the separate window that opens)
Disclaimers 1) In certain instances it has been determined that the creators of some of the productions analyzed on this blog, and/or the creators of source material(s) used in the making of these productions, may be making negative statements about certain segments of society in their productions. These statements should be taken as expressing the opinions of no one other than the creators.
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Saint Augustine's Confessions andCity of God from Wikisource (except where otherwise noted); portions from Wikisource used on this blog are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica from the 'Logos Virtual Library' website (except where otherwise noted), compiled and edited by Darren L. Slider; believed to be in public domain.
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