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Are you gonna do it without the fez on?  1976’s The Royal Scam, Steely Dan’s fifth album, is returning on June 6 in a variety of formats to conclude the band’s reissue campaign which began in November 2022 with Can’t Buy a Thrill.  Like the past titles in this series encompassing the Dan’s ABC/MCA discography, The Royal Scam will be reissued on 180-gram vinyl from Geffen/UMe while an audiophile-aimed UHQR 45 RPM, 200-gram vinyl edition and a hybrid stereo SACD (playable on all CD players) will arrive from Analogue Productions.  All formats have been newly remastered; Bernie Grundman has mastered the UHQR and SACD iterations from the original tapes while Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling Sound handles the standard 180-gram LP.  The latter has been sourced from high-resolution digital transfers of the tapes, and pressed at Precision.  Nino-Hernes’ remaster will also be released digitally.

The Royal Scam was housed in a jacket adorned with artwork once described by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen as “the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none (excepting perhaps Can’t Buy a Thrill).”  Yet the cryptic cover – depicting a man sleeping as giant skyscrapers with monstrous heads surround him – was somewhat appropriate for the dark if alluring sounds within.  Expectedly, Becker and Fagen surrounded themselves with the era’s finest musicians to bring their jazz-flecked fantasias and musical noirs to life.  These included drummer Bernard “Pretty” Purdie (in his first appearance on a Dan album); keyboardists Paul Griffin and Don Grolnick; guitarists Larry Carlton, Dean Parks, and Denny Dias; bassist Chuck Rainey; percussionists Gary Coleman and Victor Feldman; horn players Chuck Findley, Dick Hyde, Jim Horn, and Plas Johnson; and singers Venetta Fields, Clydie King, Sherlie Matthews, Michael McDonald, and Timothy B. Schmit, among others.  With Gary Katz producing and Roger Nichols and Elliot Scheiner engineering, it was assured that every sonic detail laid down by the band would be heard on The Royal Scam.

Becker and Fagen’s songs were typically sharp and observational, from the double entendre-laden “The Fez” to the lead single “Kid Charlemagne,” inspired by LSD chemist, Grateful Dead pal, and counterculture hero Owsley Stanley.  The title track, the longest on the album, illuminated the sad underbelly of the so-called American Dream as did “Don’t Take Me Alive,” sung from the perspective of an outlaw on the brink.   “Sign In Stranger” conjures a sinister world while the reggae-tinged “Haitian Divorce” told its relationship story on a more personal level.  With generous soloing (Larry Carlton on “Kid Charlemagne,” “Everything You Did,” “Don’t Take Me Alive,” and “The Royal Scam;” Paul Griffin on “Sign In Stranger;” Walter Becker on “The Fez,” Dean Parks on “Haitian Divorce”) and brass arrangements by Garry Sherman, The Royal Scam set the stage for the following year’s jazz-rock breakthrough, Aja.  It reached No. 15 on the Billboard 200 and yielded charted singles with “Kid Charlemagne” and “The Fez” in the U.S., and “Haitian Divorce” on the U.K. Singles Chart.

The remastered 180-gram LP of The Royal Scam will arrive on June 6; the Analogue Productions titles are also available for pre-order now.

Steely Dan, The Royal Scam (ABC Records ABCD-931, 1976 – reissued Geffen/UMe, 2025)

180-gram black vinyl: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
UHQR Vinyl Box: Acoustic Sounds
Hybrid Stereo SACD: Acoustic Sounds

Side A

1. Kid Charlemagne
2. The Caves of Altamira
3. Don’t Take Me Alive
4. Sign In Stranger
5. The Fez

Side B

1. Green Earrings
2. Haitian Divorce
3. Everything You Did
4. The Royal Scam​