Album: The Royal Scam (1976)

Charted: 82

License This Song 

• While the music played, you worked by candlelight
  Those San Francisco nights
  You were the best in town
  Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
  You turned it on the world
  That's when you turned the world around
  
  (Did you feel like Jesus?)
  Did you realize
  That you were a champion in their eyes?
  
  On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene
  But yours was kitchen-clean
  Everyone stopped to stare at your technicolor motor home
  Every A-Frame had your number on the wall
  You must have had it all
  You'd go to L.A. on a dare and you'd go it alone
  
  (Could you live forever?)
  Could you see the day?
  Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away?
  
  Get along, get along, Kid Charlemagne
  Get along, Kid Charlemagne
  
  Now your patrons have all left you in the red
  Your low-rent friends are dead
  This life can be very strange
  All those Day-Glo freaks who used to paint the face
  They've joined the human race
  Some things will never change
  
  (Son, you were mistaken)
  You are obsolete
  Look at all the white men on the street
  
  Get along, get along, Kid Charlemagne
  Get along, Kid Charlemagne
  
  Clean this mess up else we'll all end up in jail
  Those test tubes and the scale
  Just get it all out of here
  Is there gas in the car?
  Yes, there's gas in the car
  I think the people down the hall know who you are
  
  (Careful what you carry)
  'Cause the man is wise
  You are still an outlaw in their eyes
  
  Get along (get along), get along, Kid Charlemagne (get along)
  Get along, Kid Charlemagne Writer/s: Donald Jay Fagen, Walter Carl Becker
  Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
  Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 48

• Mossy from OhioSeveral errors. Not Dayglo/face, it's (Italian racial slur)/fence. It's not "is there gas in the car" it's "get this gas to the car, get this gas to the car."
• Chief from ChicagoI recall an interview with Walter Becker where he described this song as an elegy to the sixties, and not about Owsley specifically.
• Nini from ColoradoMy 1st LSD trip (experience) was Owsly in 1967 in Watsonville, CA ! It was phenomenal! Before all the bad cuts and ugly drugs they cut it with.
• Bruce from Baltimore, MdFor many years, and in a previous life, I was under the impression that “just by chance you crossed a diamond with a pearl” was a reference to freebasing cocaine. The lyrics go on to mention test tubes, a hotel room, no gas in the car etc. Seems very fitting to me, but that’s the beauty of good music. The lyrics are genius in that they’re written just loosely enough to allow the listener to interpret them for themselves.
• Art4peace from CaliforniaI have loved this song for 40+ years, especially Larry Carlton's guitar solos. Recently when I heard it, in the context of 2020 and the various conspiracy theories about the possible laboratory origin of Covid we have all seen, this verse literally gave me goosebumps: "Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl, you turned it on the world..." Obviously the song was about Owsley in the 60s, but that lyric sounds pretty spooky now, doesn't it?
• James from NashvilleI've heard the isolated vocals on this song and can confirm that he is definitely singing 'champion' (not 'italian') at :36 and 'day-glo freaks' (not 'dago freaks') at 1:42. Great song, great band!
• Rick from West Chester, PaWhat a great song, I always figured it was about Owsley but just confirmed it recently. The lyrics are just perfect for Steely Dan's style.
• Adrien from BostonOh my God it *IS* "italian" and not "champion"! I am stunned to have been hearing it wrong all these years!!!
• B Clubb from South CackalackI first this song may ha been about Alexander shulgin.... but quickly found out it was about the bear!!! Only reason to post right now is to give love & respects to Walter Becker! Rip legend!!! Also Jeff from Jacksonville, you exactly right bout the gas running out on him fleeting for the piggies!
• Peter from OhioWow, I can't believe how some just don't get it. I mean this song, it's so plainly obvious that it is about Owsley Stanley lll, the great acid cooker of the sixties. The "gas in the car" reference is so clear. But the song is also full of 1960's references like the "Day-Glo freaks" who used to "paint the face" is about a brand of fluorescent paint (Day-Glo) that the flower children would use to paint flowers and peace signs on their faces. You don't see them around anymore because they've "joined the human race" (the rest of the 9-5 world). Yes Stanley seemed to cross the diamond with the pearl and then along with the Merry Pranksters (Technicolor motor home) went on to turn the whole world on. This song is Steely Dan at their best. The wry, but ingenious humor buried in masterful lyrics and skillful musicianship catches my attention everytime and Kid Charlemagne is one of their best.
• Sam from New YorkPraveen: Not so fast. I mean, it seems clear to me that "white men" in this context is a reference to cocaine ("you are obsolete; look at all the white men on the street" = "no one wants LSD anymore; everyone is buying cocaine these days"). And I can even hear "Day-Glo" instead of "dago". But there is absolutely NO WAY that the word being sung is "champion," the writer's claims and the official Steely Day lyric web page notwithstanding. I hear "Italian" too, and Charlemagne WAS the King of Italy (although not technically "Italian").
• Praveen from SunnyvaleWell, for 25 years I have known this song, and heard the lyrics as "all you dago freaks...you are Italian in their eyes". I attributed this to Fagen's imagined Italian background, and anti-Italian racism in USA. The line "look at all the white men in the street" suggested Italians finally becoming white. Anyway, thanks to the interwebs, and this fine site, I stand corrected.
• Nathan from Austin TxMike, interesting that you bring up the Crystal Meth connection. There's at least once in Breaking Bad that Walter White references his love for Steely Dan. And also in Malcolm in the Middle, there's an episode where Bryan Cranston's character relaunches his old pirate radio station from when he was in college, where he took the pseudonym Kid Charlemagne.
• Mike from New London, CtWhile the song was written about a kitchen chemist cooking up batches of high quality, squeaky clean LSD, it seamlessly translates into the present time by the lyrics perfectly matching up with a kitchen chemist cooking up Crystal Meth instead. In fact, if someone didn't know when this song was written, they would almost certainly think it WAS talking about someone cooking up Meth, it's what my nephew thought when he heard it. Makes the song more timeless than it already was by reminding older people like me of my youth, and younger people of the present time. Except the big difference is while I have fond memories of doing LSD a few times, Crystal Meth completely destroys people's entire lives and even whole rural communities and is the scourge of the midwest. Sad.
• Rob from Boston, Ma"Did you feel like Jesus" makes me think of Fagan's so called faustian deal with devil, did it ever happen, is that why he is so talented? He is on record as not being a believer, but the grandest statement in bible is "every knee will bow and every tongue confess 'Jesus is Lord' to the glory of the Father."
  
  This statement signified that Jesus is God and that it is the Father's will to have everyone acknowledge that he is God, not just a good moral teacher, or some Kid Charlemagne type. Objectively provable from non bibical sources such as Alexander the Great Hellenizing Palestine (a term not even used back then Hadrian coined it centuries later proving that the Palestinians are just political footballs of the Arab world and not native to Israel at all.
• Rob from Boston, MaI love the drums in this tune. The guitar and drums work so well together.
• Onetoke from Memphis,tn, United KingdomTo Liquid Len and Dave from Ottawa, Canada: You guys are just not old hippies or OLD HIPPIE MUSICIANS or You would remember that time changes in the middle of a song mean that it is a song about LSD. WOW! Just so happens that this song is about the ACID KING OWSLEY STANLEY -- the first chemist to mass produce perfect LSD in San Francisco. He was busted after his car ran out of gas. That super clean acid was the cross of a diamond with a pearl.
• Jeff from Boston, MaI always thought the quasi-disco rhythm and instrumentation perfectly complements what the lyrics are saying by making it clear that this is no longer the era of 1960s hippie/folk music. You can imagine the characters as they talk with their standard-issue 70s perms and the oversized sunglasses to hide the bloodshot eyes.
• Chip from Jacksonville, FlThe reason behind "Is there gas in the Car? Yes there is gas in the car!", was that Owsley was arrested after his car ran out of gas.
• Tim from La Grange, Txcrossed a diamond with a pearl,you turned it on the world,thats when you turned the world around.yeah acid turned the world around.you could also apply this song to the "crack epidemic".a chemist hittin' "on the right combination"
• Tom from Concord, VtThe solo was done in *two* takes, not one - still amazing.
  http://www.granatino.com/sdresource/16lc.htm
• Michael-d from Boston, Ma- Shady in San Francisco, you got it right. It's the *idea* being the inspiration here. Sometimes musicians paint the horizon with w/ a few extra colors that satisfy them, as opposed to what is really there. But it paints a memorable picture.
  
  
• Shady from San Francisco, CaI had an amusing experience a few years back hearing Owsley talk about this song. "I don't know who they think they were talking about, but it sure wasn't me," he said. I think the title of the song spoke volumes, though. Owsley aka Bear is a brilliant and opinionated man, but modest he is not. I also think the song is more about the *idea* of Owsley as a symbol of The Haight rather than the man himself, but it definitely draws heavily on interesting biographical snippets from Owsley's legacy as an outlaw hero.
• Claude from Kingston, MaEveryone is talking about the gas in the car line.....my favorite line has always been "clean this mess up else we'll all end up in jail, those test tubes and the scale....."
• Trigger from New York, NyI think the Happy Mood towards the end, musically, is an homage to Ken Kesey's band of Prankster's "tootling the multitudes" from the top of their bus. Their improvised, music was described in Electric Kool Aid Acid Test to sound something like this.I also think that this is a song/tribute to a Kesey.Owsley composite character.
  "go to LA on a dare" refers to Kesey's warrants for a pot arrest that he, as someone already said, was hiding in Mexico for but would dress up in disguise and go to LA and SF till he eventually got nailed.
• Jenny from Boston, Mamy favorite line:
  everybody stopped to stare at your technicolor motorhome!!
• George from Holiday, FlThe YouTube video features NYC session guitarist Jon Herrington. This from the "Two Against Nature" tour.
• Andrew from Boynton Beach, FlRe: the diamond and the pearl line...Janis Joplin, nicknamed "Pearl," used to do speedballs. Perhaps this is a reference to famous drug users, in which case, who would "Diamond" be?
• Tim from Houston, Txjust by chance you crossed a diamond with a pearl,you turned it on the world....that would work pretty good to describe the "crack epidemic".
  who needs nostradomas,we got steely dan
• Andy from Rockaway , NyLarry Carlton played guitar, gret.
  IS THERE GAS IN THE CAR
  YES THERE'S GAS IN THE CAR
  My son's favorite line.
• Michelina from The Mountains, CoGood God, ya gotta love Bernard "Pretty" Purdie...and hey, Adam from England, I've heard that Donald Fagen didn't want to sing, that he didn't have confidence in his voice, but Katz and Becker felt that Fagen's voice got the intent of the material across best.
• Joe from New York, NyIn 1978 I recall being under the impression Lee Ritenour was the soloist until I was corrected by my guitar teacher. I was like, "No way, man. It's clearly Rit. Listen to the lines. Classic Rit." But it is LC, of course, not Rit. But a while ago, I read an interview with LC in which he said that Fagan and Becker wanted Rit for that job but couldn't get him and asked LC to "play like Rit." Has anyone else ever heard that? Like an idiot, I failed to save the article.
• Troy from Macon, Ga"On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene,
  But yours was kitchen clean." This refers to the fact that Owsley Stanley developed a method of making his LSD 99.9% free of impurities, making it higher-quality and "safer" than his competitors.
• Liquid Len from Ottawa, CanadaYou're right, Dave, there's a measure of 2/4 in the midst of an entirely 4/4 song, soon after the solo starts. Right around where he does the little guitar figure that they would expand upon at the end of the song. (Does anyone else find the solo at the end strangely unrelated to the rest of the song, suddenly the mood is too happy or something)
  
• Scott from Charlottesville, VaMy understanding is that "crossed the diamond with the pearl" refers specifically to the drug combination called a "speedball," which Stanley supposedly invented.
• Anastasia from Riverside, Cabelieve it or not, that solo was done it ONE TAKE!!!
• Dave from Romulus, NyRe the guitar solo...is it my imagination or does the time signature change or does he throw in an extra note?
• Ron from West Palm Beach, LaI always assumed this song was about novelist and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey, author of "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest" and subject of Tom Wolfe's "Electric Koolaid Acid Test". The lines, "Get the scales outta here", and "Is there gas in the car?" and "I think the people down the hall know who you are" -- all refer to Kesey's experience in Mexico as a fugitive from the FBI. (Serious paranoia.) Also, "Your Technicolor motor home" would of course refer to the Prankster's psychedelic school bus, "Further".
• Shane from De Moines, IaLots of references to acid here - "yours was kitchen clean", "dayglo freaks", "on the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene", etc....
• Frank from Cambridge, MaGreat song. I spent hours trying to perfect that Larry Carlton solo. I thought it was about some designer drug (crossed a diamond with a pearl). Close enough.
  
  My favorite line is: "All those day-glo freaks who used to paint their face. They've joined the human race. Some things will never change." I don't know why but it always makes me laugh.
  
• Jacob from St. Louis, MoI agree: the guitar work is fabulous throughout.
  
  The bass groove for the song is also pretty kick-ass
• Dell from Atlanta, GaSorry Jeanette/Walter, Love the "gas in the car" line.
• Dirk from Nashville, TnJeanette--that's funny about Fagen saying that. The gas-in-the-car line is always the hook for me. It's such a typical stroke of Steely Dan songwriting realism. How many times have you had somebody ask you, "Is there gas in the car," and you thought, in a Donald Fagen voice, "yes there's gas in the caaaaaaaar."
• Joe from Wilmington, DeThis reminds me of a week I spent in San Francisco, which was the best week of my life.
  
  The song is obviously about Owsley and his acid making, but the element of race is also present here.
• Jeanette from Irvine, CaFagen considers the "is there gas in the car! yes theres gas in the caaaaaaaaar!" part of the song his corniest lyrics. lol
• Adam from Wolverhampton, EnglandDonald Fagen has a amazin voice!
• Bill from Moriches, NyLarry C. pulls off a great jazzy solo. The chord changes are not very typical for a rock/pop tune, and the solo is a timeless classic!
• Liquid Len from Ottawa, CanadaVery good guitar solo by Larry Carleton. Grooving drums by Bernard Purdy, playing on a drum kit borrowed from Jeff Porcaro.

More Songfacts:

A Bar Song (Tipsy)Shaboozey

Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" is a country reworking of J-Kwon's hip-hop hit "Tipsy," with the setting changed from a club to a dive bar.

Piano ManBilly Joel

Billy Joel is surprised that "Piano Man" is so successful. He called it "an old, long song about a guy at a depressing piano bar."

Soak Up The SunSheryl Crow

Sheryl Crow's "Soak Up The Sun" isn't as lighthearted as it seems: the song deals with the prevailing head-in-the-sand reaction to climate change.

Break FreeAriana Grande

Ariana Grande's collaboration with Zedd, "Break Free" came about after the Russian-German producer overheard Grande performing at a label showcase while he was backstage, and he mentioned to his team that he wanted to work with her.

Are You Gonna Go My WayLenny Kravitz

"Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz is from the perspective of Jesus Christ: "I am the chosen I'm the one."

TammyDebbie Reynolds

"Tammy" by Debbie Reynolds was the only US #1 single by a female act between July 1956 and February 1958.

Editor's Picks

Ian Anderson: "The delight in making music is that you don't have a formula"Songwriter Interviews

Ian talks about his 3 or 4 blatant attempts to write a pop song, and also the ones he most connected with, including "Locomotive Breath."

Taylor DayneSongwriter Interviews

Taylor talks about "The Machine" - the hits, the videos and Clive Davis.

Dino Cazares of Fear FactorySongwriter Interviews

The guitarist/songwriter explains how he came up with his signature sound, and deconstructs some classic Fear Factory songs.

Kevin GodleySongwriter Interviews

Kevin Godley talks about directing classic videos for The Police, U2 and Duran Duran, and discusses song and videos he made with 10cc and Godley & Creme.

Fire On The StageSong Writing

When you have a song called "Fire," it's tempting to set one - these guys did.

Harry Wayne Casey of KC and The Sunshine BandSongwriter Interviews

Harry Wayne Casey tells the stories behind KC and The Sunshine Band hits like "Get Down Tonight," "That's The Way (I Like It)," and "Give It Up."