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Who knew that one of American rock’s biggest and most creative bands, Steely Dan, wrote and recorded a beer jingle for Schlitz that never saw the light of day?
That is, until now…
That lost beer jingle from 1975 has resurfaced thanks to Steely Dan’s longtime engineer Roger Nichols. It was recorded by the band in LA during the eight-month window between Can’t Buy a Thrill and Countdown to Ecstasy, and even though it’s about “the beer that made Milwaukee famous, it’s classic Steely Dan, a band that like the Beatles redefined what rock and pop could be…
As the Exploding Dan Substack explains, Donald Fagen, who co-wrote all of Steely Dan’s songs along with Walter Becker, only agreed to take the gig on the promise of creative freedom without interference from Schlitz .
The now unearthed track runs just under two minutes, featuring a jazz fusion beat and Steely Dan’s uber-rich harmonies, with Fagen singing, “Once around life / Once around livin’ / Once around beer / And you’ll keep around Schlitz.”
“As we were doing it, somebody came by from Schlitz’s ad agency, producer Gary Katz recalls, “you know, a guy with a powder-blue sweater tied around his neck and quite literally a stopwatch in his hand. He walked into the control room and thought he was going to take over, and that just wasn’t gonna happen.”
“He started asking questions about the song,” and Donald said aloud to me, ‘Do you have your hand near the red button?’ Then he addressed the ad guy: ‘If you say another word about this song, we’re just gonna erase it.’ So the guy left.”
The jingle, which features voiceovers in both English and Spanish, ended up getting rejected by Schlitz due to the Spanish voiceovers the band insisted on using.
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And while we’re at it…
Here’s our remembrance of Walter Becker
