The Royal Scam

In common with other Steely Dan albums, The Royal Scam is littered with cryptic allusions to people and events, both real and fictional. In a BBC interview in 2000, songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen revealed that "Kid Charlemagne" is loosely based on Owsley Stanley, the notorious drug "chef" who was famous for manufacturing hallucinogenic compounds, and that "The Caves of Altamira" is about the loss of innocence, the narrative about a visitor to the Cave of Altamira who registers his astonishment at the prehistoric drawings.[5]

"The Fez" has the distinction of being, other than the instrumental "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" on Pretzel Logic (1974), the only Steely Dan song with a credited writer other than Becker and Fagen. Of keyboardist Paul Griffin's contribution to the song, Becker has said that "There is an instrumental melody that Paul started playing in the session, and when we decided to build that melody up to a greater position, since we had some suspicion that perhaps this melody wasn't entirely Paul's invention, we decided to give him composer credit in case later some sort of scandal developed and he would take the brunt of the impact", while Griffin has said that Fagen already had the keyboard riff, and he just took it in a different direction.[6] Fagen later said of Griffin, "There are some musicians who are hacks, and then there are guys like Paul who can create something so different and unique they make the record."[7] Chris Willman described the song in an August 22, 1993, article in Los Angeles Times as "a cheerful ode to the importance of always wearing a condom".[8]

The album's cover features an image of a man in a suit sleeping on a bus stop bench in Boston and dreaming of skyscrapers with monstrous animal heads at the top. Zox originally created the painting of the skyscraper/beast hybrids for an unreleased Van Morrison album, and designer Ed Caraeff suggested superimposing a photograph of a sleeping vagrant taken by Charlie Ganse to make the cover for The Royal Scam.[6] In the liner notes for the 1999 remastered reissue of the album, Fagen and Becker jokingly called it "the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none (excepting perhaps Can't Buy a Thrill)."

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[12]
Chicago Tribune	[13]
Christgau's Record Guide	B[14]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[15]
The Great Rock Discography	6/10[16]
MusicHound Rock	3/5[17]
Pitchfork	8.3/10[18]
Q	[19]
Rolling Stone	[20]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[21]

Upon its release, the album was not met with as much critical acclaim as its predecessors, with many reviewers finding that it did not show any musical progress. The original Rolling Stone review was more positive, however,[22] and the magazine later gave the album five stars out of five in a Hall of Fame review.[20]

In 2000, the album was voted number 868 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's book All Time Top 1000 Albums.[23]

• "Kid Charlemagne" spent three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, reaching a peak position of number 82 in July 1976.[24]
• "The Fez" spent five weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 59 in October 1976.[25]
• "Haitian Divorce" spent nine weeks on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 17 in January 1977.[26]

Steely Dan

• Donald Fagen – keyboards, lead vocals, background vocals, horn arrangements
• Walter Becker – guitar, bass guitar, horn arrangements

Additional musicians

• Complete lyrics
• "Don't Take Me Alive" on YouTube