“Only a Fool Would Say That” by Steely Dan
Apparently not all fiery, young musicians from the 1960s and 70s were hippyish. For here we have Steely Dan, who were in their early twenties at the time, criticizing the type of idealism that helped define mainstream hippy ideology.
It has been put forth that this song is actually a John Lennon diss track. That said, it should be stated that no names are dropped. But it is also pretty obvious that the titular “fool”, even if inspired by a particular individual, is a personification of a group. And most simply explained, that group is defined by a naïve idealism. From the vocalist’s perspective, this naïve idealism is not founded in reality but rather the privileged background they come from.
To these people, based on their own experience, the world is indeed free – ripe with opportunity, if you will. But what the vocalist is reminding them of is that the same is not true for instance for the laymen who are breaking their backs to make ends meet.
So it is such individuals who Steely Dan are labeling as “a fool”, the types who can actually stand up in public and say something like ‘all is free in the world’. Or put more bluntly a person of a privileged standing, like say Lennon, was not in a realistic position to speak on behalf of the masses, who do not have life as easy.
Facts about “Only a Fool Would Say That”
This is a track whose official release date is listed as 1 November 1972, being one of the songs found on Steely Dan’s “Can’t Buy a Thrill”. And even though ABC Records did not put it forth as a single from that album, “Only a Fool Would Say That” still seems to be a fan favorite.
The aforementioned John Lennon (1940-1980) was of course a member of The Beatles from 1960 to 1970, a British rock band who can be considered the most successful music act of that decade.
Steely Dan is a band that was more or less fronted by its founders, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. At the time this particular song came out, they were buttressed by the following:
- vocalist David Palmer
- drummer Jim Hodder
- guitarist Skunk Baxter
- guitarist Denny Dias
In more recent years, since the passing of Becker in 2017, Fagen has been holding down the act on his own.
It was also Becker and Fagen who wrote “Only a Fool Would Say That”, and the track was produced by regular Steely Dan collaborator Gary Katz.
Steely Dan’s “Can’t Buy a Thrill”
In November of 1972, the album, “Can’t Buy a Thrill” was released by Steely Dan. It was released as their debut studio album.
“Can’t Buy a Thrill” can be described as a fusion of pop, folk rock and soft rock sounds. It was recorded at The Village Recorder, a recording studio located in Los Angeles. The producer of the album is one Gary Katz. Gary is widely recognized for his works with the band.
The defunct ABC Records was responsible for the release of the album in 1972. On 22 August of 1973 the album got reissued by Dunhill Records.
“Can’t Buy a Thrill” peaked at No. 17 on the Billboard 200. Additionally it won numerous accolades. One of these accolades was being ranked at the 238th position on Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. In an updated version of the said list in 2020, the album was placed at the 168th position.
On the 7th of September, 1973, the album received a Platinum certification from the RIAA. This was after it sold over a million copies in the US.
Two officially singles were released from this album. They are:
- “Reelin’ In the Years”
- “Do It Again”
Excellente
This song gives me tropical vibes.
Also, Steely Dan > The Beatles, there, I said it.
My favorite Steely Dan song right now – till I hear the next song. I get the tropical feel too. And I love hearing Donald sing those high notes. One bad thing about Steely Dan songs, they always come to an end. I hate that!
This “insight” into Lennon is so locked into the rubric of the times as to be completely meaningless. Lennon came from a working class family. The 60’s were rife with social upheaval and war. The threat of nuclear annihilation was ever present in ways anyone born after 1970 can’t imagine. The optimism of the Beatles was a triumph over fear and hopelessness, not a privileged world-view. By the way, the music was anything but one thing. It was also gritty, political, intimate, honest, challenging. Irony is lost on this generation.
Lennon came from an upper middle-class family. His friends laugh at the idea he was “a working-class hero.”
He lived with his aunt and uncle who was a milkman…hardly upper middle class.
“Upper middle class” my behind. Upper working class maybe!
Certainly NOT anything remotely resembling middle class! The amount of uninformed sh*te some folk talk about Lennon, is hilarious.
So you think Lennon was “upper middle class”?!?! Hahahaha! What a load of uninformed rubbish. Upper working class maybe, but that just means there was one wage coming in! The idea that that made him “upper middle class” is laughable!
The amount of ill informed rubbish some folk spew about Lennon, is ludicrous!
For someone who “wasn’t working class,” he sure had to do a lot of work for a lot of years. No one who knows anything about the subject seriously believes that that family was of the aristocracy, living off of their inheritance and investments. John didn’t go to school with the Royal Family.
The Beatles and solo John Lennon: vast difference.
damn straight it was
Lennon was not from a working class family, he had a comfortable middle-class background. McCartney was the more working class member of the Lennon/McCartney team.
I believe they were new arrivals to LA from NYC when they wrote this, definitely when they recorded. Walter has stated they wrote about NYC characters when in LA and vice versa. “Salad and sun” may refer to the LA types they encountered in California, but their mind was on the NYC types they were missing, hence “ everybody on the street…murder in their eyes”. So they’re inundated with altruistic optimism from the granola LA showbiz types and they counter that with the bleak worldview of the New Yorkers they’ve left behind. Takeaway? Great lyrics over amazing chord changes and jazzy guitar fills that I hadn’t yet heard in 1972.
Terrific story, thank you
Lennon’s imagine was essentially born out of idealism and naivete which is at the root of privilege. Which is basically the same issue with all the liberal whack jobs in the United States these days. If you want to be a dreamer and if you want to work to make the world better, fine, but don’t hold yourself out as something special and know and accept that most things don’t change and human nature doesn’t change.
Wow! Where is that coming from? Where are you getting the idea that Lennon or all the whacky liberals out there think (or thought) that they are better than everyone else?
I have never met one who didn’t think that.
Some do not take the British invasion literally which it was…I was Tavistock directed at the culture to demoralised the population.The beatles were the ace in the pocket and ‘imagine’is a think tank dream.
Why are all conservatives naive di-ks?
Why are all the leftists destructive haters?
Conservatives are driven by facts and reality. Liberals live in an emotion driven perpetual child state. Except they are convinced that only they know how to run the world and if you’ll just shut up they’ll create a utopia, like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot.
LOL
+1 on this comment
There were many arrogant quips and lyrics from John over the years, none more foolish than “we’re more popular than god”. Goes deeper than simply privilege… thinking very highly of himself and his views. Signed, A Beatles fan
Jesus. More popular than Jesus.
only jesus was more popular than jesus
I don’t think John Lennon was bragging when he said this. He was simply stating a fact. I don’t even think he enjoyed or understood the adulation.
Famously taken completely out of context, and then completely misinterpreted by superstitious morons paranoid that someone might diss their cult idol. It wasn’t a brag, as it was taken to be, out of context. It was a random example within a discussion regarding the decrease in church attendance, which was an actual thing in the real world in Britain at that time. After all these years, people are STILL knee-jerk getting it wrong.
So good after a half century
Steely Dan > The Beatles? Only a fool would say that!
Now that is funny.
my question is, what exactly is being said at the end of the song?
Only a fool would say that, but in Spanish.
AS said by Guitarist Denny Dias
I’d never heard this theory, and I wish I hadn’t! But I can’t take a weirdo like Donald Fagan too seriously. Steely Dan was an interesting group (I own all their albums) but the Beatles are in a class by themselves.
It’s easy to sing about “imagine no possessions…” when you’re driving around in a psychedelicly Painted rolls Royce. There are a lot of things that I appreciated about John Lennon, but Becker and Fagan were spot on with this criticism!
So anyone with lots of money and possessions is arbitrarily denied expressing the opinion that the world might be a better place if humans weren’t so caught up with gaining worldly possessions? Why? Would you think better of Lennon if, after becoming so wealthy, he had just kept his mouth shut and ignored how the poor are oppressed and looked down upon by the self-centered rich?
Yes. Put your money where your mouth is. Nothing wrong with being wealthy but don’t preach unless you’re willing to give it away.
That was early on, every is allowed to grow. Just his idea of utopia,just imagine, that’s all.
Nice to read someone who “gets it” !
Surly the lyrics refer to Prem Rawat, leader of The Divine Light cult.Lennon was not a boy when he wrote “Imagine” nor was he ever “a natural man”; more an exceptional one!
Lets get back to the basics here. I love The Beatles and I love Steely Dan. Both groups have given the world a lot of happiness and harmony. Their genius for writing great songs full of killer melodies and funny thought provoking lyrics are among the best of their generation. Both will be remembered and played for many generations to come. I’m so glad I was around to hear them first hand. Way way better than a lot of dross that has come out lately.
Why do people assume SD is talking about John Lennon? I don’t think he wore a white stetson hat often- he wore a black one and sometimes a panama style hat. He wasn’t the only one preaching world peace and love and taking an anti-materialistic stance. He wasn’t getting salad and sun in NYC. I don’t see it- it could be a lot of people. Just give me some truth.
Can we just stop a minute and ask how this, and the Far Out mag piece it references, justify the assumption that the song is about Lennon? Or show any evidence? A white stetson, brown shoes – these are not Lennon’s trademark clothes. It sounds more like Tom Wolfe!
Yes, the song contrasts the idealism of the time with the realism of working people, but there is much better material for a jab at Lennon / Imagine – as mentioned above, his outrageous custom RR Silver shadow, the gold doorknobs in his mansion that he didn’t like people touching, etc. etc.
This tidbit of information now totally makes me look at both songs differently. My parents listened to both the Beatles and Steely Dan though out my childhood providing me with many memories. I love both of the bands but if I have to pick just one to listen to it would be Steely Dan hands down.
John would probably say, it’s just a song, who cares! The final Beatle release was “you know my name, look up my number”. Donald is just spiteful because he has fat lips and drools out of one side of his face. Horrible whiny voice, not saying that’s a bad thing. I’m a big fan of both. Mccartney was a SD fan, but Lennon not so. And I know why, They couldn’t rock!
Yes, who cares. You either get John’s song or you don’t. I never liked Imagin that much, but I always listen to it when it comes on the radio, just to remind me of a better world ideal.
OMG! If you know anything at all about Fagen and Becker it’s that they loved to take these small, snapshot observations about human behavior, add their own cagey wit and laugh up their sleeves as pundits and know it alls tried to explain what they meant. Classic!
By the time Lennon did “Imagine”, he was wealthy, which validates Steely Dan’s criticism of him. And, BTW, “Can’t Buy A Thrill had “Dirty Work” as a single, so that’s three. And, while “Only A Fool Would Say That” wasn’t an A-sind single, it was on the B- side of “Reeling In The Years”.
By the time Fagan and Becker wrote that song, they were wealthy too, at least compared to me. John was only talking about his idea of utopia….no war poverty, etc. Just saying his bit for God’s sake. He didn’t compare himself to the real fool on the hill who gave his life for us, just the fools ideals.
But Fagen and Becker remained grounded in reality
I believe that Becker and Fagen were referring to the optimistic belief by some idealistic young people during the late 60’s and early 70’s that hoped to change the world. I was 20 when this album came out and it’s hard for people born later to realize how many revolutionary movements were underway during this time many of which were highly idealistic; Stephen Gaskin’s Hippy bus tour of the west coast and settlement at the Farm in Summertown, TN; the summer of Love in SF; the Bkack Power movement, the Woman’s liberation movement, the Antiwar Protests, and on and on. While these efforts had their impacts, the impacts were more long term. An immediate result was a strong backlash from society as a whole. McCarthy got trounced in ‘72 by Nixon. So Dan was saying many of these optimists were idealistic fools. Lenin’s Imagine had cone out a few months before, so Lennox’s optimism fit in with this idealism but it wasn’t the only thing.
I can’t read Steely Dan’s mind, but it seems that many of the lyrics — peculiar word choices on their face — make sense if they refer to the Beatles and Lennon lyrics, suggesting they are indeed talking about Lennon, primarily. Imagine came out in 1971, one year prior.
“A boy with a plan”: Lennon sang “This Boy”.
“A natural man”: Imagine also contained the song “Jealous Guy,” which, when Lennon originally penned it in India, was called “Child of Nature” (inspired by the same Maharishi lecture that inspired McCartney’s “Mother Nature’s Son”).
“Wearing a white Stetson hat”: While Lennon primarily wore a black Stetson-like hat, he also sometimes wore a white one.
“Unhand that gun”: Lennon was the primary writer on “Happiness is a Warm Gun”.
“I heard it was you . . .”: Imagine, obviously.
“Imagine your face . . .”: Imagine, obviously.
“Standing in his brown shoes”: “Old Brown Shoe.” (What an off rhyme; why mention the color all?)
“Man with a dream”: Imagine lyric, “you may say I’m a dreamer” (Number 9 Dream didn’t come out until 1974).
Also, Imagine was really Yoko’s mindset, but Steely Dan probably didn’t know that at the time. She’d been writing poetry like this for years.
and your younger than you realize…
Marxism and the reign of terror, death and destruction was known when Lennon was spewing his Marxist, Atheist religion
Imagine is in the pantheon of most disgusting songs ever written.
It’s only Rock ‘n’ Roll, but I like it.
I do think “Imagine” reflected more Yoko than John. Remember the “Rolling Stone” cover with him wrapped around her naked, in a fetal position? How long was it they stayed in bed, and addressed their public from a cocoon? “You’re younger than you think” may be a comment by the Dan on Lennon’s regression. Away from the Lennon/McCartney magic, he got smaller and smaller. AND, the brown shoes in “Only a Fool?”? They are being worn by the working man on the street, dragging himself home from doing his nine-to-five. Not being worn by Lennon. The white Stetson hat is a metaphor.
Nicely put, Meredith. His infatuation with Okay Yoni, infantilised him; that and several metric tonnes of LSD tabs.
Only a Fool really hits the spot.
Re. Chris’s post, Elton John may haveliked a good show,, but he kept his feet on the ground.
When Elton John visited Lennon and Ono in the Dakota Building he discovered that Ono had a specially refrigerated room for her fur coats. John later sent Lennon a satirical verse for his 40th birthday: “Imagine six apartments/It isn’t hard to do/One is full of fur coats/The other’s full of shoes.