Despite touring together for ‘The Long Goodbye Tour’ until Donald Fagen’s health problems caused a plan change in October, The Eagles and Steely Dan had a musical rivalry in the past.
Having the same management, the two bands referenced each other in their music during a period in the ’70s. Steely Dan started the trend with 1976’s ‘Everything You Did’ from ‘The Royal Scam’ album, but Don Henley took ‘revenge’ the same year with another track.
How The Eagles Repaid Steely Dan
Since ‘Everything You Did’ included the lyrics, ‘Turn up The Eagles, the neighbors are listening,’ many people took this as a diss from the Dan to the ‘New Kid In Town’ players.
With some sources reporting that Walter Becker’s annoyance with his girlfriend’s love for The Eagles inspired the song, the talks about its meaning lasted for years. Explaining whether the lyrics were a ‘piss’ or ‘accolade’ in a chat with the Uncut magazine, Don Henley commented:
“It was a little of both! I know them pretty well, and it was like he was sort of saying, ‘Everybody in LA’s playing this f**kin’ record, and I’m sick of it!’ It was a little bit of an acknowledgment, and a little bit taking the piss, because we had the same management – still do – but you know, they’re very droll, [Donald] Fagen in particular.”
The singer mentioned returning the gesture with ‘Hotel California’ and went on:
“We repaid them in ‘Hotel California,’ with the line ‘They stab it with their steely knives, but they still can’t slay the beast.’ That was my rejoinder.”
The Steely Dan Inspiration And The Backlash Against The Track
Initially, ‘Hotel California’ openly named Steely Dan in the lyrics above, but The Eagles later decided to be less direct with the reference and changed them. Glenn Frey once explained this in an interview by saying:
“We just wanted to allude to Steely Dan rather than mentioning them outright, so ‘Dan’ got changed to ‘knives,’ which is still, you know, a penile metaphor.”
On the other hand, the song’s content and theme caused a stir for its supposed ‘satanic’ elements in the ’70s. Frey later clarified that the song was more about artistic freedom, inspired partly by Steely Dan. Talking to BBC, he shared:
“Everybody wants to know what the song is about, but we don’t know. Don and I, really liked Steely Dan, and they had some pretty brave and different lyrics, and we’d never done anything outside the box, really. Then, we just sort of got brave with ‘Hotel California,’ and we said, ‘It’s just a movie; it doesn’t have to make sense.”
Later Relations Between The Two Bands
Steely Dan and The Eagles maintained a good relationship despite their past rivalry. In fact, Timothy B. Schmit worked on the Dan albums like ‘The Royal Scam’ and ‘Aja.’ There was also an attempt to have Don Henley contribute backing vocals to 1977’s ‘Peg,’ but it didn’t work out.
