Everything You Did
It was not my own!
Album: The Royal Scam
Track Number: 8
If there’s one name I would ask you to remember once this project is complete, dear reader, it is Larry Carlton. Larry Carlton is/was a studio guitarist who performed on much of The Royal Scam, Aja, and Gaucho. There were many individuals associated with The Beatles that were considered by some to be the “fifth Beatle”; I purport Larry Carlton is the “third Dan”, the next-most-important member of the band behind our legends. His louche guitar wails throughout “Everything You Did”, which in this writer’s humble opinion is one of the sleaziest, and therefore most “prototypical” Steely Dan songs.
Aside from appearing on more Steely Dan tracks than any other studio musician, Carlton also served as a musical liason between the core and the studio players; often he would transcribe WB & DF’s musical ideas so that the day’s band could play from sheet music - so he also knew his music theory and how to direct a rock band. But there’s something about the way this guy plays guitar that conveys a mood we associate with Steely Dan; the feeling of a man scorned and seething, down and out; pissed off but too fucked up to really do anything about it.
On “Everything You Did”’s solo, his guitar has a triumphant defiance with the exact amount of pinched distortion to maintain an edge of anxiety. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jay Graydon’s “Peg” solo, but it’s a bit mercenary in nature - get in, play the thing, get out. It’s easy enough to turn off the amp and go touch grass. But Carlton’s guitar work speaks to a kind of mind meld with our legends - an understanding that can only be conveyed through phrasing and melody, a dedication. Larry Carlton, the ultimate servant of Steely Dan. Even if the events of the song didn’t happen to him, his fingers trick us into thinking they have.
Lyrically, the track is very clearly about a cucked guy. He knows his wife’s cheated on him and he wants to know the sordid details and maybe even kill his wife’s lover. My favorite lyric: “I jumped out of my easy chair / it was not my own!”1 First off, a truly fun Fagen voicing. But secondly, and more importantly, huh? Did our narrator get confused about which easy chair was his, in his own “happy home”? What seems more likely is that when he sat down in his easy chair, he discovered something not his own. This is a device Steely Dan uses frequently - using a pronoun whose reference is unanchored to its attached clause. “It” in this case referring not to the chair but what was discovered in the chair. Perhaps a fez?
“Turn down the Eagles, the neighbors are listening” is good too, but that’s more of a “check out this reference” type lyric, and the Eagles’ response (“…they stab them with their steely knives…” in “Hotel California”) is more interesting.