Steely Dan have been making their standard strides up the American album chart on Could 24, 1975, as they paid one other of their visits to the singles scene. As their fourth LP Katy Lied moved in direction of a No.13 peak and eventual platinum certification within the US, the only “Black Friday” jumped onto the Sizzling 100.
The phrase that the Walter Becker/Donald Fagen tune was named after what has come lately to indicate a date on the retail calendar. It had historically denoted a day of collective disaster, significantly of a monetary nature, as with Steely Dan’s fictitious story – which, with typical inventiveness, was set in Australia on the time of the monetary crash of the unique Black Friday, lengthy earlier than it was ever the time period we all know in the present day.
Their story of a crooked speculator who makes off along with his ill-gotten beneficial properties had him absconding to Muswellbrook, a city within the Higher Hunter Area of New South Wales that lies some 150 miles north of Sydney. “Gonna wear no socks and shoes,” sings Fagen, “with nothing to do but feed all the kangaroos…when Black Friday comes I’ll be on that hill, you know I will.” Becker, in the meantime, performs the solo, on a Fender Telecaster that belonged to a different guitarist who appeared on Katy Lied, Denny Dias.
“Black Friday” entered the US chart, as the best newcomer of the week, at No.76, and garnered sufficient Prime 40 radio assist to peak at No.37. As Brian Candy’s biography of the band, Reelin’ In The Years, recounts, that was “not bad for an act that wasn’t touring, wasn’t about to tour and wasn’t making any secret of it either.”
As for finding the tune in Australia? “It was the place most far away from L.A. we could think of,” stated Fagen.
Purchase or stream “Black Friday” on Katy Lied.
