“Any Major Dude Will Tell You” by Steely Dan

Tucked onto Pretzel Logic in 1974 and slipped onto the flip side of "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", "Any Major Dude Will Tell You" catches Steely Dan in a consoling mood, a song that tries to talk a friend down from a rough patch. The title's dude came from Los Angeles, where Donald Fagen and Walter Becker found the locals calling each other "dude" funny enough to borrow; they were, Fagen later said, just trying to speak the lingo.

Unusually for them, Fagen wrote the music alone, with Becker helping only on the words. Fagen sings and plays keyboards, Becker handles bass and guitar alongside Denny Dias and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, who adds pedal steel, and Jim Gordon drums. Gary Katz produced, Roger Nichols engineered, and the whole thing glides; Steely Dan FAQ author Anthony Robustelli counted it among the band's smoothest-sounding songs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.