The Royal Scam is the fifth album by Steely Dan, originally released by ABC Records in 1976. The album went gold and peaked at #15 on the charts.[1] The Royal Scam features more prominent guitar work than other Steely Dan albums. Guitarists on the recording include Walter Becker, Denny Dias, Larry Carlton, Elliott Randall and Dean Parks.
The mood of the album stands in contrast with the band's more mellow and hugely successful follow-up, Aja.
In common with other Steely Dan albums, The Royal Scam is littered with cryptic allusions to people and events both real and fictional. In a BBC interview in 2000,[2] Becker and Fagen revealed that Kid Charlemagne is loosely based on Augustus Owsley Stanley, the notorious drug "chef" who was famous for manufacturing hallucinogenic compounds, and that "Caves of Altamira" is about the loss of innocence, the narrative about a visitor to the Cave of Altamira who registers his astonishment at the prehistoric drawings.
Track Listing
01 00:00 "Kid Charlemagne"
02 04:37 "The Caves of Altamira"
03 08:07 "Don't Take Me Alive"
04 12:20 "Sign in Stranger"
05 16:41 "The Fez"
06 20:39 "Green Earrings"
07 24:39 "Haitian Divorce"
08 30:24 "Everything You Did"
09 34:17 "The Royal Scam"
