Steely Dan – The Boston Rag

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Any news was good news
And the feeling was bad at home
I was out of mind and you
Were on the phone
Lonnie was the kingpin
Back in nineteen sixty-five
I was singing this song
When Lonnie came alive

[Chorus]
Bring back the Boston Rag
Tell all your buddies
That it ain't no drag
Bring back the Boston Rag

You were Lady Bayside
There was nothing that I could do
So I pointed my car down
Seventh Avenue
Lonnie swept the playroom
And he swallowed up all he found
It was forty-eight hours til
Lonnie came around

[Chorus]

Send "The Boston Rag" Ringtone to Cell


Lyrics submitted by AbFab

Track duration: 05:40

"The Boston Rag" as written by Walter Carl Becker, Donald Jay Fagen

Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

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The Boston Rag song meanings
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15 Comments

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  • 0
    Song Comparison:Hi there. Thanks a lot for all those brillant and very instructive comments.
    beside the pitch and meaning of the lyrics, there is something VERY obvious to me in the chorus: Does it reminds you something? In construction, sound and ambiance? no? Another famous band from early 70's revealed at Woodstock's festival... The Boston Rag is for me a quick and short musical incursion of the Dan in the mood of this flower power time... Listen again and imagine CSN&Y on stage !!
    Flag bichooon March 24, 2013   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:I know the lyrics red

    " I was out of mind and you
    Were on the phone"

    But I'm positive I hear

    I was out of my mind and you were on the phone

    Anybody else notice this or am I out of mind?
    Flag gregclon March 19, 2013   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:I believe "Lonnie" refers to a mutual friend of the speaker and his girlfriend who was their main supplier of drugs.

    The feeling was bad at home and the girl is on the phone trying to get a fix for them -- he's out of his mind, dopesick.

    Lonnie finally shows up as he's playing the song.

    The Lady Bayside thing still eludes me a bit, perhaps she's avoiding him, but by pointing his car down 7th Ave., I take it to mean that he's giving up on her and heading out again, alone, in search of another fix.

    Lonnie O.D.'s.

    The Boston Rag strikes me as either being a code term for a weaker but more reliably potent and available kind of heroin. OR, perhaps he's yearning for more innocent times when his life wasn't so complicated by Lady Bayside and Lonnie.
    Flag awal767on October 03, 2012   Link
  • 0
    My Interpretation:So... “Rag” refers to a dance. Yes, like ragtime. Lonnie is not real. He is a fictional character--even in the context of the song, fictional--he “comes alive” out of the deranged psyche of a nervous boyfriend. He’s on drugs maybe, or maybe just going through an emotional moment--whatever you want. (It’s vague so you can relate your particular circumstance to the song...that’s the beauty.) He’s having this breakdown, and he calls his girl, and she’s...on the phone!? It’s like...beep beep beep. The fast beeps. A busy signal... (Remember the days before cell phones, and even before home phones with call-waiting.) So, dude freaks out, has a psychotic break, and literally becomes Lonnie, freaky drug kingpin, cruising 7th Ave, gambling, what have you... Now, Lonnie. When does he come alive? When the real narrator is “singing this song.” What song? Not this Dan song that we’re evaluating here, but the song referred to in this song--the song the narrator is listening to when he has this breakdown. (This is sorta tangential to the narrative, a creepy trip going through the now-psychotic narrator’s brain--hence its function as a chorus.) So the narrator has had a psychotic break, becomes crazy Lonnie in a reaction against his prude girlfriend (“Lady Bayside” being a religious reference in NY at the time...look it up), gambling, drugging, and sexing it up all over town--and he doesn’t even know what’s going on until “48 hours” later, when “Lonnie [comes] around,” meaning that it took two days for the narrator to recover from his episode and reinhabit his own fragile brain. But the song (“Bring Back the Boston Rag”) is still with him... Take it to the chorus, boys! Donald?
    Flag daemonparanoidon January 12, 2011   Link
  • +2
    General Comment:I understand this song very well, even though it is very short on detail - by design. You don't need too much detail with a subject like this... it's about a basic set of circumstances, but moreso the feeling that goes along with it. Obviously it involves drug use and some interpersonal drama between the narrator, Lonnie, and the narrator's girlfriend. Lady Bayside is Walter's reference to ladies with 'tude that come from Bayside in NYC, which is where Walter grew up. So the narrator is caught between Lady Bayside and Lonnie, his friend, the drug kingpin, and surely the person he likes to hang around and do drugs with, and the fact that, and this is important, the party is about to come to an abrupt end. This is precipated by the whole lifestyle but is culminated, as is often the case, by a very real tragedy - Lonnie's overdose due to his overzealousness with the partyin'. This puts the author into a tailspin. He tries to turn to his girlfriend, but she doesn't even care because they're in the middle of a fight... so the bottom really falls out on this guy, especially because he's getting that gnarly depression that comes along with too much drug use immediately followed by the situation where no more stuff is avaialable and the shit is hitting the fan at the same time. A young person doesn't have the goods to handle this kind of turmoil, but many have found themselves faced with it. The narrator is the type who will probably eventually right the ship, and maybe this becomes just another song to him... but for many others they just get taken down for the count. The reference to the Boston Rag is also somewhat vague, but not when you take it in the context of the lyric itself in the chorus... bring back the Boston Rag, as a song the guy is always chanting, has a fairly understandable meaning... especially to me because it's something I've often thought about... it's about nostalgia with a touch of sadness... about the passing of a 'better time'. The feeling that you just want the Boston Rag, that perfect song or perfect time (1920's was when they had all the famous 'rags'... the piano tunes with the jump bass) that you are so nostalgic about, when you could be crazy like you are now, but not feel so worn out and depressed at the same time. And the knowledge, whether it is exactly true or not, that there is no way in hell that you can ever go back... and just that knowledge, right when it hits you... you are suffering a mental breakdown. All hail the Boston Rag. Better days will come down the road, or else (the guitar solo is one of the greatest and tells a lot of the story in itself that the sparse lyrics can't..) Writing sparsely is a real talent, because you still have to make things rhyme... so don't get too stuck on the exact words... it's meant to connect with you on a more simpler, you lived it yourself kind of way..
    Flag caucasianon March 21, 2010   Link
    • 1 Reply
  • 0
    General Comment:There's some really good insights above - especially the details of Lonnie swallowing a bunch of pills and being out cold for 2 days. That makes a lot of sense.

    I just wanted to add that both Donald and Walter are big Jazz fans and a lot of early Jazz music is called Ragtime. A lot of these ragtime songs have similar titles like, "The Pineapple Rag", "Tiger Rag", "Maple Leaf Rag", etc. So I think they wrote this song at least in part to have a title like those. Maybe they meant it to have a double meaning to also include the slang for newspapers, but I'm not so sure.
    Flag jsaulon September 22, 2009   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:I always got this image of Lonnie being the narrator's toddler son, the narrator is always strung out and the wife being on the phone, "too busy" or never around in general. The narrator and his girlfriend, wife, whatever might be a poor couple who never get along or are never together or just have a bad homelife, lifestyle, etc, i dunno. "The Boston Rag" I feel is the narrators way of showing the listener that he is nostalgic for better times, "I was singing this song when Lonnie came alive" might be his way of saying life, for him, has sucked even before their son Lonnie was born. "Lady bayside" seemed to me like she was flirting around with other guys and he couldnt do anything about it. I thought it goes "Lonnie was the king THEN / back in 1965" but it doesnt matter much... "So i pointed my car down 7th ave" sounds to me like the narrator left the girl and maybe took their son, and as a druggy, he didnt pay enough attention to him and Lonnie got into the drug stash ("swept the playroom") and was comatose for 48 hours.
    Flag wally1047on July 21, 2009   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:Lonnie refers to a guy who used to be the leader of their clique back in college. Supposedly he took a pile of pills and was out of it for two days.
    There were apparitions of the virgin Mary in Bayside NY back in the early 70's, so I'm guessing that line is referring to the fact that the girl was a virgin as well, or perhaps just too religious or moral for the scene they were in at the time.
    Flag slusichon May 20, 2008   Link
  • +2
    General Comment:The guitarwork on this song is far better than the lyrics, I think.

    As for the lyrics themselves...I read an interview where Becker said that he wrote the verses about a friend of his from his youth. Fagen apparently wrote the chorus. The only other thing I can remember is that Becker made some cryptic comment to the effect of "The nice thing about The Boston Rag is that it's set in New York City." So take that for what it's worth.
    Flag thermo4on October 16, 2006   Link
  • 0
    General Comment:Audiogasm...nice touch.

    I always thought it was about a the narrator's family...Lady Bayside being the mother of Lonnie and Lonnie being their little kid born in '65 who in a literal playroom put things in his mouth and had to get his stomach pumped.

    That, and the bluebirds help me get dressed in the morning.

    Eh, the Boston Rag could be a symbol of an easy morning's work of reading the paper, a sign of the sanity that he called life before the kid came. Ahhh, those happier days...
    Flag GreyBlueEyeson August 24, 2006   Link

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