That song is pure genius ! And the chorus is one of the most terrific I've ever heard !
About the lyrics, I agree that this song is certainly autobiographical. I would just mention what a journalist called Stewart Mason wrote about it on allmusic.com :
"Fagen has said that the narrator is a middle class suburban kid newly besotted by jazz and Beat culture, and indeed, listening carefully suggests just the sort of over-romantic naiveté and general cluelessness that one would expect from someone attracted to a lifestyle he does not yet understand. The great opening line of the chorus, "Learn to work the saxophone," suggests that he doesn't even have his verbs straight yet! And yet, even though there's certainly a level of mockery to the lyrics, Fagen's performance is so achingly sincere that one assumes that the middle-class kid in the song might be some combination of his and Becker's teenage selves."
He explains it much better than I could do with my broken English...
That song is pure genius ! And the chorus is one of the most terrific I've ever heard ! About the lyrics, I agree that this song is certainly autobiographical. I would just mention what a journalist called Stewart Mason wrote about it on allmusic.com : "Fagen has said that the narrator is a middle class suburban kid newly besotted by jazz and Beat culture, and indeed, listening carefully suggests just the sort of over-romantic naiveté and general cluelessness that one would expect from someone attracted to a lifestyle he does not yet understand. The great opening line of the chorus, "Learn to work the saxophone," suggests that he doesn't even have his verbs straight yet! And yet, even though there's certainly a level of mockery to the lyrics, Fagen's performance is so achingly sincere that one assumes that the middle-class kid in the song might be some combination of his and Becker's teenage selves." He explains it much better than I could do with my broken English...