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*** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX ***
“Rose Darling” is one of those fairly rare Steely Dan love songs … but in true SD fashion, it’s really more of a lust song. The narrator seems to be pleading so hard with the object of his attempted affair he even begins to drop the pretense that this is about romance (“All my empty word of love/can never screen the flash I feel”) and even gets nasty (“you won’t feel it ’till it grows”).
While Becker and Fagan are cracking themselves up over the lyrics, the music behind it, as usual,is seriously good. It benefits from tasteful piano comping, crisp drumming and Michael McDonald once again lifting up the chorus. There’s also a clean, bluesy guitar courtesy of Mr. Dean Parks (pictured above). Parks has been a long time favorite sessionist of The Dan, having appeared on records ranging from Pretzel Logic to Two Against Nature and before he even get his first call into a Steely Dan recording session, he had already done dates for Stevie Wonder, Helen Reddy, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Marvin Gaye and Billy Joel.
For “Rose,” his liquid, string bending lines finds a perfect place alongside that piano, and this is also one of the rare times he solos on a Steely Dan record as he’s typically brought in only for rhythm work. Sounding a bit like another legendary L.A. session guitarist Larry Carlton (who appears on the next track), Parks is never about flash but is all about taste, and by just doing his job damned well he gives an understated performance that helps to make “Rose Darling” hold up well more than three and a half decades after this was taped.
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- Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock + Paul Motian – ‘The Old Country’ (1992; 2024 release) - November 7, 2024
- Devin Gray – ‘Melt All The Guns II’ (2024) - November 5, 2024
- David Cain – ‘Variations’ (2024) - November 1, 2024
I interpreted this song the same way back in the 70s until somewhere along the line (on the Blue Book, probably) it was noted that the “Rose” in this lyric is likely to be the same as Jackson Browne’s “Rosie”. Then it all fit together.