Katy Lied

It was the first record made after Baxter, Dias and Hodder were dismissed. Becker said it felt liberating to be free to hire whichever drummer they wanted and to stop working for a while when they chose. Jeff Porcaro, then 20, played drums on every track except Any World (That I'm Welcome To), which has Hal Blaine. He struggled with Black Friday and with Your Gold Teeth II, which moves between 3/8, 6/8 and 9/8, until Fagen gave him a Charles Mingus album with Dannie Richmond on drums and he came back a few days later and played it. According to Robustelli most of the keyboards are by Michael Omartian, who bought a Bosendorfer piano for $13,000 to the dismay of ABC executives. Phil Woods played his saxophone solo on Doctor Wu in one take. Michael McDonald made his recording debut on four songs.

The last track finished was Daddy Don't Live in That New York City No More. Becker and Dean Parks had played guitar, and Becker and Fagen asked Larry Carlton for a third part on the strength of his playing on Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust. Carlton said he got it in under an hour. Everyone's Gone to the Movies and Any World predate the band, and Any World had been offered to Linda Hoover and Dusty Springfield. Mr. Sam was recorded and left off, and Funky Driver was started but never finished. The back-cover photo of Fagen in a reindeer sweater and Dias in a sombrero holding a helium tank was taken by Becker at a session for a Schlitz beer jingle that was rejected. The jingle turned up again in 2023 in Roger Nichols's archive.

Becker and Fagen disliked the sound because a dbx noise-reduction unit malfunctioned. Dias says the album was remixed with Dolby, while Becker says the masters were affected too. Katz told Rolling Stone that the tapes had sounded better than anything they had heard before the fault was found. Black Friday is about a speculator who flees to Muswellbrook, New South Wales, and Doctor Wu, Fagen said, is about a relationship that ends because of the woman's drug addiction. The title comes from the Doctor Wu lyric, and the cover shows a katydid.

It reached 13 in both the United States and the UK and went gold. Black Friday reached 37 on the Hot 100, and Bad Sneakers peaked at 103. Christgau called it slightly disappointing yet ranked it third among 1975 albums. Mark Richardson wrote in Pitchfork that this was the record where Steely Dan became something other than a rock band.