Pretzel Logic

It was the last album made while the group was an active touring band and the last with the full quintet, yet no track uses all five members. Recording began at the Village Recorder and moved to the new Cherokee Studios in Chatsworth because costs at the first were too high. Writing was difficult, so the duo cut one cover, Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley's East St. Louis Toodle-Oo, and three songs from before Steely Dan: Barrytown, Parker's Band and Charlie Freak. Barrytown is credited to both writers but was written solely by Fagen, and Charlie Freak is unchanged from their 1960s demo.

Hodder was sidelined in favor of Jim Gordon, though he kept coming to the sessions. When his try at Night by Night failed, Dias suggested Jeff Porcaro, then 19, who arrived with David Paich. Hodder's only contribution was backing vocals on Parker's Band, which has drums by both Porcaro and Gordon. On the Ellington tune, Becker used a talk box to imitate a muted trumpet, Baxter's pedal steel stood in for a trombone, and Fagen played the clarinet part on piano. Funk, in Night by Night and Monkey in Your Soul, and a shuffle, in the title song, were new to the band. The bass pattern of Rikki Don't Lose That Number comes from Horace Silver's Song for My Father. Parker's Band is an ode to Charlie Parker, with references to his Savoy sides, Kansas City, and the recordings Groovin' High and Relaxin' at Camarillo.

The cover photo of a Fifth Avenue pretzel vendor at 79th Street was taken by Raeanne Rubenstein. He refused to sign a release, but ABC found he was selling without a license and decided it could publish. The idea came from Fagen and Katz.

It reached 8 in the United States after 36 weeks on the chart and 5 in Canada, and went platinum in September 1993. Rikki Don't Lose That Number reached 4. Bud Scoppa of Rolling Stone praised its fluid ensemble sound, Down Beat said no American rock recording group was better, NME named it album of 1974, and Rob Sheffield wrote in 2004 that the whole album is flawless. It placed second in the 1974 Pazz and Jop poll, and Christgau put it first on his own list.