Deacon Blues

It was written in 1976, largely at Fagen's Malibu house, and recorded in 1977 at the Village Recorder. It was issued as a single on 24 March 1978 with Home at Last on the B-side. The single edit runs about six and a half minutes, released although the band had refused to edit it. It reached 19 on the Hot 100 and 14 in Canada.

Becker played bass, his only bass part on Aja. Larry Carlton and Lee Ritenour played guitars, Pete Christlieb the tenor saxophone solo over two takes, and Tom Scott arranged the horns. Venetta Fields, Clydie King and Sherlie Matthews sang backing vocals, and Al Schmitt mixed it. Becker and Fagen had picked out Christlieb after hearing him in the band on The Tonight Show but did not know which saxophonist it was, so Katz brought in players one after another until they identified him.

The idea came from the notion that nerds and losers deserve a grand name like Alabama's Crimson Tide. Becker described the protagonist as a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life, and later said the song was about the mythic loserdom of being a professional musician. Fagen has said Norman Mailer's The White Negro influenced the persona. The name came from the football player Deacon Jones, altered. The Guardian placed it third among the band's twenty best, praising the blissful brass arrangement and the roaring sax solo. The Scottish band Deacon Blue took their name from the song. Rolling Stone placed it 214th on its 2021 list, and Callahan and Oldham covered it in 2021.