| Kid Charlemagne | |
| Cover: | Kid charlemagne cover.jpg |
| Caption: | The cover of the "Kid Charlemagne" single features Fagen (top) and Becker (bottom) |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Steely Dan |
| Album: | The Royal Scam |
| B-Side: | Green Earrings |
| Released: | June 1976 [1] |
| Length: | 4:38 (album version) 3:56 (single version) |
| Label: | ABC |
| Producer: | Gary Katz |
| Prev Title: | Bad Sneakers |
| Prev Year: | 1975 |
| Next Title: | The Fez |
| Next Year: | 1976 |
"Kid Charlemagne" is a song by American rock band Steely Dan, released in 1976 as the opening track on their album The Royal Scam. An edited version was released as a single, reaching number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100.[2] Larry Carlton's guitar solo on the song was ranked #80 in a 2008 list of the 100 greatest guitar solos by Rolling Stone.[3]
Writers Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have stated that the lyrics of "Kid Charlemagne" were loosely inspired by the rise and fall of the San Francisco-based LSD chemist Owsley Stanley,[4] augmented with other images of the counterculture of the 1960s:
On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene
But yours was kitchen clean
Everyone stopped to stare at your Technicolor motor home
The first two lines draw on the fact that Owsley's LSD was famed for its purity. The "Technicolor motor home" of the third line is likely a reference to Furthur, the Merry Pranksters' modified school bus; Stanley supplied them with LSD.[5] [6]
The final verse describes Stanley’s 1967 arrest after his car reportedly ran out of gas:[7]
Clean this mess up else we’ll all end up in jail
Those test tubes and the scale
Just get it all out of here
Is there gas in the car?
Yes, there’s gas in the car
I think the people down the hall know who you are
Carlton's guitar solo starts at 2'18" into the song and ends at 3'08". Pete Prown and HP Newquist described it as consisting of "twisted single-note phrases, bends, and vibrant melody lines"; they called it and Carlton's "joyous, off-the-cuff break" during the song's fade-out "breathtaking."[8] According to Rolling Stone, which ranked "Kid Charlemagne" at #80 in the list of the 100 greatest guitar songs, "In the late seventies, Steely Dan made records by using a revolving crew of great session musicians through take after take, which yielded endless jaw-dropping guitar solos. Larry Carlton's multi-sectioned, cosmic-jazz lead in this cut may be the best of all: It's so complex it's a song in its own right."[9] In 2022, Far Out Magazine listed it as the fourth-greatest guitar solo on a Steely Dan song, calling Carlton's playing "intense, fluid, and frequently on the brink of spinning out of control".[10] Nick Hornby, in Songbook, spoke of the solo's "extraordinary and dexterous exuberance", though he questioned its relationship with the "dry ironies of the song's lyrics".[11]
“It’s my claim to fame,” Carlton told Guitar World in 1981. “I did maybe two hours worth of solos that we didn’t keep. Then I played the first half of the intro, which they loved, so they kept that. I punched in for the second half. So it was done in two parts and the solo that fades out in the end was done in one pass.”[12]
Carlton's use of tapping in the solo was cited by Adrian Belew as an early example of what he and Rob Fetters were trying to accomplish at the time when Eddie Van Halen was experimenting with the technique.[13]
Carlton called his solo on "Kid Charlemagne" the high point of his career at the time, saying, "I can't think of anything else that I still like to listen to as strongly as that."
Cash Box said that "the melody and arrangement are complicated, but accessible" and "every note is necessary."[14]
. Songbook . 55 . Nick Hornby . Penguin . 2003. 9781573223560 .