Remembering the Lost Jingle Steely Dan Wrote for Schlitz Beer, Found Decades Later by Their Engineer’s Daughter

In June 2023, a demo of Steely Dan’s lost 1979 track “The Second Arrangement” surfaced for the first time. It was discovered by Cimcie Nichols, daughter of the band’s longtime engineer, Roger Nichols. The track was originally recorded for the band’s 1980 album, Gaucho, before being accidentally erased by an assistant engineer in December 1979.

Weeks later, Nichols also revealed another unexpected track from her father’s archives, the band’s 110-second jingle for Schlitz Beer. It was recorded somewhere between the band’s 1972 debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill, and their follow-up, Countdown to Ecstasy, from 1973. The untitled jingle was produced by Steely Dan for the Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based brewing company during the band’s eight-month break between albums.

“It was soon after ‘Reelin’ in the Years’ that someone called and asked if the guys would write a song for the Schlitz commercial,” shared Gary Katz, the band’s longtime producer. “And as I remember it, Donald [Fagen] said, ‘OK, but we’re gonna write it.’ By which he meant, they didn’t want to do a commercial somebody else wrote.”

Steely Dan co-founder and guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter added, “The band was still pretty young in its career, so everybody was reaching out for whatever opportunities there were.”

Written by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the jingle ran just under two minutes and features a jazzy Steely Dan fusion. Once around life / Once around livin’ / Once around beer / And you’ll keep around Schlitz, sings Fagen, who also added in some Spanish words, including gusto, or enjoyment, he feels from drinking a can of Schlitz: When I get home from a hard day’s work / He says he likes to grab for all the gusto he can get / ‘Cause you only go around one time.

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“As we were doing it, somebody came by from Schlitz’s ad agency, a guy with a powder-blue sweater tied around his neck and quite literally a stopwatch in his hand,” recalled Katz. “He walked into the control room and thought he was going to take over, and that just wasn’t gonna happen.”

When the Schlitz executive started asking questions, Katz remembered Fagen saying to him, “Do you have your hand near the red button?” before addressing the visitor from Schlitz. “If you say another word about this song, we’re just gonna erase it,” Katz remembered Fagen saying. “So the guy left. I didn’t hear about it again.”

Eventually, Schlitz shelved Steely Dan’s jingle due to concerns over the use of the Spanish word coger, for “grab” or “take,” which could be translated as a slang term for sexual intercourse.

Though the jingle was never released, there was evidence of its production; an image of Fagen and guitarist Denny Dias from the Schlitz session appears on the back cover of the band’s 1975 album Katy Lied.

Nearly 30 years after the band recorded their jingle, it was also the start of a new era for Schlitz, founded in 1849, when it was sold to Pabst Brewing Company. “If I were the Schlitz company,” said Baxer, “I would contact Donald Fagen and pay him a million dollars to do another one.”

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images