The Steely Dan Lyric About Ending a Marriage in a Hurry

Steely Dan rarely took a standard approach. That applied to their music, which they recorded in painstaking fashion with a variety of session players who were held to the high standards of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. The pair also wrote lyrics that described unusual situations or threw the spotlight on unsavory characters.

Their 1976 song “Haitian Divorce,” which appears on the classic album The Royal Scam, combines a little bit of everything from the above paragraph. It features a plot worthy of literary fiction that hinges on one country’s unique laws regarding the dissolution of a marriage.

“Divorce” Proceedings

By the time of The Royal Scam, their fifth album, Steely Dan’s stalwart duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had long since given up the charade that they were your typical rock band. All you needed to do to glean that was to look at the album credits for each record, and notice the names were constantly changing.

Fagen and Becker would write the material, and then head into the studio to find the right arrangement with the help of ace session players. These musicians would often have to endure numerous takes, and sometimes their work would even mutate after the fact. That’s what transpired with Dean Parks, who recorded the guitar solo in “Haitian Divorce,” only to have Becker later alter it with the use of a talk box.

The lyrics of “Haitian Divorce” were based on the Republic of Haiti being known around that time as one of the easiest jurisdictions for those wanting to get a divorce with as few hassles as possible. They even advertised this fact in an attempt to boost tourism.

The big draw of getting a divorce in Haiti is you could do it without both parties signing off on it. Becker and Fagen saw this scenario as ideal for telling a story about how romantic whims can often change lives (and, in the case of the song’s story, create new ones).

Examining the Lyrics of “Haitian Divorce”

Ironically enough, the first few lines of “Haitian Divorce” promise marital bliss for the two principals: Babs and Clean Willie were in love, they said / So in love, the preacher’s face turned red. (Could Fagen and Becker have come up with the name “Babs” because, in their pre-Steely Dan days, they once wrote a song recorded by Barbra Streisand? Makes you think.)

The bliss is short-lived, as the song’s third line makes clear: Soon everybody knew the thing was dead. What to do? Listen to the entreaties of Papa (likely a reference to Papa Doc Duvalier, longtime president of Haiti until his 1971 death): Papa say, “Oh, no hesitation / No tears and no hearts breakin’, no remorse / Oh, congratulations, this is your Haitian divorce.”

With her divorce in hand, Babs decides to stick around, check out the nightlife, and have a good time: She drinks the zombie from the coco shell. That’s where she meets Charlie, and their relationship heats up in a hurry, as can be implied from the cinematic description: They danced the famous merengue / Now we dolly back / Now we fade to black.

While the relationship with Charlie proves to be short-lived, Babs returns to the U.S. with quite the memento: Some babies grow in a peculiar way. The interracial child has to deal with the scrutiny of Babs’ friends and relations: Semi-mojo, who’s this kinky so-and-so.

Is there a moral to this tale? Fagen and Becker weren’t the types to wrap things up neatly in a bow. “Haitian Divorce” is simply a slice of life, the story of what happens when people make decisions to couple and uncouple in the tropical heat of the moment.

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