Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Steely Dan trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Steely Dan trivia quiz covers Walter Becker and Donald Fagen from their meeting at Bard College through Can't Buy a Thrill, the decision to quit the road in 1974, the session-musician perfectionism of Aja and Gaucho, the twenty-year hiatus, and the surprise Album of the Year Grammy for Two Against Nature. The easy questions handle things most rock fans know: where the name came from, the biggest singles, the album that defined yacht rock and who left to join the Doobie Brothers. The hard and expert questions are for people who own the box set: the withdrawn debut single, the future comedy star who drummed in their college band, the Schlitz jingle, the erased Gaucho track, the Keith Jarrett lawsuit, the mu major chord and the pseudonyms the pair used on stage in 1993. In keeping with the band's own habits, nothing here quotes a lyric; the questions are about the people, records and stories. Every answer was checked against Steely Dan's encyclopaedia entry before publishing. If you enjoy this, try our 70s rock and classic albums quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Walter Becker and Donald Fagen met in 1967 at which school in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York?
Bard
Fagen heard Becker practising electric guitar at a campus café and asked, 'Do you want to be in a band?'
Q 02Steely Dan took its name from an object in which William S. Burroughs novel?
Naked Lunch
The object in question is a dildo; the pair, Beat-literature fans, had already name-checked it in an unreleased demo called 'Soul Ram'.
Q 03Which future comedy star played drums in one of Becker and Fagen's college bands?
Chevy Chase
The group went by names including the Don Fagen Jazz Trio, the Bad Rock Group and the Leather Canary.
Q 04What was the title of Steely Dan's 1972 debut album?
Can't Buy a Thrill
Its singles 'Do It Again' and 'Reelin' In the Years' reached No. 6 and No. 11 on the Hot 100.
Q 05Steely Dan's top-selling album, released in 1977, was titled what?
Aja
It reached the US top five within three weeks and was one of the first American LPs certified platinum by the RIAA.
Q 06Which 1974 single was Steely Dan's most successful, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100?
Rikki Don't Lose That Number
It came from Pretzel Logic, which also included a rendition of Duke Ellington's 'East St. Louis Toodle-Oo'.
Q 07Steely Dan's Two Against Nature won the Album of the Year Grammy over which two heavyweights?
Eminem and Radiohead
It beat The Marshall Mathers LP and Kid A, and was the band's first studio album in twenty years.
Q 08Two Steely Dan alumni, Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter and Michael McDonald, went on to join which band?
The Doobie Brothers
McDonald kept contributing backing vocals to Steely Dan records right up to Gaucho, but Baxter never worked with them again.
Q 09Steely Dan session players Jeff Porcaro and David Paich went on to form which band?
Toto
Porcaro's first Steely Dan drum track was 'Night By Night' on Pretzel Logic.
Q 10Steely Dan stopped touring after a July 1974 show at which venue?
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
Becker and Fagen disliked constant touring and dismissed the other three members to concentrate on writing and recording.
Q 11Who produced all of Steely Dan's 1970s albums, having hired Becker and Fagen at ABC?
Gary Katz
His engineer, Roger Nichols, would win six Grammys for his work with the band.
Q 12Before Steely Dan, Becker and Fagen toured in the band of which 1960s vocal group?
Jay and the Americans
Singer Jay Black dubbed them 'the Manson and Starkweather of rock 'n' roll'.
Q 13Which star recorded the Becker/Fagen song 'I Mean to Shine' on a 1971 album?
Barbra Streisand
A shelved 1970 album of the same name by Linda Hoover, featuring five of their songs, finally came out 52 years later.
Q 21Which Aja single, with Michael McDonald on backing vocals, was released first and hit No. 11?
Peg
'Josie' and 'Deacon Blues' followed, peaking at No. 26 and No. 19.
Q 22Why was the planned tour supporting Aja cancelled?
Backing musicians began comparing pay
The rehearsals simply ended; Becker's leg was shattered years later, by a Manhattan taxi during the Gaucho sessions.
Q 23Steely Dan wrote the title song for which 1978 film, a flop that still yielded a hit single?
FM
The song earned the band another engineering Grammy and just missed the US top 20.
Q 14Steely Dan's withdrawn 1972 debut single, later called 'stinko' by its writers, was titled what?
Dallas
ABC pulled it for sounding too country; it and its B-side 'Sail the Waterway' have never been reissued on CD.
Q 15Which original Steely Dan lead vocalist was fired in April 1973?
David Palmer
He sang 'Dirty Work' on the debut and later co-wrote Carole King's hit 'Jazzman'.
Q 16Steely Dan once recorded a jingle, rejected and never aired, for which beer brand?
Schlitz
Long thought lost, the 1-minute-50 recording was rediscovered in Roger Nichols's archive in 2023, complete with a helium-voiced Spanish intro by Baxter.
Q 17'My Old School', from Countdown to Ecstasy, is a direct homage to events at which institution?
Bard
The single stalled in the lower half of the charts but became an FM rock staple.
Q 18Striving for perfection, Becker and Fagen sometimes asked musicians to record how many takes of a track?
Forty
Becker himself still ended up playing bass on more Steely Dan songs than any hired hand, with Chuck Rainey second.
Q 19Which 1975 Steely Dan album's sound was compromised by a faulty DBX noise-reduction system?
Katy Lied
It went gold anyway on the strength of 'Black Friday' and 'Bad Sneakers'.
Q 20Which guitarist's prominent playing makes 1976's The Royal Scam the band's most guitar-driven album?
Larry Carlton
Session drummer Bernard Purdie also appears; in the UK, 'Haitian Divorce' became the band's first major hit.
Q 24Which Gaucho track, a favourite of Katz and Nichols, was accidentally erased by an assistant engineer?
The Second Arrangement
A recording of it was finally discovered in 2020.
Q 25Which jazz composer sued Steely Dan over Gaucho's title track and was added as co-writer?
Keith Jarrett
Fagen admitted he loved 'Long As You Know You're Living Yours' and that it had been a strong influence.
Q 26Which Dire Straits guitarist played on Gaucho's 'Time Out of Mind'?
Mark Knopfler
'Hey Nineteen', the album's first single, reached No. 10 in early 1981.
Q 27After Steely Dan disbanded in 1981, Becker moved to Maui and described himself as what?
An avocado rancher
He also quit the drugs he had used for most of his career.
Q 28Fagen's 1982 solo debut, which yielded the hit 'I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)', was titled what?
The Nightfly
It went platinum in the US and UK and became the first of a trilogy completed by Kamakiriad and Morph the Cat.
Q 29Becker produced two 1980s albums for which British sophisti-pop band, and was listed as a member on the first?
China Crisis
The album was 1985's Flaunt the Imperfection; on 1989's Diary of a Hollow Horse he was credited only as producer.
Q 30On the 1993 reunion tour, what composer-inspired pseudonyms did Fagen use for himself and Becker?
Rick Strauss and Frank Poulenc
The tour supported Kamakiriad, which earned an Album of the Year nomination despite poor sales.