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Reminds me of
Baby, you'll come knockin' on my front door
Same old line you used to use before
And I said yeah, well, what am I supposed to do?
I didn't know what I was gettin' into

 
Don't Take Me Alive · Steely Dan


Songfacts®:
"Don't Take Me Alive" is the third track from the fifth Steely Dan album the Royal Scam. Co-fronties Walter Becker and Donald Fagen are the writers of same, naturally.

Leaving no mystery to the lyrics, "Don't Take Me Alive" is about a violent criminal holed up with "a case of dynamite" telling the cops to shoot him, in the tradition of playing "suicide by cop." He also appears to have committed patricide. That's our Steely Dan - the darkest lyrics sung to the most cheerful tunes in rock 'n' roll!
Long before O. J. Simpson led police on a slow-speed chase through its streets, Los Angeles had been host to a number of unusual crimes and high-profile apprehensions - flipping on the TV in LA, you can often see a crime unfolding in real time.

Natives of the city are used to it, but Becker and Fagen were transplants from New York, so to them it was really bizarre. In writing this song, they drew on some of these stories that inundated the city.
That's Larry Carlton doing the guitar solo. He's usually content to be a session musician, but he took his day in the limelight winning a Grammy (Best Pop Instrumental Performance) for playing on the theme to the hit TV series Hill Street Blues. See, you've loved him all your life and never knew it.
While their next album, Aja, was their most successful, the true hardcore Steelies usually agree that The Royal Scam is the point where Steely Dan really distilled themselves into their perfect form.

Since you Steely Dan fans always bring it up in the comments anyway, yes, Steely Dan got its name from Naked Lunch, a novel by William S. Burroughs. Both Becker and Fagen were beat-generation literature fans. However, "Steely Dan" is not a character in that book. It is a strap-on dildo, whose full name is "Steely Dan III from Yokohama." If that shocked you, well, you should have seen that coming when you saw the title Naked Lunch.

Don't Take Me Alive
by Steely Dan

Steely Dan The Royal Scam
Album: The Royal Scam (1976)


Agents of the law
Luckless pedestrian
I know you're out there
With rage in your eyes and your megaphones
Saying all is forgiven
Mad dog surrender
How can I answer
A man of my mind can do anything

I'm a bookkeeper's son
I don't want to shoot no one
Well I crossed my old man back in Oregon
Don't take me alive
Got a case of dynamite
I could hold out here all night
Yes I crossed my old man back in Oregon
Don't take me alive

Can you hear the evil crowd
The lies and the laughter
I hear my inside
The mechanized hum of another world
Where no sun is shining
No red light flashing
Here in this darkness
I know what I've done
I know all at once who I am

I'm a bookkeeper's son
I don't want to shoot no one
Well I crossed my old man back in Oregon
Don't take me alive
Got a case of dynamite
I could hold out here all night
Yes I crossed my old man back in Oregon
Don't take me alive
 
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