"Reelin' In the Years" was written by
Donald Fagen and
Walter Becker and features Fagen on vocals. As usual for their works, Fagen and Becker have been consistently close-mouthed about the song's meaning and how it was written. However, it is usually interpreted as being about a man whose girlfriend has broken up with him for someone else, and expresses his heartbreak by belittling his ex-lover and putting himself on a pedestal. Some suspect the line "The weekend at the college didn't turn out like you planned" may be an autobiographical reference to the drug bust at
Bard College which became the subject of a later Steely Dan song, "
My Old School". Though Steely Dan had ostensibly recruited vocalist
David Palmer so that Fagen would not have to sing lead live, even on Steely Dan's first tour Fagen sang lead on "Reelin' in the Years", with the other five members all singing backup.
Jimmy Page ranked the guitar solo as his favorite solo of all time, and he scored it at 12 out of a possible 10. In 2016 the solo was ranked the 40th best guitar solo of all time by the readers of
Guitar World magazine. The four-channel
quadraphonic mix of the recording has extra lead guitar fills not heard in the more common two-channel stereo version. ==Reception==