10 Songs You Didn't Know Were About Drugs

At this point, Steely Dan have become more known as being a meme for dad rock than for their actual music. Though a song like "Kid Charlemagne" has some of the best playing of the 70's, most people bypass it as just tedious background music or for its sample in Kanye West's "Champion." Even if the sound is a bit soft by today's standards, the characters that permeate this track are some of the seediest you will ever come across.

Growing up in the late 60's, Donald Fagen first got the idea for the lyrics from Owsley Stanley, whose resume up until that point was being both a roadie and the main drug distributor for the Grateful Dead. There's certainly nothing wrong with writing a more autobiographical track, but this Kid Charlemagne persona becomes a little too real as the song goes along.

After the blistering solo from Larry Carlton, you realize that this man is actually on the run from the police, who have just been ordered to search his house. Not willing to be taken alive, Charlemagne takes all his test tubes and narrowly evades the cops with just enough gas left in the car. With no clear whereabouts as to what happens next, it's still a possibility that our drug-dealing hero might still be out there.