My Rival

This song is about a father's newborn son. The son is the father's "Rival" for the wife/mother's affections.

"Milk truck" is the mother's breast. The baby "screamed." The father goes out to drink and whine.

The "detective on his case" -- with the scar and hearing aid -- is a grandfather with a video camera taking movies of the new baby.

The "tiny hand" is the baby's hand. The father loves him, but has now become jealous.

The baby boy's "crime" is his taking the mother's attention away from the father, so the father will "match him whim for whim," which means the father will act pretty much like a baby.

So there it is.

I think My Rival is about having a child (probly a boy).

one clue... "I still recall when I first held Your tiny hand in mine"

but the other clue, "Sure he's a jolly roger Until he answers for his crime"

i think this part means that he stole his father's heart (the singer)

This song also could mean how having a child takes attention away from the father and is now put on the child and this is what the singer is singing about.

Re: "I say it is as simple as a guy has lost his love to an older ganster type ala Edward G. Robinson...And yes this is SOOOO cool, a perfect film noir..." --underbanyantrees

Yeah, I took the "hearing aid" item (along with the "scar") to mean a tough old guy who got into a lot of fights and probably had a big old cauliflower ear (and some hearing damage) from blows to the head.

A man out for revenge (my rival; fool in love; stomping time) against the man who stole his lover without a care in the world (Jolly Roger). I'm slightly in denial re the paedophile theory due to its morbidity, though it is persuasive in parts. "Tiny hands" could just be decribing the fond memory of his ex-lover's delicate touch, however.

I think it's about a man who's wife is cheating..I've got detectives on his case. Yes he's the jolly roger..a thief..till he answers for his crime of cheating..yes I'll match him whim for whim..guy can't see what she see's in him, his affair is a whim? I struck a match on the door of Anthony's Bar..watching them eat...he goes in after they left..the whining stranger,a fool in love, with time to kill..following them..I'VE GOT DETECTIVES ON HIS CASE, He wears a hearing aid...I could be totally wrong on all of this,it's just the way I play the movie in my mind about the song. This happens to be my favorite album by them. Such a great vibe the whole album has.

Since Steely Dan themselves don't know what their lyrics mean - they've admitted as much in interviews - I'm going to go out on a limb here and take an "Occam's Razor" approach and say they mean just what they appear to mean.

It's a film noir styled movie-song about a guy using detectives to track down the guy who is stealing his girl, plain and simple. I know that a lot of people like to attribute drugs and child abuse and everything including the kitchen sink, but isn't that overthinking it just a bit?

They also say that they purposely put in lyrics that they have no idea what they mean just to confuse and obfuscate, such as "Battle Apple" in the song "Josie." They are on record as saying that they don't know WHAT a "Battle Apple" is, just thought it sounded good.

So interpret away, at your own risk. I just take 'em on face value and it seems right to me.

I think just about everything that's correct has been said, but so has quite a bit that isn't.

A man is going to a bar to confront and beat up the man with whom his lover has been having an affair. Detectives found the man, who is older, with a hearing aid and a scar. This is the only rival in the song. He has never seen him before, which is why "show me" is the thought in his mind before this, their first meeting.

The "tiny hand" is that of the female lover of the man. Not a baby. This is the only "you" in the song, which tells us that his love for his is foremost in his mind.

"Roger" is the word that nobody has decoded yet, and as a verb it refers to rough or random sex. Here, it's applied to the rival; the narrator still has on his mind that the rival had sex with his woman. Yes, "jolly roger" itself has a meaning, but here we should see the words standalone. The association with piracy is on-theme, but what's torturing the narrator is the thought of the cheating, and it galls him that it would have been jolly. But the rival won't be jolly when he answers for his crime (when he is being beaten). The song lingers in the minute before the encounter takes place, but the narrator is imagining so many aspects of it in detail. This is excellent stream of consciousness narration.

"Whim for whim" is indeed a play on "limb for limb" and it's worth picking this apart. "Limb for limb" refers to a brutal beating, which is what the narrator planned. A whim is an action taken for pleasure or passion, perhaps unwisely. The rival committed one such action (sex with the woman) and the narrator is now about to match that whim with his own whim (the beating). The "for" here, that the beating is a response to the first whim, serves as justification.

Back to the top. The man has driven to this place, but the milk truck and the scream are apparently in the past. The milk truck could be the rival's car in the man's driveway (as seen by the narrator), but it could be much cruder than that, the rival physically entering the woman (as imagined by the narrator). The scream was his lover, crying out in passion. That was the moment that the narrator learned that he had been cheated on, back at his own home. It's on his thoughts now as he enters the bar.

"Time to kill" is another play on an expression. It normally means that a person has an excess of time, but this man does not. He expects to confront the rival in the bar, and it seems that rather than just a beating, he might take this all the way to killing the rival. This is time to kill… literally.

The narrator has seen the rival in film that detectives took of some subsequent meeting between the rival and the woman. And, just to remind us of the times, that would likely be film in 1980, not likely video.

That's it. No baby, nothing about Judaism. The story is very tight; the lyrics deliver a lot of detail.

One of my favorite Dan songs. Puts forth such a perfect Film Noir vibe. Amazing horns. Lyrics possibly about finding the man who stole his lover, but that seems a bit oversimplified. Not sure what the hearing aid bit is getting at...

The pedophilia interpretation is totally bogus. The detectives are the private investigators the singer has hired to spy on his woman as she engages in an inappropriate relationship with another man. Steely Dan's lyrics are often very dark, but sorry, no child molestation in this one.

Almost all their songs are like M.C. Escher paintings. They can be seen in so many different ways and from so many different angles.