Lockdown Licks no. 332. Larry Carlton style intro riffs from “Don’t Take Me Alive” by Steely Dan. Played on an HB35+ guitar into a NUX M8 amp set to ‘superlead’ with some reverb. Carlton single handedly wrote the playbook to jazz/blues/ rock fusion guitar back in the 1970s with his blistering lead playing for Steely Dan.

Featuring an extended G bar chord, into two double string bends, followed by single note run with repeating pedal riffs,a pre bend and release riff and an improv riff ending on a bend.

Don’t Take Me Alive” is the third track from the fifth Steely Dan album “The Royal Scam” 1976. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen are the writers.

Leaving no mystery to the lyrics, “Don’t Take Me Alive” is about a 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 Steely Dan – the darkest lyrics sung to the most cheerful tunes in rock ‘n’ roll!