Part 4
Deacon Blues - Steely Dan
A Lyric Analysis

"My back to the wall
A victim of laughing chance
This is for me
The essence of true romance."
What high pressure "chance" situation can he be referring to that doesn't care about his feeling? Games of chance: gambling. Like everyone else, he craves conflict. And he is romanticizing the lifestyle, as exotic and dreamy, playing the saxophone in a drunken haze, gambling with a cigar and all his new friends.

"Sharing the things we know and love
With those of my kind
Libations
Sensations
That stagger the mind."
They are all his kind now, ramblers and gamblers, playing the sax to and with them, drinking, indulging in all the sensual pleasures of a Jazz Club that also has gambling ... and, I am sure, women.