[3] Writers Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have stated that the lyrics of "Kid Charlemagne" were loosely inspired by the rise and fall of the San Francisco-based LSD chemist Owsley Stanley, augmented with other images of the counterculture of the 1960s:[4]

On the hill the stuff was laced with keroseneBut yours was kitchen cleanEveryone stopped to stare at your Technicolor motor homeThe first two lines draw on the fact that Owsley's LSD was famed for its purity.

Pete Prown and HP Newquist described it as consisting of "twisted single-note phrases, bends, and vibrant melody lines"; they called it and Carlton's "joyous, off-the-cuff break" during the song's fade-out "breathtaking.

"[9] In 2022, Far Out Magazine listed it as the fourth-greatest guitar solo on a Steely Dan song, calling Carlton's playing "intense, fluid, and frequently on the brink of spinning out of control".

]Carlton's use of tapping in the solo was cited by Adrian Belew as an early example of what he and Rob Fetters were trying to accomplish at the time when Eddie Van Halen was experimenting with the technique.