Barrytown - Version 2

Barrytown is a town in upstate New York near Annandale, where Donald Fagen and Walter Becker went to school at Bard College. Strange things have happened there indeed. Barrytown was the headquarters for the Unification Church, a controversial religious organization led by Sun Myung Moon, with a campus there from 1974-2018. They were prominent in the '70s, with Moon giving speeches at Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium.

Despite insisting in song that he would never go back to his old school, Donald Fagen did, receiving an honorary degree from Bard in 1985. When he was there the student newspaper The Bard Observer asked him about the song "Barrytown." He replied: "I used the name of the town because I like the sound of it. It's basically a fiction. Funny thing is that I came back to Bard during Thanksgiving this year for the first time since I left. Just drove up for the day. When we got there most of the students were gone. It was pretty amazing walking around campus because a lot of those sites are emotionally charged for me. it was a very bizarre experience for me."