"My Old School" is a single drawn from Steely Dan's 1973 album Countdown to Ecstasy. It reached number 63 in the Billboard charts.
In its March 24, 2006 edition, Entertainment Weekly details a return trip to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York by Donald Fagen, in which he describes a raid by sheriff's deputies in May 1969. Fagen, his girlfriend Dorothy White, Steely Dan bandmate Walter Becker, and some 50 other students were arrested. Charges were dropped, but the harassment was the origin of the grudge alluded to in "My Old School". Fagen was reportedly so upset with the school being complicit with the arrests that he refused to attend graduation.
My Old School is a 2013 historical documentary created by Jason Allard and Scott Gabrielson.
The film traces in history of the largest abandoned school in New England, located in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The historic building, constructed in 1914, housed thousands of students over the years as Woonsocket High School, then as Woonsocket Middle School. My Old School features a series of interviews with former teachers, faculty, and city officials along with historical photographs and footage from inside the abandoned school.
The film premiered to a local audience in Woonsocket, Rhode Island on October 5, 2013. It premiered on PBS on March 6, 2014.
I remember the thirty-five sweet goodbyes
When you put me on the Wolverine
Up to Annandale
It was still September
When your daddy was quite surprised
To find you with the working girls
In the county jail
I was smoking with the boys upstairs
When I heard about the whole affair
I said oh no
William and Mary won't do
Well I did not think the girl
Could be so cruel
And I'm never going back
To my old school
Oleanders growing outside her door
Soon they're gonna be in bloom
Up in Annandale
I can't stand her
Doing what she did before
Living like a gypsy queen
In a fairy tale
Well I hear the whistle but I can't go
I'm gonna take her down to Mexico
She said oh no
Guadalajara won't do
Well I did not think the girl
Could be so cruel
And I'm never going back
To my old school
California tumbles into the sea
That'll be the day I go
Back to Annandale
Tried to warn you
About Chino and Daddy Gee
But I can't seem to get to you
Through the U.S. Mail
Well I hear the whistle but I can't go
I'm gonna take her down to Mexico
She said oh no
Guadalajara won't do
Well I did not think the girl
Could be so cruel
And I'm never going back