Walter Becker Quotes
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I think we're right up there with Herman's Hermits and the other greats. Maybe somewhere between Herman's Hermits and the Gershwins.
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Originally, we had a band known as Steely Dan. As we moved away from the band, we got whoever was appropriate for specific tunes. In a lot of cases, we gravitated toward jazz players who had more sophisticated harmonic concepts.
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I learned a lot from the various artists I produced. Either you see them doing something that you do want to do it, or you see them doing something the way you don't want to do it.
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There was a film called 'FM,' and we were asked to do the title song. And I said, 'Does it have to have any specific words?' And they said, 'No, it just has to be about FM radio.' It took a day or two to write.
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If any artist abuses his audience as a means to any end, noble or ignoble, he better have a damn good reason for it.
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With any relationship that goes on and is productive over a long period, there have to be some sort of interlocking qualities in those personalities that make it possible to survive.
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It was the 'Gaucho' album that finished us off. We had pursued an idea beyond the point where it was practical. That album took about two years, and we were working on it all of that time - all these endless tracking sessions involving different musicians. It took forever, and it was a very painful process.
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There was a time in my life when one aspect of my lifestyle called for watching a lot of television.
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'Gaucho' was a struggle for us for a lot of reasons, and in the end, we just sort of survived it.
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I don't think that the Grammys are in any way a just way of grading music.
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Most of the time when people say something sounds like Steely Dan, and I listen to it, it doesn't. And I'm not even sure what they're talking about.
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I learned music from a book on piano theory. I was only interested in knowing about chords. From that, and from the 'Harvard Dictionary of Music,' I learned everything I wanted to know.
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With 'Aja,' there was a sort of happy conjunction between our tastes and the backgrounds and styles of studio musicians at the time.
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What about that Dave Brubeck live album, with a version of 'Like Someone in Love' on it, and long sax solos by Paul Desmond? That's what got me hooked on jazz.
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There are some things that I write that I know are personal in a way, or the gag is so obscure that it's just for me, and there's other things that could basically be for anybody or be anything, at least until the lyrics start to get written.
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We have been fortunate enough to do something that has always been out of the mainstream and yet have an audience for what we do.
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ABC had all these schlocky, bubblegum acts, and we had to come up with suitable material for them. In which we were amazingly unsuccessful.
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Cynicism, I contend, is the wailing of someone who believes that things are, or should be, or could be, much, much better than they are.
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People are really exercised about one particular thing, and that is themselves. They will bore you endlessly with their broken hearts.
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I'm not interested in a rock/jazz fusion.
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It's interesting how some songs really lend themselves to performance in a big public venue and performance by a band and so on, and so they're even more successful in that context than they were on the record.
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I think the audience for Limp Bizkit is probably not going to be particularly interested in what we're doing. I don't think they'll find much that satisfies them in what we do.
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Some places you play in America, it's like 'On the Waterfront.'
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I guess actually playing on the records and touring is a great forced practice regimen for me. And you learn a lot playing with people.