Top 50 Walter Becker Quotes

It seemed like the more complex the music we were playing, the less able we were to guarantee its consistency.

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.

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.

People are really exercised about one particular thing, and that is themselves. They will bore you endlessly with their broken hearts.

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.

Rock music is being systematically merged with fashion.

When you start to work with someone, there’s a negotiation that takes place involving what’s going to happen when you have a difference of opinion. Most attempts at collaboration never survive the negotiation. Merely being agreeable is not enough.

From a linguistic point of view, you can’t really take much objection to the notion that a show is a show is a show.

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.

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.

There’s a great freedom in writing by yourself. You can write anything you want.

The perfect day for me is waking up and having a cup of tea with my kids before I drive them to school; Then, I go into the studio and try and write some music for three or four hours and give up about noon.

My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50’s and 60’s and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.

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.

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.

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.

With ‘Aja,’ there was a sort of happy conjunction between our tastes and the backgrounds and styles of studio musicians at the time.

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.

Our career had a sort of funny shape.

I’m a self-taught musician aside from what I’ve been able to pick up from other players.

We opened for the Kinks, the Beach Boys, the Guess Who, Chuck Berry, Sha Na Na. We opened for Cheech and Chong – I opened for Cheech, and Don opened for Chong.

We’ve been allowed to operate unmolested on the fringes of the music scene, really. That’s where we enjoy it most.

That’s sort of what we wanted to do: conquer from the margins, sort of find our place in the middle based on the fact that we were creatures of the margin and of alienation.

It’s great fun to play with a really good band.

I thought Twitter was a joke. I really thought it was a gag. I thought it was like National Lampoon or the Onion.

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.

Singing, for me, means singing as loud as I can.

What gets people into trouble with records now is that they want to build something up without substantial musical ideas. Without that as a foundation, you can add all the layers of sound you want – it’s still going to sound like a mess.

Let’s face it, us ’60s folks had pretty high expectations.

In the ’70s… there were rock players, and there were jazz players.

I love guys like Charlie Parker.

I spent a couple of years not doing any music or anything, just here in Hawaii trying to get healthy and adjust to the new regimen I was setting up for myself.

Going out and looking for managers is like going out and looking for rattlesnakes.

I can never believe how much time and energy and money and talent and everything else is being poured into horrible ideas.

When the first album came out and I heard ‘Do It Again’ on the radio, that was the greatest thing that had ever happened. After that, it was all downhill.

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.

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.

We fly to the town in the little private airplane, and then we have to get in cars and drive to the hotel and then drive to the gig. So, I want to do a tour where the performances will actually be at the small airports.

All our wives are experimental psychologists.

I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends.

I think we’re right up there with Herman’s Hermits and the other greats. Maybe somewhere between Herman’s Hermits and the Gershwins.

Given a choice between Charlie Mingus and Eric Dolphy or Joe Strummer and Lou Reed, there was no choice. I like Reed and Strummer, but it’s kiddie music.

‘8 Miles to Pancake Day’ is a reconciliation of the classic space-time dilemma.

We try to write things that work on a variety of levels at the same time: A sleek exterior with a turbulent lyric.

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.

The more of what our music does violates the premise of its format that it’s presented in, the better. So, hearing our music in the supermarket, a Muzak version, is great.

It wouldn’t bother me at all not to play on my own album.

The protagonist in ‘Deacon Blues’ is a triple-L loser – an L-L-L Loser. It’s not so much about a guy who achieves his dream but about a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life.

Most of our songs are about relationships.

I’m not interested in a rock/jazz fusion.