Beck quotes

Your heart is a drum keeping time with everyone.

Sea Change was so specific. From the beginning it was set what it was going to be. All the other ideas that I had at the time I had to put to the side.

As music becomes more computer-based, it's lost some emotional impact.

In Japan, you get on the bullet train or the airplane, and I loved the little speeches the stewardesses would do. They even do little speeches before you play gigs.

As society changes, as politics change, as people change, certain songs still seem to resonate.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder what makes music or culture or taste go in certain directions. Who knows what the forces are behind it.

There's more well-known artists who aren't making as good songs as people who are just coming out of nowhere. That seems to be more typical in the last few years than ever.

There are plenty of Minutemen. People willing to be Minutemen. Where are the people that want to be George Washington? Where are the Benjamin Franklins? Where is Sam Adams? Where is John Adams?

You can't please everybody, man.

I remember you would record a guitar part, and we would have to sit there for 15 or 20 minutes waiting for the computer to process it. You'd see the little wheel spinning on the computer, and you'd be praying that the hard drive didn't crash and you didn't lose the performance.

Maybe certain aspects of what I was doing were reacting against what was happening or what people said, too. That's something that happens when you're starting out. After some time goes by and you get a little perspective, you realize that you don't need to react. You can just carry on with what you're doing. That took me a long time figure out; I've only gotten to that point in the last five or 10 years.

Technology was something I avoided when I started out - I didn't even have electric guitars. Only played acoustic. But after a while, I realized that it's important to embrace things that are available in your time, and try to do something different with them.

Set your guitars and banjos on fire and before you write a song smoke a pack of whiskey and it'll all take care of itself.

You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record.

There's an infinite amount of possibilities and detours and things that can distract you from actually just performing the song and having whatever emotion that's invested into the song come through in the recording.

I would love to do an electronic record. There's just so much to see and do and try. And life goes by.

Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.

Eventually, if you're experimenting with a sound that's unfamiliar, it gets absorbed, and somebody comes and does it better, and it becomes part of a vocabulary.

I enjoy recording live better, but I think by the nature of it you are going to end up with something that's a little bit more traditional.

Most of my early records were not cohesive at all, just collections of demos recorded in different years. 'Odelay' was the first time I actually got to go in the studio and record a piece of music in a continuous linear fashion, although that was written over a year.

I had long hair when I was a teenager.

The only way I was allowed to play was by convincing bands to let me do a few songs while they set up. That went on for years.

The limitations are limitless.

Sometimes things in life take a few years to digest, and they find their way into the work later on. Sometimes I'm writing about things from eight years ago-they just took a long time to distill and come out in the appropriate way.

Somebody else is satisfied by five Bentleys. I'm satisfied by a beautiful string arrangement.

When I pull out vinyl - which isn't that often anymore - it's undeniable that I get a different feeling. There's a different physiology happening between the sound waves and the body that doesn't happen with music playing off the computer.

There's a different physiology happening between the sound waves and the body that doesn't happen with music playing off the computer. About five years ago, I got a turntable that hooks up to your computer, and I put the vinyl in there and I listened to it back-to-back with a CD, and it didn't even compare. But people don't have time to go track down vinyl, lower it in, all that. And they probably don't care. It's hard to make music knowing that it's not going to be received by the listener in the way that it should be.

Anything goes. You always find interesting things that way.

Sometimes, reissues can be revelatory, or put the original record in a different light, but those are rare.

I'm just taking one step at a time. I could zigzag one way, but it's not usually on purpose.

I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.

There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that's never been released.

When you say 'state' you mean 'national.' National Socialism. That is what Mussolini and Hitler did. National Socialism. State Capitalism. They've changed the name.

I think it's interesting being American, the expectations for an American guy, and the image that has to be projected. 'Oh, I can't wear pink,' that kind of stuff. There's none of that in Europe.

When I did "Top of the Pops" for the first time, Ace of Base was one of the other bands, and I have a memory of them on a small stage next to me in the TV studio. A memory of their performance is burned into my mind. Seared.

If someone is making a judgment when they don't have firsthand experience, it's intolerant. How can you make a judgment on something you don't know about?

I grew up I guess you'd say in the cassette era.

I'm always working on my own music, too. I've been working on a record for a few years.

Back then, Pro Tools only had four or eight tracks, so we couldn't actually hear all the tracks. We could only hear eight at a time, so if a song had 25 or 30 tracks, we wouldn't be able to hear it until we went into the studio an put it all on tape. The process was a little bit backwards.

I try not to do email; I try to talk to people on the phone.

I've been practicing for years, trying to figure out how to record an entire band live.

I've personally reached the point where the sound of MP3s are so uncompelling, because so much is lost in translation.

With modern recording techniques, and living in the Pro Tools era, the process gets really drawn-out, and it can become painstaking.

Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig.

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.

I didn't even have a computer until like 10 years ago. I was still using a typewriter until 2002.

I have for four years now been ringing the bell. Economic Holocaust is coming. Economic day of reckoning is coming.

Whether you're aware of it or not, any kind of collage idea becomes a part of how you see the world once you incorporate media and internet and video games and all these things.

I'm sure the music is going to come out. I'm not sure if I'm going to put out 12"s or put the songs on my website. I just have to get them done.

It was disturbing to me that an idea or a song could become something so different from what you originally intended. It's like if a friend took a stupid picture of you at a party on their phone, and the next thing you knew, it was on every billboard.

I've done so many albums where I've been in the studio for 14 hours a day for six months just trying to come up with things on my own. It's a nice change helping other people with their music and not being all about what I'm trying to do myself.

There's some quality you get when you're not totally comfortable.

There are certain records that you love because the songs are great, but you don't go to them as an example of great production.

It gets a little bit troublesome when you have something that's overcompressed that shouldn't be.

The years keep going by and you realize, Wow. Doing these records is such a process: going on tour for a year and a half, then you get home and you want to do other things.

There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite. I want to hear that artist; I don't want to hear me - that's the last thing I want to hear. There are a lot of technical studio things I've learned or figured out, and I feel like I could use those things to help other people with what they're doing.

You just want to go back to those 70s albums. Even a lot of the 90s indie records were still done on tape, and you hear the difference.

I love British humor. It's just so - surreal.

Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude.

I'm always looking for older equipment and ways of recording, but you can't escape the fact that it's all going to be digitized and reduced. I do think music sounds better when it's on tape and more simply recorded. I've been arguing with people for 10 years about tape versus digital, and I believe tape is absolutely essential in getting the sound that's conducive to the enjoyment of music. I wonder if it's going to go back to that. Sometimes I think it has to. As music becomes more computer-based, it's lost some emotional impact.

I'm always looking for older equipment and ways of recording, but you can't escape the fact that it's all going to be digitized and reduced.

I think everybody should just turn off their TV machines and make up their own songs about whatever comes to mind-their couch, their friends their loaves of bread. Everybody's got their own songs. There should be so many songs out there that it all turns into one big sound and we can put the whole thing into a pickup truck and let it roll off the edge of the Grand Canyon.

You spend so many months and years in the studio, and you see the clock ticking and so much time spent on the minutiae of technical things. And I just thought it'd be fun to do something extremely fast and get that rush of something that had some energy, something that you weren't tired of when you finished it.

With my own music, I try to get away from things that are familiar and things that would be easy for me to go to.

You can't write if you can't relate.

It's hard to make music knowing that it's not going to be received by the listener in the way that it should be.

I've said for years to wives and mothers, you must start to see yourself as Sarah Connor. You must equip your children with the information they need to survive an ever-changing world.

My whole generation's mission is to kill the cliche...it's one of the reasons a lot of my generation are always on the fence about things. They're afraid to commit to anything for fear of seeming like a cliche. They're afraid to commit to their lives because they see so much of the world as a cliche.

I think my whole generation's mission is to kill the cliche.

There are certain records from the 80s and early 90s that you love because the songs are great, but you don't go to them as an example of great production. Over the last 20 years, myself and a lot of other musicians my age have tried to discover things in 50s, 60s, and 70s recording techniques that were lost or discarded. We've all been trying to crack this code. It's been an important period in the last 15 years, reclaiming some of those lost approaches to making records.

I enjoy the collaboration. I always envied people in bands who got to have that interaction.

Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out.

I think I gave indications early on that mine wasn't just going to be a commercial, er, career. If that were the case, then the first record would have been 10 versions of 'Loser.' I always thought it would be interesting if there was no such thing as gold and platinum records, or record deals, and people were just making music. What would the music sound like?

There are a lot of technical studio things I've learned or figured out, and I feel like I could use those things to help other people with what they're doing.

When my nephew was 3 and 4, he would say the most genius things. He said, You're hammer macho with FBI dogs. I thought it was just one of those great lines.

Let the desert wind cool your aching head. Let the weight of the world - drift away instead

Originally, the lyrics to "Girl" were really upbeat, and then it didn't work for me somehow. You need the dichotomy. If you're doing something happy and light, you need the shadows.

There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite.

Sometimes, I think the way the music business has been destructive and the way the fans are been put through it and try to navigate through it, so much is so foreign to what musicians would actually want to do or what would be natural to them.

Technology was something I avoided when I started out - I didn't even have electric guitars. Only played acoustic.

I didn't want to do something typical.

I do think music sounds better when it's on tape and more simply recorded.

Growing up, a film was an action film or it was a comedy or it was romantic, but you don't really see such stark lines between genres nowadays.

It's so easy to criticize your own time, and I see that as a problem, even for myself, as a listener.

I did that Grammys thing - I did a little freeform poem.

I don't remember half of the new bands, though - and I think that's kind of where we're going. It's turning into just a big derby of songs. May the best song win.

I've been arguing with people for 10 years about tape versus digital, and I believe tape is absolutely essential in getting the sound that's conducive to the enjoyment of music.

Especially in music, you wonder, Okay, should I still be doing this? Like, are you overstaying your welcome at the party? But I don't know.

I'm more critical of my songwriting than anybody, but I've worked really hard in the last five to 10 years to improve. I didn't take it all that seriously when I started. It was a little bit of a stigma to being a songwriter or a folkie back then. I did a lot of send-ups of sensitive singer-songwriter stuff when I was starting out, which limited my development as a songwriter in a way. I wasn't really fully given license to explore that until the mid-90s. I'm still working on it; I'm a little bit of a late bloomer.

For the records I've work on over the last 10 years, I get sent the really compressed version and the non-compressed version, and oftentimes you end up going with the more compressed one because it's what people's ears are attuned to. I think the bigger problem is saturation and people being desensitized.

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

[Early on,] the attitude was that what I was doing wasn't music.

There's some quality you get when you're not totally comfortable. When you're not doing what you're used to, you could completely fall on your face. You could completely blow it.

I think you have to keep a childlike quality to play music or make a record.

I think trying to be offbeat is the most boring thing possible.

I'm more critical of my songwriting than anybody, but I've worked really hard in the last five to 10 years to improve.

I never had any expectations of winning a Grammy. It wasn't something I was set on, that I was hoping and praying and starving for.

When you work with somebody for a long period of time, you develop a shorthand with everything.

Whatever you do has to be commercial and it can't be too distracting - it has to be background music, basically.

When you use some of the more modern recording devices and Pro Tools, when you get into the technology, you are aching to get into some territory.

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

There are people who've prepared their whole lives for real heavy success and bask in it. They're so good at it and they obviously love it. I'm just happy to be making a record.

I know my own limitations. And if somebody says, "I need songs for a cartoon garage band - they look like this and they should sound like this," it gives you a direction. I like having that kind of assignment.

I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.