Zitat des Tages von Walter Becker:
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.
If any artist abuses his audience as a means to any end, noble or ignoble, he better have a damn good reason for it.
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.
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.
I'm a self-taught musician aside from what I've been able to pick up from other players.
It seemed like the more complex the music we were playing, the less able we were to guarantee its consistency.
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.
I can never believe how much time and energy and money and talent and everything else is being poured into horrible ideas.
I'm glad we turned into a big-time touring band later in life. In fact, it's almost like we planned it out that way.
If there's a strange way to do something, I would certainly like to know about it. I feel that I owe that to my public.
When you're collaborating with somebody, there has to be a spirit of cooperation. There are a lot of times when you just can't persuade someone to write a certain type of song, either musically or lyrically.
I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You have a kid, and it's like, 'He's gotta go to college! Gotta have some clothes!'
I always look for the weirdest note to land on. I felt that that was the least I could do for the great musical traditions which I've spawned.
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.
ABC had all these schlocky, bubblegum acts, and we had to come up with suitable material for them. In which we were amazingly unsuccessful.
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.
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.
I think every time, before we do an album, we have a discussion where we sort of consider the idea of doing something radically different.
It wouldn't bother me at all not to play on my own album.
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.
'8 Miles to Pancake Day' is a reconciliation of the classic space-time dilemma.
We are constantly competing with the monsters from the id.
Singing, for me, means singing as loud as I can.
It's good - it's great when somebody who is 20 years younger than you comes up and says, 'Wow, we just got turned on to you guys, and you're really great,' or something like that. I like that.
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.
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.
I'm not interested in a rock/jazz fusion.
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.
We've been allowed to operate unmolested on the fringes of the music scene, really. That's where we enjoy it most.
I think that there's the self-imposed pressure to come up with something that's good. For guys like us, that's much more important than any external pressure could really be.
