Beck Quotes

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The limitations are limitless.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Tonight the city is full of morgues, and all the toilets are overflowing.

There's shopping malls coming out of the walls, as we walk out among the manure. That's why I pay no mind.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 please everybody, man.

Your heart is a drum keeping time with everyone.

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.

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.

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.

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'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.

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

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.