Beck Music Quotations

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool. On paper, though, it's all stripped back. The musical idea is the one that wins.

Usually, the music inspires the lyrics. The lyrics just sort of fall off like a bunch of crumbs from the melody. That's all I want them to be - crumbs. I don't want to work any kind of fabricated message.

Studying music in a conservatory would be stifling for me, although I respect people who can do it. And by no means am I an expert at notating music or music theory - that's not really my world.

If you look at an old piece of sheet music, there's all kinds of text on it, there are ads, there are proclamations of the greatest songs' success, there's artwork. So there is a tactile, physical experience of learning the song and the way it's notated.

If we look at the fact that record covers are essentially advertisements for the music, we acknowledge a function and purpose to draw in the prospective buyer.

I wish I had more confidence. I think that's probably my Achilles' heel. If I had more, I probably would have felt emboldened to make more interesting music earlier on, or really go for it in an artistic or songwriting sense.

I've never been able to relate to apathy. I've always been doing stuff, been in action, making music or working just to get by.

The repercussions of what you put out and what people gravitate to in your music never registered at all. I never had that thing that maybe other bands have - a specific idea of what they are and what their sound is.

I sat out a few years because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do next. So many things were changing in music and in culture, so it seemed like a good time to step back.

I feel like I've spent the majority of my time touring and traveling, so if I reduced the actual time making music, it's probably four and a half years at the most.

I can't tell you how many things I've worked on where I sat on it for a few years, and then somebody else did something very similar. Whether it's some weird vocal effect you hear on another record, or a drum beat, or even a song title, a subject matter, or a mixture of different kinds of music.

Being able to take musical ideas through every iteration is attractive to me. Granted, not everyone's going to want to listen to that, but it should exist.

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

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.

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's never any pressure on the music having to be something.