Beck Quotes

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Beck

Profession : Musician

Birth : July 8, 1970

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.

Beck

I'm really fascinated by lingos and colloquialisms that are outmoded and have gone by the wayside. I love the way people spoke in the '30s, and the amazing slang of the mid-'60s and '70s.

Beck

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.

Beck

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.

Beck

You can't meditate on walking or certain human habits. You concentrate too much on the way you walk, and you'll start walking pretty weird.

Beck

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

Beck

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.

Beck

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.

Beck

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

Beck

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.

Beck

I didn't want to do something typical.

Beck

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

Beck

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

Beck

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.

Beck

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.

Beck

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.

Beck

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

Beck

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.

Beck

I'm a musician. I'm not, like, a personality. I've never really pretended to perform that kind of function.

Beck

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.

Beck