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" 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. "

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" Originally, we had a band known as Steely Dan. As we moved away from the band, we got whoever was appropriate for specific tunes. In a lot of cases, we gravitated toward jazz players who had more sophisticated harmonic concepts. "

" Our career had a sort of funny shape. "

" It's great fun to play with a really good band. "

" You have a kid, and it's like, 'He's gotta go to college! Gotta have some clothes!' "

" Most of our songs are about relationships. "

" You can't always count on the devices, attitudes, and conceits that stood you in good stead in 1972 or 1973, or 1978-79, to still have the same impact all these years later. "

" From a linguistic point of view, you can't really take much objection to the notion that a show is a show is a show. "

" 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. "

" It's interesting how some songs really lend themselves to performance in a big public venue and performance by a band and so on, and so they're even more successful in that context than they were on the record. "

" 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. "

" There was a film called 'FM,' and we were asked to do the title song. And I said, 'Does it have to have any specific words?' And they said, 'No, it just has to be about FM radio.' It took a day or two to write. "

" I can never believe how much time and energy and money and talent and everything else is being poured into horrible ideas. "

" 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. "

" People are really exercised about one particular thing, and that is themselves. They will bore you endlessly with their broken hearts. "

" That's sort of what we wanted to do: conquer from the margins, sort of find our place in the middle based on the fact that we were creatures of the margin and of alienation. "

" I learned music from a book on piano theory. I was only interested in knowing about chords. From that, and from the 'Harvard Dictionary of Music,' I learned everything I wanted to know. "

" I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends. "

" We play rock & roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz. "

" We are constantly competing with the monsters from the id. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I don't particularly like L.A. "

" 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. "

" It's a mystery to me why everybody doesn't love jazz. I've never been able to figure that out. "

" With 'Aja,' there was a sort of happy conjunction between our tastes and the backgrounds and styles of studio musicians at the time. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" We fly to the town in the little private airplane, and then we have to get in cars and drive to the hotel and then drive to the gig. So, I want to do a tour where the performances will actually be at the small airports. "

" We opened for the Kinks, the Beach Boys, the Guess Who, Chuck Berry, Sha Na Na. We opened for Cheech and Chong - I opened for Cheech, and Don opened for Chong. "