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" It's great fun to play with a really good band. "
Walter Becker
Good
Fun
Band
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" We are constantly competing with the monsters from the id. "
Walter Becker
ID
Constantly
Competing
" People are really exercised about one particular thing, and that is themselves. They will bore you endlessly with their broken hearts. "
Walter Becker
Broken
Hearts
Bore
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Got
Good
Great
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Beach
Guess
Who
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Song
Said
Radio
" 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. "
Walter Becker
You
Work
Start
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Healthy
Doing
Trying
" Most of our songs are about relationships. "
Walter Becker
Relationships
Our
Most
" I think what television and video games do is reminiscent of drug addiction. There's a measure of reinforcement and a behavioural loop. "
Walter Becker
Addiction
Think
Video Games
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Pressure
More
Important
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Place
Our
Middle
" In the '70s, my playing was completely untutored, but it sounded good to me, and I tried to find ways to make those very simple things work in more ambitious contexts. "
Walter Becker
Good
Me
Work
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Love
Someone
Me
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Ever
Out
Radio
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Time
Process
Two
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Successful
Interesting
Performance
" If you're playing in a room that holds 15,000 people, it's just a question of how bad the room acoustics are and in what way they're bad. "
Walter Becker
You
Bad
People
" With 'Aja,' there was a sort of happy conjunction between our tastes and the backgrounds and styles of studio musicians at the time. "
Walter Becker
Time
Happy
Musicians
" It seemed like the more complex the music we were playing, the less able we were to guarantee its consistency. "
Walter Becker
Music
Playing
Consistency
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Jazz
Band
More
" I don't think that the Grammys are in any way a just way of grading music. "
Walter Becker
Grammys
Any
Just
" There was a time in my life when one aspect of my lifestyle called for watching a lot of television. "
Walter Becker
Lot
Television
My Life
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Hotel
Drive
Want
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Planned
Life
Fact
" All our wives are experimental psychologists. "
Walter Becker
Psychologists
Wives
Our
" I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends. "
Walter Becker
Odds
World
Old
" The perfect day for me is waking up and having a cup of tea with my kids before I drive them to school; Then, I go into the studio and try and write some music for three or four hours and give up about noon. "
Walter Becker
Tea
Drive
Day
" We try to write things that work on a variety of levels at the same time: A sleek exterior with a turbulent lyric. "
Walter Becker
Try
Write
Variety
" Going out and looking for managers is like going out and looking for rattlesnakes. "
Walter Becker
Looking
Like
Going
" 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. "
Walter Becker
Living
Man
Broken