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" 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. "
Walter Becker
People
Time
Musicians
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" 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. "
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You
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" 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. "
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" I thought Twitter was a joke. I really thought it was a gag. I thought it was like National Lampoon or the Onion. "
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" In the '70s... there were rock players, and there were jazz players. "
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" I can never believe how much time and energy and money and talent and everything else is being poured into horrible ideas. "
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" There are some things that I write that I know are personal in a way, or the gag is so obscure that it's just for me, and there's other things that could basically be for anybody or be anything, at least until the lyrics start to get written. "
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Personal
Obscure
Me
" 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. "
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Love
Someone
Me
" It seemed like the more complex the music we were playing, the less able we were to guarantee its consistency. "
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Music
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Consistency
" 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
" It's great fun to play with a really good band. "
Walter Becker
Good
Fun
Band
" 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. "
Walter Becker
People
Ideas
Trouble
" Most of the time when people say something sounds like Steely Dan, and I listen to it, it doesn't. And I'm not even sure what they're talking about. "
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People
Listen
Say
" 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. "
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Ever
Out
Radio
" If any artist abuses his audience as a means to any end, noble or ignoble, he better have a damn good reason for it. "
Walter Becker
He
Good
Artist
" All our wives are experimental psychologists. "
Walter Becker
Psychologists
Wives
Our
" 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
" I love guys like Charlie Parker. "
Walter Becker
Charlie
Love
Like
" I learned a lot from the various artists I produced. Either you see them doing something that you do want to do it, or you see them doing something the way you don't want to do it. "
Walter Becker
Doing
You
Way
" With any relationship that goes on and is productive over a long period, there have to be some sort of interlocking qualities in those personalities that make it possible to survive. "
Walter Becker
Survive
Relationship
Possible
" 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
" It's a mystery to me why everybody doesn't love jazz. I've never been able to figure that out. "
Walter Becker
Never
Jazz
Love
" There's a great freedom in writing by yourself. You can write anything you want. "
Walter Becker
Writing
Freedom
Yourself
" Let's face it, us '60s folks had pretty high expectations. "
Walter Becker
High
Us
Expectations
" 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
" 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
" 'Gaucho' was a struggle for us for a lot of reasons, and in the end, we just sort of survived it. "
Walter Becker
End
Just
Struggle
" You have a kid, and it's like, 'He's gotta go to college! Gotta have some clothes!' "
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Clothes
You
Like
" We play rock & roll, but we swing when we play. We want that ongoing flow, that lightness, that forward rush of jazz. "
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Flow
Swing
Rock
" 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
" 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