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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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" 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

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

Walter Becker

Particularly

" The more of what our music does violates the premise of its format that it's presented in, the better. So, hearing our music in the supermarket, a Muzak version, is great. "

Walter Becker

Music

Our

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Let's face it, us '60s folks had pretty high expectations. "

Walter Becker

High

Expectations

" I don't think that the Grammys are in any way a just way of grading music. "

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

" 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

Important

" 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. "

" We've been allowed to operate unmolested on the fringes of the music scene, really. That's where we enjoy it most. "

" Given a choice between Charlie Mingus and Eric Dolphy or Joe Strummer and Lou Reed, there was no choice. I like Reed and Strummer, but it's kiddie music. "

Walter Becker

Choice

Music

" 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

" I think what television and video games do is reminiscent of drug addiction. There's a measure of reinforcement and a behavioural loop. "

" We have been fortunate enough to do something that has always been out of the mainstream and yet have an audience for what we do. "

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

Walter Becker

Constantly

Competing

" 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. "

" Most of our songs are about relationships. "

" 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. "

" Singing, for me, means singing as loud as I can. "

" In the '70s... there were rock players, and there were jazz players. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When you're collaborating with somebody, there has to be a spirit of cooperation. There are a lot of times when you just can't persuade someone to write a certain type of song, either musically or lyrically. "

" 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. "

" 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 guess actually playing on the records and touring is a great forced practice regimen for me. And you learn a lot playing with people. "

" 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. "

" Cynicism, I contend, is the wailing of someone who believes that things are, or should be, or could be, much, much better than they are. "