Beck Quotes
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I think it's interesting being American, the expectations for an American guy, and the image that has to be projected. 'Oh, I can't wear pink,' that kind of stuff. There's none of that in Europe.
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[Early on,] the attitude was that what I was doing wasn't music.
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Eventually, if you're experimenting with a sound that's unfamiliar, it gets absorbed, and somebody comes and does it better, and it becomes part of a vocabulary.
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The limitations are limitless.
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I think I gave indications early on that mine wasn't just going to be a commercial, er, career. If that were the case, then the first record would have been 10 versions of 'Loser.' I always thought it would be interesting if there was no such thing as gold and platinum records, or record deals, and people were just making music. What would the music sound like?
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I've been practicing for years, trying to figure out how to record an entire band live.
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I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.
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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.
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It's hard to make music knowing that it's not going to be received by the listener in the way that it should be.
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When my nephew was 3 and 4, he would say the most genius things. He said, You're hammer macho with FBI dogs. I thought it was just one of those great lines.
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Whatever you do has to be commercial and it can't be too distracting - it has to be background music, basically.
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When you work with somebody for a long period of time, you develop a shorthand with everything.
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Maybe certain aspects of what I was doing were reacting against what was happening or what people said, too. That's something that happens when you're starting out. After some time goes by and you get a little perspective, you realize that you don't need to react. You can just carry on with what you're doing. That took me a long time figure out; I've only gotten to that point in the last five or 10 years.
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I'm always looking for older equipment and ways of recording, but you can't escape the fact that it's all going to be digitized and reduced.
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I love British humor. It's just so - surreal.
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Sometimes things in life take a few years to digest, and they find their way into the work later on. Sometimes I'm writing about things from eight years ago-they just took a long time to distill and come out in the appropriate way.
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Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig.
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Sometimes, reissues can be revelatory, or put the original record in a different light, but those are rare.
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When I did "Top of the Pops" for the first time, Ace of Base was one of the other bands, and I have a memory of them on a small stage next to me in the TV studio. A memory of their performance is burned into my mind. Seared.
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No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
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Your heart is a drum keeping time with everyone.
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Let the desert wind cool your aching head. Let the weight of the world - drift away instead
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There's more well-known artists who aren't making as good songs as people who are just coming out of nowhere. That seems to be more typical in the last few years than ever.
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You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record.
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I don't remember half of the new bands, though - and I think that's kind of where we're going. It's turning into just a big derby of songs. May the best song win.
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As society changes, as politics change, as people change, certain songs still seem to resonate.
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I've been arguing with people for 10 years about tape versus digital, and I believe tape is absolutely essential in getting the sound that's conducive to the enjoyment of music.
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There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite.
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There's some quality you get when you're not totally comfortable.
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Especially in music, you wonder, Okay, should I still be doing this? Like, are you overstaying your welcome at the party? But I don't know.
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