Walter Becker

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

“'Gaucho' was a struggle for us for a lot of reasons, and in the end, we just sort of survived it.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I think every time, before we do an album, we have a discussion where we sort of consider the idea of doing something radically different.”

“All our wives are experimental psychologists.”

“Singing, for me, means singing as loud as I can.”

“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 have a feeling there were many, many successful rock duos that just didn't get attention. That's the fault of the rock press. They are always playing up controversy, scandal, aggravation, and irritation.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“It wouldn't bother me at all not to play on my own album.”

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

“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.”

“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.”