Latest Beck Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• There's a different physiology happening between the sound waves and the body that doesn't happen with music playing off the computer. About five years ago, I got a turntable that hooks up to your computer, and I put the vinyl in there and I listened to it back-to-back with a CD, and it didn't even compare. But people don't have time to go track down vinyl, lower it in, all that. And they probably don't care. 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.

  Beck

  People, Track, Different

• 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. I do think music sounds better when it's on tape and more simply recorded. 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. I wonder if it's going to go back to that. Sometimes I think it has to. As music becomes more computer-based, it's lost some emotional impact.

  Beck

  Believe, Emotional, Thinking

• Technology was something I avoided when I started out - I didn't even have electric guitars. Only played acoustic. But after a while, I realized that it's important to embrace things that are available in your time, and try to do something different with them.

  Beck

  Technology, Important, Trying

• There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite. I want to hear that artist; I don't want to hear me - that's the last thing I want to hear. There are a lot of technical studio things I've learned or figured out, and I feel like I could use those things to help other people with what they're doing.

  Beck

  Artist, Helping Others, People

• There are certain records from the 80s and early 90s that you love because the songs are great, but you don't go to them as an example of great production. Over the last 20 years, myself and a lot of other musicians my age have tried to discover things in 50s, 60s, and 70s recording techniques that were lost or discarded. We've all been trying to crack this code. It's been an important period in the last 15 years, reclaiming some of those lost approaches to making records.

  Beck

  Song, Love Is, Important

• 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.

  Beck

  Long, People, Perspective

• I'm more critical of my songwriting than anybody, but I've worked really hard in the last five to 10 years to improve. I didn't take it all that seriously when I started. It was a little bit of a stigma to being a songwriter or a folkie back then. I did a lot of send-ups of sensitive singer-songwriter stuff when I was starting out, which limited my development as a songwriter in a way. I wasn't really fully given license to explore that until the mid-90s. I'm still working on it; I'm a little bit of a late bloomer.

  Beck

  Sensitive, Songwriting, Stigma

• There's some quality you get when you're not totally comfortable.

  Beck

  Quality, Comfortable

• Sometimes, I think the way the music business has been destructive and the way the fans are been put through it and try to navigate through it, so much is so foreign to what musicians would actually want to do or what would be natural to them.

  Beck

  Thinking, Trying, Way

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• I remember you would record a guitar part, and we would have to sit there for 15 or 20 minutes waiting for the computer to process it. You'd see the little wheel spinning on the computer, and you'd be praying that the hard drive didn't crash and you didn't lose the performance.

  Beck

  Remember You, Remembers You, Guitar

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• Back then, Pro Tools only had four or eight tracks, so we couldn't actually hear all the tracks. We could only hear eight at a time, so if a song had 25 or 30 tracks, we wouldn't be able to hear it until we went into the studio an put it all on tape. The process was a little bit backwards.

  Beck

  Song, Eight, Track

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• 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.

  Beck

  Memories, Mind, Aces

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• When you use some of the more modern recording devices and Pro Tools, when you get into the technology, you are aching to get into some territory.

  Beck

  Technology, Tools, Use

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• There's an infinite amount of possibilities and detours and things that can distract you from actually just performing the song and having whatever emotion that's invested into the song come through in the recording.

  Beck

  Song, Detours, Emotion

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• I enjoy recording live better, but I think by the nature of it you are going to end up with something that's a little bit more traditional.

  Beck

  Thinking, Littles, Ends

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• I've been practicing for years, trying to figure out how to record an entire band live.

  Beck

  Years, Trying, Band

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• With modern recording techniques, and living in the Pro Tools era, the process gets really drawn-out, and it can become painstaking.

  Beck

  Technique, Tools, Eras

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• I grew up I guess you'd say in the cassette era.

  Beck

  Eras, Grew Up, Grew

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• You spend so many months and years in the studio, and you see the clock ticking and so much time spent on the minutiae of technical things. And I just thought it'd be fun to do something extremely fast and get that rush of something that had some energy, something that you weren't tired of when you finished it.

  Beck

  Fun, Tired, Years

  Interview with Tom Breihan, pitchfork.com. July 13, 2009.

• Whatever you do has to be commercial and it can't be too distracting - it has to be background music, basically.

  Beck

  Backgrounds, Background Music

  "Catching Up With Beck". Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. August 2, 2010.

• Whether you're aware of it or not, any kind of collage idea becomes a part of how you see the world once you incorporate media and internet and video games and all these things.

  Beck

  Media, Games, Ideas

  "Catching Up With Beck". Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. August 2, 2010.

• I'm always working on my own music, too. I've been working on a record for a few years.

  Beck

  Years, Records, Always Working

  "Catching Up With Beck". Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. August 2, 2010.

• I'm sure the music is going to come out. I'm not sure if I'm going to put out 12"s or put the songs on my website. I just have to get them done.

  Beck

  Song, Done, Music Is

  "Catching Up With Beck". Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. August 2, 2010.

• I know my own limitations. And if somebody says, "I need songs for a cartoon garage band - they look like this and they should sound like this," it gives you a direction. I like having that kind of assignment.

  Beck

  Song, Giving, Cartoon

  "Catching Up With Beck". Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. August 2, 2010.

• I enjoy the collaboration. I always envied people in bands who got to have that interaction.

  Beck

  People, Collaboration, Band

  "Catching Up With Beck". Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. August 2, 2010.