Quotes from Beck

If you look at an old piece of sheet music, there's all kinds of text on it, there are ads, there are proclamations of the greatest songs' success, there's artwork. So there is a tactile, physical experience of learning the song and the way it's notated.

There are a lot of people who really abused sampling and gave it a bad name, by just taking people's entire hit songs and rapping over them. It gave publishers license to get a little greedy.

There are people who've prepared their whole lives for real heavy success and bask in it. They're so good at it and they obviously love it. I'm just happy to be making a record.

Every band I knew or played with had flyers and properly-recorded demos and contacts; I couldn't even get a gig.

I sat out a few years because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do next. So many things were changing in music and in culture, so it seemed like a good time to step back.

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool. On paper, though, it's all stripped back. The musical idea is the one that wins.

Studying music in a conservatory would be stifling for me, although I respect people who can do it. And by no means am I an expert at notating music or music theory - that's not really my world.

Your heart is a drum keeping time with everyone.

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.

When I started out playing small clubs, you could feel the room recoil from certain kinds of songs. Anything that was too personal, that had a sentiment to it, or was laying out your feelings, was immediately booed. People would start throwing things. And anything that was really provocative or humorous or radical was embraced or cheered.

In the studio, I'm always throwing people on different instruments.

I'm just taking one step at a time. I could zigzag one way, but it's not usually on purpose.

You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record.

Most of my early records were not cohesive at all, just collections of demos recorded in different years. 'Odelay' was the first time I actually got to go in the studio and record a piece of music in a continuous linear fashion, although that was written over a year.

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool.

It's so easy to criticize your own time, and I see that as a problem, even for myself, as a listener.

Sea Change was so specific. From the beginning it was set what it was going to be. All the other ideas that I had at the time I had to put to the side.

If someone is making a judgment when they don't have firsthand experience, it's intolerant. How can you make a judgment on something you don't know about?

Art is the child of Nature yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude.

The limitations are limitless.

I don't love you because you're beautiful, you're beautiful because I love you.

Every time you go in, it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia, or maybe the road wipes it out.

You can't write if you can't relate.

There's a destination,a little up the road. From the habitations and the towns we know. A place we saw the lights turn low. The jig-saw jazz and the get-fresh flow