WALTER BECKER

My primary influences were the best jazz players from the 50's and 60's and later some of the pop people from the same time period along with the better of the well known blues musicians.

I'm a self-taught musician aside from what I've been able to pick up from other players.

I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends.

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.

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.

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

There was a time in my life when one aspect of my lifestyle called for watching a lot of television.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

If it feels like we're re-creating something rather than creating something, we don't do it.

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.

It seemed like the more complex the music we were playing, the less able we were to guarantee its consistency.

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

If there's a strange way to do something, I would certainly like to know about it. I feel that I owe that to my public.

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.

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.

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.

In the '70s, my playing was completely untutored, but it sounded good to me, and I tried to find ways to make those very simple things work in more ambitious contexts.

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.

I learned a lot from the various artists I produced. Either you see them doing something that you do want to do it, or you see them doing something the way you don't want to do it.

Some places you play in America, it's like 'On the Waterfront.'