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.
— Beck
In the past it seemed like I was making fun of rap a little bit. But it was more me making fun of myself, since I'm not technically a rapper, whatever that means.
I'm just taking one step at a time. I could zigzag one way, but it's not usually on purpose.
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.
I hadn't done much rapping in a while. I really wasn't sure I was going to do that any more. For a couple years I thought I was done with that. It wasn't really required of me.
I did that Grammys thing - I did a little freeform poem.
Tonight the city is full of morgues, and all the toilets are overflowing. There's shopping malls coming out of the walls, as we walk out among the manure. That's why I pay no mind.
No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
It's really hard for me to commit, one way or the other. I was just always creating and seeing what came out.
In Japan, you get on the bullet train or the airplane, and I loved the little speeches the stewardesses would do. They even do little speeches before you play gigs.
I would love to do an electronic record. There's just so much to see and do and try. And life goes by.
I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.
I had long hair when I was a teenager.
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.
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.
I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.
In the studio, I'm always throwing people on different instruments.
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?
I think you have to keep a childlike quality to play music or make a record.
I hear a lot of bad TV commercials that try to sound like Where It's At. That pretty much turned me off from using the electric piano for a lot of years.
I didn't want to do something typical.
Anything goes. You always find interesting things that way.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
I think my whole generation's mission is to kill the cliche.
