G. Beck Quotes

You never fully appreciate what you had until you don’t have it anymore

Everyone wants to feel loved, but when all you feel is alone it's tough to accomplish anything else.

I love British humor. It's just so - surreal.

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?

The process of spotting fear and refusing to obey it is the source of all true empowerment.

Anger elicits anger, fear elicits fear, no matter how well meaning we may be.

If we're stuck with having expectations, there's a very good reason to embrace positive ones: It's that we often create what we anticipate.

Denial exists because human infants, though equipped with trust-o-meters, are built to trust, blindly and absolutely, any older person who wanders past.

Growing up, a film was an action film or it was a comedy or it was romantic, but you don't really see such stark lines between genres nowadays.

What is a husband? He is the one who, with a touch, can bring back the starlight and glow of years long ago. At least he hopes he can - don't disappoint him.

As music becomes more computer-based, it's lost some emotional impact.

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

With my own music, I try to get away from things that are familiar and things that would be easy for me to go to.

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

I didn't want to do something typical.

Technology was something I avoided when I started out - I didn't even have electric guitars. Only played acoustic.

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

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

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.

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'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.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder what makes music or culture or taste go in certain directions. Who knows what the forces are behind it.

I try not to do email; I try to talk to people on the phone.

[Early on,] the attitude was that what I was doing wasn't music.

I've said for years to wives and mothers, you must start to see yourself as Sarah Connor. You must equip your children with the information they need to survive an ever-changing world.

I do think music sounds better when it's on tape and more simply recorded.

There are certain records that you love because the songs are great, but you don't go to them as an example of great production.

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.

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.

There's more well-known artists who aren't making as good songs as people who are just coming out of nowhere. That seems to be more typical in the last few years than ever.

I don't remember half of the new bands, though - and I think that's kind of where we're going. It's turning into just a big derby of songs. May the best song win.

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.

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.

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

It gets a little bit troublesome when you have something that's overcompressed that shouldn't be.

The only way I was allowed to play was by convincing bands to let me do a few songs while they set up. That went on for years.

I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.

Eventually, if you're experimenting with a sound that's unfamiliar, it gets absorbed, and somebody comes and does it better, and it becomes part of a vocabulary.

I didn't even have a computer until like 10 years ago. I was still using a typewriter until 2002.

Sometimes, reissues can be revelatory, or put the original record in a different light, but those are rare.

There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite.

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

You just want to go back to those 70s albums. Even a lot of the 90s indie records were still done on tape, and you hear the difference.

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.

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.

I did that Grammys thing - I did a little freeform poem.

The years keep going by and you realize, Wow. Doing these records is such a process: going on tour for a year and a half, then you get home and you want to do other things.

When you say 'state' you mean 'national.' National Socialism. That is what Mussolini and Hitler did. National Socialism. State Capitalism. They've changed the name.

I would love to do an electronic record. There's just so much to see and do and try. And life goes by.

You can't please everybody, man.