Donald Fagen Quotes

It’s great to know that our old stuff still sounds good to our fans, just as it’s wonderful to think that we’ve turned a few people on to jazz over the years.

My writing is really intuitive. As a kid, I went to school in New Jersey and hung out in New York, so the way kids used to talk got into our earlier songs.

People are usually afraid to say what’s on their mind.

As jazz fans, it was amusing for us to play jazz harmonies on these big, ugly electric guitars.

Randy Newman seemed like an even worse singer than me. I liked Ray Charles, Levi Stubbs, Jack Jones, Joe Tex, Wilson Pickett.

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

We’re not getting any younger.

Popularity has everything to do with business
and nothing to do with music.

My style is a little quirky. I can’t play as fast as most professional jazz players.

When you get a groove going, time flies.

What do you do with what you’re given, and how do you transform it into something worthwhile?

I don’t think you can escape the environment we live in now.

I had trouble distinguishing art from life. I don’t now, and I feel much better!

Anthemic rock music is inherently fascist – anything intended to move huge masses of people is politically offensive to me.

I took some lessons as a kid but trained myself by ear. I did it the way jazz musicians used to learn years ago, which is to play records and slow them down to figure out the notes. At first I tried to imitate Red Garland, who was my favorite jazz pianist.

I’ve never been comfortable as a lead performer, and I never wanted to be a singer, particularly.

Popularity has everything to do with business and nothing to do with music.

We don’t think of ourselves as being perfectionists, really. To us it’s more about desperately trying to have it sound more or less OK.

I had a dream that Britney Spears rubbed her breasts in my face and Jennifer Lopez gave me head while Salma Hayek sucked my toes and the Olsen twins videotaped everything. I would have kept dreaming it, too, if I hadn’t set off the smoke detector.

I think of Steely Dan as being of its time, and it may be inseparable from its time.

I have a critical nature, in the sense that when I look at something I often look for the flaws.

I like it when songs develop in some way. Four minutes usually isn’t enough time for something to develop musically.

I’m starting to get older, and began to think about mortality a little more. My mother died in 2003 and that was a big shock. When your parents start to die off, that’s going to be a revelation. So for me, this album – although it might sound quite cheery – is really talking about death.

Now why the hell would I want to increase the volume of my ejaculation ? They can already hear me in the apartment next door.