Donald Fagen Quotes

I think that the only goals that we try to set for ourselves is to evolve musically.

There's been a progression in my sound.

We'll see some simplistic players for a while, who'll then get into more complicated things and evolve with their instruments. This is a cycle that happens over and over again in music.

I can see that if this was an album done 10 or 15 years ago we could see we were moving on to some place else.

But for the first time, we haven't made a huge leap forward in sound from our last album. Fans who own Kid A should be able to get their heads around it.

Music has to keep moving. But I was lucky. For me there was always something around the corner.

When Kenny first came to me, I think he was thinking of making a nice little folk record, but in my opinion, folk music had come to an end and I felt he needed to go to the next step, the next generation.

But I listen to live recordings of things that I did back in the '70s and then how I've done things since. And there's no doubt about it: if I compare the two, it's like chalk and cheese.

As you grow older, your music begins to mature and grow older along with you.

I'm just expanding my sound and making it bigger.

Conceptually, I've always gravitated towards arrangements that weren't just presenting one idea. I like to look at my songs as having a main part, an interlude, and almost like another song at the end.

The first record was basically a quick, fast record. The second record, we were going for more of a poppier sound - like a heavy pop sound. For 'Rocket to Russia,' we'd sort of reached our pinnacle. We'd gotten really good at what we were doing, so that's like my favorite record - that's a really good record. It's just great from beginning to end.

Our music is becoming more mature.

You have to grow with the music.

Music is constantly developing and changing.

I'm going to keep evolving and evolving and showing people that progression is key when it comes to music.

Music needs to move forward.

All my albums are evolutions, one on top of the other.

On 'Van Halen,' I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning,' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.

I think that every band tries to mature their sound through their existence, you know?

I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.

A lot of times, when a band finds success with a certain style or sound, they have a really hard time breaking away from that to grow as artists.

Younger players in this music often turn out to be middle aged; it is not a young music.

I'm proud that with 'Bright Eyes' we've always experimented and tried to make a different record every time out.

And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that's something that we as classical musicians have underestimated.