Walter Becker

8 Miles to Pancake Day' is a reconciliation of the classic space-time dilemma.

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.

Most of the time when people say something sounds like Steely Dan, and I listen to it, it doesn't. And I'm not even sure what they're talking about.

I think every time, before we do an album, we have a discussion where we sort of consider the idea of doing something radically different.

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

It was the 'Gaucho' album that finished us off. We had pursued an idea beyond the point where it was practical. That album took about two years, and we were working on it all of that time - all these endless tracking sessions involving different musicians. It took forever, and it was a very painful process.

I can never believe how much time and energy and money and talent and everything else is being poured into horrible ideas.

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

When you start to work with someone, there's a negotiation that takes place involving what's going to happen when you have a difference of opinion. Most attempts at collaboration never survive the negotiation. Merely being agreeable is not enough.

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.

We try to write things that work on a variety of levels at the same time: A sleek exterior with a turbulent lyric.

There are some things that I write that I know are personal in a way, or the gag is so obscure that it's just for me, and there's other things that could basically be for anybody or be anything, at least until the lyrics start to get written.