You’ve been performing since the late 80s. What keeps you going? AmongstTheWaves
It’s a good question. I don’t really know any other life. I’ve spent a lot of my time trying to create a body of work, and out of that, maybe there’s a few songs at the end that are not bad. So I just keep going down into the mine, trying to come back with a couple of things worth keeping. It’s a lot of digging. If I had to stop and get a job painting houses or something, I would still make songs just for myself, because that’s how it started.
You tend to alternate between styles from album to album. What do you feel is closer to your intrinsic self, funky Beck or lonesome Beck? Mazzini
Probably lonesome. But the other side of things gets me out of my shell, stops me from being a little too ponderous, which I’m apt to do. The other side of what I do – Loser or Odelay – was more of a fluke. At the time that was what people liked. Now it’s kind of reversed – they prefer the more introspective, quiet songs, and stuff that’s a little more genreless. I don’t have any songs that they play at weddings, like Uptown Funk. I remember telling Mark Ronson, “Hey, you made a wedding song.” He was like, “Yeah, finally.” That’s a very elite category of song.
