I’ve never done it before. I might do a few Steely Dan things that I particularly like, but it’ll mainly be my stuff.

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

September 11, on a global scale, and my mother dying, on a personal level, were the two major things that got me thinking about all of this.

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

That was one of the elements. Just getting older and also I’m a New Yorker, so 9-11 on a broader level had something to do with it. I work as I go so I have...

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

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...

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

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.

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

When you get a groove going, time flies.

We’re not getting any younger.

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

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.

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...

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

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

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

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

Mortality! It’s intimations of mortality. I’m 58, and by that time, more people you know have died. My mother died a few years ago. And being a New Yorker, 9/11 had a lot to do...

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