I'm always looking for older equipment and ways of recording, but you can't escape the fact that it's all going to be digitized and reduced.

You just want to go back to those 70s albums. Even a lot of the 90s indie records were still done on tape, and you hear the difference.

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder what makes music or culture or taste go in certain directions. Who knows what the forces are behind it.

I'm more critical of my songwriting than anybody, but I've worked really hard in the last five to 10 years to improve. I didn't take it all that seriously when I started. It was a little bit of a stigma to being a songwriter or a folkie back then. I did a lot of send-ups of sensitive singer-songwriter stuff when I was starting out, which limited my development as a songwriter in a way. I wasn't really fully given license to explore that until the mid-90s. I'm still working on it; I'm a little bit of a late bloomer.

Sometimes, reissues can be revelatory, or put the original record in a different light, but those are rare.

I've been arguing with people for 10 years about tape versus digital, and I believe tape is absolutely essential in getting the sound that's conducive to the enjoyment of music.