I do like this statement from the interview:

“We were very fortunate. We came up in an era where the record companies allowed us to make the music we wanted to make, and then they found a way of marketing it and selling it, which is 180 degrees from what happens today in the business. We were very conscious of making albums with substance. Every song needed to have some redeeming quality, or else we basically didn’t put it on the record. So it wasn’t about making a few hits and filling out the album with quickies; that wasn’t the way we approached things. The albums were thought of as a piece of work, and the singles that emerged from those albums were the songs radio gravitated to. Many times, we allowed radio to pick the singles. We would just put the whole album out there, and the record company would mull it over, and they’d run it by various radio people, and they would say, “That’s the one, let’s go with that.” We were very much not involved with the picking of the singles.”

I miss that at one time an album was considered a piece of work in itself—a collection of songs with a cohesive message or a reflection of the craft and art of an artist at a given time.

“Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.”

Tom Stoppard, “Artist Descending a Staircase”
British dramatist & screenwriter (1937 – )

It’s like the difference between the Yankees and the Phillies. Hype versus competence. I can’t believe I just made a sports metaphor. My inner Chomsky is slowly dying.

He has great taste in restorations, too. Georgian: the thinking man’s Victorian.