Top 75 Mike McCready Quotes

We want to have a life outside of Pearl Jam, too.

I really liked Stevie Ray Vaughn, so hey – I tried to look like him.

There’s times when I go, ‘We should have done a bunch of videos.’…Regardless of mistakes we’ve made, we made ’em, and we own ’em.

We can go to Australia and play to 30-to-40,000. We can do that in certain places in the States, but not everywhere.

When you’re really young, dating girls, and trying to explain Kiss, they just look at you like you’re kind of crazy. I think they got so big in the Seventies and were such a phenomenon – they did the ‘Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park’ movie, the solo records – some people only know the merchandising stuff.

Until Mad Season, I didn’t have that confidence to write songs, and I really got it, playing with these guys. It meant the world to me.

When our band took off, we were all in this microcosm of a hurricane or whatever it was. It was a crazy, crazy dream come true with nightmares floating around it, and all sorts of stuff was happening, and my Crohn’s was happening.

And watching Ed, he’s really coming into his own doing some new things onstage I’ve never seen him do. He’s really getting into it, putting 120 percent into the show. We feel comfortable and excited.

That’s what music has always been to me: a feel. I’ve listened to the Stones many times and it still makes me have that feeling of joy every time. They are still around and put on a really exciting show. We also give it 120 percent.

We’re always working on our communication, which is something that’s important. Instead of going through managers to discuss things, we will sit down and have meetings about things. That’s a process. And you have to be able to be honest with each other as much as you can.

It’s always push and pull with a record company.

Reason why we’ve lasted so long is we write music; we get very intense. We go away from each other, do our own thing, and then we get back together.

I never play as well without these guys; the best I have ever been creatively has been with Pearl Jam.

I like to have a lot of different creative outlets.

Jeff Ament, the bass player, plays basketball. He ultimately wants to do music, but he’s really good at basketball, too. We all want to do what we can’t do, maybe.

I feel very blessed we can still have a career making music.

Crohn’s patients differentiate their diet. You know, what I can handle and tolerate, another person couldn’t, and what they can, I can’t.

We’ll go to South America and play to 60,000. It’s insane.

When we did our first record, my mindset was this is all going to be over tomorrow.

I try to dig deep into my soul to figure out something positive in the pain. I think I go to certain places when I play to heal.

I think I bought into that whole rock n’ roll lifestyle, and all that does in the end is kill ya. So I don’t recommend it to anyone.

I love some kind of pressure in the air. Some kind of weirdness in the crowd, good or bad. That’s what we thrive on.

We want to push boundaries musically if we can and come at things from a different direction.

My favorite rocker is Go because it is heavy and chaotic.

People will steal ideas and put them into songs.

There’s Eddie’s conviction and his lyrics and his ideals, and he can just rock straight out. His vocals are incredible. And we all are really competent musicians.

Recording ‘Ten,’ we probably did ‘Even Flow’ 30 times.

To be able to make a living doing what I love is truly a gift, and I’m thankful for that every day.

We value doing things grassroots, even at this level. That means no real high ticket prices or meet-and-greets and all that kind of stuff.

I used to sit for hours and copy every lick on those early AC/DC and Kiss records. From there, I went on to Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. After a while, you kind of develop your own style.

There was no support system in Seattle for musicians.

My mind has always kind of operated with this band like it’s gonna be over tomorrow.

I have lived most my life with chronic inflammation and constant pain with immediate diarrhea.

I’ve met a ton of new people who have colitis or Crohn’s. Talking to them has been probably the most healing thing: to hear other people’s attitudes on how they deal with their disease and how they stay positive.

I think about trying to make it better. That’s all I do when we play ‘Even Flow’ or anything off of ‘Ten’: ‘Let’s do this the best we can.’

There’s this idea that, ‘All I have at the end of the day is my mind.’ That’s the only thing you can control. I believe that.

Everything I know, I stole directly from Ace Frehley, Angus Young, and Keith Richards. That’s how you learn.

When we’re not doing any Pearl Jam stuff, that’s when I’ll probably think of doing something else, whether that be scoring – hopefully more opportunities will come – or doing a solo thing.

Honestly, I’d rather do regular interviews. It’s more interesting to talk about whatever… anything other than guitars. I’m not into being a tech-head.

I am constantly amazed at their support over the years.

I don’t ever want to play a festival again, period.

I should never, ever try and grow a mustache again.

Playing onstage, I’m always aware of where the bathrooms are. When Crohn’s hits, I have to run, or it won’t be pretty.

I would love for people to enjoy our music and have feelings from it. That’s all I can hope for.

I have to eat in a way that’s good for me.

I play ‘Rock Band’ with my friends’ kids, and they completely beat me senseless with it. I feel like I’m holding them back. I try to play the drums, and I just can’t play the drums. I think I need to work on my skills.

Whether it’s Neil Young or Johnny Rotten, a band has to have someone like that: someone who you listen to and know that he believes what he says.

As a band, we just don’t tolerate any kind of abuse or intolerance of any kind of LGBT people by any kind of government.

A song kind of comes out of anywhere. A song will come out of the sky, or an idea, or walking around, or playing with other guys.

There are moments in South America, in Brazil, where you look out, and there are literally thirty, forty thousand people jumping up and down at the same time.

My life would have been different without Paul Stanley or Ace Frehley. They would have to be the greatest on my list as an influence to my life at 11 years old.

I still believe guitars will be around as long as there’s rock music.

I’ve always had this term ‘mad season’ in my head.

At this point, because we have stayed the same course for so many years, I feel like we are freer to make choices that are motivated by what feels right creatively at a given point in time.

After Mad Season, I started writing my own music for Pearl Jam and brought it in. ‘Given To Fly’ came out of that, and so did ‘Faithful’ – those were on ‘Yield,’ which came after Mad Season.

Mad Season changed my life in a million different ways.

You get some confidence in your songwriting abilities and go for the essentials – guitar, bass, drums, vocals. Those are the basic band essentials that have to be in place before you go any further.

I’d love to have Jack White up. I think he’s just a phenomenal guitar player. I’d love to see him play up close because he’s got a killer voice, and he’s a great lead player, too. That would be exciting to me.

I think our relationship with Epic had run its natural course, and it happened to coincide with the fulfillment of our contract. We decided not to resign with them.

Sometimes with Polaroids, the shot you want to get in your head doesn’t happen. What it makes me do is be patient, I guess, or let go of that presumption of what the shot’s going to be.

Pearl Jam sit down and have conversations about Kiss all the time on tour.

When they’re singing the guitar lines of songs in South America? Never heard that before. And in Canada, when they’re singing all of the lyrics to every song – that blows me away. I don’t know all the lyrics to every song.

A lot of times, bands will go on tour, and people only wanna hear the hits. Luckily, our fans are receptive to our new stuff.

‘Black Diamond’ blew my mind. Ace Frehley came onstage and did it with us at Madison Square Garden a few years ago, which was a total high watermark in my life. When I was 13, I never thought in a million years that I would even talk to him; I’d probably pass out. And here I am playing with him!

There’s a Kiss through-line to a lot of the music that came out of Seattle, and it hasn’t been talked about a lot.

It was by design that we mostly used pictures that you could not necessarily see what was going on, and that didn’t really focus in on the band, but instead focused in on a theme.

I think our fans are bigger and better students of Pearl Jam than we are.

Actors want to be musicians, and musicians want to be baseball players.

It’s always cool when somebody from a football team or baseball team comes to your show.

I like ‘X-Files’-type shows with government conspiracies and extraterrestrials and all that.