Top 70 Mike McCready Quotes

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 wanted to start doing more music, doing more things than just playing guitar. I started taking singing lessons and piano lessons. I need to learn more things, to be an artist or whatever, and then transfer that back into writing songs.

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.

There was no support system in Seattle for musicians.

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.

Polaroids were the instant thing to get a photo back when I started it. You had to wait two days to get your film back if you had a real camera, and I was more of an instant-gratification guy.

I’ll hear us on classic rock radio stations, and I’ll go, ‘Oh, my God, we’re getting old!’

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.

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 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 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.

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.

Tom Petty sent me this amazing 12-string Rickenbacker, and ‘Not for You’ was the first time I used it. It was like a Christmas present. One day, it just showed up at my door. I called him up and thanked 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.

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.’

I’ve been denied coverage two times in my life – and it’s after I’ve been in a big successful rock band. And I’ve a lot of met people who‘ve been denied coverage who don’t have the resources to fight the insurance companies. And they shouldn’t have to do that.

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.

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

It’s hard enough just staying in the present. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow.

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.

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

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 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.

Duff McKagen’s been a dear friend of mind for a long time, and he’s a Seattlelite.

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

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.

There are some people who have stayed with us our whole career, which is pretty cool too.

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.

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

We came out of a very provincial city that was not very supportive of music, and we had to do our own thing and flyer everywhere.

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.

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 think, as an artist, you want to keep going – you want to keep taking challenges; you want to be pushed, in a way – and I think Sonic Evolution does that, it makes me feel a little uncomfortable and get out of my comfort zone.

Every Crohn’s and colitis patient is different, and they all respond to different things. That’s the craziest thing about it.

I’ve always wanted to have keyboards in the band.

Playing music was something I wanted to do since I was 11 years old, so when we went on tour and started selling records, it was an incredible, strange dream.

I don’t know if you could call me a natural-born runner.

Playing albums in sequence can be awesome, or it can be very limiting.

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.

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

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.

We try to keep everything as in-house and small and as punk rock and do-it-yourself as we can. That’s part of our way of doing business.

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

To just meet people that have Crohn’s or colitis and to hear their stories gives me a lot of hope and a lot of courage.

The older I get, the more I surf and do more stretches to get ready for the rock show.

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

The average life spans of many bands are not that long, up to five years if they are lucky.

We were accused of sounding like a couple of bands when we started out. Aerosmith was one.

I honestly grew up listening to the Stones more. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love the Beatles.

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

I like to have a lot of different creative outlets.

There’s no time for regrets. You’ve just got to keep moving forward.

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

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.

It’s extremely important to have a loyal fan base and be receptive to them.

I am constantly amazed at their support over the years.

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

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

At some shows, the set list gets changed while we are on stage. I know Ed thinks about the set very hard throughout the day in order to make the best show possible for the fans and for us.

I remember, after the New Year‘s Eve 1991 show, somebody running onto the bus and saying Nirvana had just hit No. 1. I remember thinking, ‘Wow; it’s on now.’ It changed something. We had something to prove – that our band was as good as I thought it was.

Other bands gave us lip service, but when it came down to it they kind of backed off. That was a little disheartening. But I respect them. That’s their business.

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.

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

That’s a fantasy of mine. We could do every record in a residency. It would be so cool. We could play the B-sides along with the album and get really creative with it.

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

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

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

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.

I’m amazed that people are even still wanting to listen to us.