“There’s no time for regrets. You’ve just got to keep moving forward.”
― Mike McCready
“I should never, ever try and grow a mustache again.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“I hold Mad Season very fondly to my heart, and there’s a lot of sadness in that, too.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“I still believe guitars will be around as long as there’s rock music.”
― Mike McCready
“Everything I know, I stole directly from Ace Frehley, Angus Young, and Keith Richards. That’s how you learn.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“But KISS inspired me personally to pick up a guitar and go for it.”
― Mike McCready
“I am constantly amazed at their support over the years.”
― Mike McCready
“I feel very blessed we can still have a career making music.”
― Mike McCready
“I have had Crohn’s for about 19 years. It is a debilitating disease that affects my colon.”
― Mike McCready
“I have lived most my life with chronic inflammation and constant pain with immediate diarrhea.”
― Mike McCready
“I have to eat in a way that’s good for me.”
― Mike McCready
“I love playing with Jeff. That’s something I never really say in the press, but he’s my favorite bass player. I’ve played right next to him for 10 years.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“It’s always push and pull with a record company.”
― Mike McCready
“It’s extremely important to have a loyal fan base and be receptive to them.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“My favorite rocker is Go because it is heavy and chaotic.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“Some people are still not into us. That makes sense. We haven’t really done a lot of press. We haven’t put ourselves out there in ways that a lot of people would know we are still around. Unless you tour or record, they don’t know you are around.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“The average life spans of many bands are not that long, up to five years if they are lucky.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“There are some people who have stayed with us our whole career, which is pretty cool too.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“There was no support system in Seattle for musicians.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“Throughout my life of having Crohn’s, I’ve been on and off prednisone when other stuff was not working.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“The older I get, the more I surf and do more stretches to get ready for the rock show.”
― Mike McCready
“I was reading an article with Stevie Ray Vaughan a long time ago, and the number ‘1959’ stuck out to me for some reason. So I started searching those out as the band got more popular and I could actually afford one. And I found this one in Los Angeles. That’s what introduced me to the whole world of 1959s.”
― Mike McCready
“I’m surprised that we’re around still. A lot of the bands that we came out with are not around.”
― Mike McCready
“Life is a pre-existing condition.”
― Mike McCready
“I honestly grew up listening to the Stones more. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love the Beatles.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“Every Crohn’s and colitis patient is different, and they all respond to different things. That’s the craziest thing about it.”
― Mike McCready
“I’m born, and I die, but in between that, I can do whatever I want or have a strong opinion about something.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“Crohn’s doesn’t define who you are. You are a human being; you are special and a great addition to society. Crohn’s is just a part of your life. Try to be positive and proactive – therein lies the solution.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“I’ve always wanted to have keyboards in the band.”
― Mike McCready
“I’ll hear us on classic rock radio stations, and I’ll go, ‘Oh, my God, we’re getting old!’”
― Mike McCready
“I’m amazed that people are even still wanting to listen to us.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“I’m the kind of guy who wants to be involved in everything concerning our new baby. I don’t want to miss a thing.”
― Mike McCready
“To be able to make a living doing what I love is truly a gift, and I’m thankful for that every day.”
― Mike McCready
“I would love for people to enjoy our music and have feelings from it. That’s all I can hope for.”
― Mike McCready
“It’s hard enough just staying in the present. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
― Mike McCready
“I’ve always had this term ‘mad season’ in my head.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“People will steal ideas and put them into songs.”
― Mike McCready
“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.’”
― Mike McCready
“We were accused of sounding like a couple of bands when we started out. Aerosmith was one.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“Soundgarden are kind of the masters of writing songs that aren’t pop cliches.”
― Mike McCready
“My mind has always kind of operated with this band like it’s gonna be over tomorrow.”
― Mike McCready
“We want to push boundaries musically if we can and come at things from a different direction.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“I hope we’ve lightened up over the years. We’re fairly comfortable where we are, living-wise, and we’re excited, honestly, just to still be around. I think we’re less earnest than we were.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“I’m sober now and very happy.”
― Mike McCready
“I don’t ever want to play a festival again, period.”
― Mike McCready
“When we did our first record, my mindset was this is all going to be over tomorrow.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“I never play as well without these guys; the best I have ever been creatively has been with Pearl Jam.”
― Mike McCready
“We have a ridiculous amount of material.”
― Mike McCready
“I think our fans are bigger and better students of Pearl Jam than we are.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“We’ll go to South America and play to 60,000. It’s insane.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“Mad Season changed my life in a million different ways.”
― Mike McCready
“When you’re in a band, you’re just trying to do whatever you can to keep your band together. You’re thinking very inwardly, very myopic.”
― Mike McCready
“In the early days of Pearl Jam, we were caught up in such a whirlwind that I was just trying to keep my head on straight and play music. I didn’t have the kind of confidence that other guys in the band did.”
― Mike McCready
“Playing albums in sequence can be awesome, or it can be very limiting.”
― Mike McCready
“’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!”
― Mike McCready
“Pearl Jam sit down and have conversations about Kiss all the time on tour.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“Am I really an author if I just put pictures in a book?”
― Mike McCready
“Actors want to be musicians, and musicians want to be baseball players.”
― Mike McCready
“It’s always cool when somebody from a football team or baseball team comes to your show.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“Chris Cornell painted in song the darkness and beauty of life in Seattle.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“I like ‘X-Files’-type shows with government conspiracies and extraterrestrials and all that.”
― Mike McCready
“I like to have a lot of different creative outlets.”
― Mike McCready
“We want to have a life outside of Pearl Jam, too.”
― Mike McCready
“I love surprising the fans.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“I really liked Stevie Ray Vaughn, so hey – I tried to look like him.”
― Mike McCready
“Recording ‘Ten,’ we probably did ‘Even Flow’ 30 times.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“Duff McKagen’s been a dear friend of mind for a long time, and he’s a Seattlelite.”
― Mike McCready
“I don’t know if you could call me a natural-born runner.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
“’Even Flow’ is the best to play live because of the long solos. It starts out slow and builds, and, depending on what the audience does, I can reflect that in the solo.”
― Mike McCready
“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.”
― Mike McCready
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