Quotes from Mike McCready

We have a ridiculous amount of material.

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

There was no support system in Seattle for musicians.

Chris Cornell painted in song the darkness and beauty of life in Seattle.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

But KISS inspired me personally to pick up a guitar and go for it.

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.

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.

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

I'm surprised that we're around still. A lot of the bands that we came out with are not around.

I love surprising the fans.

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