There's no time for regrets. You've just got to keep moving forward.
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.
Chris Cornell painted in song the darkness and beauty of life in Seattle.
I hold Mad Season very fondly to my heart, and there's a lot of sadness in that, too.
Actors want to be musicians, and musicians want to be baseball players.
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.
I have lived most my life with chronic inflammation and constant pain with immediate diarrhea.
But KISS inspired me personally to pick up a guitar and go for it.
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.
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.
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.
Pearl Jam sit down and have conversations about Kiss all the time on tour.
There was no support system in Seattle for musicians.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We'll go to South America and play to 60,000. It's insane.
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.
The older I get, the more I surf and do more stretches to get ready for the rock show.
Mad Season changed my life in a million different ways.
I like to have a lot of different creative outlets.
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.
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.
Am I really an author if I just put pictures in a book?
Life is a pre-existing condition.
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.
I've always wanted to have keyboards in the band.
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.
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.
My mind has always kind of operated with this band like it's gonna be over tomorrow.
I've always had this term 'mad season' in my head.
I don't ever want to play a festival again, period.
I never play as well without these guys; the best I have ever been creatively has been with Pearl Jam.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When we did our first record, my mindset was this is all going to be over tomorrow.
I should never, ever try and grow a mustache again.
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.
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 honestly grew up listening to the Stones more. But that doesn't mean I don't love the Beatles.
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.
'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.
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 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.
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.
I'm surprised that we're around still. A lot of the bands that we came out with are not around.
