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QUOTES Jeff Ament Matt Cameron Stone Gossard Mike McCready Eddie Vedder Jeff Ament "There are definetely moments live where it's as good as any experience you can have. There have been shows where maybe the whole first half of the show my eyes have been closed and then you'll look out in the crowd and there'll be somebody totally lost in their head, in exactly the same place you're in. That, to me, is the essence of music." "Music for me is one of the more healing art forms. I think anybody can put on a pair of headphones and put in a disk or play a record and have it change them." "We knew we were still a long way from being a real band at that point, and we needed to tour. So essentially Ten was just an excuse to tour. We told the record company, 'We know we can be a great band, so let's just get the opportunity to get out and play.'" "Except for a few moments on the first record, a lot of times Eddie's lyrics were just stories to me. I knew he was a great writer and there was a lot passion behind the lyrics, but I didn't always relate to them. On this record [NO CODE], it's like my own thoughts are in the songs... In some ways, it's like the band's story. It's about growing up." "Add Water. Watch Pearl Jam Grow." Matt Cameron "My brother was the Zeppelin guy in my family." "I've had some great drug experiences, although I definitely don't take any one thing at all - besides coffee. But experimentation is part of growing up and I think that if people want to experiment, they should, no matter what any right-wing group is telling you. But if it gets to a point where you can't really do anything else any more, then it's a problem..." "We did a show in Olympia right before Badmotorfinger came out, and people there were starting the riot grrrl Kill Rock Stars label at that point, and there were T-shirts, and they were great. I asked if I could buy one of the T-shirts, and the guy said, 'No man, you're a rock star.' I thought to myself, 'What a closed-minded idiot!'" "It's like the comic books, where these giant weird creatures fuck these little girls with a dick going through their mouths - these violent fucking weirdo fantasies that people buy here. They don't show pubes, but they do show these little girls getting raped by a moth. There's definitely a weird underlying sexual tension to this culture." (On Japanese Comics) "Well, Kim and I were KISS freaks when we were 14 and 15. I was in a KISS cover band!" "I'd rather talk about pot than music anyday. We talk about music in every fucking interview, so this is a nice change." Stone Gossard "The bottom line is that when we all plug in, Eddie can make us dance and play like little molecules bouncing off the wall. And, for whatever reason, we can make him feel like singing." "For me, that title [five against one] represented a lot of struggles that you go through trying to make a record. Your own independence -- your own soul -- versus everybody else's. In this band, and I think in rock in general the art of compromise is almost as important as the art of inpidual expression. You might have five great artists in the band, but if they can't compromise and work together, you don't have a great band. It might mean something completely different to Eddie. But when I heard that lyric, it made a lot of sense to me." "I think in bands you have role playing, and for me it's riffs and arrangements and songwriting. Eddie's the guy you're looking at on stage, if I was in the audience I'd be looking at him - well, I might look at me a couple of times as well." Mike McCready "I started playing the guitar because of Kiss. I was 11. I had the Kiss lunchbox, everything. Every kid at the time was into Kiss, with all the firebreathing and stuff. We used to leap around the couch with brooms and strut in front of the mirror. Actually, I still do that." "I'll do whatever the song dictates - if it doesn't need a real lead, then I won't do one. But if it does, then I'll fuckin' go off." "The press is the press. They're going to write whatever they want because that's what they do. People don't know Eddie. He's one of the most caring individuals I've ever met in my life, if not the most caring. He's very intelligent. I think he gets freaked out about people following him around. Honestly, I don't know what he has to go through." "I think the band itself helps ground Eddie, and all of us." "You shouldn't die at a rock 'n' roll show, no way. It's a celebration of life." "I heard a Creed song on the radio the other day and I thought, 'Is that us?'" Eddie Vedder "If people don't like what I'm doing I really don't have time to hear it. I'm doing something good with my life and I challenge them to do the same." "The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself. Be stronger than those people." "I don't need drugs to make my life tragic" "Everybody writes about it like it's a life-affirmation, thing -- I'm really glad about that. It's a great interpretation. But 'Alive' is... it's torture. Which is why it's fucked up for me. Why I should probably learn how to sing another way. It would be easier. It's... it's too much. The story of the song is that a mother is with a father and the father dies. It's an intense thing because the son looks just like the father. The son grows up to be the father, the person that she lost. His father's dead, and now this confusion, his mother, his love, how does he love her, how does she love him? In fact, the mother, even though she marries somebody else, there's no one she's ever loved more than the father. You know how it is, first loves and stuff. And the guy dies. How could you ever get him back? But the son. He looks exactly like him. It's uncanny. So she wants him. The son is oblivious to it all. He doesn't know what the fuck is going on. He's still dealing, he's still growing up. He's still dealing with love, he's still dealing with the death of his father. All he knows is 'I'm still alive' -- those three words, that's totally out of burden. Now the second verse is 'Oh she walks slowly into a young man's room... I can remember to this very day... the look... the look.' And I don't say anything else. And because I'm saying, 'The look, the look' everyone thinks it goes with 'on her face.' It's not on her face. The look is between her legs. Where do you go with that? That's where you came from. But I'm still alive. I'm the lover that's still alive. And the whole conversation about 'You're still alive, she said' And his doubts: 'Do I deserve to be? Is that the question?' Because he's fucked up forever! So now he doesn't know how to deal with it. So what does he do, he goes out killing people -- that was 'Once.' He becomes a serial killer. And 'Footsteps,' the final song of the trilogy, that's when he gets executed. That's what happens. The Green River killer... and in San Diego, there was another prostitute killer down there. Somehow I related to that. I think that happens more than we know. It's a modern way of dealing with a bad life." "When you're out in the desert, you can't believe the amount of stars. We've sent mechanisms out there, and they haven't found anything. They've found different colors of sand, and rings and gases, but nobody's shown me anything that makes me feel secure in what happens afterward. All I really believe in is this fucking moment, like right now. And that, actually, is what the whole album [TEN] talks about." "I can definitely listen to every song on the record [VITALOGY] and get something out of it. 'Nothingman' was written in an hour, and so I like listening to that, cause it just happened and somehow captured a mood there, at least for me in the vocal. Any time I can nail down a song, a thought, in a half hour, that feels really good. We recorded 'Tremor Christ' in a very short period, one night in New Orleans, and I remember what that night was like. I can see how the lights were turned down low. I can see the room. And so I like listening to that. I wrote 'Better Man' before I could drink legally - on a four-track in my old apartment." "It's so important - Everyday we wake up, we're creating our memory. We have to create the best ones we can, even if for one day. Find your goals and take them one step at time. Your happiness and control form responsibility. It takes work and you MUST do things yourself. Don't expect anyone else to do it for you. Don't feel sorry for yourself. I've learned that about myself. I once thought I was under the lion's paw but when I decided to take on responsibility, I became much more free." "In America we like to have fun. Because we are an advanced culture... we live in a very advanced society and have a futuristic way of taking care of our population problem... we give each other guns and kill each other." "How is life treating you? Better yet, how are you treating life?" "Even if you're just a bum underneath a bridge, hopefully there's something you can pull out of a day that makes it worth living." "Pete Townshend was probably more of a father to me than anybody." "If you trust me at all, if you want to listen to me at all..but you certainly don't have to...speaking from experience, I can tell you that things change. You can believe me, you don't have to. They probably won't change unless you make them. The best way to change something that's around you, something you don't like, is to change yourself. And I don't think you want other people changing you, I think the only person that can change you is yourself. So if you ain't happy, if you're reading magazines about generation x-ers and thinking 'yeah, I'm one of them', well fuck that. Don't let anyone tell you who you are. No, no. No one can tell me who I am. I can tell you who I am, but that would be a long story. I could tell you who I am and it wouldn't fit in a Rolling Stone. If wouldn't fit in a video...it's my life, it's your life. You're the only one who knows who you are. I hope you know who you are, figure it out. Cause you are somebody. And I'm probably stating the obvious, but I just thought I'd do it anyway. So if you feel like you've got a piece of duct tape on your mouth, if you feel like you can't speak, take it off, speak up, speak your mind, shout it out, let 'em hear, shout it out."