Mike McCready Quotes

I've become a workaholic. When the shows slow down and there's no press and I can get my time to myself in the studio with my music, I get into this zone, man. I enter this incredible space where I'm just making music. And I feel like I can work with anybody - with Elton John, with Hanson - and I can make something incredible.

People sometimes ask if I want to be a solo artist, but it just wouldn't be any fun being on your own.

When you get the right people together, writing music becomes very effortless.

Collaboration is part of what keeps me interested in music.

We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.

There's a song called 'All We'd Ever Need,' which is actually the first song that the three of us wrote together on our first album, and when we wrote that song I didn't have any real experience to pull from.

I enjoy the collaboration. I always envied people in bands who got to have that interaction. I've done so many albums where I've been in the studio for 14 hours a day for six months just trying to come up with things on my own. It's a nice change helping other people with their music and not being all about what I'm trying to do myself.

Being in a band is a really magical thing because you've got a family and you operate as this one entity. It's very democratic; everyone is involved in the output. But within that, there can be a lot of disagreements and strife.

Sometimes one of us will have a riff or a bass line from home but it really gels when we come together. We really have a strong special chemistry that we take advantage of when we get together.

There's no better feeling than just going in and just working with someone and what comes out is something that the world knows about.

Find someone you can jam with. That's a big deal. When you play with someone else, you gotta work together to get the thing started and in time, working and in the groove.

I love jamming with my band because the guys inspire me every time. We all get off on each other's playing.

Being in a band, you become each other's best friends as well as each other's worst enemies.

The Dead Daisies have been an absolute blast for me so far. The guys are all great musicians and also incredibly easy to work with.

So much of inspiration comes from collaboration with other musicians.

I often write songs, and when I do, I usually write quite a few of them. I really have to be in the mood.

Music. It's all creativity right here, right now.

When you're a songwriter and you click with someone, you tend to want to keep writing with that person.

I'd always been on the giving end of music and creating.

It has been a pleasure to play with all these artists. Pretenders was a real highlight, but also Damon, aka Badly Drawn Boy, Sinead... Ian Brown... all of these people I learn from and love to work with.

For hundreds of years people have talked about artists having inspiration, but often, some persons would say, write us a symphony or write us a song, on commission. The artists would come up with a masterpiece without waiting to have their muse inspire them.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

The music comes first. When Geoff has made something the inspiration comes automatically. His music is very expressive. But still is is a very difficult process: I have to add something to his music, not push it away. It has to be equal, and I find that very difficult.

I can almost always write music; at any hour of the twenty-four, if I put pencil to paper, music comes.

Whoever best serves the song is going to be served by the song.