Matt Cameron Quotes

When you're working with the same band you kind of know their style inside out, and even when you've been working for seven years with the same people, suddenly they'll do something you didn't even think they were capable of.

I love bands that can collaborate, and I feel like the Rolling Stones wouldn't be nearly as great as they are if it wasn't for them having a real group.

When you play with great musicians, whether they're schooled or self-taught, they keep you on your toes. It comes down to people's personalities and individual energies.

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.

When you're used to playing with people, when you're in a band, then you're used to playing with each other. People nowadays aren't used to playing with each other because they don't have to.

But things can happen in a band, or any type of collaboration, that would not otherwise happen.

I think it was probably down to the fact that we weren't together personally as a band. We weren't pulling in the same direction. I always feel if you're having a good time in the studio it actually comes across on the tape and that was a bit of a miserable album for us.

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

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

Fleetwood Mac was one big lesson in adaptation for me. There were five very different personalities, and I suppose that made it great for a while.

You don't realize how beautiful an idea is until you do it with other people. There's this really shimmery, awesome thing when you start finishing a song - where the song just starts writing itself.

I always want harmony within the band. I want it to work.

The Sekrets record is very much me, and Dan's Emergency Room is very much him. And then Alkaline Trio is very much ours.

I enjoy the collaboration. I always envied people in bands who got to have that interaction.

I think it's important when you make a record that you know you're working with the people who are going to get the best out of you.

I get so much energy and I learn so much through collaborating with other people. Ultimately, I think the best music will always be created through collaborations - pooling together skills to create something bigger than any individual. I like to use my own SOPHIE material to present ideas in their most extreme, un-compromised form. I really use those opportunities to express exactly where I'm at in terms of production and writing ideas, as a document of my thoughts and feelings, as well.

I think a lot of things that people think are complimentary are a little bit condescending, but then we just have to keep doing what we're doing, and being in the band is the important bit.

I think Gram did his best work in co-writes. Sometimes when you're working with one other person, it's such a magical thing. You're editing each other and you're trying to create that one spark.

...when you collaborate with someone else on something creative, you get to places that you would never get to on your own. The way an idea builds as it careens back and forth between good writers is so unpredictable. Sometimes it depends on people misunderstanding each other, and that's why I don't think there's any such thing as a mistake in the creative process. You never know where it might lead.

If I'm talking to a photographer, I'm talking to a stylist, I'm talking to a makeup artist, we're kind of creating and collaborating and making something that is artwork and is special and is different.

Communicating with musicians is really interesting because everyone has their quirks and their strengths and their weaknesses.

The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens.

When you're songwriting, it's like talking about your own life experience. When you're with a band, you have to compromise.

I think different musical collaborators bring out different qualities in my songs and I like that.

I've always loved playing in bands where there's like three or four people and we're all throwing out ideas and coming together to make an album.