Mike McCready Quotes

We've never been shy to admit that Metallica is a huge influence in our lives and on our music.

If there was no Black Sabbath, I could still possibly be a morning newspaper delivery boy. No fun.

Not to be mean about it, but some great rock and rollers, like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, are pretty one-dimensional.

I originally wanted to go into sports, but my first concert was KISS at the shooting of 'KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park.' The minute I saw Gene and Paul... it was all over. I knew that's what I wanted to do.

I grew up listening to a lot of Ray Charles and '60s rock, thanks to my father, and then my brothers got me in to KISS and whatnot, so I guess that's where I got my first taste for music.

Everything I know, I stole directly from Ace Frehley, Angus Young, and Keith Richards. That's how you learn.

Spittin' blood, smokin' guitars, fire everywhere - Kiss is where I started.

What we admit to is being a rock n' roll band. From day one, I was a big Chuck Berry fan.

I can't possibly overstate how much influence Rush had on me as a young teenager. I would say from about 1981 to 1987, they were my gods.

My first influences for playing were Johnny Ramone and Jimmy Page, the same as everybody else. Joe Perry. The guys in Alice Cooper's band, whatever their names were. Mick Ronson from David Bowie. You know who really influenced me to write songs? Iron Maiden.

Rush and guitarist Alex Lifeson are among my biggest influences.

AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' is the greatest meshing of vocal, guitar, and content I've ever heard. That's what I aspire to.

I love the Beatles, and when I was very young, I had young parents, so Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles constantly were big influences on my life.

My dad is a huge rock n' roll lead guitar fan.

Back when I was working with the Stones and with Joe Cocker and Neil Young and Neil Diamond and all of those - 'the boys,' I call them - it was fun.

There weren't a lot of girl singers around. Paul McCartney and John Lennon were the guys I looked up to.

I got into Kiss before I got into anybody. The first thing I heard was 'Detroit Rock City.' I heard it in the school library, where I lived.

I draw inspiration from anything and everybody and that's what country music is to me... real life stories and real life emotions.

One thing people would be surprised about is that although hard rock and heavy metal are without question 90% of what I listen to and my passion, there are other things I enjoy. My first ever favorite band in my life before KISS was a power-pop band called The Raspberries.

'Rock n' Roll Animal,' the live album, is one of the greatest live albums out there. It was a huge influence on me.

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

At 15, I started listening to hard rock and heavy metal, but I would say it was more hard rock because I liked Kiss, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, and eventually AC/DC.

The power chords in 'Come Sail Away' were super heavy to me as a kid. Metal? No. Hard rock? At times, for sure.

I tended to lean towards the guys who both sang and played, such as Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Steve Wariner... And at the other end of the spectrum, I had Eric Clapton in a rock and blues sense, jazz guys such as Tal Farlow and Les Paul... Then Chet Atkins-type stuff.

We never considered ourselves to be a good band or anything, we just thought we were playing for fun and we wanted to play music that sounded like Black Sabbath or Soundgarden or the music we were into at that time.