Mike McCready Quotes

If you have a great band with a mediocre drummer, you have a mediocre band. If you have a mediocre band with a great drummer, you have a great band!

One of the things I feel very strong about is the achievement of the Band really being a complete band.

It's easy to put on a Deep Purple record and say, 'That sounds great.' But why? Part of it is individual practice, but by playing together, a talent of meshing happens.

Whenever we come back from another project, we're always so stoked to see each other and play with each other again. I really feel like that's been the key to why we're still together as a band. I remember a period five or six years ago feeling a little burnt out and wasn't sure whether I wanted to keep doing it.

I'm in a band. I have the basic idea, but when you surround yourself with really good players, why would I tell anyone what to play, because they're that good. They don't tell me what to play. They might encourage me, so that's what I do. I encourage them.

Average band with a great drummer sounds great, great band with an average drummer sounds average.

It's really very easy for me to be in The Cardinals, because I bring my voice, my guitar, and my songs to them, and then we all play around to find out what works.

Being in a band is about making the band the priority.

I've had nightmares about having to kick people out of my band because they've said that they don't like the Beatles. I'd wake up and turn to them and say, "You like the Beatles, right?"

When I clicked into this idea of doing a band and examining a band as a dysfunctional family, I wanted to reverse that Rescue Me formula.

There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!

The Eagles are four very alpha personalities. We've all done solo work, and we've all played with very good musicians, but when the four of us get together, it becomes something that's much bigger than any one of us.

When you have four guys in a room writing songs, it different. It's great - that's what makes a band a band. Audioslave was great.

The longevity of a band is really contingent on loving the people that you're making music with and being able to get along in the long run. It's just like being married, except you're married to more than one person!

We have a certain bond that we don't have with anyone else on the planet. You just have that bond, that journey when you are in a band together.

You've got to be able to compromise in a band; otherwise, somebody's more important than the next guy, and that's never been the case in Priest.

The limitations and parameters of a band is something I've always enjoyed: so many creative people coming together and raising the music to places we'd never get on our own.

When you're in a band, it's a close-knit thing. There's a lot of emotional stuff.

To me, a great drummer isn't always about somebody with chops who can shred. A great drummer is someone who is part of a great band.

Naturally, in a band or duo, it's really about compromise which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Any musician in any band - for a really good band - you know your part in the band.

I was never the brains behind the band - that was always Liam. But together we were a complete package.

Everyone wants the same thing in this band, so we definitely respect each other. I mean, all of us have had hit songs, so it's a band full of people who really know what they're talking about, so you have to respect that even when you think something you have might be great, and they go, 'Man, it's not as great as you think it is.'

In the end, yes, I'm the singer of Old Dominion, but we're a band of great singers and great musicians, and we just respect each other so much.

If you start off writing an album with a band, the reality is that you're constantly in each other's company, so it's really important that you get on with each other.