Jeff Ament Quotes

With Pearl Jam, everybody is so good at what they do, it's hard to get up the courage to say, Can I sing this part, or, I want to play guitar. I feel like I have more courage to do that.

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.

I think getting the rest of the guys in the band to write is important.

When you're in a band and there's five of you, you have to accommodate five people in every song.

I'll come in with a string of riffs and direct the musical ideas. But you still need a band and their input to make the ideas come alive. You can't underestimate band chemistry.

I like being with the band, the whole idea of playing music with them.

Luckily, I'm in a band with two other guys who really pull their own weight and have the skills and abilities to compensate for my weaknesses.

Yes, I'm a musician. I also like to play with others, sometimes more, sometimes less.

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.

For me making music is part social, part interaction, part collaboration.

I've always worked with other people. As a musician, it's your role to basically share with other people.

When I make a record with My Morning Jacket, I love what those guys do, so I don't have a need to play bass or drums or anything, because we're doing that as a unit.

You write a song; you know what you want it to sound like. With a band like ours, it's more about the collective. It's important everyone feels expressed and represented.

I love seeing people collaborate to make great music!

In The Go-Go's, my philosophy is that I contribute whatever the song requires. I never think, 'What can I put in here to show off the latest trick that I just picked up?' What I think is, 'What's required from me as a drummer to make this a better song?'

I see myself as a composer who plays music and likes to play with other people, and not just as a solo artist.

I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

If I'm working as an engineer for another band, the responsibility for brilliance pretty much rests on their shoulders. I think I'm pretty good, but I'm not good enough to turn a trout into a sausage, or the other way around.

I know when I sit with my band members and we're playing back a song that we've done, I know that they're experiencing it in a completely different way and hearing stuff that they're alerted to because the way the interpret the world is through their ears. Mine is through my eyes.

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

I'm definitely responsible for coming in with some basic chord changes, or ideas. Everybody in the band looks to me to come up with the basic seed, so it's not very productive to come in with nothing.

That's why it's called Sebastian Bach. I mean, it's a permanent band, pretty much, but if I jam with other people, it just makes a better album, I think.

A bass player has to think and play like a bass player. A drummer has to play and think like a drummer, and stay out of the way of the vocalist. The guitar player has to respect everybody else.

That said, everything's important, and every musician who plays on the record is an integral part of it.

As an improviser I'm now pretty comfortable with trios, so I'm thinking of working up to quartets.