Ament Quotes

#1. Ladies and gentleman of Florida, this is the real Jeff Ament ... take a very good look because there's an imposter running around ... if someone comes up to you and says he's Jeff Ament and says he wants to take your pot or wants to take you to a strip club, it's probably not him.

Eddie Vedder

#2. 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.

Jeff Ament

#3. When you ride your bike, you're working your legs, but your mind is on a treadmill. When you play chess, your mind is clicking along, but your body is stagnating. Climbing brings it together in a beautiful, magical way. The adrenaline is flowing, and it's flowing all the time.

Pat Ament

#4. I feel like in a lot of ways I can relate to the fans, just being a fan of music myself.

Jeff Ament

#5. That's probably half the reason I wanted to be in a band - I wanted to see the world.

Jeff Ament

#6. I'm a big fan of power trios where there's only three instruments.

Jeff Ament

#7. Every few years I'll party way too much to remind myself what an idiot I am.

Jeff Ament

#8. It was hard to figure out what were the good causes, the bad causes, even the good politics and the bad politics. So we started taking requests and figuring it out.

Jeff Ament

#9. I'm not going to say no to playing a show in Missoula.

Jeff Ament

#10. It's hard for us not to be involved with things. When you have so much information and you see so much need, there's too much going on for us not to get involved.

Jeff Ament

#11. Our first record didn't come out on vinyl, so I think that might have had something to do with actually being in a position to make sure that it came out in vinyl this time. It sounds way better.

Jeff Ament

#12. We went to Big Sur about three years ago and hung out at the Esalen Institute.

Jeff Ament

#13. It's great that people are basically spending their two weeks of vacation to come out and be with us in some weird part of the world. And I think we owe it to them to take 'em to some cool places.

Jeff Ament

#14. Make movies. Don't make videos. Videos are evil.

Jeff Ament

#15. Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love talked trash about the fact that I hooped. I once stopped to say 'Hi' before a show, and as I walked away, Courtney yelled, 'Go play basketball with Dave Grohl!'

Jeff Ament

#16. I just have a serious problem with business for business' sake: this bottom-dollar mentality. I have a serious problem with evil.

Jeff Ament

#17. What one leads on-sight, in good, strong style, safely, is what one's ability is.

Pat Ament

#18. We just finished making a record. Everybody wants to play shows, so we're going to after that.

Jeff Ament

#19. Unless you're a vegan freak of nature like Tony Gonzalez, I don't think you can play sports much past your early 30s.

Jeff Ament

#20. You go to a show and you know the crowd is there because they like the music, not because everybody else was going. That's a good feeling. You look out there and you know, these are our people.

Jeff Ament

#21. Everything Ticketmaster stands for is what we're fighting against. They're just a small cog in a machine where the artist is at the bottom.

Jeff Ament

#22. There really is a certain magic that happens when you're in the studio. And it's important in life to feel that magic: to feel that there is something greater moving all this along.

Jeff Ament

#23. I didn't write this song. Someone was talking in a room. I just wrote down everything they said.

Jeff Ament

#24. Now I approach climbing differently. I have learned less effort and energy, less obsession, and more feeling, as with piano, more emphasis and less frenzy.

Pat Ament

#25. Everybody got away from what Pearl Jam are supposed to be.

Jeff Ament

#26. I get lost in my right brain, especially in creative things.

Jeff Ament

#27. I don't have a great voice or even a good voice.

Jeff Ament

#28. I had a portable 8-track player under all my ramps, cranking one of my four 8-tracks - Cars/'Candy-O,' Ramones/'Road To Ruin,' Cheap Trick/'Heaven Tonight' and the first Devo record. I don't remember skating without music.

Jeff Ament

#29. I'm healthy enough to still skate, so I gotta go because growing up I didn't have - I mean, I grew up in Montana so ... there was kind of a little half-pipe in my yard, and that was the extent of the skate terrain in Montana. So I've got to go out and make up for lost time.

Jeff Ament

#30. We've always been a band that stood up for what we thought was right.

Jeff Ament

#31. Right after 'Backspacer,' my best friend got killed tragically. Something happened to me then where I got super motivated. I had a shelf of all this unfinished music ... So I just went to work and made a conscious decision that I was going to finish a bunch of stuff. Life's short.

Jeff Ament

#32. The whole idea of comparing climbers is ludicrous. It would be like sitting Van Gogh down with Rembrandt and saying, Ready, get set, go.

Pat Ament

#33. Newspapers ascribe the word "climber" to any person who falls in the mountains or off a rock. To refer to anyone who falls in the mountains as ... a climber ... is as factual as to say that anyone who sits down at a piano is a pianist.

Pat Ament

#34. I love sad. Sadness makes you feel more than anything.

Jeff Ament

#35. Where I grew up, I could be a punk rocker and a jock. But in college, it became apparent that those two worlds didn't mix. When I brought my guitar back to school after Thanksgiving break, a friend handed me his bass and said, 'Listen to the Ramones.'

Jeff Ament

#36. This isn't a mass-produced ... instrument. Mike Lull Custom Guitars makes each bass right here in the NW. Over 20 years of collaborating, designing, and building basses has gone into my model.

Jeff Ament

#37. I have to go someplace where I can soak myself in a creative atmosphere.

Jeff Ament

#38. I led the state in defensive interceptions my senior year, with seven in nine games. Then I went to Montana to play basketball and found out quickly that my college career wasn't going to work out how I'd envisioned it.

Jeff Ament

#39. I certainly didn't want to be in a punk rock band, because I had already been in a punk rock band. I wanted to be in a band that could do anything - like Led Zeppelin.

Jeff Ament

#40. I've been interested in Eastern religions since I went to college because I was trying to figure out where I stood with Catholicism.

Jeff Ament

#41. Riding a bike works your legs but not your brain. Playing chess works your mind but not your body. Climbing brings it all together.

Pat Ament

#42. All you have to do is drive by the empty tennis courts and basketball courts and compare them to the skate parks ... c'mon people, get with the program - the future is now!

Jeff Ament

#43. When I moved to Seattle, I was hanging out with kids who had done drugs, had sex a million times. I look at them now and realize their childhood was taken away.

Jeff Ament