Jeff Ament

“I don't have a great voice or even a good voice.”

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

“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!”

“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.”

“Ever since I picked up a bass, I've written songs.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Punk rock and skateboarding took the 'school' out of living your life, and I related to learning as I went, doing a lot of different things that I liked, when I liked. Consequently, I'm mediocre at all of the above, but still stoked on being a lifetime student of music, skating, painting, writing, etc.”

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

“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.”

“I get lost in my right brain, especially in creative things.”

“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.”

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

“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!'”

“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.”

“I'm not going to say no to playing a show in Missoula.”

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

“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.”