Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready Talks Prince, North Carolina Boycott
A couple of hours before Pearl Jam played the Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, South Carolina, on April 21st, guitarist Mike McCready called into Rolling Stone to talk about the band’s ongoing North American tour. The shocking news of Prince’s death hit earlier that day, and that night he’d sprinkle a bit of “Purple Rain” into the band’s show-closing rendition of “Yellow Ledbetter.” We already shared McCready’s take on Pearl Jam’s complete-album shows, but a ton more was discussed, including the group’s decision to cancel their show in North Carolina, what’s happening with the next Pearl Jam LP and where he sees the band going many years from now.
I still can’t believe this news about Prince.
I keep getting texts. It’s devastating and shocking. I remember one time we met him. He was really cool. I asked him a silly guitar question, and he said he didn’t know what he did to get his sound, but his tech would know. And then he said he was very into our Ticketmaster battle. I think this was at a party in 1995. It felt really good to know he was behind our Ticketmaster battle.
I must have seen him four or five times times in concert. Every time I was like, “OK, he is the best guitar player I’ve ever seen.” I’d go to his show and get completely blown away by his technique, and mostly just his feel and how fast he could play. He can stop and just milk the notes. He was just so phenomenal on the guitar. And then a year would pass and I’d forget and I’d see him again and go, “He’s still the best guitar player I’ve ever seen in my life.” And I’ve seen a lot. He just blew my mind.
How is the tour going?
Musically, I think we’re hitting our stride right now. We’re playing pretty great. I didn’t feel that way after the first couple of shows. I felt like I messed up a lot on a few songs and we just didn’t really have our bearings as a band. But by the third or fourth show it came together. I think it was in Hampton, Virginia. … It was one of those things where the crowd involvement was phenomenal. In the past we haven’t done that well in the South. We were excited to be playing those big places, especially in Florida. Now we’re in the groove, in terms of music.
But we did have to cancel that show in North Carolina. That was a thing we thought really hard about. As a band, we just don’t tolerate any kind of abuse or intolerance of any kind of LGBT people by any kind of government. We felt we needed to support people that didn’t have a voice.