Pearl Jam Members Fans of Kiss
Story by Cat Badra
Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready is a big fan of glam-rockers Kiss
It may not seem the most likely story, but Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready is a big fan of Kiss. Growing up, McCready was so inspired by the glam-rock band that he had “a Kiss room and I started playing guitar,” he explains in a new Rolling Stone article.
McCready says his fascination with Kiss stems from the fact the band “were larger than life, with this intangible thing that I basically think about all the time.”
“I was Peter Criss for Halloween in 1976,” he said, adding that when Ace Frehley came onstage and performed with Pearl Jam at Madison Square Garden a few years ago, it was “a total high watermark in my life. When I was 13, I never thought in a million years that I would even talk to him; I’d probably pass out. And here I am playing with him!”
The guitarist also claims that Pearl Jam chats about Kiss while they’re on the road: “My band used to do ‘C’Mon and Love Me.’ Matt Cameron played in a Kiss tribute band when he was 14. They got so big around San Diego that they got a cease and desist order from Casablanca Records. Jeff Ament used to play “She” in his band Deranged Diction. There’s a Kiss through-line to a lot of the music that came out of Seattle, and it hasn’t been talked about a lot.”
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