Pearl Jam's Mike McCready stopped by The Rock HQ to have a chat with Westie Lee yesterday (November 6), marking his first radio interview in over 20 years.
Pearl Jam are currently in Auckland on their Dark Matter World Tour and are all set to play at Go Media Stadium Mt Smart this Friday (November 8), and they'll do it all again this Sunday (November 10), so it was awesome of McCready to stop by for a chat. Check out his full chat with Westie Lee below.
At the start of the interview, McCready told Lee that the band are excited to be back in New Zealand, since it's been ten years since they were last here. Elsewhere, he mentioned that he'd stopped by Auckland's Real Groovy Records and picked himself up New Zealand pressings of the first four U2 records, which he was clearly stoked about.
During the chat, Lee and McCready covered heaps. Jack White, Andrew Watt, Tom Petty and Chris Cornell were some of the names bought up and talked about, as well as how writing Dark Matter was, what McCready does before a show, where he goes when he does his guitar solos, his favourite songs to play live, the Seattle Rock Scene and the Rock Opera he's developing, and so much more.
As the chat wrapped up, Lee gifted the legendary guitarist a Toki Pounamu necklace, and explained the significance that Pounamus hold in New Zealand and Māori tradition.
"Wow... It's so cool... It's beautiful" McCready responded as Lee put the Pounamu over his neck. "Thank you for doing that, it's unexpected."
This is Westie Lee's second chat with McCready, after he caught up with him backstage in Boston in September, so it was pretty epic that the two could catch up again.
Have a watch of the full chat, and if you wanna skip to different topics, take a look at the timestamps below.
Mike McCready Full Chat Timestamps:
0:00 Welcome back to NZ
1:13 What Mike does before a gig
3:08 Jack White
4:04 Live debuts at Ohana
5:52 Favourite live songs
7:15 Writing Dark Matter
9:57 Andrew Watt
10:53 Guitar solos
12:28 Fans
15:36 Pearl Jam Experience
16:10 Festivals
18:14 Tom Petty
20:56 Vinyl
22:03 Dressing Room
23:44 Chris Cornell
26:36 Seattle Rock Scene
32:15 Gifting a Pounamu
