Jeff Ament
Jeff Ament
Jeffrey Allen Amentis an American musician and songwriter who serves as the bassist for the American rock band Pearl Jam. Along with Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, and Eddie Vedder, he is one of the founding members of Pearl Jam. Ament is also known for his work prior to Pearl Jam with the 1980s Seattle-based grunge rock bands Green River and Mother Love Bone, and is particularly notable for his work with the fretless bass, upright bass, and twelve-string bass guitar...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth10 March 1963
CityHavre, MT
CountryUnited States of America
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.
I've been interested in Eastern religions since I went to college because I was trying to figure out where I stood with Catholicism.
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.
I have to go someplace where I can soak myself in a creative atmosphere.
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.
Every few years I'll party way too much to remind myself what an idiot I am.
I just have a serious problem with business for business' sake: this bottom-dollar mentality. I have a serious problem with evil.
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'm a big fan of power trios where there's only three instruments.
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.
We opened for Black Flag, and none of the bands had dressing rooms, but Henry Rollins had his own. He had struck me as different from that.
It's in the middle of the whole tour, so we'll get to go out and change it up a little bit. We love Tom and his band. It will be a cool, special show for people.
I've seen kids turn their lives around. It's usually a kid who's outside of the team-sport world, or maybe has a darker personality or doesn't fit in. Skateboarding ends up being something they latch onto. It sounds hokey, but finding a focus on something - whether it's skateboard or playing your guitar - can be life changing.
That's probably half the reason I wanted to be in a band - I wanted to see the world.