Q&Amp: Chris Cornell's New Tour Might (Not) Get Loud

by caryn ganz, amplifier, march 2011

At the end of the month, Chris Cornell will launch his Songbook Volume 1 tour, a series of shows that fans view either as a unique chance to see him revisit his entire catalog acoustically, or simply a roadblock between the world and the new Soundgarden album the band resolved to record in 2011. The Amp spoke to Cornell about his secret past as a folk songwriter and how the Beatles inspired his controversial Timbaland-produced disc "Scream."

How do you prep for a tour like this? Do you sit with an acoustic guitar and rearrange songs?
If it's just one guy and an acoustic guitar singing, the audience is not watching what the drummer or bass player or lead guitar player are doing, they have to really focus. Rehearsing for something like this is one of the more fun things I can do that's part of my job. That's where the cover of "Billie Jean" came from. It was really not a serious attempt at doing a Michael Jackson song. While I was in Audioslave I would do four or five acoustic songs in the middle of the set, and I was going to throw that in there as a prank. I think I was doing an impersonation of Tom Waits doing a verse of "Little Red Corvette." I changed the time signature to 3/4, a more gospel time, slowed it down, and then something happened. Which was like, oh my God, as I sang those lyrics in that way it suddenly became a different song, a song that had this emotional depth.

You said when you played it live the first time, the audience's reaction struck you.
What can songs be? And how much can you actually reapproach or reimagine a song? When Johnny Cash did [Nine Inch Nails'] "Hurt," that's a great example of if a song is great, it can be approached from a totally different angle and it still holds up. Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt" is better. I don't see how anyone could beat that, just because the lyrics connect with his emotions and where he's at at his life at this moment. It's almost hard to listen to because it's so fragile and sad.

This tour is going to span your whole catalog -- Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Audioslave -- is anything off limits?
Nothing's off limits, really. I should come up with something I wrote before ever being in a band, that would be interesting and really cover my whole life. The very first songs I wrote, I wrote on piano, I was probably six or seven. I picked up a guitar at nine or 10 when my fingers could actually do it and I wrote a few folky style songs, like John Denver.

At around that time you discovered the Beatles, who were a huge influence on you?
I guess I was around nine years old. It taught me immediately that music was going to be a big part of my life. Sitting in my bedroom and listening to records for hours was something I set time aside to do, like an activity that for another kid might be going out to play basketball. I was in a sense in school with those records because I listened to them so much that it really got ingrained in me -- a lot of sonic choices and the overall adventurous attitude. Being a little kid, I didn't pay much attention to the idea that there are actually four lead singers. That had an effect on me. I thought of rock music as being whatever you want, and push yourself, go out of what you think is your normal sound and be different.

You have tried to execute that idea in your career -- like "Scream," of course, for which you took a lot of criticism. Two years ago you said the album was ahead of its time. So how does it sound now?
I love it still. I think it's an amazing album from beginning to end. It doesn't sound like anything else to me that anyone's ever done. When it came out I was prepared for a lot of criticism. There was never a situation where I thought, "Oh, people are going to love this and it's going to be my 'Sgt Peppers.' "

A problem that's followed me in my career has been that I initially gained a fanbase based on aggressive music and hard-rock singing, and it's something my band can do very well. People would try to book Soundgarden on heavy metal day with nothing but speed metal bands and that was just one part of what we were about. I've always loved hard rock music, but it's just one of many many different kinds of music that I really love. I'm not interested in genres.

Soundgarden and Jane's Addiction were two bands that people had a hard time trying to categorize in the '90s.
When Seattle became known as a scene and grunge became known as a genre of music, that was really baffling to me. Because if I looked at the four or five key bands, none of them sounded anything at all alike. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, or Soundgarden -- we were all guitar-based rock bands, but past that, everybody had a completely different approach to music. Had we not all been from the same area code, I don't know that that would have ever come up as a genre.

You said you'll likely play "Seasons" on this tour. Have you seen the movie it comes from, "Singles," recently?
I haven't seen it in a long time. It's a strange time capsule. When Cameron Crowe made that movie, none of the bandmembers who appear in their little cameo roles were known outside of Seattle at all. And as it goes in the world of movie production, by the time it came out, that was completely different. So it looked like he ran up to Seattle to get all these huge rock bands to be in his movie, but he was trying to capture very organic, tight, close-knit, pretty much unknown scene and put his story there.

Soundgarden's "Badmotorfinger" celebrates its 20th anniversary this year -- do you have any special plans?
I think there will be celebrations for anniversaries for all things Soundgarden past because that's what got us together now to begin with -- to accept the responsibility of approaching our legacy and maintaining it. But at the moment we're just starting to work on new material.

Reprinted from Yahoo! Amplifier - originally available as an online feature here

Chris Cornell Fan Page © Clare O'Brien 2011