bringing back the grunge
by sarah rodman, boston globe, july 2011
Q. Will we be getting a sneak peek at songs from the new record at the show?
A. I doubt it. To me, I don’t really see the point. Next time. A band that hasn’t played in so long, it’s going to be difficult for us to even choose the old songs.
Q. Plus, there is that portion of the audience that doesn’t want to hear a new song no matter what. But there are some people who are interested.
A. No matter what you do, there’s always going to be somebody that doesn’t hear the song they wanted to hear. But I like to keep that amount of people to a minimum and try to cover a lot of territory. And Soundgarden is a band that has fans that have different favorites of different periods of our career, which I think is a good thing because the Beatles had that and Led Zeppelin had that, so I think it’s a good thing that we have that.
Q. Soundgarden has become one of those bands that gets passed down to new generations; you must be seeing young faces in the crowd.
A. I think with parents or an older sibling they’ll hear children listening to some rock and just be shaking their head thinking, “This is awful, I’ve got to show them what’s good. Listen to this, Joey, this is real rock music.’’ And I think that’s the generational thing that always happens. I got that from big brothers, because my dad listened to Chuck Berry and I didn’t get it. (Laughs). I get it now, but I didn’t get it then. . . . I got into Neil Young when I was 11 because I found a cassette in a ditch and it was covered with dirt and I took it home and managed to somehow clean it up and make it work. I didn’t know who he was. It was “Rust Never Sleeps’’ and it was great, that was my introduction. I see a lot of young fans where I can just sort of tell that they discovered us somehow accidentally and then decided that’s what they liked.
Q. Matt said recently that you guys are actually playing better than you did back in the ’90s. Do you think it’s because you’ve just naturally grown as musicians or has something in the dynamic shifted?
A. Something in the beer dynamic has changed. And that’s helped. I noticed in the studio this time after about four or five days in a row working, no one was drinking ever. And it’s not something we talked about. We don’t have, like, some 12-step person in there, we just don’t do it. And if somebody wanted to, it wouldn’t matter, it’s not an issue, but we just don’t. And that’s probably a factor in terms of being a living, breathing, cohesive unit.
Q. What’s the status of the new album?
A. I haven’t really sat down and gone through it in a detailed way, but it’s more than half done, that’s for sure.
Q. You don’t have a record company so there’s no pressure for a specific release date, right?
A. Yeah, I think we’ll be talking about that as we continue along. But the closer we get to being done with it the more we’ll be worried about “OK, who can put this out and how do we want to do this?’’ I think just when we started rehearsing for this tour, I heard rough mixes of everything and for the first time got a feeling for what it sounds like and it was pretty exciting.
Q. Are you guys having fun?
A. Yes, definitely.
Q. In an interview a few years ago you said to me, “If people aren’t moving forward in a positive way, they’re moving backward in a negative way.’’ How do you feel these days?
A. It’s one or the other, and it feels like I’m moving forward in a positive way.
Reprinted from the Boston Globe- originally available as an online feature here
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