L to R: Jason Sutter (drums), Peter Thorn (guitar), Chris Cornell (vocals), Corey McCormick (bass), Yogi Lonich (guitar) Photo © Ross Halfin 2007 used by permission

Perhaps it's the cramped and shabby setting of the room at the top of the Astoria, but Chris Cornell seems larger than life as he steps through the door and shakes my hand. Tall, slender and slightly other-worldly, he pauses to stare out of the window before settling himself into a grubby armchair. "Have I been here before?" he wonders aloud. "It looks kinda familiar."

I remind him that this crumbling old theatre and dance hall was the scene of Audioslave's first UK show, in London back at the start of 2003. He nods dreamily, muttering something about Soundgarden. Had they played here, too? Neither of us can remember, so I tell him it's plain that while every other musician on the planet is intent on reforming their old band, he seems to be getting back together with himself.

"Er, yeah, I guess so," he replies with a chuckle. "I think that in a solo career, you can do whatever you want any time you want. Like Robert Plant, for example. No more Led Zeppelin - so he does a Robert Plant record. But then there was the Honeydrippers thing as well. Audioslave in a sense was that kind of thing for me. Because I had a solo career, I was open to an idea like that."

That solo career had stalled following the 1999 release of the critically acclaimed but slow-selling Euphoria Morning. When Rick Rubin had his bright idea and told Rage Against the Machine to try jamming with Chris Cornell, he started a train of events that resulted in three albums, two world tours and six years of music-making. In February 2007, Cornell finally put an end to months of speculation by confirming his departure from the supergroup, citing "irresolvable personality conflicts as well as musical differences."

"It feels like what I was doing was interrupted almost," he ponders. "Not for a bad thing, for a really great thing. But it does feel good to get back. I don't think I was really ready for it anyway, after Euphoria Morning. I think my life was too much of a mess, I was drinking too much, I didn't really have the focus to be just doing my own thing."

Chris doesn't regret any of it, but now feels that Audioslave was a diversion within the context of a longer journey, "like I'm back towards this forward movement musically that I kind of started with Euphoria Morning. Just a real free-form songwriting experience where I'm not really thinking about the outcome that much. I'm just going with whatever mood strikes me musically on the day when I'm writing a song, and then I'll make that into the song. Audioslave was a band, so it wasn't like that. It really was constricted to ingredients that you all four agree upon, that you like about music. Soundgarden had that too, [though] Soundgarden pushed the envelope a little more because we were a band for a lot longer."

In the years following the end of Soundgarden, Cornell sank into personal depression linked to his intake of alcohol and pills. At the same time, he was dealing with the disintegration of his marriage to erstwhile manager, Susan Silver. His time as Audioslave frontman seemed to be part of his recovery from that dark period, and Cornell has certainly spent the greater part of his life as a recording artist collaborating with other musicians. So does he now feel that playing material from the past is helping him wrap it all up - leaving him free to evolve and move on as an individual?

"Well, I'm just kind of figuring out what it means," he replies. "To be honest it's a little strange now to play Audioslave songs amongst Soundgarden songs and songs from different solo projects, and I'm not really sure why. You know, it was a little strange to do Soundgarden songs at first when Euphoria Morning came out and it was also strange to do Soundgarden songs when we did it in Audioslave, but then I kind of got used to it. I'm just having to get used to playing Audioslave songs in a band that's not Audioslave. 'Cause that was a pretty specific identity, I think."

Audioslave's identity always had trouble shaking the "temporary supergroup" tag. Despite producing three solid albums in the time it took contemporaries Velvet Revolver, for example, to come out with one, critics remained unconvinced of their cohesion as a band. And despite their show of solidarity, Audioslave sometimes evoked not so much a band of brothers as Dumas's three musketeers. A trio of inseparable men-at-arms -- plus d'Artagnan, the man on the weird yellow horse, always a bit of an outcast.

Cornell gives the impression that the machine eventually ground to a halt through a process of attrition rather than some major cataclysm. Was it really impossible for the band to evolve further after 2006's Revelations?

"Sure, Audioslave had the ability…but it would take adding a lot of hands-on, it would take digging deeper, it would take a pretty intense effort from everyone in the band. I didn't feel like I was willing to put in still more than I was already doing, 'cause I would rather just make my own records. Audioslave isn't my first band, it's not that first love where I'm willing to do that, because this is my first thing and I want this to be together forever no matter what. I'd rather have the freedom combined with the effort, versus just the effort, but still have opinions to dodge and to work within and parameters to work around. 'Cause I really don't need it."

Fans had known there was a solo side project in the works for some time, but Cornell had initially seemed to be planning something low-key, possibly acoustic. So it was a surprise to some when Steve Lillywhite (U2, Peter Gabriel, XTC, Rolling Stones) was announced as producer, a heavyweight studio band was recruited and the project seemed set to become a major release.

The resultant album Carry On (Suretone/Interscope) showcases Cornell's adaptability and vocal range across the whole gamut of styles - from the aggression and fire of rocker No Such Thing to the soul food of Safe And Sound. There's drama in the anthemic Silence The Voices, passionate lyricism in the Beatles-esque Scar On The Sky and even a couple of countryish ballads in Finally Forever and bonus track Roads We Choose.

The album emerged worldwide at the beginning of June. Since April Cornell has been touring extensively, taking in destinations from Reykjavik to Istanbul and beyond. The tour - set to last for eighteen months - is a celebration of his twenty years in the business.

"I'm doing Soundgarden songs now that I'm not 100% the author of, too, which I didn't do before. This is the first time I've done things like Jesus Christ Pose and Slaves and Bulldozers, Zero Chance …these are all songs that I co-wrote with someone else. I haven't done that until now and frankly, that feels great. I was like the majority writer on every single record I've ever done and I was so involved in the music and the composition that it all feels pretty close to me. I don't feel like I'm doing a cover song from another band when I do a song by Soundgarden or Audioslave."

His current live band, though, are a far cry from Audioslave's ready-made set of doughty musketeers. "The band I have now I put together really last minute - I've been really lucky," explains Chris. "I needed people who got along with each other and did it all in a way that was sort of harmonious. These musicians have to really live on top of each other, they have to get along with each other almost more than they have to worry about getting along with me, 'cause I'm so busy doing press and other things all the time that I don't see them as much as they see each other."

It wasn't as straightforward a process as Cornell had hoped. The musicians who'd helped realise the new songs on Carry On weren't necessarily the most suitable players for Soundgarden and Audioslave material, or for that matter, available for the long haul.

"And I started noticing right away with other musicians that I was auditioning - that weren't even the guys that played on my record - that they were taking that sort of territorial view of marking out their space and, you know, 'this is a job I have working for that guy playing his songs, and fuck you!' There were a couple of different guitar players that voiced that they weren't necessarily that eager to play with two guitar players on stage. You know, they could do the job themselves, 'I don't really want another guy'. Even if that were the case - it's an idea I might have entertained - to say 'I don't want to do that', made me think that already, they're more worried about sharing the stage than they are anything else. That's sort of weird - and these guys aren't going to get along. When you're a band you have to learn how to live with each other and figure out what you do that bothers the other guy, and that guy has to figure out what bothers you. But in this situation, part of the criteria was that it would be someone who didn't have an attitude."

The band Cornell eventually put together - comprising guitarists Peter Thorn and Yogi Lonich, bassist Corey McCormick and drummer Jason Sutter - was recruited via open auditions at Los Angeles's Musicians' Institute, and selected as much for their personalities as for playing. Like all good guns-for-hire they're quick to pick up a song - but what's most notable about them is how quickly they've coalesced into a band with their own strong onstage identity. They also have a musical ease and flexibility which allows them to explore the whole range of Cornell's catalogue as a songwriter.

"For sure!" Cornell agrees. " I needed to find musicians that could get the whole picture, that could get the sensitivity of some of my mellower or more arranged solo stuff as well as the sheer aggressive nature of some of my songs in bands….I mean the first time Audioslave did Loud Love, or whatever it was, the first Soundgarden song [we did], it was really strange because it sounded so different. The band I'm playing with now sounds more like Soundgarden - this band has the ability, like Soundgarden did, to really not pay much attention to time. Like, the song starts, it doesn't really matter how long it's going before I start singing - if there's a guitar solo it can go on longer than normal, you know, we can stretch songs out. This band has the ability to be pretty ad-libby, pretty stream-of-consciousness oriented, and Audioslave was pretty strict - if something didn't happen when it was supposed to, we'd get kind of thrown off. So I think the Soundgarden songs sound a little more natural with this band doing them."

It's not as if the band are well-oiled, characterless music machines churning out exactly what they're told. Watch a Cornell show, and each musician seems to be coming from a different place - yet somehow, it all coalesces into a seamless whole. Jason Sutter has a style that manages to be both lusty and concise, getting away with individual displays like his showpiece solo in Slaves & Bulldozers. Corey McCormick has an elastic feel that underpins the whole without becoming leaden, and the two guitarists have fascinatingly complementary styles and personalities.

"Yeah, they really do!" grins Cornell. "And that's still coming to light. Night after night. There's that first step of everyone learns the songs, and they know all the parts and they play them, and it comes together and it sounds good like that, and that was probably the first five, six shows, maybe seven shows. And it's been more a promotional tour so we're not out playing night after night, it'll be like we play one night and then I'll do like a day of press, or two days of press, and then we play again. So after about seven shows, which took a couple of weeks, all of a sudden I'm hearing things in the middle of songs which are not on the record, they're not things we worked out; it's just like the different guys are filling up parts with just with just… vibe, and ambience, and things that the songs have never had before, that I've never heard before, and that's where you get into a kind of a bonus. It's not what they're hired for, it's not something you can expect from someone, and when it shows up it's just really lucky, it's really great."

Composer and multi-instrumentalist David Arnold is also at the Astoria tonight, preparing to make a one-off guest appearance with Cornell and his band for their rendition of Casino Royale movie theme You Know My Name. Keyboardist Natasha Shneider was a big part of Cornell’s last touring band for Euphoria Morning. Carry On, too, features keyboards from sessioneer Jamie Muhobarac as well as one-finger contributions from Cornell himself (“If it sounds like a monkey could play it, that’s me.”) Does he miss the musical muscle of keyboards onstage?

“When you have two guitar players, you can kind of get all that stuff done anyway. Especially with the technology now. And with these guys…Peter Thorn, he has a great talent for recreating sounds on guitar, sounds like it could be an organ, a Hammond…he can reproduce almost any sound. Yogi’s sort of more a classic rock guitar player, so between the two of them we don’t really need keyboards and you don’t miss it. Like, a lot of the identifiable horn parts that were on You Know My Name are played on guitar and it feels like the song, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.”

Although Cornell is now the one in charge, it's difficult to see him as simply a singer with a backing band. Live, the onstage chemistry between all five musicians is tangible and inclusive: these aren't guys who are happy to stand in the shadows while the man with his name on the tickets hogs the spotlight. "Yeah - this is no different to me than Audioslave in that I didn't know those guys," he clarifies. "We got in a room and starting writing songs, we worked together, we made records, we toured. This is the same thing - I feel just as close to these guys as any band I've ever been in at this point. The structure's a little bit different, but I'm not a dictatorial type of a guy. Generally someone will ask me 'what should we do?' and I'll say, 'I dunno, what do you want to do?' Unless it's something I really NEED to do - then I'll say it. But once you have four or five guys, whatever, in a room playing music or on stage, you are a band."

It's inevitable though, that some fans of Cornell's previous work will take time to accept what he's doing now. Perhaps some of them will choose not to accept it, just as some Soundgarden fans disliked Euphoria Morning or refused to acknowledge Audioslave. However, Cornell feels that the live band is working hard to win over any doubters. "This band is accepted by the audience night after night, they're loved by the audience, there aren't a lot of people with their arms folded staring down their noses at them because they're not the original members of some other band, we're not getting a lot of that," says Chris. "I think you have to play, people have to see it, people have to be a part of it and see that everybody's having a good time, everyone's into it. I mean y'know, I dunno, there are bands where guys have been in the band for 25 years and they don't look like they're having as good a time as these guys. Look at the drummer of U2, he doesn't look like he's someone who wants to be doing this, he looks like he'd rather be doing something else . . .and it's his band!"

This easy-going joie de vivre is something of a departure for Cornell. In his Soundgarden days he was something of a patron saint for the disaffected and around the time of Soundgarden's biggest hit Black Hole Sun, his music teemed with pain, fear and fury. The songs might have been full of suffering - but the singer, it turned out, was a survivor. Since his turn-of-the-century nadir, Chris Cornell has successfully battled addiction and depression. Settling in Paris with his wife Vicky and their children, his songs have begun to deal with the positive side of life as well as with the dark and transgressive - a sea-change which some fans have found hard to navigate. What would he say to those people who believe artists only do their best work when they're suffering?

"Er , well they might be right… it depends on the artist, really," he laughs. "It's hard to say. I think that songwriters can write good songs depressed or happy and they can write bad songs depressed or happy. That's been my experience. For example, if you're someone who prefers moody dark depressed themed music, then you might think the song isn't as good, but that doesn't mean it isn't, it's just not your cup of tea. And also I think as long as the emotion's sincere, I think you're OK. There are a lot of bands…particularly hard rock bands, or these modern heavy metal bands with the singers who don't really sing, they just sort of growl like a monster puppet and where the lyrics are really dark and aggressive and evil…there's no real emotion in it; it's kind of just like Halloween, 24/7. It's not disturbing, I don't feel that there's any deep connection to any type of distress or depression or anxiety or anger. It's just a production decision - let's be this kind of band, you know, "I wanna write dark pissed-off songs." Very few people do it where you really feel it, you feel like that's for real. And no one's going to do that forever. I mean, someone's entire career writing songs that are either angry or depressed? You're going to run out of things to say I would think, you'll just run the risk of writing the same song over and over."

Some of the artists that do make these kinds of production decisions erect a whole onstage identity, propped up with costumes, sets, dancers. Marilyn Manson's stage shows, for example, have as much in common with cabaret or theatre as they do with music, and even the back-to-basics White Stripes are surrounded with layers of myth - the red-and-white colour code, the brother-and-sister act, Meg's embroidered drumstool. Arguably, such artists choose to assume a persona to put up a wall between their onstage and offstage self. Does Cornell?

"It depends…," he muses. "I'm not really sure. Maybe at a time there was, maybe at a time there was a character I was trying to portray, that I put out so that there'd be some sort of difference or distance - but those are all kind of smeared with me. Because, you know, the different periods of my life where I've acted differently onstage I've also acted differently offstage, so I don't know."

A lot of the changes in Cornell's visible personality have had to do with his alcohol problems. "When I was touring with Soundgarden for Superunknown, that was really the first time I really started actually drinking on tour. I never did before. I drank a lot, but not on tour, and I didn't really smoke on tour either. I was really focussed, you know, the show was important and my lifestyle was pretty clean. And then in 1994… Kim [Thayil] and Ben [Shepherd] and I just sort of started to get a little bit crazier in terms of our overall behaviour, you know, years of being on the road and being in a band and whatever. I started going onstage from being a little bit buzzed to being absolutely wasted, and that changed my personality onstage. I remember very specifically. All through my Euphoria Morning tour I was drunk onstage or drinking onstage, one of the two, or at some point onstage I was drunk and then I'd sober up a little bit, I don't know."

Cornell laughs before lapsing back into thought. "But . . . I don't know even how much different I am. It feels different. But it was a little bit weird going back to being completely sober and going out onstage with Audioslave and not even really having the memory of what I used to feel like or be like onstage. And I think…. I guess I dealt with it by singing the song, and just kind of concentrating on that. Like I'm going to go out and stand in front of the mic, and sing the song good, and then whatever happens after that, I get sort of swept up in the song and it's all pretty natural. And I'm still that way. When I was in my early twenties I would run out for the first song and just start going apeshit and you know, "this is a rock show and fuck you and here we go" . . . and I haven't been that way in a long time. You know, if I'm not feeling it, then I'm not going to be doing it but I usually . . . unless there's something really wrong with the sound or something, the music sweeps me up eventually. I guess that's where the natural part comes in."

Cornell is the kind of artist whose influence runs deep. Fans and fellow musicians alike have described his songs as therapeutic or inspirational - Guitarist Vernon Reid publicly thanked Soundgarden for The Day I Tried To Live which he said "kept him going" one particularly dark day, and actor Brad Pitt namechecked Cornell as a source for his own portrayal of Achilles in 2005 movie Troy. Chris isn't sure how all this makes him feel.

"It's kind of surreal. I guess I feel kind of detached. I mean it's good, because it reminds me I'm in the privileged position where what I do musically actually gets out there and people hear it and it has an impact and it has an effect on people. You know, a woman the other night came up to me and she had books for my children, and she was talking about the books that she would read with her children when she was in the hospital. And I've had people come and say that they went through the exact same kind of stuff, and it was songs that I wrote that got them through it, that they concentrated on it . . . you hear that a lot. If I spoke to fans more I would actually hear that more, I think, and that's why it's important to me not to feel like it's necessary to describe, song after song, what my intentions were when I wrote it, and what I want people to think when they hear it, or feel when they hear it or read the lyrics, because that's not the point. I don't think that's what I do or what I should do. I think that what the listener owns, that what the fans owns, is their interpretation of it, their feeling of it. I don't feel like I'm someone who should be writing messages that I really gotta be concerned with getting out there to other people who don't know it."

Chris Cornell laughs, his clear gaze relaxing into wry amusement. " I don't think I know enough. I'm not that smart."

A self-confessed "wild ADD boy", Chris left high school early, unable to fit into the disciplines and structures of formal education. I start to tell him about a friend of mine - an American special needs teacher who finds his lyrics work brilliantly as a way of getting the troubled, sometimes dysfunctional young boys in her charge to react to language. He cuts in, fascinated, almost disbelieving: it's plain this isn't something he's heard before.

"Really??? REALLY?? That's cool!…..I wish the teacher had tried me with that when I was a kid. 'Cause I didn't have very much luck."

In some ways the video for Carry On's lead-off US single No Such Thing seemed to feed into some of those same issues, stirring up controversy amongst the moral majority with its harrowing and violent imagery. Some fans described it as "unwatchable drivel to appease a mindless audience"; others argued that it had "a lot to say about the weird contradictions of the human heart". How did Cornell feel it reflected what he was expressing in the song?

"Well, it doesn't really have anything to do with the song. I viewed it as a soundtrack to a piece of film. The original idea was trying to portray on some level, this backyard wrestling scene - this really grassroots organic scene that happens in the US that people do frown on, and people are divided about as a scene. There are a lot of people who think that it's absolutely the lowest common denominator and like, the sign of the apocalypse that kids would spend all their time doing that -- whereas I see it differently. I see it as a reaction to a world where now everyone is sitting at a desk looking at a computer and spending all their time indoors and not doing anything physical."

That's not to say that Chris advocates going out and smashing a bottle over someone's head, or throwing an unconscious girl off a cliff. "It's also a manner of theatre -- and I think that's the problem people will have with the video. People always take things literally, take things as a message. People also take the responsibility away from anyone who might view or listen to something. In other words, a piece of film - or a song, or a painting - is not a suggestion for action to someone, or a suggestion of any kind for that matter. It stands on its own as what it is. And so to me the video, really, it's not . . . I don't find it particularly powerful. I don't know if it ended up portraying what I really wanted to do in the first place when it came to the sort of grassroots backyard wrestling thing, other than the fact that some people are kind of freaked out by it, which I do like. But the imagery I think is unbelievable, it's just fantastic. It lives in such contrast with the song that it ends up like my song is just the soundtrack to this odd collection of imagery - and I think it's very artful and really well done. "

So that's the video, but what of the song? Rocky Kolb, the American physicist, wrote that "the laws of the universe tell you that if you start out with truly nothing, this is unstable and will decay into something. The universe is inevitable. Nothing cannot exist forever". As a scientific rejection of nihilism, that's fairly succinct. Was Cornell thinking along the same lines ?

"Yeah, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. It's just taking the math out of a social situation, or humanity, which I think we kind of do. If you're not moving forward, then you're moving backward, if you're not satisfied then you're dissatisfied; if you're not wealthy you're poor. You know the kind of thing; humans don't tend to flatline. I don't think we do, I don't think we coast. I don't think people necessarily, by their own nature, tend to be complacent. I mean you might go through periods where you're complacent, but I don't think that's our point. I don't think that's the point of our existence really, I don't think that's human nature. I think we're in motion and it's going to be one way or another, it's not just going to be down the middle."

However, if we're not running down the middle, then sooner or later we're going to hit one or other extreme - and as Cornell further explains, "the whole thought process came about from trying to figure out what would be in the mind of a suicide bomber. I guess it's pretty simple, you know. If somebody doesn't value their own life, I don't know how you expect them to value someone else's. And in a weird way - not to say that I condone it - but I do at least understand that thought process, and that's really all I was trying to do, trying to understand how it could happen."

Suicide bombers often consider themselves warriors in the service of an ideal, though, however outlandish that might seem - and it's not every murderer who thinks along those lines. "If it's something like serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, that type of a person, there is no understanding, that's a fucking crazy person and all you need to understand is that they're nuts and things are not there that are supposed to be there, or things are there that are not supposed to be there," insists Cornell. "There's something wrong, but it's not normal, it's a sickness."

But not every case is as clear-cut. "There's always that argument, you know, this kid at Virginia Tech that shot 32 people, was he crazy? Or was he just really acutely depressed and disenfranchised? I don't know. Probably crazy."

As always in the aftermath of an atrocity, theories and counter-theories fly and everyone's looking for explanations. "I think he was nuts," concludes Cornell. "I think with carnage like that which is so horrible, everybody wants to be able to be mad at someone … but you almost have to look at it like these people got hit by a bus, or a plane crashed. It's a tragedy, an accident. Because this kid probably was an accident of nature, something was wrong in his brain and he snapped. And it wasn't that someone was lax, and it wasn't that he's evil, and it wasn't that the gun store sold guns, it wasn't any of that, it was simply that his brain didn't work. But I don't know that, you know, that's just what I imagine. Maybe it's easier for me to imagine that, instead of imagining that someone could be that bad."

At this point of moral turbulence Chris Cornell's tour manager descends to carry him off; there's a photo session to do before he goes onstage, and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, now snowy-haired, wanders in to say hello. It's a busy night - but there's very little missing from the titanic performance Cornell, band and guest star David Arnold give a little later that evening, in front of a capacity audience which also includes half of London's press pack and Carry On producer Steve Lillywhite.

Well over two hours and three encores later, Chris emerges into the near-empty auditorium to sign memorabilia for competition winners. Calm, soft-spoken and cool as a cucumber, it's difficult to recognise him as the same man who has just won over London with peerless musicianship and sheer vitality. As the band say their farewells and the curtain finally comes down on one of the best nights I've spent in a theatre, it's hard to harbour any nostalgia for the past when the future looks so bright.

As he'd told me before the show, in an overcrowded profession Chris Cornell feels constantly privileged to be playing music that "actually gets out there." It's obvious that he's constantly aware of that daily dispensation - and intends to give everything he can in return.

Carry on, Chris.

- Clare O'Brien, 16 May 2007.

Now read Part 2 of this interview, recorded at the Glasgow Academy on 27 June...

SEE ALSO:

...edited versions of this interview published at UK's Subba-Cultcha.com (June 6 2007) and New Zealand's Herald On Sunday (June 17 2007)

...this interview translated into Portuguese for Chris Cornell Brasil

...my interview with Steve Lillywhite, producer of Carry On

© Clare O'Brien 2007

"I didn't feel like I was willing to put in still more than I was already doing, 'cause I would rather just make my own records"

"I was so involved in the music and the composition that it all feels pretty close to me. I don't feel like I'm doing a cover song from another band when I do a song by Soundgarden or Audioslave."

"All of a sudden I'm hearing things in the middle of songs which are not on the record, they're not things we worked out; it's just like the different guys are filling up parts with just with just… vibe, and ambience, and things that the songs have never had before."

"I'm not a dictatorial type of a guy. Generally someone will ask me 'what should we do?' and I'll say, 'I dunno, what do you want to do?' Unless it's something I really NEED to do - then I'll say it"

"I think that songwriters can write good songs depressed or happy and they can write bad songs depressed or happy. That's been my experience."

"I started going onstage from being a little bit buzzed to being absolutely wasted, and that changed my personality onstage."

"When I was in my early twenties I would run out for the first song and just start going apeshit and you know, 'this is a rock show and fuck you and here we go' . . . and I haven't been that way in a long time."

"It's important to me not to feel like it's necessary to describe, song after song, what my intentions were when I wrote it, and what I want people to think when they hear it, or feel when they hear it or read the lyrics, because that's not the point."

"A piece of film - or a song, or a painting - is not a suggestion for action to someone, or a suggestion of any kind for that matter. It stands on its own as what it is."

"Humans don't tend to flatline. I don't think we do, I don't think we coast. I don't think people necessarily, by their own nature, tend to be complacent.I mean you might go through periods where you're complacent, but I don't think that's our point. I don't think that's the point of our existence really, I don't think that's human nature."