key change

with a new hip-hop inspired album, chris cornell seems to be running from his rock band past, but the former soundgarden frontman is so much more complicated than that (as you would know if you followed him on twitter...)

by clint brownlee, seattle sound, june 2009

In late April, Chris Cornell was in Seattle for a sold-out show at Showbox SoDo. Just a few hours before his set, the former Soundgarden frontman and recent Timbaland collaborator spent some time with Sound in his swanky Four Seasons suite. Much of the surprisingly long conversation can be found in this month’s cover story on the former grunge god, Key Change.

Here’s more of it—the first of three segments where Cornell talks about the making of his Timba-produced new record, Scream, Soundgarden’s catalog, returning to the city where he became famous and more.

SOUND: You were thinking about someone remixing your work, and Timbaland was thinking of working with a rock musician …

CHRIS CORNELL: Yeah. [Timbaland] didn’t want to do remixes, he wanted to do original material. I thought, well, that would be an interesting thing. But what would I do with it, really, if we went in and did two or three songs? It wouldn’t make a lot of sense. And everyone had told me that he makes albums in three weeks. I thought, well, why not make a whole album? I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I would get. And the reaction was, “Yeah, I’d love that.” And that was it. [Laughs]

So we just did it. I was on the road—I canceled the European leg of a tour I was going to do. And we went in and in six weeks we had, like, 20 songs. And the environment was really good and relaxed, so it turned into this really long project. It became a little more adventurous, an hour-long continuous thing. It became a more ambitious thing musically than it started out to be. So it became like a six month project.

SOUND: What was your lyric-writing process?

CC: I would just kind of run at it. I came up with ideas based on what I was hearing. What was the atmosphere? Who is the person that’s singing? Who’s the character? That’s sort of typical of me. There are some songs where it just comes straight out as me, I guess, but there a lot of songs, more often than not, where there’s a character that’s living within the atmosphere of the music. Who is that guy and what does he have to say?

SOUND: How much Chris Cornell is in these songs?

CC: With this record, there’s always a little bit. But because of the influences and the different genres that I got into, I’m kind of exercising R&B and soul influences that aren’t modern. They’re what I listened to when I was a kid. Or what I listened to in my 20s, when I was sort of going backward to what was going on in soul music in the ’60s and ’70s. That’s what my soul
and R&B influence is. So my character that’s living in that music is that guy. It’s the version of me that always loved that kind of music, and it’s sort of finding the bridge between those influences and what I’m listening to [now]. And that’s where I think the record got sort of eclectic and a little more original.

I didn’t really have any idea what it would sound like going in. It was just an exciting, interesting, fun thing to try to do. Another thing that came out of it, I suppose, that I didn’t really think about, but that’s inspiring when I look back—is the trust part.

SOUND: Trusting Timbaland?

CC: Him trusting me. He let me do what I do, and I let him do what he does. I didn’t try to customize his approach to what he does to fit me. To me that didn’t make any sense. Then I wouldn’t really need to be making an album with him. Why should I go make an album with Timbaland and tell him how to do what he does? ‘Cause I’m good at that. I can tell anybody how to—I’ve done it my whole life. My entire career with Soundgarden, including producers, we never let anybody do anything. I produced all my own vocals from 1994 until the third Audioslave record with Brendan O’Brien. That record was the first time I actually let anybody in the studio record me. Otherwise it was just me behind the board, producing my own vocals. And I would tell everyone when I was done.

SOUND: Did anything scare you about the collaboration?

CC: The first couple of days, I was kind of finding my bearings. Trying to find out what the process was going to be like. And I asked the question a lot—how do you guys normally go about making records? Because this wasn’t, you come in with your 20 songs or 50 songs depending on who the producer is and figure out which ones you’re going to prioritize and then rehearse and record them. This was, you come in with nothing. He had nothing. I had nothing. So the first couple of days, I was kind of waiting for him to bring in something he felt would be a good starting point. A good beat that would be a good starting point.

I remember that when he started playing the first thing, “Long Gone,” it had this trippy quality to it, but also this somber quality to it. It was very different from anything I’d ever done. As soon as I heard it, I realized that he had a pretty good understanding of who I was and how there could be some kind of bridge between what he does and what I do. Before it was even a third of the way through, the engineer of the demo handed me a pad of paper and a pencil—that sort of answered the question. I was like, “That’s how this works. We don’t sit around and talk about it. We don’t try to do different things and see which is the best thing. We just go at it.”

SOUND: And you were okay with that?

CC: I love to do that, but I guess I spent years and years and years in basements and warehouses and different places in Seattle, working on songwriting and song crafting. Trying to approach it from every different angle. Eventually I realized that there was no particular method that I had. Sleep or no sleep. Concentrated efforts, writing with an instrument, writing in my head. Anything I would try, I would have failures and successes. Learning how to be me, and be somebody who’s not afraid to write whatever I want musically or lyrically. That took a long time. And by the time I’m sitting in a studio with Timbaland writing songs, I’ve got a lot of that experience. So no matter how different it was, I really liked the focus part. I don’t really know how to describe it. There’s no time to second-guess yourself. There’s no leeway to go away for a month. It’s not like a Peter Gabriel record where you do a couple of hours every day, and 200 of those days might actually have been the wrong idea. [Laughs]

There were a lot of years where I would just be drinking and smoking a lot because I was just sitting in the studio and waiting for stuff to happen. And I don’t do very well in that environment. I do much better just focusing and working. And this whole process was like that.

SOUND: Given that process, was it easier to nail your vocals?

CC: [It] was in a sense a little more like demo-ing, like if I was writing a song for a band or a solo record. It’s similar in that I’m sort of recording and writing at the same time. Some of the musical ideas and arrangements are coming from my head. Some are coming from a weird sound that I can make, the production value of some weird thing that I know I can do. That becomes integral to the song. And then the vocal takes being fresh.

Rick Rubin has said a bunch of times that the vocal takes of mine from my earliest Soundgarden demos are sometimes better than the ones on the records. When I’m singing a song for the first time, I haven’t made any decisions about it yet. I’m not really sure how I want to sing it, to make it the best it can possibly be. Maybe there’s a certain amount of vulnerability there; the brain’s not getting in the way so much. I noticed that happened a few times, where I would do a demo and feel like, okay now I know how to do it. Then I go into the studio thinking I’m going to do the real version, but never quite get that original feeling.

SOUND: Is it hard to hear people say that Chris Cornell sold out?

CC: I think that’s sort of a script. That’s something I predicted literally when I hung up the phone with the concept of going in to make the album. I knew that would happen. It’s more a reaction—it’s the first thing that will come out of someone’s mouth. It’s completely expected. But you know, I get so much positive support for it, too. It also becomes sort of a sociological experiment. Who is it that’s saying that? Nowadays, you can sort of track that—who was saying what and why. It tends to be older people, and it tends to be men, and it tends to be from where people are least tolerant, least willing to accept this type of genre-mixing.

In terms of the idea of “selling out,” someone with my background doing an album like this—as far as commercial success goes, I don’t think you would get ahead from any angle. Is that my best move if I want to make money? All the reformation phone calls that I get constantly—the money is in the Genesis angle or the Police angle. [Laughs] Doing something that’s completely out of what you’ve been known for is not going to be the money-making angle.

SOUND: That’s a hard argument to make with some people.

CC: There’s a lot in this that reminds me of the late ’80s with Soundgarden. There is controversy surrounding what it is, and the crossing of two genres, which is exactly what Soundgarden was going through. For me, it’s a personal feeling. When I go out and perform these songs—particularly when I came through and did the album from beginning to end [in late 2008]—rather than releasing something that’s completely different and then allowing fans to hear it on the web or buy it, then gauging their reaction, then go perform it if the reaction is good, I’m out there and it’s the first time they’re hearing any of it. It is completely different than anything I’ve ever done, and it’s my hardcore fans I’m right there with the first time that they’re hearing it. There’s something really exciting about that.

SOUND: Have you found your true musical self with Scream?

CC: One thing I can say with all confidence is that I’m not really searching for the real me musically. A good example of that is with Soundgarden. We sort of defined who we were with the album Badmotorfinger. It took us a while to get there; it took three years to be in a situation to even release anything. We made Badmotorfinger, and I think we really defined the band at that moment, who we were at that time. And where do you go from there? The next record, we were really restless. We really had to reinvent ourselves. It didn’t necessarily make sense to fans in the bigger picture, because Badmotorfinger was the first album that had big success outside the indie world. And all of a sudden, Superunknown comes out and it’s completely different. But we had to do it. We had to go and do something else, because we’d defined that version of who we were, and had to create a new identity. I think we did that really successfully, and continued to do it on Down on the Upside. Those were the really prolific years, in terms of us writing songs and being who we were. Very adventurous.

That’s a good example of me personally not wanting to define myself and my identity as a musician. I think that’s the world left for people who die. [Laughs] I heard a Nick Drake song on a movie the other night, and I missed listening to his music. I’d listened a lot for a couple of years, but stopped. It’s suspended in time. I look at him as doing this one magical thing. Period. For someone who lives beyond three albums and has a life span, that’s a different story. You know, I want to be forever searching. I want to forever, in a sense, play a new game every time I play.

SOUND: In that way, Scream isn’t a surprise at all.

CC: You’re one of the few people who recognize that. Even when Soundgarden wasn’t releasing records yet, when we were getting songs we recorded in my living room played on KCMU, I was writing weird sort of solo music. And Matt Cameron was doing the same thing, writing and recording on his own. Ben always did that. Hiro did that. We always kind of did that.

Temple of the Dog is a great example—I had a group of songs that were very different than Soundgarden. I didn’t think they fit with my image of what the band was. The song “Seasons” that was on the Singles soundtrack—that could have been on a Soundgarden record later. It could have maybe been on Superunknown, sure. At the time, it didn’t really make sense. It didn’t make sense for Louder Than Love or Badmotorfinger—it would have sounded like somebody’s solo song on the middle of band’s album.

And then Euphoria Morning—a lot of that came from the fact that songs, particularly singles like “Outshined,” “Burden In My Hand,” “Rusty Cage,” “Black Hole Sun”—I wrote those songs in their entirety. So I wanted to move forward as a solo artist and not be echoing Soundgarden. Because Soundgarden is very important to me as a band and artistically as an entity, as its own beast. So I steered away from anything that would be like that.

[For Audioslave], I wrote a couple of songs in their entirety, but they were very different. I would write [parts]; in “Like a Stone,” I wrote the bridge section, because it was something they weren’t really used to doing. It was kind of coming from sort of a Beatles angle. I love that type of Beatles refrain in a song—it pulls the rug out from under it, then reintroduces the song as though it’s the first time you’ve heard it.

SOUND: And many fans have stuck with you through it all.

CC: I have a fractured fan base. I see it in the audience. One of the cool things that I’ve noticed—I’ll see the bigger, roudier, bearded guys that you expect to go berserk for “Rusty Cage” or “Outshined,” and I’ll hit a song like “Enemy” or “Watch Out” or “Scream” from the new album, and they go berserk. That’s a really satisfying moment. Even if it’s a group of four or five people, I’m having an impact on them as music fans that’s pretty broad, pretty extensive. It’s very satisfying. I don’t know how else to put it.

SOUND: There’s a line in “Sweet Revenge”: “Let me talk to the fans.” What do you want to tell them, and what’s the revenge?

CC: There’s a lot of things. At that time, and a lot of previous times in my life, the craziness of the music business separates you from the fans. I remember Mike Bordin, the drummer of Faith No More, referring to the music business as “the poison” that you have to kind of deal with to be able to do what you love to do. Which is to be a musician and write songs and play music and have this experience with your fans. That always stuck with me. And to this day, it’s something that’s very distracting. I don’t want to sound like an idiot, like a naive person saying, “I should be able to make albums and reach the world with my music without ever having to talk to a person who wears a tie!” I wish I could do that! But at the same time, there are times when it is too much being surrounded by business people.

One thing I think that’s really cool about what hip hop could bring to rock music is the entrepreneurship of it. There’s a lot of grassroots happening in hip hop that never happened in rock music, or that happened here and there, but this is coming from a place that’s family-oriented. One guy brings up his buddy, and another guy brings up the next. Everybody has each other’s backs, sort of circling the wagons all the time, trying to protect what they do.

SOUND: Would you say that happened in the late 80s here?

CC: Definitely. And to varying degrees of success. Soundgarden was very successful at autonomy. We set a tone that was so impenetrable that I still benefit from it today. I have yet to have a record company person come into a recording studio when I’m doing what I do. Ever. I believe the reason that is is because the tone was set in 1989, 1990, when we were saying, “We don’t want to sign with a major label under any conditions other than we do whatever we want and we deliver you the records.”

I remember talking to Krist Novoselic about In Utero, and seeing an interview with Steve Albini about how DGC was refusing to release it. I remember thinking, how is it that a band that just sold 14 million records worldwide can get shut down by a record company? I don’t think they can. I think if they just said, “We’re not gonna change this,” [DGC] would have put it out. Because it’s just bad business otherwise. I think there was sometimes undue pressure put on Kurt. I think that is certainly part of the equation of what his thinking was, what led to his demise. Undue pressure coming from “the poison.”

SOUND: So the revenge is, “Hey, I’m going to do this my way”?

CC: Exactly. And I always will. That’s made even easier for me, anyway, by what I believe is the musical revolution of this generation. It’s not a band or a sound or a genre, it’s the internet and the technology we can use to record [music], the way we can share our music and the way we can work. I’m writing songs with a friend of mine now, and when I’m on the road I have like a backpack that has a mobile recording studio in it. I didn’t like some vocal takes I did when I was at home, so I redid them in the hotel room and file-shared them. Now they’re in the song. [Laughs] Purists may frown on that, but for me, I’m a kid in a candy store. We can share music now in seconds. It used to take a room filled with equipment, a reel-to-reel, a whole bunch of outboard gear to record it. You’d record a song on that and mix it down onto cassette, which you could then go play for your buddy in his car. Now—a song that I cowrote with my friend Rory de la Rosa—he sent me lyrics, I wrote the music and recorded it in my little home studio. I uploaded it so people could download it, and never left the room.

SOUND: What’s it like to be in a position to do that for a fan?

CC: I don’t know how possible it is to comprehend it. He’s sort of still in the stages I was in maybe the first time I heard a Soundgarden song on the radio. Because some stations are playing the song [song name], and he wrote the lyrics entirely. It’s being sung by his musical hero, and I have no reference for that. David Gilmour didn’t write a song from my lyrics and rock it… [Laughs] It goes into different emotional layers. It opens up a topic, too, about what makes an important album or an important song? I always get into that with anybody who works in the music business or adopts the attitude that commercial success equals quality. Or that critical success equals actual quality.

One of the first things I remember Rory telling me was that his daughter, who died of cancer, her favorite song was “Killing Birds,” from Carry On. Just to hear that made me feel that even if no one else had ever hear that song, it was more than worth it. It’s incomprehensible, difficult to understand the depth of it. I try to stay a little bit out of that, so when I pick up a guitar to write a song, I’m not thinking about what kind of impact it can have. I’m just thinking about being what I’m supposed to be, which is a self-involved, self-important songwriter.

SOUND: What you’re supposed to be.

CC: Exactly. [Laughs] I’m supposed to be the narcissistic, self-important songwriter. A dreamer, pulling things out of the clouds, writing about myself as if anyone should ever give a shit.

originally available as an online feature here

Chris Cornell Fan Page © Clare O'Brien 2009