chris cornell never met timbaland before recording album with him

'he can make a beat out of anything', cornell tells nme.com

by nme, march 2008

Chris Cornell has told NME.COM how he managed to team up with Timbaland for their unlikely collaboration, revealing that he never actually me the producer until they hit the studio together.

The duo worked together on Cornell's new solo album 'Scream', and despite both coming from opposite ends of the musical-spectrum, the former-Soundgarden man claimed that work on the project was a blast.

"He [Timbaland] can do anything!" Cornell enthused. "He'll make a beat out of anything – banging on a wall, hitting a box. In the second day in the studio, a bunch of people came in with pots and pans and spatulas from the kitchen and we set them up with amps and stuff. That ended up on the album."

Cornell said that he got in touch with the producer through a friend, not meeting him face-to-face before work on the record began.

"I actually had a friend of mine who was good friends with Timbaland's cousin who runs his record label," he said. "So I'd never met him. We just had this phone conversation and then went into the studio and started working right away.

"It was like a ten-minute phone call – we didn't talk to the record company or anything."

The former Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman says that the album, which he compares to Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' on account of its conceptual nature and gap-less songs, is a "dramatic departure" for him.

"People thought it was going to be Timbaland beats with a bunch of fuzzy rock guitars and me singing over it," he explained. "I don't think they expected us to go so far into the direction we have."

The singer was recently embroiled in a Twitter argument with Trent Reznor, after the Nine Inch Nails man lambasted 'Scream' by saying it makes him feel "uncomfortable".

 

originally available as an online feature here

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