reunited soundgarden to play newark and atlantic city

by tris mccall, the star-ledger, july 2011

Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell has listened to the rough mixes, and likes what he hears.

"This is going to be a really good album," he says. "We’ve managed to avoid all the pitfalls common to bands returning after a long break."

Cornell, 46, means that Soundgarden, a group that hasn’t put out any new material since "Down on the Upside" in 1996, isn’t trying to recapture a particular sound from a past disc. He calls the sessions for the upcoming Soundgarden album — scheduled to be released in the spring — expressive and experimental, and suggests he might surprise some longtime fans.

"Basically, we’re doing what we’ve always done," says Cornell, whose distinctive wail seems to split the difference between moody Jim Morrison and mystic Robert Plant. "We’ve always gone in different directions. Each of us will bring songs in and guitar parts. Each has his own tendencies and musical feel and interpretation of what Soundgarden should sound like. It’s kind of as though we’re picking up where we left off."

It’s a reunion that didn’t seem likely to happen. Soundgarden’s ’97 split wasn’t acrimonious by rock band standards, but all four members had moved on to other projects. In several interviews conducted during his tenure with the supergroup Audioslave, Cornell downplayed the possibility of a Soundgarden reunion, suggesting that the acclaimed Seattle quartet had accomplished everything it set out to do.

But Soundgarden reunited to play Lollapalooza last year, and this summer, they’re on the road again, and will be howling from stages in Newark, Friday, and Atlantic City, Thursday.

"How it happened and how long we were apart doesn’t really matter," says Cornell. "When we were touring after ‘Down on the Upside,’ we’d been doing it for 14 years. We were ready for a break and, actually, a break without announcing that we had broken up would have been fine. But I’m not complaining about anything. It feels very refreshed right now."

Initially formed in the mid-’80s, Soundgarden was always a bit older than its Seattle peers and had a track record of recording success before programmers and music industry executives turned their attention to the Pacific Northwest. The group’s early recordings were some of the first ever released by Sub Pop Records, the local imprint that became a national operation after the emergence of Nirvana.

"I felt that bands in Seattle really wanted to be part of an indie scene akin to those in Austin or Minneapolis or New York," says Cornell. "Our first indication that Seattle was even more special happened when we started touring to these cities, and we didn’t get the same feeling there that we did at home. In Seattle, we had good bands all the time. You could go into a club any night, and you’d see something interesting. The perception is that it was all loud, noisy, guitar-based bands, but actually, it was much more varied than that. There was a lot more going on."

To millions, the quartet will always epitomize the alternative rock sound of the early ’90s. Soundgarden’s fusion of heavy metal, classic rock, underground punk and off-the-wall experimentation on "Badmotorfinger" and "Ultramega OK" set the tone for a half-decade of ferocious popular music.

It’s not unreasonable to argue that the grunge era ended on April 9, 1997 — the date of the first Soundgarden breakup.

But "grunge" doesn’t mean much to Cornell and his bandmates.

"Grunge was a name that somebody pulled out and used to describe a genre that I didn’t hear. I would listen to Nirvana or Pearl Jam or Soundgarden and encounter very different bands."

Yet the musicians in these acts were all friends, and shared aesthetic similarities.

"What we had in common was more about what we left out. We excluded the trappings of ’70s arena rock that had nothing to do with writing songs. The hard rock bands of the late-’80s were driving fancy cars and flying in Lear jets and presenting themselves as completely separate from their fans. Nirvana was three guys who looked like you went to high school with them. And they were more intense, more aggressive and smarter than the MTV metal bands with the limos and expensive costumes."

The 1994 "Superunknown" album made Soundgarden stars, and its "Black Hole Sun" remains a defining psychedelic rock song of the era. But the group never lost its connection with its fans, and Cornell continues to follow the dictates of his own muse.

"Soundgarden," he says, "has never been a band that took a lot of outside influence."

 

Reprinted from The Star-Ledger- originally available as an online feature here

Chris Cornell Fan Page © Clare O'Brien 2011