soundgarden frontman up close and personal

by mike devlin, times colonist, april 2011

 

When acclaimed singer Chris Cornell walks on stage this week, his fans can expect to hear a little bit of everything, from Soundgarden songs to Pink Floyd covers.

What they won't hear, to be sure, is an artist unsure of where he wants to go. "I don't want to sound like a crazy person that can't figure out what they want to do," Cornell, 46, said recently from a New York hotel room. "But I always want it to be open.

"It's fun to try to figure out different songs that I can interpret acoustically and see if they'll work or not. Some of them do and some of them don't. But it's fun to experiment with that and be surprised by the songs that seem to work that I wouldn't expect."

Cornell, the adored Soundgarden frontman, is nearing the end of his solo acoustic Songbook tour, the first solo outing of its kind in the performer's remarkable 25-year career. The tour winds down May 6 in San Diego, but not before stopping in Victoria for a sold-out date on Friday at the Royal Theatre.

Cornell scheduled a tour of his own while Soundgarden, which reunited in 2010 following a long hiatus, continued working on its forthcoming new album, the first batch of new material from the group since 1996's Grammy-nominated Down on the Upside.

The process of stripping Soundgarden songs down to their acoustic essence for his solo tour, while writing and recording new material with his Seattle bandmates, has been beneficial for him from a songwriting standpoint, Cornell said.

"From the very beginning of Soundgarden, we all had a similar attitude, without ever discussing it. Any time we wrote a song, it was as though we were approaching songwriting from a new angle every single time. If something sounded a little like we were repeating it, or we were repeating a sensibility that had already been covered on a song, we would always steer away from it."

If anything, Cornell said, playing acoustically has made the divide between his two careers even more defined.

"With Soundgarden making a new record, it feels like the right time to do it, and keep those worlds in their own authentic worlds. If I'm writing a song that Soundgarden can play, it goes to Soundgarden — always. That's the way it is. I'm super-excited to play music with those guys, and I always have been."

Tempers were high prior to the Soundgarden split, which for nearly a decade made the chances of a reunion unlikely even for the staunchest fan. Making the possibility even less likely, Cornell was off with Audioslave, a super-group which paired him with three members of Rage Against the Machine. The group experienced substantial success during its five-year run, netting two Grammy nominations and record sales well over five million copies.

The formation of Audioslave, in 2001, came at a difficult time for Cornell, but it also played a key role in his personal healing. Following a stint in rehab, which was caused by the dissolution of his marriage to Susan Silver, who formerly managed Soundgarden, Cornell gave up drugs and alcohol and experienced — for the first time in years — immense critical and commercial adulation as one of the best singers in rock.

And yet, no matter how popular Audioslave became, the shadow of Soundgarden loomed large. The group was the first Seattle band to break to a national audience during the grunge explosion, and remains (alongside Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains) one of the most important acts in the Pacific Northwest's rich musical heritage from that era.

To this day, Soundgarden's legacy remains a huge point of pride for Cornell. Not only did they touch on a number of genres over the course of their career, they did it with a style that was uniquely their own. "A band that can do Jesus Christ Pose and Black Hole Sun and have it seem to make perfect sense, which it always did, I wanted that to be the norm," he said.

Despite the rush of adrenalin he gets from playing with Soundgarden — who have announced only four tour dates thus far, one being July 2 in Toronto — the Seattle native hasn't grown tired of carrying the mantle all by himself, without the aid of his bandmates, on his solo acoustic tour.

Being on stage alone each night, with the barest of instrumentation for support, definitely has its own rewards, Cornell said.

"In the environment of an acoustic show, there becomes a kind of living room quality to the atmosphere. It feels like a safety net. As much as playing by yourself on an acoustic instrument can make you feel vulnerable, the audience is so supportive that at some point I can do a song I don't really know and the audience doesn't care. They are excited to see that process happen."

Excited, indeed. The opportunity of seeing a certified rock legend in an intimate theatre setting proved too much to resist for audiences: Each of the 28 dates on Cornell's tour sold out immediately, with reviews thus far describing Cornell as nothing short of brilliant.

Cornell, who has two young children with his second wife, Vicky Karayiannis, and is now based in Los Angeles, has enjoyed playing smaller venues on his current tour, and knows that when Soundgarden ramps back in later this year it will do so in much larger rooms.

He'll miss the intimacy, but hopes that the rush of reducing his songs to their bare essence remains. Cornell said he is still awestruck by the reinvention of one of Soundgarden's most famous songs, Rusty Cage, which was covered in 1996 by Johnny Cash for his Grammy-winning album, Unchained.

The unique yet relatively simple approach of Cash producer Rick Rubin, who is responsible for uniting Cornell with his Audioslave bandmates, is something Cornell continues to hold in high regard.

"That was interesting how he got Johnny to re-interpret songs that I thought would be impossible. I was pretty sure Rusty Cage would be impossible. I was asked to do an arrangement for [Cash], and pretty much called up Rick and said, 'That's not going to work. You're out of your mind.' But once I heard his version I felt stupid. It was so simple. I was way over-thinking it."

Reprinted from the Times Colonist- originally available as an online feature here

Chris Cornell Fan Page © Clare O'Brien 2011