with a new sound and a new life, chris cornell is still a star

by sarah rodman, boston globe, june 2007

A few minutes ago, Chris Cornell was every inch a rock star.

Stalking the stage during an April show at Avalon, the feral singer previewed songs from "Carry On," his new album out today, and sang classics from the two mammoth rock groups he fronted. Every fist-pump-worthy high note was ecstatically cheered by an adoring sold-out crowd.

Belting out brawny teeth-rattlers like "Outshined" by Soundgarden (the most muscular of the groups to take the flannel carpet ride out of Seattle in the '90s) and "Cochise" from Audioslave (the new-millennium supergroup he formed with three-quarters of Rage Against the Machine), Cornell moved with a leonine grace and sang, at 42, with a voice still limber enough to make an Olympic gymnast envious of the way he sticks his landings.

But now, backstage calmly sipping hot tea to soothe that golden-god-of-rock throat, Cornell is soft-spoken and very much a normal dude, albeit one with the smoldering good looks to make him the model of choice for designer John Varvatos. But either side of Cornell -- widescreen or life-size -- is a portrait of a happy man.

He is happy to be solo again, following the February demise of Audioslave -- due to "irresolvable personality conflicts and musical differences" -- after three albums. He is happily married to his second wife, Vicky, who sits in on the end of the interview because, the mother of his two toddlers says only half-jokingly, he won't even tell her what his new songs are about. (At least one, the ultra-romantic ballad "Finally Forever," is about her and is destined to be a hipster wedding staple.) He is content to live part-time in Paris, where the onetime line cook owns the "new American" restaurant Black Calavados and where he hopes to retire one day to a life of mingling with diners, cigar smoking, and belly growing.

He is thankful for his half-decade of sobriety. And most of all, he is thrilled to have achieved a level of success that means he can go out and play whatever he wants. Unlike with previous outings, Cornell wants not only to showcase "Carry On" but to rediscover every phase of his career, through ever-evolving set lists. Playing some Soundgarden and Temple of the Dog songs for the first time has been particularly exciting. "My thing really has been trying to do these songs the way I always wanted to do them, and enjoy doing new songs as well as anything old that I feel like doing, and being in a frame of my mind where I'm not hammered ever, totally sober and awake and aware and experiencing all these songs that way," he says.

It was not always thus. On his first solo tour in 1999, Cornell was both drinking heavily and focusing almost exclusively on his autumnal debut album, "Euphoria Morning." Although the drinking was clearly a problem, temporarily abdicating his grunge throne was a necessity.

"I just felt like if I didn't come out right after Soundgarden and do something different and fresh for me I might not be allowed by my audience to do it later," says Cornell. "I think you really have to draw that line in the sand. Some fans will get off the ship but others won't, and you'll get new fans. But ultimately you have to do that. I think I did it successfully."

Now, with "Carry On," he is combining the different and the familiar. Cornell fuses his love of the meaty, outsized rock that made his name with other influences ranging from the Beatles to Jeff Buckley to early Rod Stewart on a record that is his most lyrically straightforward yet stylistically varied.

Producer Steve Lillywhite , famed for his work with everyone from U2 to the Dave Matthews Band, says he was attracted initially by Cornell's voice and his willingness to examine "how you move through your career and still keep your audience but change your music. He doesn't want to do the same songs that he did. He's a different person now."

Indeed, in addition to his life changes Cornell tries new things as a songwriter, using more direct language while introducing blues, electronic, soul, and folk textures to his trademark heavy rock sound.

There is the whimsical hard funk of "She'll Never Be Your Man," partially based on the true story of a friend whose girlfriend left him for another woman. The taut, acoustic "Ghosts" finds Cornell realizing that not only has his physical geography changed , but his emotional place in the world as well. And "Safe and Sound," a bittersweet musing on the meaning of peace and mutual respect, in which Cornell declares a belief in "the promised land" as stately horns sigh in the background, is his "Imagine."

At first he worried the song, with its concerns about war, violence, and indifference, was too naive. "That's basically admitting that in the face of all this I still have hope," he says. (He dedicated the song that night at Avalon to the families of the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings.)

Hope was not a major commodity in previous Cornell songs such as "Pretty Noose," "Black Hole Sun," and "Like a Stone." And he admits with a laugh that the juxtaposition of him as "a guy who was in macho bands, who took his shirt off, to come out and say 'I still have hope that things could actually be peaceful and great and good' -- and it's not the '60s -- is a little weird."

Drummer Jason Sutter , who anchors Cornell's new touring quartet and is familiar to Bostonians from his stints with Jack Drag and Juliana Hatfield, believes Cornell has been liberated by the new material. "There's much more to these songs than [at] first listen. There really is some interesting chordal and melodic stuff that he's never done before. It's not as heavy as a lot of Soundgarden, but all that Soundgarden stuff is still there. And when we play live, there really is a nice balance."

That balance is likely related to Cornell's sobriety. "I feel way more connected to the emotions of the songs whether I like it or not," Cornell says. "I never used to really go on loaded, I did a few times in my career, but to go on just completely dead-on sober, it's very different. Consequently, the live tapes sound much better."

And his new bandmates are impressed with his stamina. Sutter marvels at the epic 2 1/2-hour shows that the band recently played in Europe.

"When somebody gets up there and they're scheduled to play an hour and a half and you play another hour on top of that, that's coming from 'I'm having a great time up here,' " he says on the phone from a Louisville tour stop.

Cornell confirms that with both his words and the gratitude he expressed onstage at Avalon. When talking about the songs that address emotional growth and hard-won insight on the new album, Cornell observes, "If people aren't moving forward in a positive way, they're moving backward in a negative way."

In this third act, he is determined, as his album title states, to carry on. And the people around him are excited to see where he goes. Says producer Lillywhite, "I love artists who take their audience on a journey, and Chris does that."

Reprinted from Boston Globe. Originally available as an online feature here.

Chris Cornell Fan Page © Clare O'Brien 2007