This page collects some of the best interviews involving Chris Cornell. For interviews with musical colleagues which have a bearing on his career, search within the news section.
February 2012
Australian journalist Dave Gleeson interviews Chris in depth for Triple M - and Chris confirms that the new Soundgarden album will be out in the autumn. You can download the full, uncut version of this interview as an mp3 here.
January 2012
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MTV Australia interview - sadly, not available in the rest of the world due to the usual daft copyright restrictions.
"Playing
the Sydney Opera House was definitely a huge, huge moment in my life,
everything about it is amazing ... just walking to the dressing room is
great." Chris reminisces about some of his favourite venues in
this interview with Melbourne's The Age.
Here's a link to the video archive at The New York Times where you can watch a fascinating in-depth, on-camera interview conducted by the paper's music critic Jon Pareles, with questions from the floor to finish.
Here's an interesting audio interview recorded backstage last year at the Brown Theatre in Louisville for The Weekly Feed.
"There's absolutely nothing nostalgic about this..." In advance of their first Australian tour for 15 years, Soundgarden get the cover of Rolling Stone's Australian edition. All four members talk about how the band got back together and give some insights into the making of the new album, due for release later this year. Scans: page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5 page 6
"With a film, you're collaborating with the director and the story and the film itself.It has its own life, and in a sense its own will. Your music is a character in the play." In a revealing interview, Reuters talk to Chris about the writing of 'The Keeper' as part of a series on songs up for consideration for an Oscar this year.
December 2011
"You kind of graduate to filmmaker, in a way." Chris talks about how it's a different process when you're writing a song for a film.
"It’s pretty close to being finished, but it kind of depends on how we all feel about it." Chris gives the San Francisco Examiner an update on the forthcoming Soundgarden album and chats about the genesis of solo track Cleaning My Gun.
The caption-writer for this YouTube video wrongly states that Chris's solo activities will end with the release of the forthcoming Soundgarden album. Not so, as he or she could have found out had they actually read the whole Associated Press interview! You can, though - it's reproduced in full here.
"Another thing that I would want to approach after the next Soundgarden album comes out would be an album of original songs that's largely done the same way, all new material done acoustic." Chris explains to The Arizona Republic how it's felt to be playing with Soundgarden again, why the Songbook tour is special and where he wants to take his solo career next.ve
"It will always be important to me to be pushing whatever imaginary boundaries there are out as far as I can." Great in-depth interview with Recoil.
November 2011
"I don't see the various incarnations of my career as a juggling act..I've always done different projects simultaneously." Chris explains to USA Today why he values constant variation within his career and why the other members of Soundgarden are happy with that.
Here's Chris's in-depth interview with Howard Stern:
"I'll always do solo albums. I've never viewed that as something that was done only in the absence of being in a band." Chris talks to Spin about his reasons for doing the 'Songbook' tour and album, his plans for the future, and why he left in the odd mistake.
October 2011
Chris talking about the inspiration behind the lyrics for 'The Keeper' and why he wanted to be part of the Machine Gun Preacher project.
Who am I to write a song about something that is this intense that I haven’t experienced?' Chris talks to Hitfix about the angst involved in writing 'The Keeper' and about isi attitudes to film music over the years.
"Why should we waste time on old stuff? Let's write new music." Chris describes Soundgarden's creative consensus, talks about the new album due out in Spring 2012 and compares it with the experience of playing live acoustic on his Songbook tour.
September 2011
"I don’t understand why people would choose to play Rock Band before they would play Halo or something..." Chris talks to lifestyle mag Collider about video gaming, tour riders, films, advertising, meeting his heroes and oh yes, music. Transcript's a bit hit-and-miss owing to a malfunctioning sound recorder.
"I learned to read music when I was 10 and did piano and took lessons... I picked it up very fast and I learned to read music very fast, but I don’t now at all. I regretted it within three years of stopping." Chris talks musical creativity, movie soundtracks and his attitude to both to Dana Harris of Indiewire.
Here's Chris's TV interview with PBS talk-show host Tavis Smiley.
You can download the podcast of Kevin & Bean's September 13 show free from iTunes - Chris is one of the guests.
"I really feel strongly about taking everything I have ever done with me. I don't know why. I feel emotionally attached to songs." Chris talks to Movieweb about the process that went into writing 'The Keeper', about his acoustic shows,and lets slip a few more details about Soundgarden's work-in-progress.
"I could have written an album’s worth of songs...It was actually very difficult to focus on one song because of the scope of the story." In a MySpace exclusive, Chris talks about his inspiration for 'The Keeper' and emotional connection with the subject matter of movie Machine Gun Preacher.
Chris talks to Cindy Scully of The Scully Show on 97.1 The Eagle Rocks, and lets the world know about his forthcoming live solo album, compiled from shows on the Spring Songbook tour.
Vydra of radio station 101.1 The Edge talks to Chris about "The Keeper": listen here.
"The core of the real scene died as soon as everybody was out touring..." Twenty years after Badmotorfinger, Chris reflects on the past and how grunge came to grief. Like Piaf, he has No Regrets.
"The old adage is "Every time you paint someone's picture it's really a self-portrait". Chris gives a remarkable in-depth interview to Artist Direct's Rick Florino about the writing of The Keeper, his own love of poetry and the new sound of Soundgarden.
Here's a podcast of Kevin & Bean's show on KROQ featuring Chris.
"There's a lesson in it for everyone who might want to give up on themselves, or might want to give up on someone else, or who might want to put someone else in a box and decide that they don't necessarily have a positive role." Chris talks to Mike Ragogna of The Huffington Post about the writing of his song The Keeper and the film in which it appears, Machine Gun Preacher, starring Gerard Butler as criminal-turned-humanitarian Sam Childers.
Chris also gave several on-camera interviews during his visit to the Toronto International Film Festival, where he was promoting Machine Gun Preacher and Pearl Jam Twenty (in which he appears.) See below.
July 2011
“Soundgarden exists. The reunion word, to me, doesn’t even need to be used anymore.” Chris Cornell explains why Soundgarden are writing faster now that they have fewer outside pressures and why it took him a while to reconnect to "the live Soundgarden identity."
"Too many acoustic things are, 'Hey he’s playing the songs exactly the same just with a cheap acoustic guitar.' It shouldn’t be that. " Chris offers insight into how he arranges - and rearranges - classic songs for his Songbook concerts.
"We've started to realize that we've been through so much together..." Chris talks to the Colorado Springs Independent about the deepening of Soundgarden's creative relationship.
"Most of my period with Soundgarden I actually didn't have long hair....We actually sold a lot more records when I had short hair. It's weird, the images that get focused on. " A lighter moment from a long and interesting interview in the New York Magazine. Chris talks about artistic integrity, career balance and how he came to belatedly discover Joni Mitchell.
"No matter what you do, there’s always going to be somebody that doesn’t hear the song they wanted to hear." Chris talks to the Boston Globe about Soundgarden setlists, how he found his first Neil Young album in a ditch, and why recording an album is easier when no-one's drinking.
“The word reunion doesn’t really apply, or it doesn’t to me” Chris in conversation with a cynic from The Boston Herald.
"For me it’s important that the lyrics are borne of the feeling of the music. I don’t get in there and create a character. It’s more of a voice that I hear living inside the music." Chris doggedly insists on talking art in the face of a load of questions about business, marketing and his "hair strategy" from The Wall Street Journal.
"That's why we really stopped being Soundgarden - because it seemed like the business side of the band had kind of taken on its own life." Chris tells Newsday why non-musical pressures won't be allowed to get in the way of Soundgarden's renewed creativity.
"Soundgarden has never been a band that took a lot of outside influence." Chris tells the Star-Ledger in New Jersey that the new Soundgarden album is is "expressive and experimental" and will surprise long-term fans.
"There's an intangible X-factor amongst the membership, a chaos going on between us that I've never seen or heard in any other way with anyone else I've played with."Ahead of their Philly show, Chris tells The Inquirer about the special feel of playing live with Soundgarden again...and why there's sometimes too much of it.
"After touring around for a month and a half... I was really looking forward to getting in the studio with Soundgarden and playing loud, aggressive rock music and then after doing that for a while it will feel great to just sit alone and play an acoustic guitar, so in that way I think I’m pretty fortunate to be able to have such dramatic extremes happening." Chris explains his "practical approach to Soundgarden" to Metro - and how mixing different activities means he's able to have his cake and eat it too.
“I needed to move on from Soundgarden. There were other things to check out and I went for it. I have no regrets. I think we all needed to move on. It was the healthiest thing that we could have done.” Chris tells the Atlantic City Weekly why Soundgarden have benefited from a long break.
June 2011
"What we do always feels new. We never repeated ourselves, ever. If anything was too reminiscent of something else we'd done, we wouldn't bother spending time on it." An interview with Melbourne's Beat Magazine about both Chris's solo tour of Australia and Soundgarden's self-reinvention.
Not much new stuff at FM96's interview, although Chris does say once again that the new Soundgarden album won't be out until 2012. And although there's a possibility that new material might be played on tour, it's much more likely that the band will stick to the hits.
You can listen to extracts from a studio interview at Seattle's 107.7 The End here. Chris talks about the "intangible chaos" of Soundgarden, recalls thrilling games of Mastermind on the road, explains why he never wrote songs when he was drunk and expertly bats away an indecent question from impudent hussy 'Red', who doesn't seem to realise she's just implied all solo artists are w**kers.
Chris has one or two interesting things to say about the cultural impact of grunge to San Francisco's Live 105 - listen or download here. Even more interestingly, his interviewer sounds like Moe the Bartender from The Simpsons.
And one of the best so far is this conversation with Roche of DC101 which you can download here. Chris discusses how it feels to write songs for Soundgarden and for other projects, looks back at his last solo album Scream and mentions other current work - like the song he's written for the new Gerard Butler film Machine Gun Preacher.
You can listen to a chat between Chris and "Fingers" of radio station WBAB in Long Island here and explains how the reunion process was internally generated by the band rather than the result of "outside intervention". He also gives spring 2012 as a likely time for the new album to make an appearance "if the world doesn't end then."
Chris kicks off a round of radio interviews in advance of the Soundgarden US tour with an affable chat with a bunch of presenters from "The Men's Room" show at KISW's studios in Seattle. Download it here.
"I did envision a diversity...a future of being open to lots of different kinds of creativity, whatever it looks like from the outside." Kiwi TV interviewer David Farrier talks in depth to Chris in Los Angeles: extracts from this interview ("Chris Cornell - the Jesus without a God complex") went out on New Zealand's TV news at 6pm. Here's some background to the interview in which, amongst other fascinating newsy nuggets, it's revealed that Chris is a huge Lord Of The Rings fan.
"To be working between the two worlds, with the tour being so stripped-down, and to have that sandwiched between recording Soundgarden material, which is about aggression, adrenalin, and rhythmic chaos, it's great." Scott Kara of the New Zealand Herald can't seem to get over being stood up by Chris during an Audioslave tour six years ago...but bottles out of reminding him. Eventually, he asks some interesting questions about contrast and juxtaposition.
April 2011
"At first, I wasn't sure the audiences were going to be quiet, but night after night, I sing my final note, and I hear it go out into the room, and come back. That's new for me." To preview the Seattle 'Songbook' show, Chris talks to veteran local writer Charles R. Cross.
"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." Ahead of his West Canadian shows, Chris explains to the press why he wants to combine playing solo with fronting a band.
"The measure of a great Soundgarden show was how I could whip up the crowd into a frenzy. With this tour, you know it's going well when you can hear a pin drop." Chris talks to Rolling Stone about playing acoustic, his rediscovery of Soundgarden's "swirling, chaotic" energy and recalls a meeting with the legendary Johnny Cash.
"It couldn't be further from what I would do in Soundgarden...that's what's interesting to me about it and that's what's exciting about it." Chris tells Spinner why he loves his contrasting "dream career".
"If I walk off stage in anything less than two hours, it just feels strange." Ahead of the Chicago show, Chris talks to Time Out about giving value for money, why his sense of humour gets misunderstood and why he's not afraid of losing his voice.
"Memories for me aren’t always good; I don’t always like looking back." A treat for completists...the full transcript of Peter Makowski's recent in-depth interview with Chris for Mojo.
“I don’t want to feel like I’m writing the same song or creating the same imagery over and over again.” Chris talks to the New Haven Register in advance of his show in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
"As a music fan," he explains, "aggressive music has only been a part, a fraction, of what I'm a fan of. And in Soundgarden, we did a lot of different things — it wasn't always the sledgehammer-to-the-head approach." Chris looks back over his career, talking to the Boston Phoenix.
"Around every corner there is somebody saying, “Wait, he can’t do that.” Then I just do it anyway, move on and have fun." Chris stands up for musical eclecticism while his interviewer does some very strange things to the English language. From the Aquarian News.
"You can't just
withdraw behind the other band members, the wall of amps or the aggression
of the songs...it forces you into a state of fearlessness." Chris
tells the Connecticut Post why playing solo acoustic takes more
courage than playing in a loud rock band.
"We are more conservative about music now than we were back then. Why?" Chris stands up for musical innovation and talks at length to Creative Loafing about his own musical influences and his love/hate relationship with the internet.
"I think there are a lot of singers that are better than me...some of the people that I think are phenomenal singers technically can’t sing at all." A nice little interview from Scott Yager of The Campus Socialite - and here it is in podcast form.
"The Beatles taught me that you should sing any way you want, about anything you want, and write a diverse selection of songs from super-whispery and personal, like Julia, to something like Helter Skelter which is over the top and aggressive." Chris looks back over his life and career with Mojo, sharing a few original insights - Audioslave's "country flavour", how drinking affected his life, the "something out of control" which happens when Soundgarden start to play.
March 2011
"There's a lot of things that don't sound like anything we've ever done, but that was always the case. We always were constantly reinventing how we wrote and recorded from one song to the next, literally." Chris talks to Rolling Stone about the new Soundgarden album currently under construction, and explains his M.O. when picking songs to rework acoustically for his 'Songbook' tour.
"'How much of a musician are you, really, if you can't just walk into a room, pick up an instrument and entertain people by yourself, playing some songs?'"? Chris talks to Billboard about the desires and objectives behind his new 'Songbook' acoustic tour - and lets slip that the new Soundgarden work-in-progress is "very diverse".
"It's the most terrifying thing I have ever done musically." Here's the rest of Chris's Q&A with Spin - this time talking about his Songbook tour, his attitude to 'Unplugged" sessions, and the "bunch of [new] songs" he has up his sleeve for a future acoustic album.
"If a song is great, it can be approached from a totally different angle and it still holds up." Chris talks to Yahoo! about preparing for his forthcoming Songbook tour, how he approaches songwriting and performance and why he's "not interested in genres".
"We're putting the music first..." Chris Cornell talks to Spin about Soundgarden's plans to record new music and play live. This is just a taster - more from the interview to follow later in the week.
For older interviews:
2010 go here
2009 go here
2008 go here
2007 and 2006 go here