Soundgarden – Past, Present, and Future

Soundgarden split in 1997 and remained dormant for thirteen years – what was it that ultimately put you all back in the same room?
Well basically, we were all kicking around life and realised that there wasn’t anybody tending to the Soundgarden back catalogue or merchandise. One time Chris [Cornell, frontman] came to Seattle, and we all wanted to talk about it, so we met him in his hotel room and discussed re-establishing all of that. We gathered a team of people and worked on it, then Chris tweeted a message to say we were getting the fanclub and website back together. Everyone read into that, so one thing lead to another and it came down to ‘oh, you guys have offers to play shows.’

We were still working on what became Telephantasm and Live on I-5 at the time, and thought ‘hey, while we’re working on this stuff, why don’t we do the cool part of it all and do a show – that’s fun.’ Then maybe let’s do the real cool part of it and record some more songs together and see what happens if we get in a room and jam. That was the exciting part. We got in that room and the ideas were flowing immediately. Plus, we were already rehearsing to play shows like Lollapolooza.

How was the first rehearsal?
So we get there and it’s the same chemistry, the same mood. We were in dropped D and I just started playing Blind Dogs – which is funny because that’s not a song we’d played live, save for a time we played it on Pearl Jam’s pirate radio show. Sadly, that was the last time I saw Layne Staley [late vocalist of Alice in Chains]. There are no dynamic changes; it’s exactly the same – it’s like we’re ageless.

Has anything changed?
[laughing] New strings, new drum heads…

Did reprising the band give you a fresh perspective on the material you'd produced all those years ago?
Yeah, we can actually play it now!

I remember reading an interview with Chris around the time of the band's split where he seemed frustrated by constant touring and the expectation to play the same songs every night with the same gusto as the first time. Speaking personally, are you in a place where you can appreciate your own catalogue more now than you perhaps used to?
No, it’s the same. I still have the same respect and awe for it. Remember that I joined as a fan and they were one of my favourite bands at the time. Since I’ve been a part of the band I’ve known what’s gone into it and still have the same respect for it that I used to. And it’s still its own thing, it’s not a ‘Seattle grunge’ thing. To me, we always stood apart and separate from any scene. We’re still us. Soundgarden will be its own entity in the history of rock’n’roll. Seattle wasn’t like, say, Merseybeat, where – because of the level of technology and the style of songwriting – they did all sound the same. 

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GUEST QUESTION: ALICE COOPER 

I met your friend Layne Staley when he was very young; he snuck in to an Alice Cooper concert and somehow got backstage. I remember he was this distinctive looking blonde kid – security were getting ready to throw him out, and the last thing he yelled to me over his shoulder was “some day my band’s gonna open for you!” I asked ‘what’s your band’s name?’ He only managed to say the words 'Alice in...' before disappearing out the backdoor. Did you ever get in trouble when you were in school for sneaking out and going to an Alice Cooper concert without your parent’s permission?
No – my parents made me go and see Taj Mahal! They made me skip school and go see this blues dude. That’s my parents. I had to sneak out to every show I ever played when I was young. Before Soundgarden was around I was in bands in the Seattle punk rock scene. I was a poor kid so I’d have to sneak onto the ferryboat, go in to the city, sneak in to the show that I wanted to see or that I was playing; sneak back on the ferryboat and then hitchhike home. That’s how into music I was. Around 1984-85, I'd go to the Central Tavern in Seattle – it was the first place I saw Soundgarden play, and I’d figured out this one secret door in that building where, if you acted like you knew what you were doing, you could just walk in. Never got busted, ever. Got into trouble for other things, but never for sneaking into a rock concert. My parents were totally supportive of my music. Well my mum was; my stepfather thought it was a joke.  

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What was it like to join a band you already admired as a fan? Do you recall the circumstances?
I saw Kim [Thayil, lead guitarist] at a show – he was a really good friend, so was Hiro [Yamamoto, founding bassist]. I’d met Chris once but hadn’t met Matt [Cameron, drummer] yet. So I was standing in the crowd at a Pere Ubu concert and Kim comes up to tell me that Hiro had quit the band. I got all pissed off and kicked an ashtray, like ‘Goddamn it!’ He’s like ‘no, no, no – we’re not breaking up.’ I go ‘oh, OK, so what’s going on?’ He says ‘well, we were wondering how it would feel to you to play bass?’ because I usually played guitar back then. I said ‘I’ll try out if that’s what you want?’ Funnily enough, the night before that, Nirvana had asked me to try out on guitar!

Speaking to Kim recently, he was a wee bit wistful about Soundgarden's old days of slumming it. Do you ever miss the self sufficiency the band had in its infancy – lugging the gear and doing the moonlight drive home from gigs?
[laughing] I don’t remember Kim ever doing anything like that! Of course, you can wax poetically about struggling and going for it. But, you know what, when it comes down to it it’s about keeping the same drive – if you lose that drive you had when you were younger and doing it all yourself then you would stop now. Your focus would go somewhere else. You need to have the fortitude and drive the whole time. By the time I joined they were still on a touring cycle of Louder Than Love and were about to record Badmotorfinger. They did one van tour with me in the band – that was fun, but it was tiring as hell. We just drove down the west coast, played Gathering of the Tribes, and then drove home.

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GUEST QUESTION: SCOTT HUTCHISON [fan & FRIGHTENED RABBIT FRONTMAN]  

How did the band’s process change between Badmotorfinger and Superunknown? There seemed to be such a leap forward creatively between those records.
Basically, what changed was the production level more than anything. The process was otherwise the same – we still do it; we all write, come in and jam. Then we’ll work on a song, and either a song will be mostly done or brought in all the way by somebody – and that could be anybody in the band; we all write. That’s the main secret weapon in Soundgarden – there’s four writers and our drummer can play guitar.

So it was the production; people at the label really focused on us for Superunknown and said ‘now you can do the big time’. Not that Terry Date [producer of their previous two albums] or anybody before that wasn’t big time. But there was more time and focus put on the recording than before, where it was like ‘OK, we know the songs, we have a producer, let’s get in there and nail it down – boom.’ Chris and Kim knew what they wanted for sounds but Michael [Beinhorn, producer] was overbearing in that regard. I could spend 45 minutes talking about how we got one guitar sound if we’re not careful! It’s hard to put your thumb on, but it lies somewhere in the production.

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You played with both Black Sabbath and The Stooges this summer, which must have been a childhood ambition realised. You also joined the Afghan Whigs and Refused on a dream bill in Milan – what were your highlights from touring this year?
I enjoyed Milan a lot; the fans kept singing the outro to Blow Up the Outside World when we were ready to move on to the next song. I like stuff like that. And I had fun in Berlin; that was like time travelling. It felt like we were back in 1988. We were playing with The Gaslight Anthem on the grounds of Spandau Prison – where Spandau Ballet took their name, incidentally – that’s a great place to play a show. There were just the right amount of people that were actually Soundgarden fans – it was also pouring down with rain but everyone was properly into it and it just had the right vibe. There were a lot of young people there. It made me feel like ‘well, they don’t look at us like we’re old and some nostalgia band getting back together’ and all the bullshit that goes along with playing your old songs at festivals.

You've since completed King Animal – your first album together in 16 years. How would you describe it?
Once you hear any notes of it you think ‘oh my God, it’s Soundgarden’ immediately. It covers a whole spectrum of moods. There are a lot of big electric guitars on there, of course; on one side is a really heavy song called Blood on the Valley Floor, which Kim wrote – well, Chris wrote the lyrics and Kim wrote the riff. Then on the other there’s a song called Halfway There, which is acoustic based and really well put together. So it covers the whole gamut – as usual, the same moody spectrum. But the sound is a lot closer to a better version of what Down on the Upside was – where it’s stripped down, sounds more like a band in a room, but we did it better than before. We know our way around the studio more. We worked with Adam [Kasper] again; he knows what we’re looking for. It’s pretty natural, but it’s got the prowess and power of Soundgarden.   

Finally, does Soundgarden feel like a longterm prospect again?
Yeah, Soundgarden’s back! Matt can go do whatever he wants, so can Chris, Kim and I – and whenever we decide to reconvene, we can. We’ve re-established ourselves enough to have that open door. We can go make another record. We don’t have commitments and debts – this is truly for the art of the music and the brotherhood of the band. It’s pretty cool. 

• Read our interview with Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil here.