{"id":17256,"date":"2017-05-19T09:19:32","date_gmt":"2017-05-19T16:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=17256"},"modified":"2017-05-19T09:46:02","modified_gmt":"2017-05-19T16:46:02","slug":"chris-cornell-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2017\/05\/chris-cornell-2\/","title":{"rendered":"CHRIS CORNELL"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

Photo Credit: Carlos Ramos<\/p><\/div>\n

CHRIS CORNELL<\/h1>\n

Going solo means going acoustic for the Soundgarden frontman<\/h3>\n

When he plays with Soundgarden, the seminal Seattle alt-rock outfit he formed in 1984, Chris Cornell knows pretty much where things stand. The band makes genre-pushing hard rock revered by punk fans and metalheads alike, and with albums like the 1994 blockbuster Superunknown<\/i>, the quartet has pushed its big, artsy sound into the mainstream.<\/p>\n

As a solo artist, Cornell has always taken a more varied approach. His fourth studio album, Higher Truth<\/i>, is a stripped-down singer-songwriter set inspired by his 2011 Songbook Tour, when he roamed the world with an acoustic guitar playing solo songs and Soundgarden classics\u2014as well as tunes he wrote for the supergroups Temple of the Dog and Audioslave. The live album Songbook<\/i>, featuring songs recorded during the tour, was released later that year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started to realize this was something that really works for me,\u201d says Cornell about the no-frills format he chose for the new record. \u201cIt\u2019s a new home. It\u2019s the summer home to my winter Soundgarden.\u201d<\/p>\n

Handling all the writing and arranging and much of the instrumentation, Cornell made Higher Truth<\/i> with producer Brendan O\u2019Brien, best known for his work with Pearl Jam. It\u2019s a significant changeup from Cornell\u2019s last solo studio effort, 2009\u2019s Scream<\/i>, a collection of R&B jams helmed by hip-hop innovator Timbaland. That record alienated many longtime fans, so this time Cornell decided to give listeners something less experimental. \u201cHigher Truth<\/i> was written to make the Songbook tours a living, breathing thing,\u201d he says, \u201cinstead of a nostalgic look back at my history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Safe to say the record was inspired by the Songbook<\/i> project?<\/b>
\nIt\u2019s the closest to an overall concept I\u2019ve ever had making a record. In a sense, Soundgarden records are conceptual, in that everything I write is my interpretation of what the band should sound like. It\u2019s a band that has become its own monster. We\u2019re all writing the soundtrack to what that is. I know what Soundgarden should sound like, and I\u2019m always trying to push the boundaries of that. But with the solo records, that never has been the case. Anything I do that doesn\u2019t sound like it should be part of the image and the identity of the Soundgarden monster, we call that \u201csolo records.\u201d As a solo artist, I don\u2019t think I had an identity until I started doing the Songbook touring.<\/p>\n

\"Photo

Photo credit: Britta Pedersen\/DPA\/Landov<\/p><\/div>\n

How has that informed the new album?<\/b>
\nBeing able to get up with just an acoustic guitar and pare down 28 years of songwriting in various bands and solo projects to this distilled acoustic-guitar-and-singer thing started to become something that made sense to me as who I am. It\u2019s the whole ball of wax, from the time I started being a songwriter until now. A song I wrote for Soundgarden, and a song I wrote for Audioslave, and a song I wrote for Temple of the Dog and a solo song\u2014and my interpretation of a John Lennon song or a Michael Jackson song\u2014they\u2019re all now kind of making sense together. I\u2019m actually able to see this character and this identity outside of myself. I have somewhat of a dreamed-up image of who this guy is. Some of it really is me, and some of it is a character I\u2019ve created, like one might create a character for a novel.<\/p>\n

Could any work for Soundgarden?<\/b>
\nI don\u2019t see any of them necessarily being songs that would make sense as Soundgarden songs. If Soundgarden did a cover of one of them, it\u2019s possible, but not probable. I don\u2019t feel like there\u2019s a whole lot of confusion between projects.<\/p>\n

The last song \u201cOur Time in the Universe\u201d seems like it would work.\u00a0<\/b>
\nThe melody was very Eastern. On the original demos, I found a keyboard patch that sounded liked Middle Eastern horns. The drum loops were all kind of synthetic, electronic-sounding. That was really the only song that wasn\u2019t written to work acoustically first. The basic arrangement was chord-based, but overall I never tried to make that work as an acoustic song. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll even perform it that way. There are a few songs I pressed to vinyl, and I actually play the records onstage and sing to that\u2014I\u2019m performing to a vinyl album instead of a laptop. That\u2019s probably going to be one of them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an uplifting message to end with.<\/b>
\nWe\u2019re living in this world where things are changing, and we\u2019re being lifted almost hourly by new technology, which opens new possibility. Everyone has to be thinking in the context of new possibility to live in this world, because things are moving so fast. Even the rate of change is speeding up. But there\u2019s also this contrasting dark cloud of global warming, climate change, irrevocable disaster\u2014careening off course toward the end of the world. Grandparents talk about how we\u2019re in our last days\u2014it\u2019s the end of the world. I\u2019m sick of hearing about it. That\u2019s the message of that song. It\u2019s a better message to leave the listener with.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Photo Credit: Carlos Ramos<\/p><\/div>\n

What was your approach to production?<\/b>
\nOther than Brendan, the only other idea I had in terms of production would be to keep it pared-down and acoustic, but make a Nashville record. The reason I didn\u2019t want to do that is the other musicians and the producer are going to color what the songs are. That\u2019s going to take it out of what I believe is my personal world. With something like the Timbaland record, I went way further away from what is intrinsically \u201cme\u201d as a songwriter and performer than I ever have before. I wanted this one to be as far back into that \u201cme\u201d corner as I could get.<\/p>\n

What about fans\u2019 expectations?<\/b>
\nOne of the strange things about Soundgarden as it pertains to me as a singer is we have an audience that embraces pretty aggressive hard rock. We are that, but that\u2019s what the four of us collectively ended up producing. We\u2019ve done a lot within that and pushed the boundaries of what that can be in a lot of directions. But none of us have ever been metalheads. None of us came from the school of hard rock. That\u2019s not who we are. It\u2019s funny: The type of fans we get are often people whose other favorite bands include Slayer, or some uber-aggressive band that lives in this world of dark metal. When we\u2019re doing a Devo cover, they would imagine it should be a joke. But it isn\u2019t a joke. We\u2019re not making fun of it.<\/p>\n

Is it scary to share your feelings on stripped-down solo records like this?<\/b>
\nI\u2019m not sure, really. It\u2019s such a different situation to write for a solo record. The first time I did it was pretty scary. That was sort of the last time. It\u2019s always a little scary to write lyrics for a band, even if those lyrics seem less autobiographical or less personal, just because those lyrics have to represent all four people on some level. It makes it difficult to write songs that are about personal thoughts, ideas, relationships and stories.<\/p>\n

And the next Soundgarden album?<\/b>
\nWe\u2019ve started working on songs and getting the ball rolling. It doesn\u2019t take long to actually get it rolling. To let it gather enough moss to actually have an album\u2019s worth of material\u2014you never know how long that\u2019s going to take.<\/p>\n

\u2013Kenneth Partridge><\/p>\n

MORE: CHRIS CORNELL\u00a0<\/a>\u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Soundgarden\u2019s frontman strips down to show off his songbook >><\/a><\/h4>\n

MORE: SOUNDGARDEN \u2013 Eclectic tracks from the past find new life on the band\u2019s box set >><\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHRIS CORNELL Going solo means going acoustic for the Soundgarden frontman When he plays with Soundgarden, the seminal Seattle alt-rock outfit he formed in 1984, Chris Cornell knows pretty much where things stand. The band makes genre-pushing hard rock revered by punk fans and metalheads alike, and with albums like the 1994 blockbuster Superunknown, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[3143,9004,9003,9005,1551],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17256"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17256"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17268,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17256\/revisions\/17268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}