WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 502 - Chris Cornell

Episode Date: June 1, 2014

Chris Cornell and Soundgarden are heading out on tour for the 20th anniversary of their most successful album, Superunknown. Chris sits down in the garage to tell Marc about the creation, break up and reformation of the quintessential Seattle band and to talk about The Beatles, punk rock, the grunge scene, the word "alternative" and rock mythology. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

LOCK THE GATES! Are we doing this? Really? Wait for it. Are we doing this? Wait for it. Pow! What the fuck?

Number two, Dave. And it's also... Eh, what the fuck? What's wrong with me? It's time for WTF. What the fuck? With Mark Maron. Alright, let's do this. How are are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies

what the fucking ears what the fuck abilities how about that i'm sorry i'm mark maron this is wtf are you with me are you with me uh on today's show chris cornell from soundgarden the fucking pipes of god fucking soundgarden, back together again, man. The 20th anniversary edition of Super Unknown comes out tomorrow. June 3rd and Soundgarden's gonna be on tour out there with Nine Inch Nails this summer. Are you fucking kidding me? Soundgarden.

Cornell. In a few minutes. I'm glad you're enjoying the new season of Marin. Thank you for enjoying that. I haven't been doing this because I'm a fucking moron. I'll give you a little teaser for this week's episode. On Thursday, we're doing the Boomer Lives episode based on the day that I lost Boomer. It's got a lot of great guest stars. The inimitable Rick Shapiro is in that episode.

I was thrilled to work with rick and then several other people you'll recognize it's it's about the search for boomer that's this thursday marin on ifc 10 p.m in most places 9 p.m and others i just got back from new mexico i did a benefit out there in my hometown as some of you know i did a benefit for the Endorphin Power Company, which is sort of a hybrid halfway house idea where they have community outreach, community service, a gym, a kitchen, single occupancy rooms for people who are transitioning into sobriety or out of jail. They got a garden there. They got a performance space there. It's just an amazing facility. It's just an amazing facility.

And I was happy to raise some money for them. And they're doing good things, helping people out through that time. That time, that tough time. Entering the insanity of sobriety from the chaos and dark insanity of drugs. Transitioning out of the hooscow, out of the slammer. But I talked to the dude Jeff over there. And he gave me me a tour of the facilities told me what he wanted to do and i was uh i was thrilled that we raised some money we had a good show genevieve mueller and uh and matt peterson some local comics out there who i uh who i reached out to a bunch of albuquerque comics on twitter and

they uh they opened the show. They did a great job. And I saw people, folks, I saw people I haven't seen in 30 years, man. 30 fucking years. It's crazy. I saw some dude that I was at Driver's Ed with. His name's Tim. And I remember me and Tim were friends when we were in Driver's Ed, and I went down to his house.

He lived in sort of a rural part of New Mexico in my memory. And I watched him kill chickens and it changed my life. An afternoon with Tim Hooten changed my life because I watched his family cut the heads off of chickens. I watched him run around and I was like, not for me. I know it's the right thing to do. I know it's just food. I know this is as intimate as you can get with your food. This is euthanasia based on appetite.

I was not into it, but it was nice to see Tim. Saw my old buddy Dave Kleinfeld, who I've known since second grade. Some of us Jews stick together. We go the long haul, man. And I saw my dad. I saw my dad. I spent some time with my dad. Yes, I did. All right, so here's the layout.

Here's what happens. I was supposed to go to New Mexico on Thursday, Thursday morning. On Wednesday, I get a text, oddly, from Jenny Connor, the producer of the show Girls. She goes, well, you're going to do a part. And I'm like, I have not heard about this. And then I heard from the casting agent. And then I heard from my manager. They wanted me to do a scene on the show Girls.

I'm not going to tell you the scene. I'm not going to tell you what I played. I can tell you it wasn't me. I can tell you I played a guy. I can tell you I didn't get naked. I can tell you there was no sex involved. That's all I'm going to tell you. But I flew to New York on Thursday and I got there.

I checked into a hotel, the Trump Soho, which I was put up in. And as expected, it was very tacky in a very Trumpian way, but it was nice. I hadn't been to New York in a while. I was a little tired. I was a little jarred. And then I got up Friday morning. I went to the set. I did the thing.

We shot all day. I went to little jarred. And then I got up Friday morning. I went to the set. I did the thing. We shot all day. I went to eat some food. I texted Louis C.K. because I know he lives down there. He texted me back. He's cutting his episodes. And we didn't get to hang out, so I hang out by myself. I don't mind hanging out by myself in New York City. It's fine because I'm always surrounded by people.

Then I got up on Saturday morning at 4.30, got on a plane, flew to New Mexico. Who picks me up? My dad. Now I want you to know, some of you are concerned that the phone call that I shared with you on my 500th episode with my father was somehow sandbagging and against the newly established order of being respectful of people in my life in terms of what I reveal about them and how I reveal it. My dad signed off on that phone call. We put it together. I sent him the file. I said, that phone call was touching and it was moving to me and I'd like to include it in the show. Here it is. Have a listen. And about two hours later, he goes, yep, I'm okay with it. So that was signed off by by him so when i was going to see my

dad i knew that we had made this plan and it we'd been in a very bad fight it was the worst that we'd ever been in probably and i was pretty dead set on on just living a life without him and uh since that phone call i said well pick me up he picked me up we hugged uh a little a little crying going on on you know on both parts a little bit and then it was just back to normal man back to him telling me what i ought to be doing oh you know what you ought to do you know what you gotta do you know what you should do you know who you should talk to you know who got in trouble for that a lot of that and then you know we talked about business we talked about my brother and then and then it always ends up with him going like you know i i still i still think it's pretty reasonable the idea of winning the lottery that's

why i play i wouldn't play if it wasn't a reasonable thing and that's you know over the arc of a couple of days that's usually about the time i could go all right well this was a good time dad i'm glad we're back on it good luck with the lottery good luck with that so let's talk about uh well do am i jumping in am i stuffing emotionally am i stuffing look i'm glad we're okay you know the the most interesting thing about whatever resentment you have against your father is when you get together with your father you're like oh my god i do that oh my god that's where i got that holy shit shit. He thinks that way. I think that way. It's hard not to really look at the possibility that you're hating yourself if you have anger at your father because they're ingrained in you. So to separate that shit and to say like, all right, these are the parts of him that I have that may not have fared him well or done him any favors. have fared him well or done him any favors so why not see that as as some sort of uh you know chronic illness the parts of your father that are inside of you that you don't like in him

it's a chronic illness you have to live with and treat it appropriately if you have a chronic illness that is survivable you're like well i i if i don't do this and if I don't act on that, and maybe if I don't say that, like he would say, that this illness won't get any worse. So treat the part of you that is directly a copy of your parents emotionally. Treat that part of you, if it's negative as as a survivable chronic illness and own it i with what's the matter with you you have you have an illness yes i'm a lot like my father uh in a bad way oh well that's survivable you just have not you don't you just can't act on that stuff you know whatever the the negative parts of him that caused him trouble you know that so that's how you treat that illness.

You live with it and you don't behave that way. You just say like, oh, I'm about to be my father. And then you go like, no, I'm not. I'm going to be Mark and I'm going to harness that fucker. And I'm going to just keep that part of him in a room marked disease dad thoughts. And I'll try to keep that door closed. But occasionally they get out and then you know that's that but uh i love the guy and he loves me and it was okay got a lot of

shows coming up in a few different places i'm doing some smaller venues i actually don't know the size of any i'm going to be at firefly in st louis i believe it's called i'm going to be in kansas city in a few weeks i'm going to to Chicago to the first annual 26th Annual AV Club Festival. Go to WTFpod.com. Check the calendar. I'm going to be in Bloomington, Indiana. I'm going to be in Charleston, North Carolina. Those are dates that are up now.

I think I'm going to be part of the Oddity Festival in a few cities this year. So there's stuff happening. Strap in. I'm going to talk to chris cornell and uh again the 20th anniversary edition of super unknown comes out tomorrow june 3rd and sound garden is going to be out there on the road across the country with nine inch nails that is a powerful night of fucking rock music right there okay let's talk to Chris Cornell so you grew up in Seattle uh-huh like the whole life it was in Seattle mm-hmm so you remember Seattle when it was a sweet dark place I have memories of

Seattle actually have a lot of memories from Seattle that are legitimately in the 60s believe it or not what was that that like? Well, how old are you? I'll be 50 in a month and a half. I just turned 50. Right, so we're like the same age. So you kind of remember like kind of 68, 69-ish? Yeah, I remember what the world looked like. It's sort of based on what people wore, what kind of glasses they had,

and what cars were there. Hair length, too. Yeah there hair length too yeah hair length too that's true and yeah um you know everybody kind of looked like ccr sort of yeah and i remember there were a lot of british bikes then so they were super loud like way louder than anything what triumphs you like yeah that was kind of the thing and so in my neighborhood i remember at that at that age i moved when i was three and a half so i still have memories up to then that i know are three and a half or earlier were you compelled because when i remember being like from a very young age looking at the hippies going like that's that's

what i need to that needs to be the direction i need to go. I think that at some age, I kind of went the other way, and it was based on actually knowing some of those guys and not liking them at all. Oh, really? When you were a kid? Yeah, when I was a kid, I had a neighbor. Yeah. Who, you know, it was a Filipino man who was married. And at some point his wife left and they had had two sons. Yeah.

And one of the sons was kind of cool and the other one was younger and he was like super hippie-ish. Right. And he had all his friends kind of coming over and they would sort of live in the basement kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they all looked, they looked like Lynyrd Skynyrd exactly. Right. And I remember a guy i was walking by the basement and he opened the window that looks up from the basement he was

shooting something at me out of a syringe one time really yeah and i was and and i just thought these guys are creeps yeah and they you know they weren't super mean but they but they were but they were somehow did they play did they have a band no they didn't have a band they just look like that yeah they just look like leonard skinner there were syringes involved no these were guys that were in in and out of jail all the time and stuff and yeah they they creeped me out did but do you remember uh the music being part because i remember sort of the vietnam war and i remember i remember mad magazine and i just remember that the hippies seemed to have the culture by the balls.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure if I had much perspective of that. How old were we? Like five? Yeah. Six? Yeah, it's hard to say.

I mean, I do remember some of those Seattle summers where there were a lot of girls with huge long hair and wearing halter tops and like dancing to 70s music and all the brothers look like bikers. And that was also one of the things that defines that period is it was the end of the baby boom. So in the neighborhood I lived in, every house had five boys in it. You know, everyone had several big brothers in various states of like college or jail

or military or whatever and so like i heard iron butterfly and uriah heap and you know every kind of somebody's big brother's records you didn't have a big brother i had two so you got all that yeah i my my big brothers the probably the what got me into prog was my oldest brother, because he took a turn into kind of like ELP, yes, sort of anything that seemed a little weird. Rough turn. Yeah. But you don't consider your music prog. No, not really. But you were into it?

Yeah, for a couple years, yeah. I don't know why I could never do it. I think for me it was like I smoked pot at a really young age, and then after a couple years I stopped. And I think it opened the door to that, just the sort of fantasy world of like there's elves and Tolkien's living in there somewhere. And I loved it.

And of course, it was the perfect setup for punk rock. Right. Because by the time punk rock hit and I heard it and understood it, the timing couldn't have been better. Because it was like, thank God. This is awesome. Snapped me out of it. I'm awake now. Thank you for waking me from my trance.

This is fantastic. Who were your other bands when you were a kid? Well, The Beatles was the bands when you were a kid? Well, The Beatles was the band when I was a kid. And it was... Forever, right? I was, I don't know how old, eight or something. One of my neighbors, he had like four older brothers. And the oldest one had been kicked out of the house.

And he just left all his records in the basement. Right. And so I stole his Beatles records. And he had everything. All of them every reissue every um every compilation every uh every album yeah you know and and the the first run of every album and i had all of them but they were wrecked like all the sleeves were ruined water damaged and i just grabbed them on a whim and um you know i had one of those old student

stereos that packs up like a suitcase. Yeah. And I just sat in my bedroom and started listening to them. And by then they had broken up and it wasn't the Beatles had nothing to do with pop culture. They were just these the mythic presence over everything. Yeah. The Beatles. Yeah.

You would see like like the the Let It Be pictures were in everyone's house. Right. So they were there. It was almost like other family members. This is my mom, my dad. Oh, you mean like the White Album pictures. Or the White Album pictures. The 8x10s.

Yeah, yeah. And then the cover of Let It Be was four photos. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that would be, you know, that's the big difference between vinyl LPs and anything else is that these albums, if it was a huge album, it was in everyone's living room and you saw it when you went inside.

Yeah, yeah. Everyone had that Let It Be album in their living room with the Beatles looking at you. Yeah, so right away you could go like, yeah, Beatles. Which records were the ones where you were like, I gotta hear that again? Well, I remember really getting into

Sgt. Pepper's, of course. i really got into the white album i really got into abbey road with headphones and and for that run on side b i don't know what it was about it but the it didn't do it for me listening to it on speakers but i discovered that that there's such a thing as headphones that sound good maybe that was the beginning of like good sounding headphones and I remember cranking it super loud and I couldn't believe

the production of Abbey Road like it was incredible there's that whole run through like you know you never give me your money Paula, theme,

Pam and then like that whole like they're all connected which is prog really yeah it is but I think it was for them just to like well how are we going

to put all this shit together we got a bunch of fragments yeah the well when they came out with that with that yeah it is but I think it was for them just to how are we going to put all this shit together we got a bunch of fragments yeah well when they came out with that with that album of number ones and then demos

yeah I kind of learned by then like oh that's how those songs came about because they had all these cool little bits right yeah

they couldn't make songs out of them right me and Mr. Muster made just a shitty song right but part of this weird thing

part of the weird thing. It was awesome. Yeah. Because you're sitting there thinking, what were these guys thinking when they did this? How high were they? How high do you have to be to come up with Mr. Mustard and Palatine Pam? I love them.

Really high. Yeah, really high. I love that lick on Palatine Pam, though. I love that guitar on that thing. Yeah, it's great. When did you start, you know, like, what were your were your folks doing were you a problem kind of yeah but not not i didn't get arrested what kind of business were you in um my dad was a pharmacist and my mom was a housewife that then got into kind of uh this sort of white trash interior decorator thing just to get out of

the house sure away from us yeah they go they either go travel agent real estate agent interior decorator yeah she that i was six when she found the need to get out and um so i was i was the um the youngest boy and i think by the time i was born and and that age, I benefited from the fact that my parents were over it. Right. So I could do pretty much whatever I wanted as long as police didn't bring me home. And so that's what I did.

But music was a big part of it. So I was either outdoorsy or I was sitting in a room alone because I didn't have friends where we would sit and listen to records and talk about it. Yeah. My friends didn't get it. So I just did it alone. And it became a lonely thing.

What's the age difference between you and your brothers? One's three and a half years older. One's five years older. Oh, so not that much. Not much, no. Are they both still around? Yeah. They're music guys?

Yeah. My brother Peter, he actually just finished a solo record, I think, that's coming out soon. He's one of the first guys i remember where and and this is a funny story because it's like 12 at night and my dad who was a pharmacist is already you know his pajamas in bed trying to sleep and i'm in the basement and we had this old we lived in an old farmhouse yeah brother shows up at the basement door with some older looking dude and they bring in this like two half stacks of a marshall and they put a head on it yeah right and they bring in this like two half stacks of a Marshall and they

put a head on it yeah right and they plug it in this is like almost midnight and and the first thing the guy does he's trying to sell it to my brother and the first thing he does he goes check this out and he turns the reverb all the way up turns both volumes all the way up lifts the head off the cabinet and then let's go and it crashes down on the cabinet and just goes... And my dad comes down the stairs, and I don't even think his feet were really touching the ground. He was like almost flying with anger and hatred,

and his head was like this giant tomato, screaming, and his teeth were kind of green. And he was gnashing his teeth at my brother. And I was looking at my brother thinking, you're out of your goddamn mind. You're lucky he didn't beat his teeth at my brother. And I was looking at my brother thinking, you're out of your goddamn mind. You're lucky he didn't beat the shit out of you. And I was thinking, that's so fucking cool.

What kind of selling? How is that a way to sell an amp? By dropping the head. Was it a tube amp? Or was it solid stick? Well, he dropped it on the cabinet. Oh, okay. Just a little bit. It felt to me like the guy had no idea how to play guitar.

And the most he'd come up with what to do with this thing was to make the reverb explode. He'd probably just stolen it. Yeah, probably. And then I remember the next day, my brother going to some rehearsal. Yeah. With the amp?

Did he buy it? With the amp. He bought it, I think, or borrowed it, and the cabinets were like on casters, and we live in Seattle, and so a lot of those hills. Yeah. So my last image of this whole thing was my brother trying to manage to roll this amp and cabinet down an extremely steep hill in the middle of the street without losing control of it, and then disappearing into the sunset. When did you start playing yourself?

I mean, when did you start knowing that know, knowing that that was the thing? Well, I learned some chords, like, Did you play before you sang? Yeah, obviously.

I didn't, I kind of had a, I had a sort of nimble choir boy voice as a, like, like, prepubescent kid.

Yeah. And, and, and could sing really well. And then when my voice changed, like, whatever range I had disappeared completely and I gave up on singing.

I didn't think... No, you found it again. Yeah. It took some... Soundgarden really helped me find it. We couldn't come up with a singer and I was like, oh, I'll try. Really?

Yeah, that's how it happened, really. I was the drummer at first. It's so effortless, man. I mean, when I saw you at the forum, I was like, you didn't even... Like, you weren't... There was no theatrics to the uh to the uh the amazing uh that what sounds like should require strain yeah i think if you if you do if you're doing it right then then it it shouldn't require too much strain if you're going to try to sing a two-hour set yeah there's

techniques they teach you all of the straining and the pushing and the stretching yeah doesn't help make that sound i think it's just your instinct to like oh how do i do this well it's a breath thing right yeah once you have it yeah it's sort of like you've just got this little reed in your throat hanging out and all the muscles in your neck and everything surrounding it don't really help it by trying to strangle it. But that's sort of what I did. But I learned how to sing really in Soundgarden rehearsals because we were really loud, super loud. And in order to get my voice to cut, I just started pushing it really hard.

Well, so how does it start? What's going on? Are you going out to see live shows in high school? I mean, what's going on there? What were some of the shows you were seeing? Not much. I mean, I think I probably saw, like, you know, sort of bands at the dance and, like, skating rink sort of stuff.

But we're, like, we're the same age. So the touring rock bands were who they were. I mean, I remember, I fucking, do you remember when Van Halen's first album came out? Yeah. I remember. I was like, holy shit. I remember the first time I heard Eruption and I didn't understand that it was guitar right yeah and everybody was playing it was like everywhere it was everywhere i remember a kid walking across the the playground

with a boom box but you know before they were stereo right and and uh like a panasonic thing yeah like a panasonic with a you know it sounded pretty good yeah yeah and it had fm on it right yeah um and i hearing it and thinking like god what is that it's like changed the world with a, you know, it sounded pretty good. Yeah, yeah. And it had FM on it. Right, yeah. And I'm hearing it and thinking, like, God, what is that? It's like changed the world. Yeah, it did. But that, but it also did another thing,

which punk rock cured. It's sort of, like, I never thought of myself as being in a rock band or being, you know, I didn't have dreams of being a rock star, ever. What were your dreams? I didn't have any. You just wanted to hang out? No, I was just sort of a wild kid.

Just like running around, driving around, smoking weed, drinking? Climbing trees, swimming, running around in parks. Fucking beautiful up there. Yeah, Seattle's a great place to grow up. At least it was then. And then listening to music right and uh

but so i i could play like i learned how some chords on acoustic guitar i learned to read music and play piano when i was like 10 but then i quit because it was like school to me right and i didn't no one encouraged me to keep keep it up i regretted it really soon after that um of course i regret it now but um it's hard to focus so many. I've been playing a long time, and I'm not even a real musician. I'm just a hobbyist. There are guys who are nerd out, and they'll noodle, and they'll figure all that shit out. And then there are guys

who just want to get out what they want to get out. Well, I don't know. I don't think that I had... I probably had the personality to sit in a room and noodle, but probably not the raw talent to pick up a guitar and go i can do this i never had that thought of i can do this uh until i was literally doing it and and drums kind of did that for me well what was you what were you saying about the the way that

punk you know was the the sort of well when you hear of uh when you hear and i'm not putting down van halen i think that they had elements of that same just simple, straightforward rock that was in punk rock as well. Right. But Eddie Van Halen's a musical genius. Right. It kind of came from Led Zeppelin in that period where commercial rock became a singer with a five octave range and a guitar player that has two necks on his guitar and can play both of them somehow kind of at the same time. And his biggest influence isn't another guitar player. It's actually like Bach or something. Right.

That's what they say publicly. Yeah. And I didn't think, first of all, i didn't think i didn't first of all i didn't think seattle produced people like that i thought you had to like be born and grow up somewhere else england yeah they only make those in england exactly something like you and yeah i don't know and you couldn't be blue collar i didn't understand the blue collar part of rock because i think that confused it too and so punk rock uh it changed everything you know for me in that anyone could do it i could yeah i could be in a band i was in a band within like three days of the first time i ever played

the drums i was a drummer in a band and the funny thing was that at that age i was probably 16 i haven't had no aspirations to do or be anything. Once that week was up, I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my whole life. Is that good? And it never went back. It was that good? Yeah, it was great. I had no, there was like, there's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, rock band. I guess that's what I'm doing.

Great. And by the time I was 24 or 5, that's when a lot of my friends were, you know, we'd be hanging out getting drunk and they would say, you know, I just don't know what I want to do with my life. And it occurred to me then how lucky I was that I never had that moment. I was figuring I'll mow lawns and wash dishes until I'm 100 years old, but this is what I will do. Did you mow lawns and wash dishes? Absolutely. Really? Yeah, I did all those things.

I broke concrete. I cleaned fish guts. I did, and it was all fine. At Pike's Market or elsewhere? No, I worked at a place called Ray's Boathouse, which was sort of like a seafood joint on the bay. Beautiful view. So you can take apart a fish to this day.

Yeah. Someone presented you with a fish. I worked at a couple seafood wholesalers where it was just really more of the cleaning up fish scales and slime. And I ended up, you know, just kind of doing the end up then after that doing jobs you can do when you're in a band. But you want to go play shows for a couple of weeks. And that would either be like construction, restaurant stuff, stuff like that. But I was never unhappy because while I was at work, whether it was a cook or washing dishes or something,

I was thinking about my band and music and arranging songs. What was the band you were drumming in? What were they playing? What were they called? The first band was called the Jones Street Band because my house was on Jones Street. And my oldest brother had turned our garage into this soundproof, windowless rock environment. Rock environment. Yeah.

He had a stereo that was absurd, that was like 300 watt thing, that was so loud that the neighbors would complain when I was listening to records, but they wouldn't complain when the band was playing because the stereo was louder. It was louder. Yeah. So he moved out and I inherited his pad. His rock environment? His Greg Brady kind of pad. And within a month of having it is when I bought a drum set. Your parents must have been fairly supportive.

My parents were divorced at that time. My mom, I think my mom was thrilled that I was doing something that didn't include alcohol or drugs. Yet. Yeah, exactly. She had no foresight, apparently. None, because being in a band is where the heavy drinking really started. Yeah, I bet. But we did that, you know.

The Jones Street Band. The Jones Street Band. You're playing drums. I'm playing drums. Who's playing guitar? yeah i bet um but that we we did that you know and and the jones street band the jones street band you're playing drums i'm playing drums playing guitar um there were two kids in the neighborhood uh one was 15 one was 17 and one was like student of hendrix right 15 year old and one was student of jimmy page uh the 17. And to this day, and unless my memory's not serving me right, those guys were awesome. Right. They were fantastic.

Hey, in that moment, they were probably amazing. They really were. You know, they were playing like the Zeppelin guy, he could play the solos from Days of Confused like different

bootleg live versions up for note. And you could listen and A-B them. He was doing it. Yeah. In earnest. So those are real nerds.

He was good. Yeah. And, you know, they were both good. But really quickly, you know, it's like 1977, 78, I was getting into other stuff. I was getting into punk music. I was getting into this other stuff. And none of those kids really seemed to be into it.

They were holding on to the old paradigm. One out of, the one guy that I started the band with was into it. And he was one of the first guys that actually,

he played me a song from The Farts, which was a Seattle band that Duff McKagan was in it and some other Seattle notables. And I think the song was 18 seconds long or something. Yeah. And it had the most energy I'd ever heard

in something that you might dare call music. And we would listen to it over and over and over. And so I shifted gears, and then I was in several, I don't know, seven bands over the next couple of years. Well, Hendrix, the whole idea of Hendrix hangs pretty heavy over Seattle, right? Because, I mean, that's where he came from. Yeah, there were a lot of Hendrix-y guitar players,

and there were a lot of bands where they just did Hendrix songs. And there was, was it Randy Hanson? He made a living out of being sort of a Hendrix tribute guy. So were you guys doing covers with the first band? Oh, yeah, yeah. Anything we could think of. Now, when you started broken to punk after you heard the Fart song, the sky opened for you. Yeah, and I think it quickly went into kind of a post-punk indie world.

I was a fan of punk for about five minutes and then i discovered that oh punk isn't just like fast bar chords and spitting right there's more going on musically and artistically really who were the guys that showed you that um where'd that where'd that kind of come into it friends that lived sort of near colleges right but. But do you remember the bands? Friends that lived... I'm trying to think. There was a band called Wire. That was the... I think that was...

Wire or Killing Joke were the first couple bands where I understood that their punk could also include... Musicality? Other stuff. Because Wire, I would hear Pink Floyd in it. Right. And I was a huge Pink Floyd kid. Yeah.

You know, music was escapism to me. Right. So that made sense. And so it didn't have to just be political, social commentary with blistering power chords. It could be trippy and it could be, there could be social commentary, but it's more esoteric. Right. And Killing Joke was like this, is he Robert Smith singing in a heavy metal band? What is this? i didn't get it

but i got that i liked it hard to place them yeah yeah and that those two bands really i think were instrumental in me understanding that that there was there was some sort of future right music was going to have and no one was going to know what it was so so after you learned that stuff where where where are you at do you still living at home um no i moved out pretty young so i was you know working in restaurants and and just had roommates and you and you were playing drums i was playing drums and i had roommates that had cool records and are they musicians um no not really not not no they're guys that you know drunken jams yeah yeah. Yeah. You're all sitting around smelling like fish. Yeah.

Drinking beers. But these are guys who were there. These are people I knew who were around me when I got my first drum set. And I wasn't a musician either. So there was, you know, there's something they must have observed I wasn't paying attention to. But still, those are your friends that they're a part of who you become as a musician and a lot of levels you know coming home with the uh the first rem ep and going what is this why is this good i don't know but it is right yeah it is you know

you got to get consensus are we on the same page here yes i don't want to be a dick and it's like no i think it's good i really do and do. You can't trust your own instincts. You don't even want to say, I love this. You're just sort of like, what? And we, okay. Even though I did love it. Right, exactly. Like, I wore that thing out. And so I bounced around in different bands.

But I had a roommate that had, like, a nervous breakdown. And that's really the beginning of Soundgarden. Because I had met Kim and Hero both from Soundgarden while we were sort of messing around in this other one of the many horrible bands that I was in. Which one was that? It was called The Shemps. Yeah. The Shemps. And it was awful.

Yeah. And the guy who was, it was his band. He knew both of them. Kim and. Kim and Hero. And I met him somehow. So he was, i was introduced to those guys and i called hero one day because i owed him money and he had a uh he had his roommate got mad

at him and was leaving right and he said you know anyone needs a roommate i said yeah i i do i need to move in somewhere now and i moved in like the next day and he was turns out he was a bass player and i was a drummer and so we started we decided we would start a band and we waited we couldn't find anyone that was a bass player with who's that hero yamamoto right right right so he couldn't find anyone until it one day he said you know maybe maybe kim should come over and we'll and and see what happens and that was that that was this revelation when kim walked in the three of us we wrote like seven songs

in two days kind of thing and Kim was playing guitar then Kim was playing guitar and it was unlike anything I'd ever heard I'd never heard anyone play guitar like that

I still haven't really and it was natural you know it wasn't it didn't seem like this guy because I ran into a lot of burnout guys

that were that were desperately trying to invent something that was unique and we sort that were desperately trying to invent something that was unique and we sort of wanted we wanted to invent our own band but but we didn't we didn't seem to have to like try try to sort of intellectually do it right just happened you know it's like wow this is different and then you're excited about it and then that makes you kind of trust what

you're doing and steer into more different and feel like, well, any way that I want to express this is valid. So Kim always had that thing. He had a way of playing that was organic to him no matter what. It's a rare thing. And it meant something to me. Like if he plays some guitar thing that he showed me back then in 1984 that I haven't heard since then. It gives me that same feeling like if I hear an old Beatles song. It triggered something in me that I didn't ever hear before

and I connected on some emotional level, I guess. I don't know. So you guys were fast friends? Yeah, right away. We wrote an incredible amount of songs. Any of those songs end up on the first Soundgarden records? No. Did you play them?

Yeah. Like, we seemed to click in a way, sort of alone in a room, that translated to our first live show ever seamlessly. Like, the first live show, we had to talk somebody into giving it to us, and we went in, we were a three-piece, and I sang most of the songs from the drums, and um we went in we were a three-piece and and i sang most of the

songs from the drums and it just went over and and there was and you were called sound garden yeah and there were i don't know 40 people maybe who came up with that name um kim yeah is it it's i got just realized it for some reason it always represented something a little harder to me but it's sort of a sweet name well it it served us really well because i think that having that name was part of us becoming kind of a big draw in seattle especially and and even when we first started doing tours anytime we were opening up for a band and what would happen is we would open up for a band that was kind of heavy and and sort of like who like I don't know I mean I can't remember like what a good example

of that would be local guys but like say we played a show with Husker Du one time great and so if you didn't know

who Soundgarden was and you would see it you would think we were some sort of green on red kind of like a neo psychedelic

right alternative R.E.M.E. thing right right and then you would show up, and we would open, and we would come out and be Soundgarden, and then they would go, holy fuck.

And so people would love us because of that. I think the guys in the Screaming Trees had that experience with us. They actually came to our show to laugh at us, and then we came out. Because of the name. Because of the name Soundgarden, I guess. They thought, who are these hippies?

Yeah, but I got that a lot. It's like, wow, I thought you guys were going to be this psychedelic thing. And then they would like us sort of more than they otherwise would have because they would have been pleasantly surprised, you know. And it ended up being a really good thing. So you were a three-piece. And, okay, so you opened for bands like Husker Du. And they're monsters, man. They're like balls to the wall.

Yeah, and I think they were my favorite band at the time, and we were a three-piece, and they were a three-piece kind of thing. Okay, so who else is around? I mean, because now we're coming on to something I'm sure you've talked about a lot. I mean, some scene is developing there, correct? Well, I think the closest contemporary at that time was then Green River.

I was at their first show and it was steve turner and mark arm from mud honey and jeff amott from pearl jam from pearl jam and then that's a good band i had that record i don't have it anymore i like that record though and then they ended up and then stone gossard ended up joining that band as well and it kind of had different it had different incarnations now were you guys mostly friends because i mean i watched that um yeah we were the the it was a very small scene that that sort of urban punk scene was very small like you the audience was always the other bands really and you would still call it punk no i'm not sure what we called it because like it's weird how like whatever this the idea of of grunge or whatever it always seemed to me to be you know pretty pretty much rock yeah but it didn't but it

definitely came from a u.s indie scene right and what what the you to define what that was at the time yeah it was husker do bad brains sonic youth the meat puppets the meat puppets butthole surfers yeah and um like just take those examples and put them together. None of them sounded anything like each other, and everybody seemed to have completely their own trip. But it had roots in punk. It was in arena rock. Right. And in what then was starting to be called alternative, simply because it was an alternative to commercial rock.

And when that word first came up, it was still a word that had a definition that is in the dictionary. And then it became a genre where it wasn't, it used to just include anything as long as it wasn't commercial rock. And so you could have a sax player in your band, like the Seattle Band Feast.

They had two singers, and one was a boy one was a girl and when the girl sang the boy played this kind of this sort of free jazz sax so right it wasn't like any well that was that time like a also because out of punk you also got that whole world of art rock that was cool yeah you know like that kind of was right it was like one one of our sort of god bands that you would pray to and and um sonic youth and that that kind of there was room for it there was room for it and it was it seemed like this open chapter of a book where it could go on and on and on, and you can do anything you want, and there are no boundaries.

And Soundgarden benefited from that thinking, and probably what defined us then and what made people talk about us was that we weren't sort of including anything we wanted, and some of that was not okay at the time. Like what? It was not okay. Is it on the records?

It was not okay to the fans it was not okay to the to to the fans of indie music for example then and that was kind of a unapologetic maleness yeah that was in incorporating sort of heavy riff rock that I reminded people of bands that were at the time considered to be you know sellout lately on the cool right and that's me so so sellout commercial but like if you at the time considered to be, you know, completely uncool. Right, uncool. Not so much sellout commercial, but like if you, for example,

if someone said, somehow that last song you guys played reminded me a little bit of Led Zeppelin. For most bands. That was a bad thing? For most bands, that was the kiss of death. But for Soundgarden, it seemed people kind of started to look at it differently.

And that was the first time I heard this phrase of zeppelin in a good way because there was at that moment nowadays zeppelin is always in a good way but in in those days there was a whole lot of zeppelin in a bad way because you had bands like doesn't that seem crazy yeah it kind of does although if you think about it what was taken from zeppelin by all the commercial rock bands was the hair, the super tight pants, the fashion, kimonos, light show, it every Led Zeppelin song to me on record, especially the earlier records, sounded like they had written it right while they were playing it almost. Like, Jimmy Page didn't seem to care.

Like, he would do these blistering solos where he would miss, like, five or six notes, would sort of fret out, and his fingers would miss him. He didn't give a shit. But also, like, it seemed to me at that time,

because we're the same age, you watched all those bands sort of arc out. Like, you know, the best of those bands was what you're talking about now and by in through the outdoor which is still a good record yeah but i still love it yeah but it was a huge commercial success and people had lost touch with what made those bands so fucking good to begin right and and where you know you you're either rejecting them i mean i think i think by the time song remains the same out, punk music was already blowing up in London and in New York in earnest.

And it had to be a reaction against everything. Right. And so fast forward to like 1985, 86, we're sort of allowing some of that into our music and it's getting a violent reaction. One way or the other. to our music and it's getting a violent reaction. One way or the other.

Well, there were a lot of supporters and I think that that, I think that that's where we found kind of a new, not only our own voice,

but we were doing something pretty much nobody was doing. Well, you must have been surrounded by, you know, arty,

sort of like, you know, nerdy kids. Yeah. There was a poet guy who seemed to weigh, you know, less than 100 pounds. Right. You know, and there was. Yeah. There was a poet guy who seemed to weigh, you know,

less than 100 pounds. Right. You know, and there were college DJs that were supporters. Yeah. A lot of guys in other bands that were writers. It was basically college people. But I imagine at some point you just started seeing dudes who liked to rock show up. Not for a while.

Really? Yeah, really. Really? Yeah, that didn't, that happened um that happened later that i think you're pretty much in the 90s before that happened really yeah because like and even now like even when people compare you guys to sabbath or can compare kim to you know to that type of uh heavy riff laying i mean at that time sabbath was even they no one gave a shit about sabbath either no but i think what it is is that the the guys still listening to Zeppelin and Sabbath records

would have no way of knowing a band like Soundgarden existed at the time. Right, right, that's right. They didn't go to any indie record stores or listen to college radio or buy indie records. They still were kind of in their cave. And so it wasn't until Alice in Chains came on the scene and they were actually the first band to break. Yeah, in a sense, because they didn't have an indie career. They didn't have an indie background. They were kind of a suburban metal band that then was suddenly sort of influenced by all the bands around them in Seattle.

And their first record deal was a major label record. But they had all these new elements that they were kind of pulling into what they did. And they were the first band to sell, like, they had a gold record, you know. And they were local guys. And they were local guys. And you guys knew them? By then, yeah. They weren't part of the early scene, but by the time their first local guys. And you guys knew them? By then, yeah. They weren't part of the early scene,

but by the time their first record came out, we all knew them, yeah. We were friends. So what was, the early scene was like, the guys from Pearl Jam, the guys from Mudhoney, the guys from... Melvins we played with. But like in town.

In town. Were the Vaselines up there? Yeah, but I don't remember even seeing them, but they were there. What sort of predated that scene, the huge bands were the Blackouts, which most of them became part of ministry at some point. Yeah. And there's a band called the You Men. And that was sort of the scene that we walked into right we were playing shows at the same time as them um but then what we did was and what green river did

seemed to kind of create a maelstrom of of new bands that started to include guys from Alice in Chains. They could see that and go, we can make records like this. Appropriate some of that. Yeah, we can fit into this in a way. There's something new for us, too. Did you feel like they were riding your scene? Was there those kind of weird competitive moments of like, what are these guys doing?

Not really. I don't really feel, I felt like if there was a band that was outwardly the most influenced by us, it was them, for sure. But I also felt like, I always felt like there was nobody like Soundgarden because there really wasn't. And if you listen to our albums

and compare them to any other band, there was nothing like that. And I still think it's the same way. I still see, like, we play... We play festival shows. We've done, like, three or four with Arcade Fire. And we can also go play right before Black Sabbath. And either one's fine.

Well, you've defined your thing. I mean, you guys are a thing. You're not an opening band. You're a band. Well, I mean, stylistically, our music can fit with either or. Yeah. And I think that that's unusual.

So what was the sort of moment where, I mean, I watched Cameron Crowe's documentary, and he seems to kind of put a lot of the center of the scene on Mother Love Bone and Andrew Wood as being defining moment of of the transition of that scene into the mainstream do you see that um i think sound gardens first show where like guys from a and r guys from major labels came that was that was the defining moment that was it yeah because the were you guys the first guys with a deal outside we Alice in Chains? We were the first guys that had any interest from a commercial label ever, by a lot, well before Love Bone or Alice in Chains. I don't even think Alice in Chains was a band then. And what happened was, through just a couple of circumstances, there was a woman that was the program director at the college radio station. She made a compilation tape with Seattle bands on it. We were one of them.

One song. Which song? I think it was called Nothing to Say that ended up on the first Sub Pop record. And then Mike Borden from Faith No More, the drummer, was a huge fan of Soundgarden. I guess we played a show with him. Yeah. more the drummer was a huge fan of sound garden i guess we played a show with him yeah and he got the the uh the woman that signed faith no more to slash warner he got her interested so uh a&m records based on on uh this tape from the radio station and and uh slash warner which then became

she then became an a&R person for Geffen. They came to one show, which was at this kind of cross-dressers sort of goth bar that had shows. And there were very few places to play. And that was one of the good ones. And we knew that these A&R people were coming and it just had never happened.

And it wasn't something that anyone thought about. Right. And they showed up, and I don't remember who opened, but we just blew it up. We did it. It was the right moment. Somehow, whatever was supposed to happen, happened. Yeah. And then we were in a major label bidding war the next day and we

basically said no to everyone and we didn't i think it was two years from that day that we ever even signed a deal because we felt like we're an indie band that knows who our audience is they know who we are you guys are going to destroy us it'll be the end of us so this was the enemy yeah kind of but the the enemy looked around while they were there they saw us and and i i don't remember who was that open for us it might have been feast or something and uh they realized there's something there you're right something happening right away once once the news was that there's this Seattle band called Soundgarden that's in a bidding war. A&R people kind of, you know, just like flies, just jumped on Seattle. And Love Bone was a band that was kind of a, you know,

like a fun band that came out of Green River where it was just friends doing something that they thought was kind of fun. And then they just decided, we're going to do this. And then they were the second band after Soundgarden to get that kind of um that kind of love and they had great you know they had great songs they were the band I think that Mother Love Bone was that was the band that could have actually saved commercial rock in the form that we had known it up to then right because they were the only band that was a bridge between um what was happening in commercial rock and and what

commercial rock became really because they had elements of of all of it and it all made sense and in the context of really great songs yeah that you would remember and that would get played on the radio and uh the fact that andy died i think was actually kind of the nail in the coffin in my mind because i know that they would have been a huge band and i know that somehow that what they did would have would have allowed some of these other bands to kind of transform a little bit and continue to have a life but because that didn't happen um it didn't work out that way it was suddenly you know anything that was commercial rock was easily recognizable and and immediately the enemy but they had they had the bridge with they had a bridge with with andrew and the way that they presented themselves the way that they the the way that they could incorporate

influences from a band like aerosmith even a ballad version of Aerosmith, but still have all of this indie pedigree and all of these other influences. They seemed to me in earnest to be able to marry those two sides without it being weird. And you were tight with Andrew. Yeah, we were roommates for a long time. And when he died, were you roommates? No, we hadn't been for a year i think what what role like because like i know like i you know my first wife or my second wife was from uh was from seattle now where did all this fucking heroin come from because it just seemed to just consume that city, man. Yeah, but based on what, really?

And I can say this from experiences like post-alcohol addiction and drug addiction where I'm trying to be sober and say I will go to an AA meeting. Right. I'm the only musician there. And if there's another musician, it's like one other guy who's maybe 10 years younger. No, I know. It happens to anybody. Yeah. Yeah.

And that was my thought and feeling of it was that it's not like the whole music scene was addicted to heroin. It was like a couple guys. No, I just mean the city. There are certain heroin cities. Maybe Seattle was one. Yeah. I didn't really get that feeling. Yeah.

I got the feeling that there was there was a group you know right of guys dudes there were the heroin guys yeah and team heroin and that somehow you know coke wasn't popular anymore and and heroin sort of was and and um that was just and also you know uh untimely death is one way of sort of creating that feeling. Right. You know, and there were a lot of dudes in that scene that were into that. Yeah. But I didn't feel like, I felt like it was less than San Francisco or New York.

Right. It's different. I think it was different dope. I don't know. Like, I'm sober, like, almost 15 years. And, you know, I remember there was definitely this this cutoff between like the booze and coke guys yeah and the weed guys and the heroin guys were like all right that they're they're a graduate level yeah and i didn't i didn't know any of the heroin or coke if i knew

them yeah you know we didn't we didn't hang out i hang out with the guys that you know were we were active guys that drank beer so we would ride mountain bikes at night and we would put a 40 ouncer where the water bottle supposed to go on the bike and and that was that was the extent of it really sure heroin was not an out in the world drug no it wasn't to have fun and climb trees at four in the morning and swim across the bay yeah no coke was a panic drug heroin was a i'm just gonna hang out drug alcohol you could get shit done on alcohol yeah you somewhat, you know, we had a normal life for at least through our 20s. We were still doing everything we did in our teens. Right. Well, that's what being a musician entitles you to.

All right, so you turn your back on A&M initially. Yeah. And you record what? How many records? We did, well, we put out an EP on Sub Pop, a couple EPs on Sub Pop. I remember those. And then kind of our dream comes true, really. And this sort of was an oddly time because right after we released, our first EP was the second Sub Pop release ever.

And Sub Pop essentially came together because of kim's relationship with the two partners telling them they should work together to start a label and uh when it's time to do another thing um sst had called bruce pavitt at sub pop and was interested in sound garden and and sub pop didn't have money to give us to make another record at that moment. Yeah. And so Bruce actually said, you should go make a record with SST. And to me, that was our dream come true Valhalla moment because that was the label we wanted to make records on the whole time. And there was this period where we were Soundgarden. We had probably two albums with the material,

and we were thinking, no indie is going to ever release a record. But that's a real indie label like the minute men dinosaur junior who else is on there with the meat puppets yeah they did one at least one record with with everyone's right i think who's going to do might have done a record on ss they did do they did yeah sonic youth did at least one bad brains um so now you're being coronated yes this is where this is where we wanted to be. And so we had this opportunity. And by then, we made that album. By then, that was really pissing off A&M and Geffen and stuff.

Because they're still talking to us and trying to convince us to sign. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you guys? And those record deals, like, I can tell you now, the first, the Sub Pop record deal was one piece of paper. One piece. The SST record contract was maybe three. Right. And I think we hired a lawyer to look at that one, and he seemed more confused by it than us, so we didn't even, you know. We met with him in my living room for 10 minutes

and then that was it yeah and uh and those both turned out to be good deals for us right um and and they were for one record now you're talking you have these guys coming to your shows and talking to you about uh five records with an option for two more. And I'm thinking how long it takes to make a record. So I'm thinking, so when I'm 30-something, maybe we'll have fulfilled the contract. And then someone will tell you, well, maybe it depends on if they pick up the option. Then you've got another four releases. And they're talking about, you know,

you're essentially making a contractual obligation to accept a record budget for a record that you're going to make eight years from the time that you sign the deal, which makes no sense monetarily based on any monetary system that's ever existed. Right. They just own you. That's all it is. Yeah. And so they're talking to us like that, and we're feeling like, why? Why?

And so once we started making the SST record, the songs that these labels wanted to sign us for, based on these songs, essentially, they start feeling, well, now they're using up all their songs on these stupid, frivolous indie records. That was the way they spoke about it. Right. songs on these stupid frivolous indie records that was the way they spoke about it right and that was the moment where we we just had to have this this sense of we had to have a sense of ourselves and self-confidence and be like you know what we just got started yeah we're gonna write more songs and uh what followed that i think was uh some demoing for a&m where they just weren't you know they said we'll pay for you guys to go in the

studio and just record some new stuff and let us hear it and we I don't know how many songs we recorded but we did like a rough mix of a couple and sent it to the A&R guy who 10 minutes after he listened to it was had like tripled the offers of whatever it was they were going to give us and so at some point we thought we're going to have to transition because we want to reach as many people as we can, and there clearly is a limit to what indie labels can do. And we still had a concern about a major label connecting to our fans that already existed. And to this day, the SST album has outsold the first A&M album.

Louder Than Love? Yes, because they helped us kind of find a new audience the SST album has outsold the first A&M album. Louder Than Love? Yes. Really? Because they helped us kind of find a new audience that was a commercial rock audience ready for something new. Right. But we lost some of the indie audience because they literally would only buy from mom-and-pop stores

that wouldn't carry an album from A&M and wouldn't carry the magazine that A&M advertises in and wouldn't watch a video program that might play your video and none of that stuff. So we were right to wait and we probably could have waited a little longer. But what that did was, what Louder Than Love did on A&M was it started to chip away at what commercial rock was. The song Get on the the snake which isn't even in 4-4 and doesn't have a chorus was the first song I heard being played on commercial

rock radio in LA at drive time yeah and I'm in a car and up until then I it didn't make sense to me but then I heard it on the radio in between Tom Petty and something else yeah and I thought this works this actually it sounds like it should be coming out of the speakers between these songs and a moment that's that was a huge moment and it didn't lead to a hit record but it did lead to MTV radio anything that was sort of the you of the gatekeepers of commercial rock were changing their perspective. They were coming to us. We weren't going to them.

Is Loud Love on Louder Than Love? Yes. That's a great song. Thank you. I love that one. So that changed the whole paradigm. That was the beginning. Yes, that changed it.

And it wasn't, you know, it was very quick. And the other bands doing that right then were the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction, really. And Nirvana wasn't there yet. No, they weren't around yet. So this all leads up to Super Unknown, which is huge. But what, Bad Motor Finger won Platinum, right? Bad Motor Finger won Platinum. I think it actually went double Platinum.

Double Platinum. Louder Than Love did not. Louder Than Love did not. Louder Than Love did not. Louder Than Love was magic because the buzz on our band and the album and what was happening was so much bigger than what we had sold. I remember when we got offers to open up for Guns N' Roses in the US and Europe, we were all kind of scratching our heads. And I think it was our lawyer at the time that said, well, what's happening is that everyone thinks your record sold a lot more than it did because everyone's talking about it and they don't know. So just pretend that it sold as much and go do it.

It's one of those weird things. But that led to Bad Motor Finger, which then by any standards, Double Platinum is a huge success. But during that year that it sold two million records, I think Pearl Jam probably sold 16 and Nirvana sold 15 or something. Which was a mixed blessing. On the one side, you could go, how come it's not us? On the other side, we didn't have a backlash and no one was mad at us right so we were still okay got some cred yeah all right so then you do super unknown which is like huge five what quadruple i think we did five million in the u.s and three million

that's like such a huge record yeah that's such a great mammoth it's a great fucking record and i've been buying your records and i was listening to your records and then when i heard you guys were breaking up like i was one of those people. I'm like, why? What? How does that happen? Well, and that's the thing. And that's what's maybe it's the timing. I don't know.

In terms of what was magic about Super Unknown is that we had been a band since 1984. Now it's 1994. But people only just heard of us last year. You know, people in terms of the of the big picture of outside of this little indie world. Right. It's like we're a new thing. It's the new thing. Have you heard that new band?

Yeah. No, they're coming out with a new record. And for us, it was like we were reinventing ourselves as songwriters, in the studio, everything about it. We were- You're growing different ways. Yeah. And just in a natural way.

We didn't wake up one morning and go, oh my God, we've got to really, we've got to do something different here. It was the opposite. We were just, it was time. You know, we were pushing the boundaries of what we did. And that album came out, you know, at that time that we were reinventing ourselves,

people were just discovering us. And that, for some reason, that seemed to work commercially, which is still, to me, a strange thing. The idea that Black Hole Sun, for example, could be this international hit single, have you ever read the words to it? It's amazing to me that it's not in theme. It's extremely dark. It's very esoteric. It's stream-of-consciousness lyrics that I don't know what they mean.

I don't know what Paul Anka thinks it means, but he sings the shit out of it. Yeah. I've heard that. I got that album. It's a weird album. And so I don't know. But it worked and it felt right. And I think, you know, we really killed ourselves to make that album and to get to a new place

as a band that could live on. make that album and to get to a new place as a band that could live on but touring for that album also brought us into a point of crisis that i that i saw nirvana go through and i saw pearl jam go through it um and that is that we came from this post-punk indie world with the punk rock bible firmly in hand and uh we killed commercial rock music by then it's gone done sunset strip the is they're wearing flannel shirts yeah and have pink hair it's over and uh we did it and and but at the same time um now we're playing hockey arenas and we're in the same magazines that that scene that we killed was in and suddenly we're having this existential crisis of we are that. Right.

And I think Soundgarden's way of dealing, we internalized it. And I think it was part of an implosion. Now, when we made Down on the Upside that followed it, it's one of our our best creative moments and we produced it and mixed it and and uh it was great but we'd been a band for a really long time by then and we were you know super unknown was just this strange shift in finding an audience and and also kind of a band a decade old going through this this reinvention but did you guys fight no it just was the natural progression of things you needed to do some other shit well we had when did you get one thing about being an indie band is that is that you're in a van driving yourself

you don't have roadies and you're basically scouring the earth you're playing everywhere yeah there are any little town that has a place that you can play, you'd do it. So being a band for 10 years and then suddenly you're having this great commercial success, that's usually when a band goes out and does what Metallica was doing the whole time, which is you support a big record like Super Unknown for two years. We weren't having it. We we were tired we were done you know we didn't want to go

scour the earth on tour so we didn't even if you were on a jet no we didn't care we we didn't we didn't have it in us was that when you were you worn out is that when you got sober um no i didn't i hadn't even really got going yet oh really, really? Yeah, I think there was a period in Super Unknown where that kind of started to pick up steam in terms of drinking. But it wasn't until after Soundgarden broke up that I really, I think, had a meltdown. Yeah. What'd that look like?

Not good. And I don't know how long, a few years. Yeah? Yeah. Did you drink yourself into like just complete fucking insanity or just yeah that's a great way to describe it yeah i don't think you know that it's insanity at the time but the biggest lesson i learned from that and which you know leads to my biggest warning always is that you live in your brain so if you're mixing chemicals and and you're

constantly under the influence of that reality is going to look the way it is and that will be what reality is sure um but it's it's valid for that situation you change the situation at some point the reality will change your outlook will change your perspective that's true your ability to deal with it's an inside job as they say exactly and uh yeah and i don't know i think that. I think that some people have that in them. And for me, I think it was always there. I was the responsible guy. I was the guy that always had a job, never needed money, worked really hard, never got fired.

I always made sure that the T's were crossed and the I's were dotted. Sure. Even as a rock musician, I was pretty reliable. Control freakish? Maybe a little bit. Yeah. But learning how to deal with that. And I think for me, whatever it was, that ability to go so far out with alcohol, it was just a situation that was kind of waiting for me.

Right. You need to break it all apart. Yeah. When I reached a point where I was like super emotionally vulnerable, I dealt with it in the way that people like me deal with it.

I retreated from the reality of it instead of being a responsible guy and trying to figure my life out and make hard decisions and deal with it. And you were still writing music. I mean, some of the solo albums. Oh, absolutely.

I never stopped. But the solo records must have been part of that dialogue. Yeah. And I think that the difference between drinking, not drinking, would have just been I would have made two instead of one in the year and a half that I did. Right. It just slowed me down. Right.

I wasn't someone that wrote. I couldn't write anything drunk. So I would have to wait until I wasn't and then write. And then when I felt like I had something good, I'd be relieved and celebrate by getting hammered. But it was just kind of laying in wait and waiting for me to be weak. And then I dealt with it in the way you know a person that's acting weak does and then until i was fed up with it and now you're okay now i'm fine you seem good good so well you did all that you did this stuff with audio sway you did the solo records and now this we're talking because it's the 20th anniversary of super unknown yes and i'm i'm anticipating my

vinyl thank you and you're going to tour with the guys? Yes. Yeah, well, we start touring soon. We're actually going to Europe. First, we're doing an event in New York where we play Super Unknown from top to bottom again. Oh, really? Yeah, and then we're going to go do a bunch of shows with Sabbath in Europe.

Oh, my God. And this is Sabbath's kind of big moment right now. And we get to be a part of it. So it's great. It seems like perfect. Yeah, it's great. How does Kim feel about that? Everyone's psyched about it, really.

And we've played shows with them before. And if you sit and talk to them, suddenly you see there's a lot of parallels between the two bands in ways that you never would have thought. Right. And suddenly now that we're the age we are, the age gap, it shrinks. Yeah. You know, when you're 20 and someone's 30, you're on two different planets. Right.

But when you're 50 and someone's 60, you're the same. Sure. And you've been through it. Exactly. And it doesn't matter the opinions about generations and music. you're 50 and someone's 60, you're the same. Sure. And you've been through it. Exactly. And those guys. And it doesn't, the opinions about,

about generations and music don't mean anything anymore. Well, yeah. And also like, you know, you're survivors. You're all survivors. Yeah, exactly. And the band's getting along good.

Mm-hmm. It's great. It's amazing, man. You're talking about Sabbath, right? But I'd heard stories that you and Kim were not well and for a period, but you're good? That's actually not, that was never true. Oh, man. You're talking about Sabbath, right? But I'd heard stories that you and Kim were not well for a period, but you're good? That's actually not, that was never true. Oh, good.

None of it. Did you hear that? Or am I making that up? Well, I've seen it written. No, no, no, I've seen it written. And basically the stuff that I've seen written was something that could have come out of like the text sort of written about any rock band. And that always happened with Soundgarden. it could have come out of like the text sort of written about any rock band right and that that

always happened with with sound garden you know we were this band where matt might be the guy that writes the heaviest song on the record and he's the drummer yeah and and ben from the from the moment that he joined the band was was contributing you know almost more music than anybody else for a minute and so you've got this band where where everyone in it is multi-instrumental, everyone in it contributes music, and yet the way that we would be sort of written about often was like the classic rock kind of Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Pete Towns and Roger Daltrey sort of the guitar player

is the musical genius and the singer comes up with words and wears tight pants and they hate each other and and that was stuff that i saw written and it had absolutely nothing to do with not even similar to our inner band dynamic or how we functioned as sound garden or how we created what we did none of it interesting so they just needed to understand why why this band went through this so they're just like let's just use the old model it must be because those two guys yeah and and say it no confidently in a way that people read it and go yeah well i bet you that's it but now we we had a meeting i think two weeks after we split up where we were just discussing like different business stuff we had to deal with given that we were going to be defunct

right and i remember everyone seeming relieved and in a good mood, and we got along great, and I remember thinking, well, that's great. This must be the right thing. And when we got back together for the first time, I think it was late 2009 when we were talking about doing stuff, there was five minutes where it was weird, only because we hadn't all been in the same room together.

And I think maybe when you're not with each other, where it was weird. Yeah. Only because we hadn't all been in the same room together. Not because of the, and I think maybe when, you know, you're not with each other, everyone has this defense mechanism that builds a sort of paranoid view of how everyone else must be thinking. Right. And after that five minutes,

we realized that didn't exist and we've been great ever since. You know, there hasn't been one moment that isn't positive since we got back together then and that's already now going on four years. That's awesome, man. It's great to hear, Chris. Thanks for talking to me.

All right, thank you. That's it. That's our show. Remember, a reminder, Marin on IFC. This is, I believe, the fifth episode of the season out of 13. It's focused on me losing Boomer, and it's a beautiful episode. And that's this Thursday, 10 o'clock, east and west, 9 o'clock, 9 o'clock, some other places in the middle. What else do I got to tell you?

Go to WTFpod.com for all your wtf pod needs get the app if you want to stream the 451 episodes that you've you've never heard because you're new go get the free app upgrade to premium and you have you can have at them all that's what i tell you boomer lives Boomer lives!