(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sat 11 October 2025 22:00, UK
Any band to come out of the rock sphere would have been infinitely better if Chris Cornell joined their ranks.
Although he had found a home in Soundgarden, chances are he could have done anything that he could get his hands on with that immaculate voice. While he did eventually test that theory a little too much when he began working on records in the 2000s like Scream, he did end up leaving one of his greatest groups on the shelf for a little while.
But looking through the jam sessions that he’s shared a stage with, Cornell is already etched in rock and roll history. While it’s a shame that we will never know what he would be doing now, hearing him form Temple of the Dog and eventually take Soundgarden to the top of the charts practically made him the next generation’s version of Robert Plant before the 1990s even ended. Once Soundgarden called it a day, though, there were a lot of frail nerves left over from his experience.
Being in a band that long could feel like a major divorce taking place, and Cornell wasn’t about to let himself get hurt like that again. And when listening to records like Euphoria Morning, you can hear him getting a lot more introspective and pouring over all of the conflicted feelings he had. The whole thing felt more akin to an acoustic Zeppelin record, but Cornell had far more experimental ideas to get out of his system.
He had already tried his hand working with a supergroup before, but it turned out that there were more than a few rock stars without their musical soulmates out there in the wild. Cornell had already received a call from Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist Zakk Wylde about the possibility of working together, but when Tom Morello showed up with the idea for Audioslave, he was a bit more intrigued than usual.
Rage Against the Machine weren’t exactly the kind of band most people would expect would mesh well with Soundgarden, but Cornell wasn’t looking to compete with Zack de la Rocha. He was his own separate entity, and while Morello thought that the whole thing would be a fun side project for Cornell to work on, the frontman made it perfectly clear that he didn’t want to get hurt all over again.
Even before they had written a note of music together, Cornell was convinced that he wanted to be in the group for all the right reasons, saying, “The other thing is that both of us had been through a lot of experiences in being in a band that were negative, that weren’t something we wanted to repeat: ‘I don’t want to have a miserable time either. I want to just do this if it’s fun, and if it’s not fun not do it’.”
Then again, Morello wasn’t in it for a musical one night stand by any stretch. He wanted the group to be big enough to give Rage a run for its money, and by bringing Cornell into the mix, tunes like ‘Like A Stone’ hit with the weight of a sledgehammer. Cornell fit like a glove, and while the effects of Morello were still weird as ever, he was still willing to make the best song rather than distract everyone with his musical toys.
The critics might not have been as kind to them, but that hardly mattered to any of them. They were finally content to make music purely for themselves, and after years of dealing with their own intra-band struggles, Cornell didn’t have to pay any mind to whether the label wanted it or not. He could call his own shots a little bit, and listening to him on these tunes, he finally feels free.
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