Audioslave

Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi chose a riff from one of their songs as a favourite of the post-millennium. And he knows a thing or two about riffs!

“You’ve got to play it as if everybody’s soul in the room depends on it.” Tom Morello

8 COCHISE

Audioslave From: Audioslave, 2002

The prospect was mouthwatering: Rage Against The Machine’s thunderous musicians, fused to Soundgarden’s octave-defying singer Chris Cornell. And for a moment, in September 2002, it seemed that Audioslave would exceed even the sum of those formidable parts, when the music video for lead-off single Cochise had the newly minted supergroup, convening on a San Fernando Valley construction rig, raising such hell that local residents feared a repeat of 9/11. “The local police and news station literally received thousands of calls from people who thought the city was under siege,” guitarist Tom Morello told MTV of the video shoot.

After a decade of blistering polemics alongside Zack De La Rocha in RATM, Morello accepted that Audioslave would be more about pumping fists than waving placards (as Cornell told Classic Rock: “Politics wasn’t part of the deal”). Still, it was all relative: no girls-and-cars bubblegum, Cochise was named after an Apache chief who led a savage push-back against the US government in 1861. “When several members of his family were captured, tortured and hung by the US Cavalry,” Morello said of that historic confrontation, “Cochise declared war on the entire South-West and went on an unholy rampage, a warpath to end all warpaths. He and his warriors drove out thousands of settlers. Cochise the Avenger, fearless and resolute, attacked everything in his path with an unbridled fury. This song kinda sounds like that.”

Not for nothing was the riff from Cochise selected by Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi as a favourite of the post-millennium. After the track juddered to life like a fleet of junglestrafing Vietnam helicopters (an effect actually created by a guitar and an abused delay pedal), Morello laid down a syncopated lick that evoked – then out-swaggered – Jimmy Page’s hook from The Ocean, over which Cornell’s vocal nods to Whole Lotta Love. “It’s one of the biggest riffs that we’ve ever committed to disc,” said Morello. And for a man with

Bombtrack, Know Your Enemy and Killing In The Name in his back catalogue, that was not to be sniffed at.

The sparks in the studio were undeniable, but Cornell recalled that it was the aforementioned video shoot that confirmed that Audioslave made sense under the spotlights: “I happened to be in rehab at the time, so they put me in this car and drove me to the set. There was that moment where we’re running through a version, and I look back and I see Rage Against The Machine, basically. It’s like this is a weird videogame. But once we did that, it felt fine. I didn’t feel like I was an odd man out or a fish out of water. I felt like what we did was a completely different thing. I really liked what we did.”

Audioslave never quite matched those early heights. And yet, with its pummelling (and still fresh-sounding) production from Rick Rubin, Cochise endures, and deserves credit for its role in the fightback for vein-bulging hard rock after the blank-eyed, detuned churn of the nu-metal years. As Morello said to Total Guitar: “You’ve got to play it as if everybody’s soul in the room depends on it.”

‘Slither sounded like a classic, while retaining its own maverick groove and personality.’

7 SLITHER

Velvet Revolver From: Contraband, 2004

By the beginning of the 21st century, Guns N’ Roses’ stronghold on rock’n’roll seemed to be fading. Appetite For Destruction from 13 years earlier was but a distant memory, 2008’s Chinese Democracy was nothing more than a tired punch line. While rock still had a grip on mainstream culture, it was beginning to loosen.

Heavy music needed heroes. Which was where the foundations for Velvet Revolver’s Slither, one of the century’s titanic rock hits, were laid. Today, 16 years on from its release, it’s still a regular on guitarist/co-writer Slash’s set-lists.

In 2002, news broke that a new supergroup was forming, after former Gunners Duff McKagan, Matt Sorum and Slash had regrouped for a benefit concert, with Buckcherry’s Josh Todd on vocals; a line-up jokingly referred to as Buck N’ Roses, and then Cherry Rose. The new supergroup had already chosen a second guitarist – ex-Suicidal Tendencies and Infectious Grooves rhythm player Dave Kushner, and only the question of a permanent singer remained.

Rumours of who that would be soon surfaced, among them Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy and former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach. With Faith No More’s Mike Patton and The Cult’s Ian Astbury reportedly having declined, no one seemed a better bet to front the new band than Josh Todd. But then Stone Temple Pilots split, their singer Scott Weiland became a free agent, and Velvet Revolver had their final piece.

“We knew we needed a great rock frontman to make the statement we wanted – which is basically: ‘This is a great rock band!’” Sorum explained at the time. “So when Scott became available we nicked him!”

The new supergroup oozed a life-after-Axl energy reflected in the fact that only three songs on their debut album, Contraband, had been finalised prior to Weiland joining. Amazingly, considering the stature of the five band members, this was to be a democratic affair, despite the 50-odd songs McKagan said were written prior to Weiland’s arrival.

According to Sorum, Contraband was merely a vehicle for Velvet Revolver to play live: “We’ve made a record that’s indicative of what we are – it’s a fresh new band, but we’re still of the ilk that a live gig is a fuckin’ war.”

As it turned out, the album would be far more than that. And Slither (a 2005 Grammy winner) was its stand-out. Co-credited to all five band members, its tension-building first 30-odd seconds flipped into a full-pelt rock chuggernaut. It sounded like a classic, while retaining its own maverick groove and personality. On record and on stage, Weiland, Slash, Duff, Sorum and Kushner gelled immaculately; the sort of rock’n’roll dream team that seemed too good to be true.

Ultimately, it was. By April 2008 the band had imploded, with an increasingly off-the-rails Weiland announcing his departure amid rumours that he was soon to be fired anyway. Solo careers and separate projects beckoned for the rest of the band. In particular, Slash would go on to embrace the Velvet Revolver notion that supergroups can be so much more than ego trips, they can actually produce great songs. And Slither was one of the greatest.