Chris Cornell
As he unveils folk-inspired acoustic solo album Higher Truth, Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell reveals yet another side to his multifaceted songwriting…
hen he’s not delivering inhuman wails and crushing riffs in Soundgarden, Chris Cornell can be found storytelling with just a voice and an acoustic guitar. In a journey that started with the grunge pioneer’s Songbook acoustic tours – stripping Soundgarden, Audioslave, Temple Of The Dog and solo songs to their bare bones – Higher Truth is the destination, an album that welcomes a host of folk and acoustic influences, while retaining Cornell’s trademark leftfield approach to progression and melody. Here, he gives TG the lowdown on the origins of his new stripped-back sound, why he had to put in the hours with his acoustic playing, and how Johnny Cash altered his perception of
Higher Truth?
“It was a period of three years, working on and off, and that wasn’t really the plan; the plan was that I was gonna sit down and concentrate on writing some acoustic songs, and that was going to happen really quickly. And it ended up just being periods of jamming, songwriting and then touring – on my own as well as with Soundgarden – and I think that was a really good thing.
“There’s a relaxed nature to the songwriting that isn’t always there for me, because there’s an over-focused-ness that happens when I’m working on songs. I’m one of those guys that does really well going into the corner of a room with the door closed and being in there for months and coming out with music and having a record. That’s what my nature lends itself best to: that overconcentrating. That can create problems, where you lose perspective, and I think it becomes a little more musically confined in terms of one direction and one feel.
“And time passing seems to help that. There are a couple of songs that I wrote – Worried Moon and Through The Window – over the course of a couple of days, and the two of them sound like brothers; they sound like the guy that’s singing each one is the same guy. And then there are songs that are older songs, that feel a little bit like a different person – and it’s a slightly different period of songwriting. I think Murderer Of Blues Skies and Before We Disappear, those songs were like brothers, too – and those were conceived and arranged in the same week, but in different years to each other.”
There’s a folk feel to Higher Truth; what were your influences when writing?
“I have a pretty big bag of influences from all different kinds of music. When you start talking about acoustic records, and particularly getting into the world of either folk or that kind of Nashville singersongwriter approach, there are still certain rules of what is and isn’t okay in those worlds. And I can’t be bothered with that. I feel like, with me and my band, we essentially invented a new genre of music, so we don’t
really have to follow rules. I don’t have to think about it! I proved myself on that level.
“In order to express what I wanted to, for example, on songs like Worried Moon or Dead Wishes, I had to learn different styles of guitar playing, and I did that basically from learning songs that I love, and knowing that those were techniques that I could use on these new songs that I’m writing. Whether it’s something like Going To California or a Nick Drake song – I learned a bunch of Nick Drake songs, and I went back and learned some Beatles songs where there are different ways that Paul McCartney or John Lennon would pick through songs, and just got into a bunch of different approaches to it, so that I had more bullets in the gun when I sat down with an acoustic guitar and tried to write a song. And I ended up going way past what I needed to, to get what I wanted done, but it was good, because it’s a big leap forward in terms of understanding the instrument.
“My approach to guitar has always been, ‘I don’t want to know anything; I don’t want to learn anything from anybody else. I just want to make it sound in ways that I think are cool, and if I do that, then there’s always gonna be some degree of personal stamp on whatever that song is.’ I had to reach out a little more into the history of songwriting and guitar players and actually learn some stuff!”
Did you use any unorthodox tunings?
“Dead Wishes, I probably made that one up – I think it started with a simple G string tuned down to E, which is a Nick Drake tuning, but as I was trying to work out the notes I wanted to hear, I had to tune the D up to E, so there’s two Es in the middle [EAEEBE]. And it’s one of those mystical, almost British folk tunings, that sort of pastoral, nuns and fairies, misty mountain feeling. But it doesn’t sound like anything else to me.”
What did Brendan O’Brien bring to the table as producer?
“He’s a brilliant bass player! [laughs] I had no idea. He’s an amazing musician, and I mean that – and I kind of learned that from Revelations, the third Audioslave album. As a band, we didn’t get too much into pre-production, where he would help us with song arrangements, but we did do a little bit of it, and it was clear if he picked up a guitar and played to show us a transition chord or something that might work better, he knew what he was doing; he wasn’t guessing.
“So, I knew he was smart, and I knew he was a good musician, but I didn’t know, necessarily, how good, and when I decided to work with him, the main reason was because I like how he records things, I like how he mixes things, obviously, so I knew the record would sound good. And knowing that he can play a lot of instruments, and has an extreme focus like I do in the studio, I felt like, ‘If it’s just him and me and nobody else, we can make the album that I want to make.’”
Was he playing the electric solos on tracks like Murderer Of Blue Skies?
“I play a couple; Brendan plays a lot. Anything that sounds like this guy’s an accomplished guitar player when he plays a solo, that’s not me [laughs]. That’ll be him. I was speaking to another magazine and they were sure that Brendan played the solo to Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart, and I said, ‘Well, no, that’s one I can play!’ That’s one note bent a bunch [sings solo] – I can do that!”
You’ve covered a broad range of material from your various projects; how do you go about adapting those songs for acoustic?
“It either works or it doesn’t, and if I really want to push the issue, I will try different arrangements to make something work. You know, I’ve done that with both Audioslave songs and Soundgarden songs, and continue to do it, because I get better at it and have a better understanding of what it means to just be playing the song on an acoustic guitar, and what does and doesn’t have to be there. I open it up to a longer list of songs that I can adapt to it.
“I had to reach into the history of guitar players and actually learn some stuff!”