“Connects with me in a way I can’t describe”: The four albums Chris Cornell became obsessed with
Sometimes, it’s incredibly empowering to throw everyone off course, even as you hot-write off the success of previous momentum. You could have just asked Chris Cornell. Going into Scream, everyone wondered if he’d lost it. Trent Reznor even said Cornell had “embarrassed himself”. In reality, though, this is exactly what Cornell had always done—subverted expectations, even when it was basically guaranteed to piss people off.
Suppose you could say it requires a hefty amount of guts to do so, though. Many artists coast in the same lane that gave them success, too timid to venture in different directions, even if it’s what they’re desperate to do. It makes sense, though, considering how fickle it can feel to occupy the limelight when one wrong turn can change everything. Evidently, though, this is the place where Cornell felt the most alive.
Speaking with The Guardian in 2009, Cornell navigated the importance of these moments, not just with Scream and his solo material but all the ways that Soundgarden and Audioslave surprised people, too. On Scream, however, Cornell’s love of subversion felt particularly taut: he stated he was clear from the get-go that pivoting wasn’t going to result in “one of these modern albums where there’s two or three producers, like labels are throwing darts against a wall to see what sticks.”
Still, all his life, Cornell had been drawn to those who also weren’t afraid to take artistic risks, even if it meant ostracising people along the way. In his world, there was little point to jumping into the musical stream if you intended to stay still, which is probably also why his seminal experience, really, truly, falling in love with music, was discovering the entire Beatles catalogue. But it was also the kind of enlightening that was entirely educational, a mindset Cornell lapped up like no other.
During an interview with BBC 6 Music, Cornell explained: “By the time I was eight, I think, I ended up with the entire Beatles catalogue, and then that’s when I really got into music, where it became important to me. I sort of became a music geek and sit in my bedroom as an activity and just listen to records alone for hours and hours.” Adding: “Sgt Pepper’s I really got into, but that was without the knowledge that was an album of any importance to anyone. And then, I remember listening to Abbey Road with headphones.”
Another seemingly accidental find was Pink Floyd’s 1967 debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which he came across unknowingly after looking through an old landlord’s record collection. The beauty of Pink Floyd, Cornell once said, was the backwards journey you find yourself on after discovering the more popular records, and how each seems just as unexpected the further back you go.
“It connects with me in a way that I just can’t describe,” Cornell said of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, continuing, “creating a very special environment that no other record can achieve. It’s more capable of removing you from wherever you are when you hear it than any other record I know.” In other words, it’s entirely unexpected, in every way—a trait we know Cornell cherished well.
On the subject of noteworthy debuts, another that caught Cornell’s attention immediately was Bob Dylan’s. This time, though, it was less about the perfection of a complete vision but the flaws of Dylan’s delivery, with his 1962 record proving that no rules don’t mean bad music. Quite the opposite, really.
As Cornell explained to Travis Hay in 2005: “There are a lot of mistakes. He messes up a few lyrics and some chords. It’s not this overblown production with a high dollar producer and studio musician and expensive mixer and all the crap people think they need to make it good or commercially viable or whatever.”
Explaining how this impacted his approach, he added: “I love reminding myself that as a songwriter, anything is possible. One of the things I tend to do is kind of think down tunnels or think down tubes, thinking songs have to include some things and can’t include other things. You can do anything. There are no rules about any of it, whether it’s lyrics, or production or song arrangements themselves.”
Looking at these four records, it’s clear, then, that taking the road less travelled manifested in different ways for Cornell, and most of the time, it just meant discovering new or different ways to be real and authentic. Dylan had it from the get-go because he hadn’t figured anything out yet, and Floyd knew exactly how to play on the expansiveness of music as an art form to make you feel you were entering a different world entirely. Subverting in any way, therefore, as long as it felt honest, always ticked Cornell’s boxes.
