“I draw the line”: Chris Cornell on the artist who ruined shock rock
One key to Chris Cornell‘s rise was his authenticity. He was a man who always kept on his path, undeterred by what was going on outside. Despite being ostensibly a grunge hero, he was always much more than the mention of that loose-knit form suggests. In his time, he played with more genres than any of his Seattle peers, ranging from hip-hop and electronic to a dramatic James Bond theme tune.
It’s interesting that despite openly discussing that Soundgarden were not a grunge band, maintaining that their sound was inspired by the fury of the first wave of punk and, most surprisingly, the atmosphere of post-punk and new wave, Cornell is often deemed closely related to classic rock and metal. This is due to face-value traits such as his incredible wailing and his band’s preference for de-tuned piledriving riffs.
However, despite Cornell refusing to be tied to any one genre, there was a time when he was cutting his teeth when he committed to an approach that was all the rage at the time, thanks to the influence of punk, metal and other heavy offshoots: the shock factor. Like most of his Seattle peers – despite their sonic discrepancies – he would transgress the era’s mores to make a splash in the live setting. While it might seem like an overdone gimmick in many respects today, it still had a bite back then.
Picture the scene. After having his eyes opened by punk, post-punk and other innovative sounds, Cornell knew that music was the only job he wanted to do. Accordingly, he left school and worked a string of low-paid jobs, from wholesalers to on the docks, which he knew were traditionally for people who had received little education, but they allowed him the space to hone his craft. At night, he continued to cut his teeth by playing with bar bands or anyone who would allow him to earn more of that vital currency: experience.
Owing to youthful imagination, Cornell was comforted throughout this period of struggle by thinking that one day, a successful group would come to Seattle, catch him doing what he did best, and hire him, taking him on an odyssey of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll that was beyond his wildest dreams. However, reality would soon take its course. Four years later, he was still stuck in this inertia. He was performing in the same lousy acts, earning the same awful pay, and still playing to the worst clientele imaginable.
Naturally, this frustration made Cornell angry. His friends, guitarist Kim Thayil and bassist Hiro Yamamoto, who had also hoped to break into music, were having bad luck, too. Sensing that they were better together, they formed a band, Soundgarden, and wrote 15 songs in a month. During Soundgarden’s early days, when they had a “quirky” post-punk-influenced sound, Cornell employed the shock factor on stage. He’d have no shirt on, whip his sweaty hair around, and wear dozens of ribbons in his hair, an aesthetic that annoyed the toxic alpha males in the audience.
When speaking to Classic Rock in 1996, Cornell was asked if he had lost that original desire to shock people and provoke a negative response. The rocker, who had released five albums with Soundargden since, explored a host of sounds and themes, and was winding down this chapter of the band, with them splitting the following year, sighed, and looked back on those desperate times.
Not only did he decry fellow grunge icon Kurt Cobain overdoing this trope, but he then named the artist who ruined it for him, GG Allin. The late punk was notorious for his wildly aggressive live shows, which featured self-mutilation, defecating on stage, and beating on the audience.
He said: “In the beginning, it was fun and exciting to us because at least the audience was reacting. But the 50th time that Kurt Cobain came out wearing a dress it was kinda, ‘Ho hum, here we go again…’. GG Allin kinda took the shock thing to its ultimate conclusion. Call me old fashioned, but I draw the line at eating my own shit for the sake of entertainment!”
There’s no wonder Soundgarden were always quick to distance themselves from the artists they were associated with. After they found their multifarious sound, they aimed for artistic refinement, not dropping the kids off on stage and flinging them at the audience in base abandon. It just wasn’t their style; it never was.
