“Never able to be that good”: Chris Cornell on the best drunk guitarist ever
Rock and roll has always been a genre that thrived on a little bit of excess. Many artists would have gladly sidestepped the destructive side of the musician lifestyle later on in life, but it’s all too enticing to have a few drinks to help numb the pain of being on a relentless schedule every time you go on tour. Although that drunken state normally leads to the worst music possible, Chris Cornell knew exactly what a sensory-impaired musician should have to make it in the business.
It’s not like Cornell wasn’t afraid to have something sounding slightly dishevelled on record, though. Looking through Soundgarden’s Ultramega OK, it’s safe to say that they weren’t aiming for hit singles like everyone else was, especially with a song like ‘Circle of Power’, which comes off like the incoherent ramblings of a homeless man set to a hardcore punk tempo.
If there was one thing that Soundgarden was sure of, though, it’s that they didn’t want to be anywhere close to the hair bands that came out of Los Angeles. The era of Poison had been going on for far too long, and listening to people like Winger and Warrant garner success had to sting for people who wanted to push the boundaries of what rock and roll could be.
Cornell wasn’t even subtle about it, either. In the song ‘Big Dumb Sex’, he openly mocks the idea that every single hair metal song is about misogynistic sexual behaviour, with every chorus being him saying, ‘I wanna fuck fuck fuck fuck you’. Of all those so-called “dangerous” bands from California, though, Guns N’ Roses seemed to hold a little bit of water in the Seattle community.
As much as Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain loathed each other, Duff McKagan was always proud to have come from Seattle, and given his friendship with Jerry Cantrell and reunion with members of Soundgarden, there was no real bad blood between him and the grunge heavyweights that started off the next movement.
For all of the punk-rock integrity that McKagan won for Guns, Cornell was more enamoured with how Slash could play, saying, “Slash is the most drunk guitarist I’ve ever seen play well onstage. I was never able to be that trashed and that good at the same time. That’s a part of his consistency; he doesn’t drink now and he’s still great. That dedication to music is what drives his character.”
And to call him strictly drunk would be underselling it, frankly. During the band’s prime, Slash could be a hot mess and still find his way to the stage, whether that meant going to the back of the stage and throwing up or continuing to play a solo despite having his cigarette fall from his lips and in between his leather pants and stomach.
Then again, Slash was never into rock and roll for the spectacle of it all in the first place. The stages may have become a lot bigger since Guns N’ Roses started, but the lion’s share of his best work came from studying guitarists until he could play insane runs no matter what physical shape he was in.
