“He fooled me”: The Chris Cornell lyric that confused Audioslave
Not every grunge band was known for having the most comprehensible lyric sheet. Aside from having to worry about deciphering whatever Eddie Vedder was trying to say in Pearl Jam, half of the Nirvana lyric sheet felt like it was stitched together through random words that made no sense taken as a whole but sounded right together. Although Chris Cornell took great pride in his lyrics, members of Audioslave were shell-shocked when they figured out what this classic song was about.
Then again, no member of the supergroup was a stranger to dark subject matter. Looking through Rage Against the Machine’s back catalogue, some of their greatest hits are not for the faint of heart, whether that’s talking about racist cops secretly being members of the KKK or going through Rodeo and looking at people who haven’t seen a brown-skinned man since their grandparents bought one.
Compared to most of the Seattle scene, Cornell uses many of his lyrics to articulate the darkest feelings he can muster. Some of the tunes may be the equivalent of painting with words like on ‘Black Hole Sun’, but there has also been no better way of describing the feeling of depression than the lyrics to ‘Outshined’, as Cornell sings about still sinking after thinking that he couldn’t get any lower.
When Tom Morello first met Cornell, though, he probably knew what he was getting himself into. Once he got the idea to work the grunge icon with Rick Rubin, their first visit to the frontman’s house included them pulling up to a gothic mansion that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Batman film and Rubin suggesting that they get the hell away from him as soon as possible.
As soon as everyone started jamming, they knew this was much bigger than what Soundgarden or Rage Against the Machine were doing. This was their take on stadium rock, but even though they had started making something more mainstream on ‘Like a Stone’, Tim Commerford remembered the band being given an education when he asked what the song was really about.
Despite it sounding like a love song, Commerford said that Cornell knocked him out when he told him it was about death, saying, “He fooled me with a lot of the songs like ‘Like a Stone’. I was like, ‘What are you waiting for?’ and he said, ‘Waiting to die’. I went back and looked at the song and I got kind of saddened by what he’s singing about. It’s a guy sitting alone in a house of death, and all his friends are dying, and he’s just waiting there. That changed everything for me.”
If the message wasn’t already clear, though, Cornell sells every word that he’s talking about. Even though the whammy effect from Morello was a strange touch, it almost sounds like ghosts from the past are checking in on that old man, wondering if today’s the day that he’s going to cross over to the other side.
It’s definitely morbid, but that was half the magic behind Cornell’s best moments. He could present some of the most grotesque imagery possible to the listener, and from the way that he phrased everything, he somehow managed to make it sound beautiful.
