“That set the tone”: the 1995 song that brought Soundgarden back together
It takes a small army to get any band back together. As much as people might be able to make nice whenever reunion concerts happen, the ability to get everyone on the same page to release a record of new material is another matter when it’s time to get the chemistry back again.
Although Soundgarden never claimed to have any bad blood between everyone, it took this song to bring them back after their long hiatus.
For a band like Soundgarden, a reunion was never going to be as simple as turning up and playing the hits. Their music had always depended on a unique chemistry between four musicians whose individual styles combined to create something far greater than the sum of its parts, making the challenge of reconnecting after years apart particularly significant.
But looking back, it’s not like the band ended in an ugly way. Throughout their time together, it was clear they had reached the end of their rope by the end of the 1990s. Kurt Cobain had left grunge hanging in the air, and despite having a pretty solid record in the can with Down on the Upside, most of their best moments ended up feeling behind them once Chris Cornell left for Audioslave.
Then again, it was probably for the best that they managed to loosen things up. Audioslave was nowhere near the kind of record Soundgarden would have made, and even though Matt Cameron made off like a bandit by joining Pearl Jam, there were still those people who didn’t feel the same listening to Cornell pump out ‘Black Hole Sun’ on his own or share the stage with Pearl Jam for ‘Hunger Strike’.
Once everyone was in the right headspace, things kicked off in earnest. They wouldn’t throw out the greatest hits and see where their audience was. That was reserved for the nostalgia circuit, and when the band first got together to jam for the first time, they hit on ‘Blind Dogs’ from their contribution to The Basketball Diaries soundtrack.
Considering how many hits they needed to brush up on, this is the kind of song that works better to showcase every band member. Since it’s not a mainstream hit, this was an excuse to work out the cobwebs, and judging by how well it worked, Cornell knew they had something still left in the tank.
Reminiscing to Rolling Stone, Cornell thought the entire reunion was shaped by playing along to that song, saying, “We’ve never played it live. That set the tone. The best way for the rehearsals to function was to shout out a song title, tune our guitars and play until the muscle memory came back.”
Then again, it was about much more than getting the muscle memory down. Looking back on the new music they made with ‘Live to Rise’ of the Avengers soundtrack or ‘Black Rain’, they seemed to be channelling that same dark energy back into their sound. Even though everything was still on the same lines as Down on the Upside, it was only a few steps away from the song ‘Been Away Too Long’ from their reunion album King Animal.
Although ‘Blind Dogs’ doesn’t deserve the same recognition as Soundgarden’s greatest song by any stretch, it’s essential to why they function so well together. They could pull nearly anything they got their hands on, and even after a decade apart, it sounded like nothing had changed since that last stadium gig for Down on the Upside.
Although ‘Blind Dogs’ rarely features in discussions about Soundgarden’s greatest songs, its importance to the band’s history is difficult to overstate. More than any chart hit or fan favourite, it became the track that reminded four musicians how to communicate with one another again. In doing so, it helped lay the foundations for one of rock’s most successful reunions, proving that some musical connections can survive even the longest periods of silence.
