‘Reach Down’: The song that made Chris Cornell realise Mike McCready’s genius
When it comes to being an exceptional rock vocalist, there aren’t many who could match the gruffness and snarl of Chris Cornell. Best known for his contributions as lead vocalist with Soundgarden and Audioslave, Cornell enjoyed a prolific career with many bands and side projects where his growls were often placed front and centre over the top of some equally menacing riffs.
Early on in his career, he enjoyed a brief stint with grunge progenitors Temple of the Dog, a band that boasted an almighty lineup made up of members of his own group, Soundgarden, as well as members of Pearl Jam and Mother Love Bone. The project was conceived by Cornell to pay tribute to his friend and former Mother Love Bone member Andrew Wood, and given that that band had also had future members of Pearl Jam in Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament within their ranks, Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready were soon recruited to be part of the one-off album project.
Cornell was initially sceptical about having these additional members on board for the tribute album that he had written songs for but decided to allow them to be part of the recording sessions on the condition that he would still have creative control over the material. However, early on in the process, he would realise that he was wrong to doubt the involvement of McCready and Vedder, with the former especially turning his expectations upside-down.
The second song from the record, the 11-minute epic ‘Reach Down’, was always meant to be the standout moment from the album, and Cornell was determined to get things right. Laying down the law to McCready, he recalled in the Pearl Jam documentary Twenty that he had told the rest of the group how he wanted it “to be a Neil Young nine-minute song that’s mostly guitar solos, and that’ll be the first song on the record, and you can fuck off.”
This blunt assertion of how things would go during the recording clearly reached McCready, and in a defiant act of determination, he set out to prove to Cornell that his contributions to the track would be more than valuable. Delivering one of the performances of his life, Cornell was quickly forced to eat his words and take back everything he had previously dismissed the guitarist for previously.
In the documentary, Cornell expanded on his reaction to McCready’s performance on the track, stating how when he began to bring out guitar solo after guitar solo, he said “this isn’t going to be a joke, he can actually fucking play.” Seemingly stunned by what he had brought out of McCready, his perceptions of the guitarist were forever changed from that moment onward.
“He went out of his mind,” Cornell continued, “And we thought he was this sweet little kid. He’s infected, and that’s gonna come out again.”
To fill the whole final six and a half minutes of the song with one extended shredding solo was the ultimate way for McCready to prove himself, and the career that he would go on to have with Pearl Jam would only act as further proof that nobody ever ought to doubt him again, not least Chris Cornell.
