“You need backup”: The album Kim Thayil thought he could have saved
What on earth do you do when your mate makes a fool of himself? I’m sure there’ll be a school of thought that says its ok to join the world in ripping the absolute piss out of them. After all, you’re friends, right? It’s ok to kick them when they’re down because they know you love them really? Well, no. That’s only what dickheads who only enjoy being dickheads do and the best way of proving this comes from Soundgarden of all bands.
At first glance, the Seattle grunge godheads should be one of those people laughing it up. They’re a very macho band on the surface. They were the band that combined the gritty rawness of grunge with the pulsating riffage and screaming guitar solos of 1970s hard rock. In a generation of rock bands that in many ways were informed by the progressive gender politics of 1980s hardcore, they were as masculine as they got.
So, when the band split up in 1997, one can imagine that everything that singer Chris Cornell was getting up to had the rest of the band in stitches. It wasn’t a complete flop, at least initially. His solo career did some decent numbers, and Audioslave, the band he formed with the non-Zach De La Rocha members of Rage Against The Machine, weren’t terrible, but that’s as far as it got.
The other members of Soundgarden also did some good business while the band were dormant. Guitarist Kim Thayil and bassist Ben Shepherd both collaborated with Josh Homme and Dave Grohl on their Desert Sessions and Probot projects, respectively. Drummer Matt Cameron actually may have had the best post-Soundgarden career out of the whole band, joining Pearl Jam in 1998 and remaining there to this day. Then 2009 happened.
What did Soundgarden want to help out Chris Cornell with?
On March of that year, Chris Cornell released Scream. His collaboration with Timbaland was a break for R&B stardom and comfortably the worst album any member of Soundgarden has put their name to. Trent Reznor summed it up best in a tweet that got him in some insanely hot water with Cornell, saying “You know that feeling you get when somebody embarrasses themselves so badly you feel uncomfortable? Heard Chris Cornell’s record? Jesus.”
Cutting? Yes. Rude? Asolutely. Correct? Oh, God yes. Scream is godawful despite both Cornell and (shockingly) Timbaland believing in the album wholeheartedly. Its no surprise that within one year of the album’s release Soundgarden had gotten back together and Cornell in particular was trying desperately to put the whole thing behind him.
Y’know who comes out of it best? The entire rest of the band. An interview with the band conducted by Spin in 2010 touches on the record and Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd are surprisingly mature about the whole thing. Cameron and Shepherd seemed to have given Cornell his props for trying, the article saying they viewed the record as “a gutsy experiment”.
Thayil is less supportive of the record but manages to say as such in a surprisingly heartwarming way. When asked about the record, he says, “I know if me, Matt, and Ben would’ve been in the studio with Chris and Timbaland, it wouldn’t have been bad. Sometimes, you just need backup.” Legit, that’s a true friend. Someone to call a spade and spade and let you know when you’ve screwed up, but someone who will be there to help you out nonetheless.
