Well, it's official. At the stroke of midnight this past New Year’s Eve came word that Soundgarden are reuniting in 2010. Chris Cornell, former frontman for the band, finally put to rest persistent reunion rumors and confirmed the band's reconciliation on Twitter with an announcement that read: "The 12 year break is over and school is back in session. Sign up now. Knights of the Soundtable ride again!" Let’s hear it all you Soundgarden fans out there. Whoo-hoo!
News of a Soundgarden reconciliation has been a long time coming—twelve years to be exact—and band members have been fielding (and fueling) reunion rumors for nearly all of it. Formed in 1984 by Seattle native Chris Cornell (who was 19 years old at the time), guitarist Kim Thayil and original bassist Hiro Yamamoto (who was replaced briefly on bass by Jason Everman who was then replaced permanently by Ben Shepherd in 1990), Soundgarden were one of the seminal bands of the grunge movement to come out of Seattle in the early 1990s. They were also one of the first bands signed to indie label Sub Pop in 1986 and the first of the grunge bands to sign with a major record label (A&M Records) in 1988.
Soundgarden released a string of albums including Ultramega OK (1988), Louder Than Love (1989), and Badmotorfinger (1991), all of which met with moderate success, but it wasn't until Seattle contemporaries Nirvana and Pearl Jam exploded onto the mainstream that Soundgarden achieved commercial success with their fourth album, 1994's Superunknown. Debuting at #1 on the Billboard charts, Superunknown included the hit singles “Fell on Black Days,” “The Day I Tried to Live,” “My Wave,” and the Grammy Award-winning singles "Black Hole Sun" and "Spoonman." Superunknown was both a commercial and critical success and remains Soundgarden’s best-selling album having been certified five times platinum by the RIAA in the States.
Following a worldwide tour in support of Superunknown, Soundgarden began what would be their final album. The self-produced Down on the Upside, released in 1996, became the source of much tension within the group when their shared vision diverged. Cornell wanted to experiment with other sounds, including acoustic instrumentation, and evolve beyond the band's heavy riffing that Thayil considered to be Soundgarden's identity. The band pushed their way through an arduous nine months of recording and released Down on the Upside to a tepid reception, despite heavy promotion. The album wasn’t as heavy as their previous albums and was a definite departure from Soundgarden’s grunge roots. The lack of artistic cohesion seemed to suggest trouble ahead for the band. According to Matt Cameron, "I started feeling the beginning of the end in those [Down on the Upside] sessions."
Never a band who enjoyed the road much, Soundgarden nonetheless embarked on a 39-date tour in support of Down on the Upside, which only aggravated existing tensions. Fans were quick to note the lack of chemistry between bandmates, and on the tour's final stop in Honolulu, Hawaii, in February 1997, things came to a head when Shepherd threw his bass in the air and stormed off stage in frustration when his equipment failed. The band retreated and Chris Cornell was left to conclude the show with a solo encore.
At that point, communication among the band members was at an all-time low, and this, with the prospect of having to create another record looming. Soundgarden had grown apart and knew they needed a change. On April 9, 1997, that change came when the band released a statement that read: "After 12 years, the members of Soundgarden have amicably and mutually decided to disband to pursue other interests. There is no word at this time on any of the members' future plans. They'd like to thank their fans for all of their support over the years.”
Although band members have gone on record to say the break-up wasn’t as fraught with drama as their fans would have, that they simply didn’t want to be a band anymore, that they lost interest, ran out of steam, were suffering from exhaustion, et al., individual takes on the implosion speak to the turbulence and contentiousness going on behind the scenes. Kim Thayil said at the time that, “This rock and roll thing is your job. You do that for 12 years, you love it, but in the course of 12 years, individuals establish and lose many relationships.” Matt Cameron added, "No matter how much success you're having, you can't continue working together if you can't communicate."
And Cornell weighed in on the band’s demise with, "We just needed some time apart from each other. Once you start making millions of records, things get out of hand. We kind of ended up becoming a band of fans and expectations. We could deal with that stuff, but at some point we stopped dealing with it very well.” More telling is the distance his bandmates maintained from Cornell for many years after the split, even declining an invite to regroup as recent as 2008 for grunge label Sub Pop’s 20th Anniversary concerts held in Seattle.
Post split, the members of Soundgarden each went onto other projects. Thayil and Shepherd kept rather low profiles, occasionally releasing music and collaborating with other artists, while Cameron, who drummed for both Queens of the Stone Age and the Smashing Pumpkins, stepped in on drums for Pearl Jam's Yield tour, then joined that band as a permanent member in 1998 and has since recorded four albums with Pearl Jam including Binaural (2000), Riot Act (2002), Pearl Jam (2006), and Backspacer (2009). Cornell formed the supergroup Audioslave with former Rage Against the Machine members and also worked on a solo career.
Over the years, Chris Cornell repeatedly shot down reunion rumors and continued to deny his fans any hope of a Soundgarden reconciliation as did his former bandmates. In an interview with NME following his departure from Audioslave in 2007, Cornell stated, "When Soundgarden broke up, my discussions with the rest of the band was 'We have to have an agreement that we will never tour Soundgarden—Soundgarden will never exist—without it being a unanimous decision and that everyone who was in the band is in the band.'"
And then in 2009 came a glimmer of hope. In March of last year, Thayil, Cameron, and Shepherd came together and were joined on stage by fellow Seattleite Tad Doyle on vocals to perform at a Tom Morello solo show at Seattle’s Crocodile Café. Cornell commented to a reporter the following month that, “If I was there, I probably would’ve gotten up onstage.” As for reunion prospects, he added, “You never know.”
Next up was a July 2009 interview with Rolling Stone in which Cornell again balked at reunion rumors by saying that any conversation going on between the band members was limited to discussion of releasing a boxed set or B-sides album of Soundgarden rarities. He claimed that there had been no discussion whatsoever of reuniting, although he added, “I've always said nothing is impossible. I never wanted to be one of those people who tries to predict the future ... I want to be open to anything, but nothing has changed in terms of our attitude toward it. It takes somebody to really stand up and say, 'We should do this, we have to go do this, let's go do this,' and so far, no one has raised their hand to do that. Still, it's not impossible."
Three months later, on October 6, 2009, all the members of Soundgarden were in attendance at a Pearl Jam concert in Universal City, California. Temple of the Dog were reunited for the first time in six years when Chris Cornell joined Eddie Vedder on stage for an encore to sing “Hunger Strike.” That show marked the first public appearance of Soundgarden together since their breakup in April 1997. Impending reunion rumors lit up the internet. The air was rife with possibility.
Shortly after the Pearl Jam show, a Soundgarden reunion at last took root.
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Although no details have been announced yet, Cornell directs fans to the band’s new website (soundgardenworld.com) for future updates. Soundgarden are said to be weighing offers from several major U.S. and international festivals and trying to work around Cameron’s duties with Pearl Jam, who recently announced their first North American date of 2010 as part of the second weekend of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (April 29-May 2). Pearl Jam will also play 10 European shows beginning on June 22 in Dublin running through July 10 in Oeiras, Portugal.
Soundgarden are also still kicking around plans for a best-of and/or reissues of their back catalog as well as compiling a Soundgarden boxed set which would include a wealth of unreleased studio material. There’s been no word yet whether or not the band will commence work on a sixth album.
Soundgarden are back. Happy New Year.
