Best known as grunge pioneer and hard-rockin’ frontman of Soundgarden and Audioslave, Chris Cornell throws fans a club-friendly curveball with his third solo effort, Scream, a collaboration with sample-savvy hip-hop/R&B über-producer Timbaland. Released March 10, the album even features Justin Timberlake and OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, plus a hidden track co-written and co-produced by John Mayer. As Cornell launches his U.S. spring tour, the 44-year-old Grammy nominee denounces detractors and revels in favorable feedback from the gays. Any other questions? Just follow him on Twitter.
By Brandon Voss
HX: Because it’s such a sonic departure for
you, Scream
is shaping up to be one of the most polarizing albums in years. How do you feel
about the stir it’s creating?
Chris Cornell: It’s actually kind of
funny. The negative responses I’ve gotten are from people who don’t really buy
my records anyway. The real fans aren’t the ones who are upset or complaining;
they’re the biggest supporters. It’s an interesting sociological experiment,
because on these social networking sites you can actually see the people making
comments — where they’re from, how old they are, if they’re a man or a woman — so I
start to draw conclusions about where the negativity’s coming from. If you’re
an older guy in the United States, you’re most likely to make a negative
comment. [Laughs]
Older people who were exposed to me as teenagers might see a mutation they
don’t like. But this album seems to resonate with the younger fans because
they’re not judging it from any particular angle or with any criteria. To them
it’s just music, and they like it.
What about Trent Reznor’s diss of Scream
through his Twitter?
In terms of viral buzz, I got all kinds of free attention out of his comment,
so that was really nice of him. [Laughs] Then I was Twittering,
and people tried to read into what I was writing because they thought I was
secretly responding to him, but I wasn’t. To this day I haven’t read what he
said.
What’s the appeal of Twitter for you?
At first it was that I could write anything I wanted anytime I felt like it. I
have odd thoughts, weird things I never share because I don’t talk much. Then I
started seeing a different side of it: I could directly answer questions from
fans on a one-on-one basis, but in a safely isolated environment, and I’ve
found that I actually like that. These are people who support me, and I have a
career because of them. That kind of contact isn’t such a bad thing.
On
various online message boards, I’ve read comments from bitter listeners that Scream “sounds gay.” Is a
gay-sounding album such a bad thing?
I don’t even know what that means. [Laughs] I guess a lot of people associate
dance music with gay people, but only if you’re older, wear a Black Sabbath
T-shirt and just listen to rock. Younger people are used to listening to dance
music or being in social situations where there’s dance music. If someone says
my record sounds gay, it’s definitely dating that person. Either that or
they’re from a part of the country that’s isolated, but I don’t know if there’s
a corner of this country that’s isolated enough where someone can be excused
for having prejudices like that anymore.
I have heard remixes of “Part of Me” in gay
dance clubs. Did you anticipate Scream being embraced by gay fans?
I have gay friends who listened to this album
eight months ago, so I got the feeling from their responses that it might
appeal more to that audience, which appeals to me. I didn’t really think about
it going in, but the feedback I’ve gotten from the gay community has been
great. It’s exciting. The more people my music speaks to the better, and that’s
really what it’s all about to me: making a connection. When Seattle bands
suddenly had more mainstream success, a lot of the band members were upset and
started judging the people who came to see them, deciding they didn’t like this
audience or that audience. It was a prejudice that I never wanted to have.
Growing up, I didn’t feel like I fit in — I was little, I couldn’t play sports, I
wasn’t good at school, I was socially awkward — and I ended up being this kid
hidden in my room listening to records. That’s when the seed was planted that
made me who I am. So I never got the concept of judgment, particularly of my
audience.
Which
track on Scream may connect most with gay fans?
That’s hard to say, but the more interesting songs are the ones that have the
most unlikely combinations of influences. “Get Up” is one of the most
dance-sounding, synth-based songs, yet I hear 21st century Doors in
it. In terms of lyrics and emotions, any song should appeal the same to
anybody. There are certain songs that aren’t gender specific, like “Other Side
of Town,” which is the story about somebody who has a close friend that they
partied and did drugs with, but the singer of the song has found a healthier,
saner lifestyle.
Do you remember when you realized you were
a sex symbol not only for women but for gay men?
It was a surprise to me when friends of mine
first told me I had gay admirers, just because I didn’t really think of myself
that way. But I suppose that’s part of what I do. I don’t think you necessarily
have to be good-looking; I want to believe that it starts with an emotional
connection to what I’m singing.
In
a 1997 interview you joked, “I’ve done my best to get in touch with my feminine
side, and it turns out my feminine side is a dyke. So I’m stuck with women for
the rest of my life!” Is your feminine side still so butch after all these
years?
There is this sort of Northwestern, clumsy logger side to me that’s always
there. As far as my sexual orientation and what appealed to me, it was really simple
when I was a little kid: I saw that poster of Raquel Welch and I watched Barbarella, and it was like,
“Okay, that’s what women are. Got it. Awesome.” My beauty aesthetic stopped
there, and that’s where I’ve lived ever since.
Have
you altered your look to gel with your new sound?
Not consciously. It just evolves naturally. We decided the concept for the
album cover shoot would be me smashing a guitar, sort of making a statement
that I’ve made a record that’s unapologetic in decidedly going in a different
direction. But when I saw the images, they reminded me of images of myself from
back when I first got started, and I liked that. So it’s a statement about
breaking away from what I traditionally do, but it embraces the past as well,
and that’s really who I am. I perform songs from my entire career. The new
album itself lives in a different world, but when I tour, all different periods
of my career coexist really well. I don’t feel any polarization from fans when
I play songs from the new album.
Speaking
of older songs, is “She’ll Never Be Your Man,” off your 2007 album Carry On, an anti-lesbian
anthem?
[Laughs]
Not at all. But it was inspired by a friend of mine
whose wife left him and then became a lesbian. As a guy, I know the feelings of
jealousy and heartache when someone leaves you; it brings up all these feelings
of inadequacy, like, what does that guy have that I don’t have? But I thought
about what can go through a man’s head if a woman leaves him for a woman: Not
only did you put her off you, you put her off guys period? How does a man
compete with a woman for another woman’s affections?
David Cook covered your arrangement of
“Billie Jean” from Carry On on American Idol, and later you
co-wrote Cook’s first single, “Lights On.” Are you a fan of the show?
The pace is too slow for me. I want to see
people sing; I don’t want to see someone sing for a minute and then talk about
it for five minutes. He did my version of the song, which is a very dramatic
reinvention, and the judges assumed that he had gone off and rearranged the
song — they’re all standing up and weeping at the brilliance of it. But my fans
went berserk, sending angry e-mails and letters to the show, because they felt
it gave David credit for something he didn’t do. Co-writing his first single
was a coincidence. Someone asked me if I had songs for other artists, and I
said, “Actually, no, I’m only writing for David Cook.” It was a joke! But he
said, “Okay, I represent him.” So I said, “Well, actually, I do have a song I
think would be great for him.” And that’s how it happened.
HX.com, April 2009.