I prefer not to use any machines. I focus a lot on cardio, which is what I do when I'm on stage. I also am into isometric workouts.
— Chris Cornell
I never went to high school. I never really finished eighth grade. I was kicked out of seventh grade once and eighth grade twice. Mainly for not showing up and not doing it. Then I went to an alternative high school for part of what would have been ninth grade and part of what would have been 10th grade.
I'm a huge fan of film and always have been.
I've seen a lot of Pearl Jam shows, and the only reaction I've ever seen is the audience being completely supportive and loving every moment.
When we've toured with Skid Row and G N' R, we probably turned a few people on to our music, but I get the feeling at one of those shows you might snag maybe 10 percent of the people out there.
'Spoonman' wasn't written for any album. It was just written for fun.
I never thought of myself as being the singer that wanted to create an identity and then stick to that.
There was no animosity in the breakup of Soundgarden.
My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them are his interpretations of the Dust Bowl-era folk songs, or even going back as far as the mass influx of people coming into the U.S. during the gold rush. His interpretations of those songs are incredible.
I got a GED based on Catholic school seventh-grade education, really. I didn't make it that far.
I think there needs to be a global focus on people taking care of people.
Stone Temple Pilots, Bush, and Silverchair are taking the simplest elements of Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and melding them into one homogenous thing.
I've always had a really difficult time with loss.
One of the Robinson brothers from the Black Crowes turned me on to Nick Drake.
I never felt bad about being lumped in with other Seattle bands. I thought it was great.
It's good for me to be involved in different things.
Fans should be encouraged that I want to try different things.
I remember as a kid that I was always physically fit.
When all of a sudden you're successful and sought after overnight, you are instantly opened to a lot of sides of humanity that the average person is never going to see. And those can often be pretty disheartening, and it can make somebody pretty lonely.
I had kind of a mean piano teacher. I went to Catholic school, so it was like the typical thing you would imagine - a little kid with a white-haired teacher frowning at the fact that I didn't practice.
A lot of people get into alternative music as part of their identity. It's something that isn't the mainstream, that their brothers and sisters don't know about, and that their parents don't like. It's something they can have as their own.
I think the Beatles is one band that, if I'm working on a song arrangement or if I have some idea for a song, and there's a little bit of a Beatles quality to it, I never avoid that. I always will steer into it.
I felt very proud to be part of a music scene that was changing the face of commercial music and rock music internationally, but I also felt like it was necessary for Soundgarden - as it was for all of these Seattle bands - to prove that we deserve to be on an international stage, and we weren't just part of a fad that was based on geography.
My history of singing has always probably been closer to a David Bowie approach than, for example, an AC/DC approach.
I'm interested in where I'm going and the people I am there to see. Going to Cuba was a great example of that, and the succession of going into Cuba, which is not a very easy place to get into, and playing music for people who have never seen a live rock concert outdoors like that.
In spite of my lack of education, I didn't lack direction.
Some of the most brilliant things that someone might do could happen in three minutes because it's something that just occurs to them. And then, there's the example of really chipping away at something to create something great. I don't believe that one is more reliable than the other.
The idea of telling the story of the Armenian genocide - or, really, any other genocide - and repeating those stories is really important. I also think it's important to always be exposing the warning signs for what was leading up to it. Those tend to always be the same.
That's the miracle of music. No one can reinterpret a Picasso, but a song can be remixed and covered and interpreted in an infinite number of ways. It's a living thing.
I always looked at rock & roll as the voice of regular people, of an economic group not in charge.
I rejected most of the folk I was exposed to in the Seventies. I came around later to Tom Waits, some parts of Jim Croce, and a lot of Cat Stevens.
'Superunknown' was one of the most dramatic shifts in what we were doing musically. I don't think I realized it at the time.
I don't listen to Beyonce or Jennifer Hudson records.
In the beginning of Audioslave, I was very honest. I said, 'We make great albums and write great albums - but don't be under the impression I'm going to be a lyricist that writes anything other than what strikes me as inspiring in the moment.' The lyrics weren't going to be focused politically.
For years, I wasn't feeling good about myself. My head wasn't clear. I was doing nothing productive.
When you're young, playing drums is immediately satisfying 'cause whether or not you know how to play anything, the bottom line is that you're pounding on something, so you're happy about it.
I learned to read music when I was 10 and did piano and took lessons.
Definitely, when you get into something where bands are playing for 30,000 people, it's not like the post-punk, U.S. independent scene.
'Black Hole Sun' was written in a car when I was driving home from the studio one night. Pretty much everything that you hear was written in my head.
As a child, I was this record collector/listener that would sit in a room and listen to the entire Beatles catalog alone, over and over and over again.
Oftentimes, especially in the context of an acoustic song, I'm motivated to write by some amount of melancholy.
When you see a country take care of its people regardless of class, or how much money they make, or what color they are, that's pretty inspiring.
I just kind of went into the blue-collar workforce at a really young age and discovered music, in terms of being a musician, around the same time. The good news is, I was probably 17 when I knew that's what I was going to do with the rest of my life, no matter what that meant.
There's this existential argument that comes in, at some point, when you're over-thinking the songwriting process. There's no guarantee that the more time you spend or the more you concentrate on certain aspects that that's going to produce a better result, especially in the arts.
The sense of anger I had when I was younger is something I thought would never go away. Over time, it's something you get almost bored with.
Companies figured out that the easiest way to make money was to reissue records that the accounting department had paid for years ago and already made a profit.
There's no way to be a 30-year-old band, go on tour, and pretend the nostalgia isn't happening.
'Superunknown,' maybe more than most albums, didn't reveal itself to be what it was until the very end - literally until we were three quarters of the way through mixing it.
I never look back, ever. I'm always looking ahead, working on the next thing.
Music is supposed to be inspired.
