Guitarist Tom Morello talked about Chris Cornell and Soundgarden and their influence on Rage Against the Machine to Alternative Nation. Take a look:
“I met Chris, I think, backstage at Lollapalooza in ’92 and maybe at a barbecue at my house, and he was just a lovely dude. Huge fan of his, [1991’s] ‘Badmotorfinger’ was a cornerstone album for Rage Against the Machine.
“The intelligence of the lyrics, the sort of poetic indirection and the huge uncompromising metal riffs of it was – that was a brand new thing. Chris sings great and they’re one of the great grunge bands.
“They predated Pearl Jam, they predated Nirvana. They redeemed metal – they and Jane’s Addiction. But Soundgarden redeemed metal in that it made intelligent content a possibility with super heavy music.”
I’m just a lucky guy who has chosen metal to live with for a long time. Metal changed my life for good. It made me more confident and stronger. Metalheads are naturally far away from the mass mediocrity and don’t accept impostures from anybody else. Metal is more than music, it’s a life changing oportunity!