Chris Cornell has found his solo voice

Chris Cornell probably doesn’t seem like a man who would suffer from an identity crisis.

He is the frontman for the seminal grunge band Soundgarden. He was a leader of the hard rock supergroup Audioslave. He founded the acclaimed tribute act Temple of the Dog. All those are definitive claims on Cornell’s musical legacy. Yet the 51-year-old singer-songwriter still had a few things to figure out when it came to his solo career.

With his new album “Higher Truth,” which came out last week, Cornell said he finally has pieced together what he thinks defines his music. It is a process he said that started in 2010 when he embarked on his solo, acoustic world tour. The one-man shows took him around the United States three times and to Australia, South Africa and Europe. Along the way, Cornell said he played songs from throughout the breadth of his career, as well as cover songs and anything else he wanted.

“That turned into something that I guess in a sense became who I am as a solo artist. I never considered having an identity as a solo artist; it was just whatever I wanted. I concerned myself with the identity of the band I was writing for. So I look at it now as a chunk of time and body of work that makes up three bands,” he said. “In the (solo tour) I am delivering these songs in a super stripped-down fashion, which illustrates who I am. I am the guy who wrote all these songs; here they are.”

While making “Higher Truth,” Cornell was also in the midst of a reunion with Soundgarden. After 10 years of playing together in Seattle, the group broke through big-time with their 1994 album “Superunknown.” Hits like “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman” turned the band into MTV staples and earned them two Grammy Awards. But things fell apart a few years later, and the band broke up in 1997. Flash forward 13 years and the band is now back together, reuniting in 2010 and putting out its sixth studio album.

Cornell continues on with both Soundgarden and his solo acoustic tour in support of “Higher Truth.” He stops at the Gallo Center for the Arts Sunday, Sept. 27, for a sold-out show. He said he plans to play a flexible set, including music from throughout his career and whatever audience members may shout out.

Cornell spoke with The Modesto Bee last month from Miami about his new album, being a grunge pioneer and the possible return of rock bands.

Q: Tell me about the process of making “Higher Truth” and your inspiration for the project.

A: That was super rewarding and fun and exciting. Since that ultimately happened simultaneously with Soundgarden reforming, I ended up being able to bounce between these two worlds. One was super-aggressive sonic post-punk rock. The other was solo acoustic work. They couldn’t be more different from each other. I wanted to really recognize the last four years of acoustic touring in that album and in that writing. These songs were those written as acoustic songs first, as one-man songs first. All I had to work with was me just sitting and playing a guitar. So they have to be the best they can be. That idea would make this album. Along the way I started adding a few more things, so it’s not just an album of acoustic guitar. But it was written that way and based on that. It’s the opposite of songs played side by side. It’s not super-aggressive rock songs. They are pared down to this super raw, simple arrangement. What’s important to me is that I made these tours kind of a living thing with new music brought into them, as opposed to just a look back.

Q: In 2010 Soundgarden reunited after more than a dozen years apart and has since released new music. Why did you feel it was the right time, and what does it feel like to be together again and working creatively?

A: I think that after that much time off, nobody was really sure what would happen. And we didn’t talk much during the break. In the absence of talking, people tend to imagine the best-case scenarios and worst. Once we got back into room talking about serving the legacy of the band, we realized we all get along and really missed each other’s company. The band was really important to all of us.

Rock musicians are not the most responsible socially in terms of relationships; inevitably there are always problems. Having 12 years go by where everyone was more grown up probably helped, too. So we never really ran into something that didn’t feel great or positive. We all felt fully lucky to have the opportunity to be a band again. So far everything has been really positive.

Q: Last year was also the 20th anniversary of the release of “Superunkown,” and you performed the album in its entirety at some shows. Did you realize when you were making the album what its impact would be? Did you feel like: “Yeah, this is gonna be huge”?

A: I didn’t realize it until after the fact. I remember doing press for it at the A&M offices. We were inside their offices in a high rise and all kind of one floor. There were a bunch of separate offices with really thin doors. I would be in one room doing an interview with someone, and journalists in another room would be listening to it. I could hear sound bleeding thought the walls. At some point, I realized this record has a lot of really great songs, and the overall essence of it felt epic to me. But in the middle of writing and recording it, it felt like any other album. If anything, we felt we really had to prove ourselves as a band that deserves to exist on the world stage in a big way, not just a band that was lumped in with other bands geographically. All of the bands lumped in geographically had that task, and I think we all did do that.

We were the band that was together by far the longest and up to that point had done the most. So we weren’t used to being lumped together. But then suddenly we were. So (with “Superunknown”) we said whatever this album is, it needs to be the album that distinguishes us. And it totally did that. Still, I think if you feel super confident about what you’re doing in middle of writing and creating an album, you might be messing up. You might be be making your worst album.

Q: I read that you don’t consider yourself a very nostalgic person and don’t like to look backward. But do you ever look back at the grunge movement now, that lumped in geographic movement, as you said, and reflect on Soundgarden’s role in it? Do you think the perception of that music and that era has changed over the years?

A: I can’t really tell you what the perception of it is to someone who is, like, 15. I can tell you the audience members looking up at us that are 15, 20, 25 are definitely looking at us with different eyes than fans did 25 years ago. We’re kind of looked at as rock icons for someone who is 15 or 20, like seeing a piece of rock history stomping around on stage. As opposed to in Soundgarden’s heyday years, it was us fighting for space in world. We don’t have that; our space in the world is established and not challenged. For us, it’s a period of having fun and experimentation. Time has created perspective, too. It didn’t occur to me until two years after we split up that we’d made records that are timeless. Never considered that notion, because you can only experience that through time.

Q: How does it feel now playing “Superunknown” in its entirety?

A: Doing the album from beginning to end was an interesting experience. We never did it before. It transported me back to those months writing and recording it, just doing those songs all in a row. My memories weren’t bouncing around from 1988 to 2012; they weren’t doing that. They were just focused on that one year. It brings to the forefront all kinds of memories that were specific to that year, that moment in my personal life. It was really weird. Music is a very good time machine.

Q: While you were pioneers in grunge, your sound was also singular in many ways. What were your influences back then, and was your goal to create such an original sound?

A: They were post-punk indie bands, really. Mostly U.S. groups, but even Australian and U.K. bands. That was kind of what we were interested in. A lot of that had to do with the notion of alternative, before it was a genre, when it was a word. It was an alternative to what you heard on commercial radio. Whatever it was, as long as it didn’t sound like Billy Joel, you were alternative. We swallowed that whole pill. From one song to another song to another song, when writing we were always happiest when doing something that didn’t sound like anything we’d ever done. The opposite is a band with an identity that forms with the intention of having a certain sound or look – that wasn’t us. We knew a lot about what we didn’t want to be.

We were bent on exploring music and whatever the combinations of those things were. It wasn’t just one guy writing all of the music, another writing all the lyrics. We had different creative combinations of that. We made big albums, 15-song albums, able to adapt everyone’s strengths into the songwriting process. That makes for a pretty eclectic sound. And I had the ability with my range to find whatever voice was needed for the song.

Q: The grunge of the ’90s really replaced the synth pop/hair metal of the ’80s. I read that you think there might be another cycle of rock overtaking today’s pop and EDM coming. Is that so?

A: I think that pop and EDM and rap are all genres that are really easy to communicate over the Internet with modern technology. Records can be made in someone’s studio apartment with a laptop and some software. What it takes rock bands to make a demo tape is a roomful of heavy equipment, literally heavy equipment. But guitar-based and drums-based doesn’t really lend itself to how we communicate music in the modern world. That’s the challenge of there being another guitar-based, drums-based, no bull---- rock band that can come make an impact on the level they have in the past. It’s probably not possible. Yet that’s usually when that shows up – when it seems just impossible. We’ll see.

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 12:57 PM with the headline "Chris Cornell has found his solo voice."