Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger
Listen to an audio version of this review by Greg
It was December 6, 1991. I entered the Worcester Centrum in Worcester, MA just outside Boston to see one of my favorite bands of my younger years, Guns n’ Roses. At an average of $20 per ticket, which was a lot for me at the time, it was important to never miss the opening act. For I wanted to “get my money’s worth” as my father-in-law used to say.
The Centrum smelled like cigarette smoke and artificial smoke, likely from the smoke machines on stage. They must have been testing the machines a few minutes before they let the fans into the venue. The Centrum was old-looking. It still is. I was lucky enough to be friends with John Casey. John was a classmate of mine and his father had connections.
I had no idea what seating charts were all about. Nor did I bother to figure out where we were sitting even as I looked at my ticket. In 1991, MTV and the radio were everything. I collected all the information on tours and music from those two forms of media. I knew Guns had an opening act, but I had never heard of them, “Sound…something…” Sound what? Sound something. Sound Garden I think”, is what I told John when he asked who the opening act was.
The usher looked at our tickets and winked saying, “Come with me, boys”. Where are we going? I wondered. As we followed him, I could see the ripped black metal t-shirts and hairspray teasing all the ladies’ hair, practically up to the ceiling! I could see the front of the stage and as we followed, we drew closer, and closer until there we were, the front row. I couldn’t believe what I had just experienced. By December 1991, I had been to a few concerts, but never even close to the front. Let alone for G N’ F’N R !!
The lights went out and a voice came over the P.A. HEY WORCESTER! ARE YOU READY! FROM SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, PLEASE WELCOME………SOUNDGARDEN!!
We were off….
That evening would go down as one of the greatest concerts I had ever seen. After that night, I went to my local Strawberries and purchased Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger the next day. As I tore the long cardboard box open, the CD fell out.
The cover of Badmotorfinger is comprised of a jagged, tornado-circular design, in the center of which is a triangle that has the album's title along the interior perimeter with a spark plug in the middle. Guitarist Kim Thayil came up with the title. While thinking of the Montrose song, Bad Motor Scooter, he made a play with words calling it Badmotorfinger. He told a reporter in 1992, “I simply like it because it was colorful. It was kind of aggressive too”.
The importance of this album is colossal. Listening to this in its entirety again 32 years after purchasing it, this album has even more meaning to me. Aside from the hits like Rusty Cage, Outshined, and Jesus Christ Pose, the deep tracks are stronger, which is how I think most classic albums are. Won’t Get Fooled Again is a great song, but not The Who’s best. Same with Money on Dark Side of the Moon. The same goes for Purple Haze.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the importance of this album is also directly related to the band’s lead singer, Chris Cornell. Anyone who has heard Chris sing knows he is among the greatest, not just of rock, or grunge, or metal, but of all music. In 1991 Chris’ vocals were a lot louder and hard-hitting. As his career progressed through the late 90s and into the 21st century, his voice would sincerely mature, bringing Chris to world-famous status. All the more remarkable is that Chris Cornell was originally the band's singing drummer before Matt Cameron took over at drums, and Chris moved to rhythm guitar (in addition to lead vocals). The band started out of Seattle, Washington way back in 1984, getting their name from a sculpture erected in a Seattle park, which was said to channel the wind. Made of pipe, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration named the sculpture, “A Sound Garden”.
Produced by Terry Date, their producer for their previous album, Louder Than Love, Badmotorfinger was originally scheduled for release on September 24th, 1991. The record company, A&M pushed it back to October 8th, 1991, due to “production issues”. Many who follow ’90s “grunge”, and many who’ve listened to my podcasts, know this time period consisted of album releases that would change the landscape of music forever. And this did not just apply to that genre dubbed “grunge”. The album was released 6 weeks after Pearl Jam’s Ten, and two weeks after Nirvana’s Nevermind and Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, which were both released on the same day, September 24th, 1991. What an unbelievable span of a few weeks for music.
Badmotorfinger kicks off with the destructive, Rusty Cage. The song starts with Kim Thayil’s “underwater sounding” guitar dueling against itself. For the intro, Thayil used a wah-wah pedal apparently as an audio filter for his guitar. The song was considered by many as “metal”. It was heavier and grittier than friends Pearl Jam’s debut, which came out the same year, and it was more technical than Nirvana’s Nevermind. This band had evolved from two-chord progressions, simply written songs to rhythm-changing melodies that would test any musician’s skills. Rusty Cage breaks down the tenacious sound that is this band. And unlike its previous two albums, Louder Than Love and Ultramega OK, Badmotorfinger is far superior. It’s a cut above their previous two not just because of better sound engineering, but also because of better songwriting. The album’s next track, Outshined, which received significant commercial success on MTV and radio, continues the trend of the album with a metal, hard rock sound, perhaps Led Zeppelin mixed in a blender with Black Sabbath, but arguably (and don’t strike me down, music gods) stronger vocals.
Chris Cornell said Outshined is about going from "periods of extreme self-confidence to plummeting in the opposite direction”. Although catchy and radio-friendly, it still consists of that dark riff and backbeat that is metal. Not so much speed metal, but a metal that would eventually be labeled “grunge”.
Soundgarden was the first grunge band to sign to a major label when the band joined A&M Records in 1989. Most of the Seattle bands at the time were very aware of the grunge genre title. And most, if not all, rejected this title. New bassist Ben Shepherd joined the band just before the recording of Badmotorfinger. Shepherd had been keeping tabs on Soundgarden and admitted sometime after he joined, they were his favorite band in the late 80s before he became a member. In regard to their genre or “tag”, Shepherd commented to a reporter in a 2013 interview, "The term grunge is just for marketing. Our music is called rock and roll, or it's called punk rock or whatever. We never were grunge; we were just a band from Seattle."
Thayil and Shepherd would do a drop-down to ‘D’ for the opening riff in Outshined. Cornell elaborated more on his feelings when he wrote the song. He shared that many times he would go through periods of extreme self-confidence, feeling like he could do anything. But then he will hear a person say something, significant or not, and he would get something in his head and, immediately his confidence would sink in the opposite direction. Cornell admitted at times he, “felt like he was a piece of crap”. He used the memory of these experiences as the theme to writing Outshined. Perhaps this ended up as a metaphor for what happened to Chris in 2017.
As I wrote/discussed in my previous review of The Motion Picture Soundtrack to the film, Singles, after finishing a concert at the Fox Theatre in Detroit on May 17th, 2017, the bodyguard of Chris Cornell found him unconscious in the bathroom of his hotel room, room 1136, at the MGM Grand hotel. Prior to this discovery, Chris had called his bodyguard initially to help fix his computer. After this visit, his bodyguard left. Later that night, he found Cornell lying on the floor with what was described as an “exercise band” tied around his neck and blood in his mouth. Records show that it took Medics 41 minutes to arrive on the scene after Chris’ bodyguard called them. The official cause of death was ruled a suicide by hanging. Police ruled out any foul play. They reviewed phone records and hotel surveillance video, which showed no one entering or exiting Chris’ hotel room after his bodyguard left him alone.
Like many other talented musicians, Cornell would join the “died way too soon club”. He would also join his friends and fellow Seattle musicians, Kurt Cobain, and Layne Staley in the afterlife. The ending for Cobain and Staley, although tragic, is more understood today. For Cornell, many, including myself, continue to wonder what the hell drove him to “jump off that cliff” that night and end it all. I have to say, I am still not satisfied with his announced cause of death.
The third single from Badmotorfinger, Jesus Christ Pose drops down to ‘D’ tuning just as Outshined did. Tuning the low ‘E’ string, the fattest string on a standard guitar to a ‘D’ gives a deeper, darker sound that many musicians in metal use. In an interview with Spin Magazine in 1992, Cornell described his motivation behind writing the song. The lyrics discuss his distaste for people who use religion as a way to exploit others. He said, “You just see it a lot with really beautiful people, or famous people, exploiting that symbol as to imply that they're either a deity or persecuted somehow by their public. So, it's pretty much a song that is nonreligious but expressing being irritated by seeing that. It's not that I would ever be offended by what someone would do with that symbol”.
MTV would ban the video for Jesus Christ Pose, as it created a lot of controversy the music channel didn’t want to get involved with. The video portrays a girl on a cross, and of course includes several mentions of the word, Jesus, which many perceived as anti-Christian. As a result, the band received many death threats from religious nuts who never took the time to actually listen to the lyrics.
In addition to the three mentioned radio singles, Badmotorfinger is stacked with a significant amount of quality, “deep” tracks. It’s hard for me to pick my favorite. Slaves and Bulldozers strikes a chord with me. Being a bass player, I cannot help but feel tied to the bass line at the beginning as it sets up the melody and the rest of the song.
Records show Slaves and Bulldozers is considered by many as one of Chris Cornell's greatest vocal performances. He certainly has many. My favorite record producer, Rick Rubin actually played the song for Brad Wilk, Tim Commeford, and Tom Morello, when the three, at the time, “former” members of Rage Against the Machine were considering finding a new lead singer for a new band they were forming. After Rage singer Zach de la Rocha, left the band in 2000, it is noted that this song convinced the three to ask Cornell to join their band, which they would later call, Audioslave. Audioslave would last six years and go on to release three albums, receive three Grammy nominations, and sell more than 8 million records worldwide.
I am not surprised Brad, Tim and Tom were impressed by Cornell’s vocals on “Slaves”. However, if we’re being honest, Rubin could have used any song by Cornell to impress them.
One song I wanted to call out is Mind Riot. Although it’s close to impossible to choose the best song, this is close to the top for me. Slower in tempo, this track has an emotional sentiment to it. Cornell wrote this as an homage to his late friend, Andrew Wood, lead singer of Seattle band, Mother Love Bone. I love the drum beat in this track. It’s not your standard 4/4 drum line or time signature. Instead of your usual kick drum/hi-hat combo hit, followed immediately by your standard single snare hit, drummer Matt Cameron plays a time signature that is the opposite of standard, comprised of using the toms in a syncopated rhythm. Chris’ vocals are romantic, even though he is singing about the riot that is taking place in his mind.
It's also important to note that guitarist Kim Thayil tuned every string on his guitar to ‘E’. It was recommended by Cornell after Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament jokingly made a comment to him, “Dude, you should write a song where the entire guitar is just tuned to ‘E’”. Ament later joked he never thought Cornell would take him seriously.
Badmotorfinger peaked at number 39 on the Billboard Top 200 charts by early 1992. It was among the 100 top-selling albums of 1992, sold a million copies in the early 1990s, and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) by early 1993.
The album went on to achieve critical acclaim. Most music critics felt it was a sizeable improvement from their first two albums and from their mid-80s EPs. It certainly hooked me as a 14- and 15-year-old. I consider Badmotorfinger an album that shaped my musical abilities, taste, and direction on how I would later write music of my own.
On that night, December 6th, 1991, my musical life would be forever changed at the Worcester Centrum. While sitting/standing in the front row, watching Cornell and Soundgarden knock my face off, I would later shift fully into Seattle mode and for about 2 years, immerse myself in the city’s music scene. That same Soundgarden performance was capped off with me catching Chris Cornell’s Dunlop gray, nylon guitar pick at the end of their show. Today, 32 years later, that same pick hangs in a frame behind glass, along with a picture of Chris and a written dedication to his life and music.
So do whatever you want! Buy this album or don’t buy this album! But if you’ve liked my other reviews, well then if you trust me then you should listen. For this is a Hall of Fame record.
