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A certain scenario kept repeating itself. The people from the magazines would take two or three shots of the band. They’d start to pack up. And then they’d sort of take me off into a corner by myself. After about the thirtieth time that a photographer asked me to take my shirt off, I started to get the picture.
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'Superunknown' was one of the most dramatic shifts in what we were doing musically. I don't think I realized it at the time.
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Everything's different. You have to recognise the fact that I'm different. Time goes on, and you change. I'm coming into this as a different guy, that's probably the biggest thing.
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It's great when you play to an audience that knows the words to all your songs, and sings them back to you.
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When I met my wife Vicky's family, I had to go out of my way to convince them, to show them, that I wasn't anything like their idea of a musician.
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At the end of the day it's the fans who make you who you are.
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One of the Robinson brothers from the Black Crowes turned me on to Nick Drake.
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The fans own the records and listen to them and love them. It becomes the soundtrack to some part of their lives, and we don't control that. To me, that's what's exciting about what we do.
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'The Beatles' did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.
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Stone Temple Pilots, Bush, and Silverchair are taking the simplest elements of Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and melding them into one homogenous thing.
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I'm a huge fan of film and always have been.
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I would look at older blues musicians who just keep going into their seventies. They keep doing it until they drop dead. And I've always felt like that's what I want to do. I've felt that since the day I was able to start playing music for a living. I don't see the point of thinking about retiring because it's not work to begin with.
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Audioslave was something that I felt had become a career decision. It became three albums over a period of years touring with a specific group of people.
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If you sold a million records, the only way you could be disappointed is if the guy down the street sold seven million. But you've got to start dodging bullets once you've sold that many records, because everybody wants to kill you. We're not in that position. We can still be very successful and not have to worry about wearing bulletproof vests.
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An acoustic show is all about you, and any little nuance or mistake is amplified.
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It's good for me to be involved in different things.
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I started as a drummer, so I sort of took on singing duties by default. I had sung backgrounds and some lead vocals from behind the drums in different bands that I'd been in, and I'd gotten great responses for the songs I would sing. I really started pursuing the possibility of being a lead singer based on the fact that I was working a full-time restaurant job and then playing gigs at night, hauling drums around. One day, it just dawned on me that, 'Hey, I could be in a band and be the singer, and it would be a lot easier!'
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I'm not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that's more what entertainment and music should be.
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Once you sit in front of people and start playing songs, it's all on you. No matter what happens, it's entirely your responsibility the entire time. I like that intensity.
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When I started writing songs for Temple of the Dog, I went to my room with my acoustic guitar, and I was happy staying in that mode. It was more chordal based and more lyric driven. I enjoyed not making riff-based songs built around a guitar idea.
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I remember as a kid that I was always physically fit.
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You can't always make out the words I sing with Soundgarden.
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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.
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I got a GED based on Catholic school seventh-grade education, really. I didn't make it that far.