jeffgarden.com

We’ve really missed Ben. We worried about him incessantly after Chris’s passing but his recent activity on social media has helped put our minds at ease. For those who don’t know, Ben has written a lot of Soundgarden material, as well as for his own solo project (In Deep Owl), and side projects Hater & Wellwater Conspiracy among others. Here is a list of everything Ben has been a part of over the past three decades:

Ben was the bassist for a Seattle hardcore (or "speedcore" as he called it) outfit called March of Crimes. That band's biggest claim to fame, says Shepherd, was a tape that sold a few copies in Finland. At one point, Shepherd enlisted Stone Gossard to play guitar (Gossard then went on the play in Green River and ultimately wound up in a band called Pearl Jam). Shepherd played in another band called 600 School, and even was a member of Nirvana for a while, though he never played a single note with them; he was their backup touring guitarist. [source]

600 School (Live recording circa 1982)

March of Crimes (Fairweather Friend demo recorded circa 1984)

Tic Dolly Row (Live recording 1987)

Shepherd had long been an admirer of a local band called Soundgarden, and even auditioned for them when Hiro Yamamoto quit right before the Louder Than Love tour in 1990. He lost to Jason Everman because he didn't know how to play the songs. When Everman didn't work out, however, Shepherd auditioned again and this time was welcomed into the band he had always idolized.. His first recording session with Soundgarden was the "Room a Thousand Years Wide"/"H.I.V. Baby" single that was released in limited edition on Sub Pop Records. [source]

SOUNDGARDEN

Badmotorfinger (1991):

·        SLAVES & BULLDOZERS   Music: Shepherd, Cornell; Lyrics: Cornell  ©1991 Noyes/You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP) 

·        JESUS CHRIST POSE Music: Cameron, Shepherd, Thayil, Cornell; Lyrics: Cornell  ©1991 Walpurgis Night Music/Noyes/In One Ear And Out Your Mother Music/You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP) 

·        FACE POLLUTION   Music: Shepherd; Lyrics: Cornell  ©1991 Noyes/You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP) 

·        SOMEWHERE   Music & Lyrics: Shepherd  ©1991 Noyes (ASCAP) 

""The fans are the real bottom line, though. They're the ones who really get fucked, and they're the most important people.""  -- Ben Shepherd, on fans and the music industry

Superunknown (1994):

·        HEAD DOWN  Music & Lyrics: Shepherd  ©1994 Stupidditties (ASCAP) 

·        HALF   Music & Lyrics: Shepherd  ©1994 Stupidditties 

"I don’t really remember writing it [The Day I Tried To Live]. I vaguely remember the verse. It was based on a tuning that Ben Shepherd had came up with. Lyrically, it was one of those songs that I thought everyone could connect with. ‘Fell On Black Days’ is maybe a sister song to it. It’s this feeling that could come over anyone, and has probably happened to everyone. ‘Fell On Black Days’ is the feeling of waking up one day and realizing you’re not happy with your life. Nothing happened, there was no emergency, no accident, you don’t know what happened. You were happy, and one day you just aren’t, and you have to try to figure that out. With ‘The Day I Tried To Live,’ the attitude I was trying to convey was that thing that I think everyone goes through where you wake up in the morning and you just don’t know how you are going to get through the day, and you kind of just talk yourself into it. You may go through different moments of hopelessness and wanting to give up, or wanting to just get back into bed and say fuck it, but you convince yourself you’re going to do it again. And maybe this is the last time you’re going to do it, but it’s once more around."  -- Chis Cornell, Interview with Entertainment Weekly, June 3, 2014

Down on the Upside (1996):

·        ZERO CHANCE   Music: Shepherd; Lyrics: Cornell  ©1996 You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)/Stupidditties (ASCAP) 

·        DUSTY   Music: Shepherd; Lyrics: Cornell  ©1996 You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)/Stupidditties (ASCAP) 

·        TY COBB  Music: Shepherd; Lyrics: Cornell  ©1996 You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)/Stupidditties (ASCAP) 

"Supposedly "Ty Cobb" was originally titled "Hot Rod Death Toll," but the title was changed when one of the members said it reminded him of Ty Cobb (played baseball with the Detroit Tigers in the early 1900s; still has the all-time highest lifetime batting average (.367)). The song showed up in some of Soundgarden's live performances before the album was released, most notably the 1995 Reading Festival. It features a 20-second intro written by Ben Shepherd and includes mandolin and mandola performances by him and Chris Cornell."  -- http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/releases/super.shtml

·        NEVER NAMED   Music: Shepherd; Lyrics: Cornell  ©1996 You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)/Stupidditties (ASCAP) 

"Ben Shepherd wrote "Never Named" when he was only 16 years old."  -- http://web.stargate.net/soundgarden/releases/super.shtml

·        SWITCH OPENS   Music: Shepherd; Lyrics: Cornell  ©1996 You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)/Stupidditties (ASCAP) 

·        AN UNKIND   Music & Lyrics: Shepherd  ©1996 Stupidditties (ASCAP) 

 FYI: Walpurgis Night Music is the name under which Matt published his musical work with Soundgarden. Kim, Chris and Ben also have their own publishing titles: In One Ear And Out Your Mother, You Make Me Sick I Make Music and Stupidditties respectively. Older individual publishing titles used by the band include Loud Love and Noyes. [source]

Telephantasm (2010):

·        BLACK RAIN Music: Shepherd, Thayil; Lyrics: Cornell ©2010 A&M 

King Animal (2012):

·        BEEN AWAY TOO LONG Music: Shepherd, Cornell; Lyrics: Cornell  ©2012 Republic Records

·        NON-STATE ACTOR Music: Shepherd; Lyrics: Thayil, Cornell   ©2012 Republic Records

·        BY CROOKED STEPS Music: Cameron, Shepherd, Thayil; Lyrics: Cornell   ©2012 Republic Records

·        TAREE Music: Shepherd; Lyrics: Thayil, Cornell   ©2012 Republic Records

·        ATTRITION Music: Shepherd; Lyrics: Shepherd   ©2012 Republic Records

·        ROWING Music: Shepherd, Cornell; Lyrics: Cornell   ©2012 Republic Records

Echo of Miles: Scattered Tracks Across the Path (2014)

·        HIV BABY  Music: Shepherd, Thayil; Lyrics: Shepherd  ©1990 Sup Pop 

·        SHOW ME  Music & Lyrics: Shepherd, ©1991 A&M

·        EXIT STONEHENGE Music: Cameron, Shepherd, Cornell, Thayil; Lyrics: Cornell  ©1994 A&M 

·        JERRY GARCIA’S FINGER  Music: Shepherd, Thayil, Cornell, Cameron ©1995 A&M 

·       NIGHT SURF Music: Shepherd ©1993 Ericksen House

·        A SPLICE OF SPACE JAM Music: Shepherd, Thayil, Cornell, Cameron ©1996 A&M 

Shepherd is perhaps best known to Soundgarden fans as "the angry one," as evidenced by his stage behavior, where he continuously flips off and spits on the crowd (though some consider it an honor to be spit upon). He and drummer Matt Cameron are both members of Hater, where Shepherd gets a chance to flex his guitar and vocal muscle, more so now that they're not busy with Soundgarden; they are also both members of the Wellwater Conspiracy. [source]

Hater (1993): vocals, guitar

·        "Convicted", song recorded for Hempilation: Freedom Is NORML (1995) - vocals, guitar

·        The 2nd (2005) - lead vocals, guitar, piano

HBS

·        In Deep Owl (2013)

Wellwater Conspiracy

·        Declaration of Conformity (1997) - vocals

Collaboration with Mark Lanegan

·        I'll Take Care of You (1999) - bass

·        Field Songs (2001) - Acoustic & Electric Guitar, Bass, Piano, Vocals, Lap Steel Guitar; wrote track 10: "Blues for D"

Ten Commandos

Supergroup involving members of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Queens of the Stone Age and Off!

Ten Commandos started early August 2008 after a conversation between Matt Cameron (Soundgarden, Pearl Jam) and Alain Johannes (Eleven, Queens of the Stone Age) following a memorial concert for Natasha Shneider (Eleven). Alain had the idea to write and record songs using Matt and Ben Shepherd (Soundgarden, Hater) as the rhythm section. The three convened in Seattle in late 2008 and for 7 days wrote the bulk of the record. Matt and Alain‰'s schedules cleared up enough in the spring of 2014 to finally finish the songs in Seattle. With the addition of Dimitri Coats (OFF!, Burning Brides) on guitar, the band entered famed Studio Litho with engineer Don Gunn. In the summer of 2014, the band finished recording at studio 11ad in Hollywood CA. All members contributed in the writing of the record. Guest musicians include Mark Lanegan (Staring Down the Dust), Nikka Costa (Come) and legendary guitarist Peter Frampton (Sketch 9). For sale [here].

·        Ten Commandos (2015)

Want to hear all these songs? Here is a complete Soundgarden Ben Shepherd Spotify Playlist

Go to live.ChrisCornell.com and click the Find Your Show button. Search shows by City to see the setlist, and add the setlist as a Playlist by connecting your Spotify or Apple Music account on the page. The playlist will automatically appear in your account.

Cover songs seem to add the original artist’s version to the playlist.

Chris Cornell’s “When Bad Does Good” is nominated for the 2018 Grammy for Best Rock Performance. The other nominees are Greta Van Fleet, Halestorm, THE FEVER 333, and Arctic Monkeys.

Chris Cornell has previously been nominated as a solo artist for Can’t Change Me and The Promise.

"For me this video represents my dad and all the art he created throughout his life and what his music meant then and what it means now"  -- Christopher Cornell

Music Video Directed By Kevin Kerslake

YouTube channel Concert Matrix Reloaded posts tons of rare Soundgarden, Chris Cornell, and Audioslave videos, including some full show bootlegs that have not been previously posted.

Watch/Download the YouTube videos below in [mostly] chronological order. We will also be incorporating the clips and shows into our Toy Box and Shows pages.

Temple of the Dog Bill Graham Civic Auditorium - San Francisco, CA 11.11.2016 Download

Soundgarden Sleep Country Amphitheater - Ridgefield, WA 08.29.2014 Check Back For Download

Soundgarden Guitar Center Sessions - 2014 Check Back For Download

Soundgarden Jones Beach - Wantagh, NY 07.09.2011 Download We were at this show and have photos posted here

Audioslave Fiddler’s Green - Lollapalooza - Greenwood Village, CO 08.13.2003 Download

Chris Cornell The Paramount - Seattle, WA 02.07.2000 Download

Chris Cornell performs “Can’t Change Me” on The Late Show with David Letterman in 1999 Download

Soundgarden Palavobis - Milan, Italy 09.26.1996 Download Video From This YouTube (Check Back) Download DVD Format Download 2nd format we already had up Download FLAC Audio Download WAV Audio

Soundgarden ”Searching With My Good Eye Closed” - MUCH Music 1992 Download

Temple of the Dog Irvine Meadows - Irvine, CA 09.13.1992

Soundgarden Hippodrome de Vincennes | France 06.06.1992 Download

Soundgarden Trocadero | Philadelphia, PA 05.10.1992 Download First Version | Download Second Version (check back)

Soundgarden The Warfield | San Francisco, CA 04.19.1992 Check Back For Download link

Soundgarden Capitol Theater - Olympia, WA 09.1991 Check Back For Download

Soundgarden Philipshalle Düsseldorf - 04.16.1990 Download

Soundgarden Vallerano - Bologna, Italy 06.08.1989 Check Back For Download Link

Kim Thayil on New Chris Cornell Box: ‘The Main Thing Is to Represent His Versatility’

With the release of a new career-spanning Cornell box set, the Soundgarden guitarist explains how the track list came together and shares memories of his late friend

Article: RollingStone.com Author: CORBIN REIFF Photo: Jim Dyson/Getty Images

“There’s a lot of things about Chris [Cornell] that people don’t know,” Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil tells Rolling Stone. “He didn’t bring a lot of baggage. Meaning, he didn’t carry a lot of things or materials or relationships within his life. He was a little bit independent of that. He traveled lightly.”

It’s late October, and Thayil is slumped on a black leather couch in the green room of the Metro club in Chicago, gamely sharing memories of his longtime friend and bandmate. He’s just come offstage after running through a tight soundcheck with the MC50, Wayne Kramer’s all-star MC5 tribute band, ahead of a barnburner of a show a few hours from now. Almost 29 years ago to the day, he was in this exact same room along with Cornell, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Hiro Yamamoto while Soundgarden were touring in support of their album Louder Than Love.

The reason Thayil is opening up is because of a new four-disc, career-spanning box set simply titled Chris Cornell that the singer’s estate will issue on November 16th. Now available for preorder, the set features 88 songs that show off the full breadth of Cornell’s incredible musical life from his earliest beginnings with his iconic band Soundgarden to the one-off supergroup Temple of the Dog, his heady years with Audioslave in the early 2000s, and the whole span of an eclectic solo career that saw him writing James Bond theme songs and collaborating with hip-hop producer Timbaland. There’s also a bevy of unreleased live cuts, including a touching duet with his daughter Toni on Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” recorded at the Beacon Theater in New York.

As Thayil explains, the goal going in was to capture, “the breadth of his career, and the large spectrum of stylistic approaches to songwriting and the growth that was shown.” He added, “Obviously Chris isn’t there to put in his two cents, so we have to try to appraise what his feelings and sentiments will be. There are some cases where I remember distinctly that Chris didn’t like this song, or he didn’t like this record, or he didn’t like this particular version, so it’s like, ‘Let’s don’t use it.’”

Opening with “Hunted Down,” the very first Soundgarden single released by Sub Pop Records back in 1987, the collection winds through the many twists and turns Cornell took through his artistic life in a largely chronological format. You can listen in real time as his skills as a songwriter refine and develop. “The lyrics get a little bit more sophisticated, I think maybe a little more poetic,” Thayil notes of Cornell’s progression. “Maybe in the early days it was a lot of songs about dogs and the sun, you know?”

Though Cornell wrote most of Soundgarden’s lyrics — “It makes sense for the singer to write the lyrics, especially if you’ve got a great singer,” Thayil says — and a lion’s share of the songs, they were always a collaborative band. Even as Cornell became more confident in his own abilities as a songwriter and would compose fully realized demos on his own — his early, home-recorded version of “Black Hole Sun,” for instance, sounds shockingly similar to the final version on Superunknown — he typically left room for the other members of the band to add their own spin.

“He liked to be a completist, and be a complete author, but he left the solos and the color parts [open] ’cause he always knew that maybe there’s something that’s missing there,” Thayil says. “I would come up with something or [bassist] Ben [Shepherd] would come up with something or Hiro, or Matt.”

Just like anyone, Thayil has his favorite Cornell songs, like the Ultramega OK cut “Beyond the Wheel,” which sadly didn’t make it onto this set. “I think it’s pretty brilliant,” he says. “Psychedelic, heavy, a little sprinkle of evil.” He’s also very partial to “Rusty Cage,” which did make the cut. “There’s something about the guitar riff there that’s really imaginative, and the arrangement is not a verse, chorus, verse, chorus arrangement. It’s kind of like this A chorus and then this B section and it ends with this other entirely different riff.”

Beyond his songwriting, one of the most mesmerizing aspects of Cornell’s artistry was his ability to adapt his otherworldly voice to fit different moods on different songs. From the banshee wails on Audioslave’s barnburner “Cochise” to the subdued and sulky Singles-soundtrack solo cut “Seasons,” he knew exactly how to use his instrument to wring the most amount of emotion from a given piece. For instance, not many rock or metal singers are capable of pulling off something as gorgeous and understated as the rendition of Schubert’s immortal “Ave Maria” included on Chris Cornell. “I think the main thing is to represent his versatility,” Thayil says.

Cornell was also a natural at creating compelling re-interpretations of other people’s songs. There’s his husky take on Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Baby (Land of the New Rising Sun),” the simmering version of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” the soaring rendition of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and of course Soundgarden’s inspired spin on the Black Sabbath classic “Into the Void,” where Cornell substituted Ozzy’s lines for a speech written by 19th-century Native American leader Sealth that fit the same meter.

For Thayil, a huge consideration when picking out the tracks for the box is how they might be viewed now given the nature of Cornell’s death. “One of my concerns was just making sure there weren’t any difficult lyric or themes. Just keep that off,” Thayil says. “There’s lyrics, or titles that may not be appropriate in this context. That might be difficult for friends, family.” That presumably meant that Superunknown cuts like “The Day I Tried to Live,” “Like Suicide” and Down on the Upside standout “Pretty Noose” were left out of the discussion entirely.

Because of the darker content of a lot of Cornell’s writing, many people got a sense of him as a brooding loner, but that’s not exactly the guy that Thayil remembers. “He was like a normal kid,” the guitarist says. “Very funny and very fucking goofy.”

Another consideration was to make sure that the contents of the comp stayed out of the way of some future projects that might eventually see release, including some new, unheard Soundgarden songs the band was refining at the time Chris died. “We were working on an album before everything came to a head, so we have some pretty strong demo material that we’re still trying to finish developing and accessing some of the recording material, to be able to flesh it out,” Thayil says.

If “When Bad Does Good,” the one unreleased studio song included on this set, is any indication, Cornell’s songwriting chops were only growing sharper as he grew older. You can thank Cornell’s friend Josh Brolin for the song’s inclusion here. The actor reminded Cornell’s widow Vicky of the song and his love for it after the singer had sent it to him to get his take on it. Written, recorded, produced and mixed by the singer himself, it again demonstrates the completist tendencies that Thayil alludes to. It’s a particularly powerful final statement from the singer-songwriter, with a clear message of hope.

Though Soundgarden has already put out a ton of unreleased archival material in recent years, as on the 25th-anniversary box set for Badmotorfinger, the 20th-anniversary box set for Superunknown and B side collection Echo of Miles, there’s still some tantalizing material left in the vaults. That might include the fabled 15-song cassette tape that comprises the earliest recordings the band made, even before their debut recorded appearance on the Deep Sixcompilation in 1986, when Cornell was still on drums.

“In terms of audio quality, that’s all 4-track stuff that we did in our basement,” Thayil says of that particular set of songs. “It’d be like bootleg-quality type stuff. But I think fans would appreciate that. At some point we’ll do that. That’s three-piece stuff, me and Chris and Hiro.”

“He was a really good drummer,” Thayil notes of Cornell. “He’s not like Matt [Cameron] but he wrote great as a drummer. I think so much so that Hiro and I entertained the idea of getting another singer so that Chris continued to write with us on drums. But Chris really want to get up from behind the drum kit, so he brought in a friend of ours, Scott Sundquist, on drums. It freed him up, and he got to do all the singing.”

Though there really isn’t a future for Soundgarden without Cornell, Thayil remains in touch with both of his other ex-bandmates on a pretty regular basis. In fact, he recently joined Cameron with Pearl Jam onstage at Safeco Field in Seattle, and the drummer has also played several gigs this year with MC50. The trio also memorably reunited in early October for the unveiling of a bronze statue of Cornell just outside the Museum of Popular Culture in Seattle along with the singer’s wife and three children.

“I talk to Matt all the time. We text, we’ll go out to dinner together with family,” Thayil says. “Ben and I will text out of the blue. We have so many mutual friends in common that we tend to cross over and see each other.”

Whatever may become of the recordings Cornell left behind, Thayil is determined to remain involved to help oversee them. “I’m gonna do the stuff that I’ve always done which is basically oversee the catalog, and the whole band would participate in that to some degree,” he explains. “But a lot of the time it’s kind of been my focus and concern from day one.”

Kim Thayil talks Soundgarden’s future, playing with rebooted MC5 — his ‘favorite band ever’

Author: Michael Rietmulder Article: Seattle Times

Back in the mid-’70s, Kim Thayil was a Chicagoland teen listening to bands like Kiss and Aerosmith, and whichever other hair-flipping rock bands were featured in Creem and Circus magazines. Throughout the pages of those once-revered hard-rock chronicles, he discovered references to bands like the New York Dolls, the Stooges and MC5. It took several months, but the future Soundgarden guitarist eventually turned up a used copy of “High Time,” the last studio album from recalcitrant proto-punk greats MC5.

“I find this and it’s different,” Thayil says. “This is much wilder. This abandon in this music, it’s more dangerous. There’s elements of chaos and a little bit sinister. There’s a political component. The lyrics aren’t as vacuous as the rest of what would have been called heavy metal or hard rock then.”

It was a “significant point of passage” in Thayil’s musical education, and 40 years later the guitarist — who has similarly influenced another generation of musicians — finds himself playing with a reincarnated version of the Motor City Five to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its seminal “Kick Out the Jams” LP, playing the live album in its entirety. Aligned with the White Panther Party, the Detroit agitators — who received their fourth nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this week — laid an unruly, politically charged blueprint in the late ’60s that would inform some of the earliest punk bands.

For this anniversary run, founding guitarist/author Wayne Kramer hand-picked a lineup featuring Thayil, Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, Marcus Durant of Zen Guerrilla and Faith No More bassist Billy Gould (who replaced King X’s Doug Pinnick in July). Soundgarden and Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron has joined the band, billed as MC50, for a dual-drum assault on select dates, including their Oct. 16 gig at the Showbox. L.A.’s Starcrawler and Olympia punk vets Fitz of Depression open.

Though he hadn’t heard from Kramer in a while, Thayil sat in on a few songs when an MC5 reunion tour (featuring Mudhoney’s Mark Arm filling in for the late Rob Tyner on vocals) hit Seattle more than a decade ago. Thayil contradicts himself a bit describing his decision to join the MC50 tour, calling it an “obvious no-brainer” but admitting it required some thought. After the death of his friend and Soundgarden mate Chris Cornell, Thayil wasn’t sure if he was ready to make a creative and emotional commitment to another group.

“I think if anyone else had called I would have declined,” Thayil says. “But because it was the MC5, which is my favorite band ever, and that opportunity was there, I had to say yes.”

Seattle fans got a taste of what the Thayil-Cameron connection can do with MC5’s incendiary material when Thayil joined Pearl Jam for a punchy “Kick Out the Jams” cover during the second of the band’s Home Shows in August. As much fun as they were clearly having on stage, Cornell was on everyone’s minds that night, with Pearl Jam covering his low-rumbling rarity “Missing” and Thayil sporting a T-shirt with the late singer’s visage. In many ways it was like “being with the Soundgarden family,” Thayil says, noting both bands share many of the same crew members.

“I couldn’t ask for a more special environment to play in Seattle, to play with my friends,” he says. “We had our family and friends there with us. The whole context was very warm and wonderful and loving.”

As for Soundgarden’s future, Thayil says more releases are in the works. Thayil is managing the band’s catalog, working with Sub Pop on possible compilations, live albums and other unreleased material, as well as discussing potential projects with A&M. While Thayil plans to continue making music with Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd (among other friends), writing or touring under the Soundgarden banner again seems doubtful. “No, I don’t think that’s anything we’d give reasonable consideration to at this point,” Thayil says. “When I say ‘at this point,’ I mean perhaps ever [laughs].”

Pressed for more, he adds: “I don’t know really what kind of thing is possible or what we would consider in the future. It’s likely nothing. The four of us were that. There were four of us and now there’s three of us, so it’s just not likely that there’s much to be pursued other than the catalog work at this point.”

But for now, Thayil’s having a blast touring with MC50 and looking forward to playing a hometown show, which he says are always “a little bit nerve-wracking.” Like most everyone in the Seattle music scene, Thayil has fond memories of the Showbox, seeing and working countless shows there in the ’80s when he worked at KCMU. And of course, there was that infamous Soundgarden reunion in 2010, when the quartet performed together for the first time in 13 years.