Guitarists From The United States

"Melody Maker: Did Andy Wood's death and then Kurt Cobain's affect your attitude to drugs?"

"Team Rock: Away from the band [Soundgarden], do you guys still hang out together?"

"No, I think that's the worst f**king thing. I mean, can you imagine having to get up at 4am and sit in a trailer while someone puts makeup on you? Then stand in front of a camera and say the same lines 60 times. I feel sorry for actors and I never want to do it. I stood in front of a camera in Singles and that's about it."

"The rest of the band [Soundgarden] thought it was silly of the press to concentrate on the beefcake when I was writing songs, singing, and playing guitar for the band. Even now, some people will stick a paragraph about my hair in the body of a review."

"We were never looking for a different lifestyle. We weren't doing it for fast cars and big houses and there doesn't seem to be any regulation in terms of lots of model chicks following us around like idiots. It's not like we have to reach back and try to hang on to our roots. We never left them. Our lifestyles haven't changed. Maybe we're making mortgage payments now instead of rent payments, and we own the car we're driving instead of making payments on it, or maybe we're driving a new car instead of a $500 15 year old car. But we're still driving to the same places, we still live in the same neighborhood, we still have the same friends."

"Well, we haven't had what I would understand as the sort of sudden pressure that seems to screw a lot of people up. We've been under pressure for years. Most of the bands I can think of that have had severe problems with success pretty much had their first or second album go over the top, commercial success like we haven't even seen. And for me personally, and to a degree the rest of the band, none of us are really super social in particular. So we're not in situations on a daily basis where being somebody that's famous is going to become really annoying, or you can't go anywhere because everyone recognizes you. I don't go out too much anyway, 'cause I've never really liked crowds or been that comfortable around a lot of people. In that case, I've been really lucky."

"I couldn't do it. I'd go there, and it just made me sick to think about sitting down and applying myself to the shit they were trying to teach me. Not that it's not useful. In a lot of ways, I regret it now, especially in terms of being a writer. I wish I had more skills and knowledge of the language. I have a fairly good vocabulary for how far I went in school, but I always wish it could be better. In a lot of ways, it screwed me up, but I just did not have the attention span for school. My mind would wander, and it would refuse to focus on something that, to me, was devoid of anything exciting or inspiring. A lot of kids really were excited by what they were learning, but I seemed to be a lot better at staring out the window and dreaming."

"That Guns N' Roses video, the one with the dolphins in it ["Estranged"]. A big chunk of the video is Axl [Rose] coming out of this huge mansion on a hill with a bunch of servants wearing white and him getting into this huge stretch and having a motorcade of police wearing white ice-cream-salesman suits. Who the f--- does he think he is going to honestly connect with besides Donald Trump? Who else is going to give a shit about the fact that he can afford that kind of attention? It goes beyond decadence; it's spitting in the face of the people that have put you there. I was offended by it, and I don't get offended by much."

"It was given to me by the late Shannon Hoon, who fashioned it out of a fork he got in Denny's (a US fast food chain) on the first tour Blind Melon ever did, which was opening for us. I really liked it, but I stopped wearing it after he died. Because the other thing I wore was this ring that belonged to Andy Wood, who died. It's like, 'I don't wanna wear these f**king things from people who died.' A girl outside the hotel tonight had a similar fork, and I've had people throw them on-stage. I've seen hundreds of those forks, but it always reminds me of Shannon. They're making them cos they're thinking of me, but really it's him. Which is cool."

"There's always a sense of camaraderie between bands. The only thing that I ever remember that starts to go outside of the normal healthy competition was when Kurt [Cobain] was slamming Pearl Jam. Once you get outside of your local little scene, lot of cases, writers will bait you and lead you down that path as cunningly as they can. I've seen it happen dozens of times. I've had people say, "Well, so-and-so said this about you, what do you say about that?" And they might be misquoting them, or maybe that's not what that person meant, or maybe that person was just in a bad mood. It's provoked out of you. They'll get you in a position where you start firing and they'll throw out little things about different people. But everyone that anyone would know as a successful Seattle band, or even an integral part of the scene, are all friends. Always have been."

"The title came from us being on the L.A. freeway about three years ago. I just started looking at the traffic and realizing there was such an array of vehicles, from Mexicans in f---ed-up Chevys with dents and white guys in f---ed-up pickup trucks to guys with orange sun-bed tans in Porches and limos. And you'd always see these f---ed-up cars on the side of the road. The idea of seeing a couple of limos smashed into one another, I'd never seen that before, and I thought these people in expensive cars - especially the limos where the windows are blacked out and someone else is driving - they seem to have a feeling that they're not susceptible to mortality. During our trip down the freeway, I was talking to this guy who drove a limo, and he said that once this guy was in the back and some supposed vagrant came up and started knocking on the window. The guy opened the door like, "F--- you, you can't touch me, I'm in a limo." And a bunch of other vagrants came up and beat the shit out of the guy, almost killed him. The song describes that sort of decadence and this strange perception that you're so high on the social or political ladder that you're somehow beyond all that. But it's not true."

"I always had a knack for it [music]. I bought a drum kit for like 50 bucks, and within three weeks I was in a band. Not only was I in a band, but people were saying that I was really good. Being someone with a short attention span who didn't have much patience for anything, that was great, 'cause it didn't take much. I could just sit down and do it instantly. I could play a basic rock beat right away, so it didn't require much patience, and that's probably why I ended up doing it. As I got some of the rewards for it, it fueled me to want to be better. Then the rewards thing gets old, and what you really want is to be good and understand it, 'cause you're so enthused by it. That's what got me into all the other instruments and songwriting and singing."

"RockNet: Were you terribly uncomfortable at the recent Grammy Award Show?"

"Have you noticed how Lollapalooza isn't this multi-cultural, multi-sexual, multi-racial event at all? What Perry Farrell never admits is that it's just a slick rock concert with a good name and his ambition is to make a lot of money. Perry has a very good manager. He even has a percentage on the parking. It's a huge draw, and what people don't realise is it's far from being just the 'alternative college' crowd who go. It's very mainstream and very middle class. Even when we did it in 1992 with Ice Cube, the whole audience was entirely white."

"Yes. I battle with that all the time. "Let Me Drown" is probably one of the most disturbing songs I've ever written. Usually, if I write lyrics that are bleak or dark, it usually makes me feel better. That one didn't. It made me question whether it was a song that was all right to play. Should we even do this? It was so negative. But that's the only one I can think of that's like that. Otherwise, it's like watching a horror movie: It makes you feel better after feeling worse."

""Tighter and Tighter" was actually written around the same time as "Black Hole Sun." In fact, I did a demo with four songs on it to play for the band. "Black Hole Sun," "Sounds Like Days," "Tighter and Tighter" and a song called "Anxious." We blew off "Anxious" entirely and recorded "Tighter and Tighter" for the last record. It was the last song we did. It was number 16 and we ran out of studio time. We had the rhythm tracks done and it was just needing vocals and my guitar solos. We just ran out of time. It was falling flat anyway. I changed the arrangement a little bit."

"That shit's really depressing to me. I couldn't watch it. You can't expect to live in some utopia where everybody plays music you like, but it's gotten to the point where noone's playing music you like—at least that's being presented on television... The music channels don't even show much music anymore. They're more interested in documentaries. They're going to start doing documentaries about David Crosby's dog pretty soon."

"I don't know how everyone else feels, but I definitely go through periods of extreme self-confidence, feeling like I can do anything. Perhaps a fan will sense that, like in a performance, and the hero image creeps out. But then someone will say something, however insignificant, or I'll get something in my head and, all of a sudden, I'm plummeting in the opposite direction, I'm a piece of shit, and I really can't do anything about it. That's where 'Outshined' comes from, and why I'll never consider myself a hero."

"Yeah, especially this postmortem trip when people die and then everybody writes about what they felt that person is going through. It's really surprising to me that anyone can think that they have those kinds of insights or spend that much time really worrying about somebody else. I think they should spend more time trying to figure out who they are. That's my whole trip. I can't imagine anybody knowing me through my lyrics, because I don't particularly feel like I know myself. And I have more than the benefit of just lyrics to go on."

"Somebody can sit at home and say, "What does this guy have to complain about?" But at the same time it's a comfortable chair to be sitting in and make those judgments. When all of a sudden you're successful and sought after overnight, you are instantly opened to a lot of sides of humanity that the average person is never going to see. And those can often be pretty disheartening, and it can make somebody pretty lonely."

"I wish I had my dogs with me. We have a white German Shepherd and two Pomeranians. That's one big and two little. We used to have two big and three little. Then one of the bigs ate one of the littles, so we had to give him away. That was hard. We essentially lost two dogs in one four-minute incident. You have a sense of responsibility and a bond with this creature, whether it's a human or an animal, and we've always had an amazing bond with animals. We didn't even know we had that in common when we first got together, because neither of us had any pets. Then I got Susan [Silver] a cat from the pound, and she just freaked out on it. She still has that cat. It sleeps on her chest every night. As time went on, I realized, 'Wow', not only is she a great pet owner, she'd be a great mother'. I've noticed that when I get around human babies, the role of the pets changes. I don't know why. Maybe because looking into the eyes of a baby is different from looking into the eyes of a Pomeranian."

"I've never been big into self-promotion. It's awkward for me. Just seeing my name on a T-shirt freaks me out."

"I try to solve my problems by writing music and recording albums, but you know what's really funny about that? Once the album becomes a success, it doesn't solve your problems. It just gets harder to write the next album."

"Kerrang!: Clare Sharp from Glasgow would like to know what you thought of your mum's appearance in Kerrang! last August [1996] - predicting the future for ten rock stars?"

"Not really. I don't even have enough time to pursue everything I want to do musically. Also, there's a lot of people out there who spend a lot of time trying to act, so I think most of the good acting jobs should be reserved for those people."

"I think Euphoria Morning is an album you can always listen to, even in a couple of years; it isn't dated. That's what I was striving for with every Soundgarden album, something lasting, something you want to listen to, again and again. Since it was always part of my approach it wasn't too difficult to record an album like Euphoria Morning. I didn't have to re-invent myself."

"She was my closest friend. She was the one person, other than my husband, I could turn to in a crisis. There was a lot of resentment when I first came to town. But Patsy was strong-willed and always taking up for me. If it hadn't been for her, I don't think I would have lasted."

"Well, I was born a coal miner's daughter In a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler We were poor but we had love That's the one thing that daddy made sure of He shoveled coal to make a poor man's dollar."

"Yeah, I'm proud to be a coal miner's daughter I remember well, the well where I drew water The work we done was hard At night we'd sleep 'cause we were tired I never thought of ever leaving Butcher Holler."

"Well a lot of things have changed since a way back then And it's so good to be back home again Not much left but the floor, nothing lives here anymore Except the memory of a coal miner's daughter."

"I come from Butcher Holler, Kentucky, and I ain't never forgot it. I'm always making Butcher Holler sound like the most backward part of the United States — and I think maybe it is. I've traveled all over this country, down South and out West, and I ain't never seen anything like it. And I ain't making fun of it, because I'm the most backward person you ever saw. I never knew where babies came from until it happened to me."

"This might give you an idea of how backward we are, but first, to appreciate this story, you've got to know that in eastern Kentucky we say the word "press" instead of "closet." Anyway, one of my best friends is Dr. John Turner, who took care of me when I was younger. Doc swears he saw this patient standing in front of the hospital elevator, looking confused. Doc asked him what was the matter, and the patient said, "Doc, I just seen a nurse get into that press — and when the door opened she was gone!" See, that patient lived in a holler all his life and never saw an elevator before. Myself, I never rode in an automobile until I was twelve."

"Sure, I wanted men to like me, but the women were something special. They'd come around the bus after the show and they'd ask to talk to me. They felt I had the answers to their problems because my life was just like theirs. Of course, it was impossible to find time to talk to each one or to answer every letter that came along. I ain't Dear Abby with nine secretaries answering the mail. Besides, I had a few problems maybe they could have solved for me. Sometimes I think some people were disappointed when they met me and found out I wasn't any smarter or happier than they were. I'm proud and I've got my own ideas, but I ain't no better than nobody else. I've often wondered why I became so popular, and maybe that's the reason. I think I reach people because I'm with 'em, not apart from 'em. It's not the fancy clothes I wear, or the way I fix my hair, and it sure ain't my looks because I don't think I'm anything special. It's the way I talk to people. You can tell when you meet somebody — in their eyes, or the way they stand — if they think they're above you or below you. After I was performing for a while, I got to like being with a crowd. I loved to get right down with 'em, with a long cord on my microphone, if I could. And if I was at a state fair or something, where they put you too far from the audience, I'd say, "This ain't the way I like it.""

"I was born by the river In a little tent. And just like the river, I've been running ever since.It's been a long, long time coming But I know a change is gonna come. Oh, yes it is."

"The moon belongs to everyone The best things in life they're free Stars belong to everyone They cling there for you and for me."

"Another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody, I have some money 'cause I just got paid. How I wish I had someone to talk to, I'm in an awful way."

"Don't know much about history, Don't know much Biology. Don't know much about a science book, Don't know much about the French I took. But I do know that I love you, And I know that if you love me, too, What a wonderful world this would be."

"Oh my baby's coming home tomorrow Ain't that good news, man, ain't that news? Baby's coming home tomorrow Ain't that news, man, ain't that news?"

"Yeah, come on & let the good times roll We're gonna stay here till we soothe our souls. If it take all night long."

"Let me tell you 'bout a place Somewhere up a New York way, Where the people are so gay, Twistin' the night away...Here they have a lot of fun, Puttin' trouble on the run. Man, you find the old and young, Twistin' the night away.They're twistin', twistin' Everybody's feelin' great. They're twistin', twistin' They're twistin' the night away."

"If you ever change your mind About leaving, leaving me behind Baby, bring it to me, bring your sweet lovin' Bring it on home to me Yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah) yeah (yeah)."

"At first I thought it was infatuation But woo, it's lasted so long. Now I find myself wanting To marry you and take you home. Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.You, you, you, you send me I know you send me I know you send me Honest you do."

"Cupid draw back your bow And let your arrow go Straight to my lover's heart for me For me... Cupid please hear my cry And let your arrow fly Straight to my lover's heart for me."

"Folks say that you've Found someone new To do the things I used to do for you. Just call my name, I'm not ashamed, I'll come running back to you.Can't sleep at night, I can't eat a bite. When you were mine I didn't treat you right. Just call my name, I know, I know I'm not ashamed. I'll come running back to you."

"All day long they work so hard Till the sun is goin' down. Working on the highways and byways And wearing, wearing a frown. You hear them moanin' their lives away. Then you hear somebody say:"That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang. That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang.""

"It's summertime and the living is easy Fish are jumping and the cotton is high Your daddy's rich and your mama's good-looking Hush, little baby don't you cry."

"My dad's a beautiful man, but like a lot of Mexican men, or men in general, a lot of men have a problem with the balance of masculinity and femininity--intuition and compassion and tenderness--and get overboard with the macho thing. It took him a while to become more, I would say, conscious, evolved."

"Oh, I think it was like when, you know, Cupid throws an arrow and hits you. First, there was this Mexican band, dressed up with bows and arrows. They were playing some funky weird music,, I didn't know it yet, but it was like Lee Perry, George Clinton, and Sun Ra mixed up, Mexican funky."

"Blues was my first love. It was the first thing where I said "Oh man, this is the stuff." It just sounded so raw and honest, gut-bucket honest. From then I started rebelling."

"I'd sit on logs like pulpits listen to the sermon of sparrows and find god in Simplicity, there amongst the dandelion and thorn"