When Soundgarden formed, we were post-punk - pretty quirky.
They're a great audience, kids. They actually respond. They don't have the references that adults have, so everything is immediate. It's always interesting to see what they react to in whatever I'm working on at the moment. And they don't even want to discuss why. That's a lesson to remember: My son doesn't care about why.
I always looked at rock & roll as the voice of regular people, of an economic group not in charge.
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.
Whenever anyone sends me a link to a band, saying, 'These guys sound exactly like Soundgarden,' it's always some super simple sludge riff with a singer that sings high and screechy. And it's really awful.
I used to hate playing Seattle shows.
Rock never meant the same thing to everyone, but when I was growing up in the late seventies, everyone could identify the five, ten bands that formed the center.
When you become a parent, you leave a lot of things behind and refocus, maybe on how simple life really is and what few things there really are to worry about. And everything else can go by the wayside.
It's great when you play to an audience that knows the words to all your songs, and sings them back to you.
Soundgarden was incredibly democratic, and I was really proud of that. I felt like we got along better than most bands we toured with and most people we knew. And at the same time, when you're that democratic and concerned with each other's opinions, you're always concerned with what the other people think.
You can't always make out the words I sing with Soundgarden.
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.
It just doesn't get any more stripped down than going out totally alone and doing songs.
I'm not usually in a talkative mode.
There was a period in my life where most of my musical career was spent in a band that was very aggressive, and there was sort of a wall of volume all the time.