In 1991, Weapons N’ Roses had been the largest rock band on the planet however a contemporary wave of teams had come alongside making music with a grittier, tougher edge had been paving the best way for a brand new kind of sound, one that might come to be often known as grunge. As a substitute of attempting to distance themselves from these younger upstarts, although, GN’R opened their door. They’d simply launched their expansive double Use Your Phantasm set and had been about to embark on a equally sprawling world tour to accompany it and so they invited Soundgarden to open for them.
On the time, Chris Cornell & co. had been coming off the again of their very own main breakthrough in third album Badmotorfinger. The GN’R tour was the kind of high-profile jaunt that would take them to a different stage, placing them in entrance of a legion of potential new followers, bringing their songs to the ears of hundreds who may not have heard them earlier than. It was a win-win, until, in fact, you had been really within the band. For Cornell, Ben Shepherd, Matt Cameron and Kim Thayil, it became an necessary lesson in how to not act when you hit large success.
They had been doubtful in regards to the assist slot from the off. “After I bought the decision in regards to the Weapons N’ Roses tour, I went to the place they had been,” Soundgarden’s former supervisor Susan Silver defined in Mark Yarm’s important grunge opus All people Loves Our City. “I keep in mind strolling in, I had a field of T-shirts, I used to be so excited: ‘Hey guys! I’ve one thing to inform you! We bought a suggestion right now… to go… on tour… WITH GUNS N’ ROSES!” They didn’t say a phrase. After about 30 seconds – it felt like an eternity – one in every of them stated, ‘What’s within the field?”
For Soundgarden’s outspoken bassist Ben Shepherd, the GN’R world was an entire anathema, the alternative of what he needed his band to be. “I’m a punk rocker, man,” he explains within the e book. I like Black Flag and far more hardcore stuff. That sort of butt rock, I don’t like. I need nothing to do with that sort of world. I’m not a rock star, I don’t like rock stars, and I don’t wish to be round them… the tour was a full-on metallic extravaganza. It was insane. I by no means needed to play stadiums… there we’re, getting uncovered to all these butt rockers, the identical type of people that would attempt to beat me up after I was a punk rocker. I had an enormous animosity in direction of these followers.”
Drummer Cameron added that the run of dates, particularly the goings-on behind the scenes, was instructive for Soundgarden in how bands should behave. “It was an eye-opening lesson so far as how to not tour if you happen to turn out to be profitable,” he stated. “Every man had a bodyguard and so they had been fully wasted the entire time. Axl would make the band wait an hour or two earlier than they went on.”
Cameron stated he remembered one present the place GN’R frontman Rose was threatening to exit and break the band up stay onstage. “There have been a few events like that the place we needed to clear the fuck out as a result of folks had been predicting a riot was going to occur.”
Speaking about his reminiscences of the tour in an interview with Vulture just a few years in the past, the late Cornell stated his principal reminiscence was feeling downhearted at seeing such an enormous band mired in dysfunction and chaos. “With out saying something unfavorable about Axl, what I keep in mind probably the most was Duff and Slash and everybody else being common, candy, heat guys in a rock band that simply needed to play rock music,” he recalled. “After which, like, there was this Wizard of Oz character backstage that appeared to complicate what was probably the most excellent state of affairs they might ever have been in: They had been probably the most profitable and well-known rock band on the planet. Each single present, tons of of hundreds of followers simply needed to listen to songs. For some purpose there appeared to be this impediment in simply going out and collaborating in that. That’s what I keep in mind probably the most. It’s unhappy.”
Soundgarden clearly struggled to maintain their distaste for all of the GN’R circus to themselves – by the point the tour got here to an in depth, GN’R’s crew had begun to seek advice from the Seattle rockers as “Frowngarden”. “Why’d we get known as Frowngarden? As a result of we weren’t social gathering monsters,” determined Shepherd. “We weren’t motherfucking rock stars. We weren’t like that. We had been there to play music. We weren’t there for the fashions and the cocaine. We had been there to blow your doorways off.”
The 2 bands’ respect for one another in some way remained, although. Cornell went on to cowl the plaintive GN’R ballad Persistence, while within the wake of Cornell’s demise in 2017, Axl & co. carried out a rendition of Soundgarden’s basic Black Gap Solar as a part of their stay set.
