Soundgarden's "CD Books" by Jon Ewing (Photos & Superunknown Track by Track Commentary)
Originally released in 1994 and now out of print, the Soundgarden CD Books issue, by Jon Ewing features a track by track commentary on Superunknown, and a ton of photos - most of which are the first to show up in a google search.
Let Me Drown
“This is probably one of the most disturbing songs I’ve written,” Chris states. “If I write lyrics that are bleak or dark, it usually makes me feel better. That one didn’t.”
My Wave
“To tell you the truth,” Chris confides, “I sorta was gunning for “My Wave” as the first single. If anyone was driving around anywhere and heard that riff - DUN-UN-NER! DUN-UN-NER! EEEIIRRRCH! - they’d be going, ‘Hey, that’s that new song by Soundgarden,’ and turn it up.”
Fell On Black Days
“It was like this ongoing fear I’ve had for years,” Chris explains. “It took me a long time to write that song. We’ve tried to do three different versions with that title, and none of them have ever worked. Someday we might do an EP! It’s a feeling that everyone gets. You’re happy with your life, everything’s going well, things are exciting — when all of a sudden you realize you’re unhappy in the extreme, to the point of being really, really scared. There’s no particular event you can pin the feeling down to, it’s just that you realize one day that everything in your life is fucked !”
Head Down
Recorded in one take, this is rhythmically and musically one of Soundgarden’s most complex releases, or as Matt succinctly puts it, “a mind fuck !”
Black Hole Sun
“No one seems to get this,” sighs Chris, “but ‘Black Hole Sun’ is sad. But because the melody is really pretty, everyone thinks it’s almost chipper, which is ridiculous.”
Spoonman
One of the songs which, according to Chris, is “lighter-hearted than anything we’ve done before, “ and features a performance by mohican-haired Seattle waterfront busker Artis the Spoonman, who occasionally joined Soundgarden to open for the band on their world tour ! Artis, whose calling card is a little wooden spoon with his phone number printed on the handle, also featured prominently in the ‘Spoonman’ video promo.
On ‘Spoonman”, Ben sings his distorted backing vocals through a Fender Twin Reverb while Chris chooses an old microphone called a Shure Vocal Master. “It’s just a piece of junk from the Seventies,” says Chris, “but it sounds great. I wrecked about seven of them because I was singing up real close to get a grainy, distorted sound from it. There aren’t many mics that can capture the full range of my voice, from low to high.”
Limo Wreck
This track was inspired by a trip on the freeway in L.A. “You’d always see these fucked-up cars on the side of the road,” says Chris. “I’d never seen a couple of limos smashed into one another and I thought these people in expensive cars — especially the limos where the windows are blacked out and someone else is driving — seem to have a feeling that they’re not susceptible to morality. We were on a highway, where you could see more limos than cars, and I had this image of how cool it would be to see a couple, that had just smashed into each other, burning.”
“You get this idea from limos you see on the highway that it’s the president, and normal rules of life don’t apply to them because they’re not in a normal car. But they’re just as susceptible to car crashes and drive-by shootings. The song describes that sort of decadence, and this strange perception that you’re so high up the social or political ladder that you’re beyond all that. But it’s not true.”
‘Limo Wreck’ is particularly distinctive because it is one of only three songs with music written by Matt Cameron. “It’s very strange,” comments Chris. “It’s in a weird time signature and it has a real flow to it. It has a lot of different melodies and moods, and it’s really dynamic too. The bass-line and the guitar lines are almost really swirling, almost kaleidoscopic, but then it just clears out, and there’s this vocal that’s left. It’s hard to describe, but it worked.”
Like Suicide
Strangely impenetrable and much misunderstood, this song was not in fact inspired by human tragedy, as Chris explains:
"I was writing the music to that in my basement when I heard this loud thump from above. I thought someone was trying to break in, so I was going up the stairs to investigate when I heard it again - THUMP!”
“When I got to the door, there was this beautiful female Robin writhing on the ground. She’d broken her neck, flying into the window. It was obviously broken, flipped back, but she was still breathing. So I went and found this cinder block and smashed her head with it. Then I went back downstairs and I just wrote about the incident. “
“It seemed opportune — someone, or someone else’s misery, can often be a great opportunity for a song.”
“My favorite solo on the record is the one at the end of ‘Like Suicide’,” says Kim Thayil.
(The missing songs don’t have Chris’s commentary, but just some info from the author — any line not quoted is from the author, Jon Ewing)
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