Jerry Cantrell’s Chris Cornell Rock Hall of Fame Tribute Was About ‘Reaching Out’

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Photos by Dustin Halter for AlternativeNation.net

Photo credit: Dustin Halter for Alternative Nation

Heart singer Ann Wilson discussed her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance with Alice In Chains singer/guitarist Jerry Cantrell in a new YouTube video. She said they did the performance to ‘reach out’ to his loved ones. She also discussed recording her own version of Audioslave’s “I Am The Highway.”

“I really like [I Am The Highway] because it’s strong, it’s confident, it’s spiritual, it’s rock. It’s a song about a person who refuses to be tied down into the mundane, who is constantly looking for freedom and independence on a much more universal scale. Not just the ordinary every day tied down type reality. Some of the words go: ‘I’m not your carpet ride, I am the sky. I am not your rolling wheel, I am the highway.’ So you see what he does there, he says, ‘Okay, I’m not the car, I’m the motion.’

I think that’s brilliant, such good songwriting. I think it showed Chris at his best as a singer too, just great, that wonderful song, passionate, masculine voice that he had, that was just the cry of a soul. You can see that I’m a big Chris Cornell fan, yes we were friends when he was alive in that body, we had a lot in common because we were both singers, and we were both complicated and outsiders in a way. Always thinking up here, never satisfied with normality.

Recently the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, another friend of his Jerry Cantrell, Jerry and I got to cover the Soundgarden song ‘Black Hole Sun.’ It was such an honor, it was like getting to actually reach out to all of the people who loved Chris and just say this is a beautiful song, this was a beautiful soul, and we all loved you. It was a fine moment.”