Soundgarden: News, History & Updates

Soundgarden Biography by Matt Pinfield

Exclusively for Alternative Nation

They’re one of the greatest rock bands to come out of the 80s and 90s, certainly. I love Soundgarden. I’ve been shown up with all of them — you know, you remember I did the album special for Down on the Upside, and then 17 years later when they came back, I did the one for King Animal when they reformed.

So I’ve had a long-term relationship. I was close with Chris Cornell, and I’m friends with Matt and Ben and Kim. I love the band so much. I think that they were inventive, innovative. I’m grateful to have been in a small way part of Soundgarden’s history.

This is so overdue because they are such an important band in my life — as a fan and as a person who had an opportunity, and still do — I still play them on the radio all the time. But I mean, they deserve to be in there and they deserved to be in there for a while.

I mean, let’s face it — Chris Cornell is one of the greatest rock singers of all time, and he’s definitely in that list of the top singers ever. A lot of people felt that way, and I’m pretty sure Freddie Mercury probably would have felt that way as well if he was still alive. But no, I think Soundgarden are such an important band. They were inventive. The way that they created songs with interesting time signatures, and the fact that there is just so much talent. Speaking of groove — that I had mentioned before — Soundgarden had that deep groove.

It was powerful, it was heavy, it had sections, it had everything. It was just super. To me, they were one of the most important bands of the 90s, and the late 80s obviously when they were getting their footing, and being one of the first bands obviously to be signed out of Seattle.

It was so important to me to see Soundgarden get in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I can’t believe Alice in Chains isn’t in there either. They need to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame too! But Soundgarden are long overdue. And talk about a band where every guy in the band wrote songs and threw in some of their parts. I mean, everybody was such an intricate part of the creative process that made up the sound of Soundgarden. So it’s just a beautiful moment.

Interview conducted by Greg Prato for Alternative Nation.