At their very first gig Audioslave set a precedent they may never match again.
The superstar bonding of Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and the last three standing in Rage Against The Machine – Tim Commerford, Brad Wilk and Tom Morello – announced themselves to the world with typical gusto.
In fact, the performance was so explosive it caused nearby residents to call emergency services fearing another terrorist attack.
At the time they were filming the video for ‘Cochise’, the opening track on their self-titled debut album.
“It was like a million dollars worth of fireworks out in the middle of a dam off the 405 and 101 freeway here,” Commerford says. “That’s a pretty damn busy thing and people were calling in… they thought it was an al-Qaeda attack in the Valley!”
After Zack de la Rocha left Rage Against The Machine the idea to join forces with Cornell came courtesy of producer Rick Rubin.
It made immediate sense and both parties were enthusiastic about the alliance from the outset. Commerford says that collective faith was quickly rewarded.
“The first day we were together we wrote a song and then we were together for another 19 days and we wrote 21 songs.
“So [to a certain extent] we had our music done after 21 days. Then we went back and re-learnt our songs and condensed them down quite a bit and played them to Rick Rubin. He wanted to hear them in different ways and they got completely morphed into different songs.”
And while proceedings kicked off well, there were some major hiccups to follow. There was a debilitating clash of managers – the RATM camp on one side and Cornell’s people on the other.
Meanwhile, a looming spot on the Ozzfest bill demanded a fast decision on a name for the new outfit… not to mention an actual album. But the band were determined not to be rushed and consequently bowed out of the event.
Fast forward to the Rubin-produced Audioslave and the result is a much more Soundgarden styled rock beast than a Rage Against the Machine effort, despite the signatory hi-jinx of guitarist Tom Morello.
Reflective songs such as ‘Like A Stone’ and ‘I Am The Highway’ are glaring examples of just how great that power shift has been. Just as surprising is the change in the agenda of three-quarters of the band.
“Chris came in the first day, before we played a lick of music, and he’s like, ‘I am not going to be the singer in Rage Against The Machine’. And we totally got that,” Commerford says.
“So us jamming with Chris was always to be a completely new band. But one thing he did say was that he’d do all the benefits we wanted to do.
“We only played 350 shows with Rage Against The Machine in ten years, and you can only do so much work when you play only that many shows… you can only raise so much money for people.
“So with this band the truth will be in ten years time, and I guarantee you there’ll be more than 350 shows. And I guarantee we’ll raise a lot more money for a lot more causes and we’ll do a lot more good at the end of the day.”
Which begs the question. Doesn’t the world desperately need a Rage Against The Machine right now?
“Post September 11 I’ve thought about that, you know. Imagine for a second if we’d stuck to our guns and we did all the same things that we did and we were up there with our Che Guvara and upside-down American flags, and we’re doing our thing post September 11 here in America. It’s not good.
“People here in America are just flat-out blind right now and there’s a lot of name calling and there’s a lot of people getting wrongly accused of things and thrown in jail and there’s just a lot of ill shit going on. It’s like a police state. And to be honest with you, I don’t think Rage right now would have been fun. I think it could have got stressful.
“We were already playing to police officers that were protesting our shows and wouldn’t work the buildings that we were playing in. So what else is going to happen once the whole country’s like, ‘Yeah, fuck those guys!’?”
We’ll never know the answer to that question. But one thing’s certain – Audioslave have arrived and they mean business.
Murray Engleheart
This story appeared in Time Off in 2002 on the release of the first Audioslave album.
