Sony Music/Interscope
Sony Music/InterscopeAudioslave‘s self-titled debut album will celebrate its 15th anniversary this Sunday, November 19. The supergroup combined the vocal powers of Soundgarden‘s Chris Cornell with three members of Rage Against the Machine — guitarist Tom Morello, drummer Brad Wilk and bassist Tim Commerford.
Thanks to Cornell’s presence, Audioslave was the only one of the three bands featuring Morello, Wilk and Commerford — the others being Rage and current project Prophets of Rage — to be fronted by a “traditional” singer. If you ask Morello, that’s no accident.
“Chris was a great artist in many ways, but he was a unique and extraordinary crafter of melody,” Morello tells ABC Radio. “You could literally throw anything at him, whether it was one chord or a riff or any chord progression, and he would some craft some beautiful Cornell-ian melody out of it, kind of like out of the ether.”
Audioslave spawned the hit singles “Cochise” and “Like a Stone,” the latter of which was nominated for a Grammy. In the wake of Cornell’s death this past May, Morello, Wilk and Commerford performed “Like a Stone” on tour with Prophets of Rage while spotlighting an empty microphone.
“It felt healing, in a way, to have this kind of communal mourning and communal celebration of a great artist and a great friend,” Morello says.
Following their debut, Audioslave released two more albums — 2005’s Out of Exile and 2006’s Revelations — before breaking up in 2007. The band reunited in January 2017 for a one-off show, and Cornell died four months later.
“It was awesome to have shared the stage with [Cornell] one last time,” Morello says of that gig.
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