Soundgarden Wants to Complete Final Album, But Need Chris Cornell Demos
Soundgarden is in a tough spot. They were recording new music in 2017 when Chris Cornell tragically passed away, but the band still wants to complete that new music with the help of Cornell’s demos. The problem? They are currently unable to obtain those demos.
Guitarist Kim Thayil detailed the issue in a recent interview with Music Radar when he said of potentially releasing new music, “Right now, that’s all kind of stalled. We tried to get this going two years ago, but we’re not in possession of any of the demos that Chris was working on with [Soundgarden’s guitar/bass techs and engineers.] We have copies of them, but what we need are the files, so that we’d be able to overdub and finish the record. We are not in possession of those.”
As for why the band has been unable to obtain Cornell’s demos, Thayil says, “We don’t know. We’ve asked nicely, we’ve suggested that this will benefit all parties, if the band could just have these files, and we could finish the songs we were working on. But there seems to be some confusion amongst various parties as to what that would entail and how that works, and who that would benefit. And it’s been tiring, you know. And we can’t move on until some future date when someone realizes the value of allowing the creative partners to have access to the material.”
Thayil was careful to not mention who exactly these “parties” were, but whoever they are, hopefully they will have a change of heart and hand over the demos so the rest of Soundgarden can complete these recordings.
In the meantime, Soundgarden: Live From the Artists Den comes out this Friday (July 26) and is available for pre-order in multiple formats at ArtistDen.com
