“Be Yourself”
from the album Out of Exile
2005
[iTunes]
It’s a Wednesday night in Hollywood, and thousands of screaming fans are packed into a block of the Walk of Fame to see Audioslave storm an outdoor stage.
Black-clad teenage boys and wild-eyed girls break down barriers and struggle with police as the hard-touring L.A.-based quartet — former Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell and three Rage Against the Machine expatriates — roar through old hits and new tunes from their sophomore album, Out of Exile.
Tan, tattooed, short-haired and lithe, Cornell joyfully yells out, “Let me see your fists in the air!” Guitarist Tom Morello, wearing a baseball cap bearing the word UNITE, pounds out the catchy opening riff to the band’s new single, “Your Time Has Come.”
For Audioslave, it certainly has.
The concert, organized by talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and taped for an MTV special and music video, followed a historic event: On May 6, Audioslave played a free show in Cuba, the first American rock group to perform in that country in 26 years. It was an honor Morello’s former band, politicos Rage Against the Machine, always discussed, but never experienced as reality.
“There were many roadblocks to keep Rage from playing Cuba, and some of them were generated by government bureaucracy, and some were generated by internal band conflict,” Morello, 40, said by phone just before a sold-out show in Mexico City.
“Having 70,000 people singing along to us on a Havana night was amazing,” he said. “I saw people throwing messages onto the stage. I saw them mouth the same words time and time again: ‘Thank you.’ “
With Out of Exile hitting stores late las month and the hopeful single “Be Yourself” already topping Billboard’s rock charts, Audioslave is on the verge of a significant rebirth.
In 2002, the band emerged from the rubble of Rage Against the Machine, a headless trio minus rapper Zach de la Rocha, who fled for solo projects that never materialized. Soon after, the fusion of Cornell, 40, and Rage alums Morello, 37-year-old bassist Tom Commerford and 36-year-old drummer Brad Wilk resulted in Audioslave’s self titled debut.
Amazingly, the group had not yet played a show. Since then, however, they’ve done hundreds.
Out of Exile propels forward from where the band’s first album left off. Twelve tightly wound tracks broaden into schizophrenic guitar solos, frantic beats and Cornell’s bluesy vibrato, which is marinated in age and experience and sped up into a howl or mellowed to a melodic shine.
“I’m really proud to say that this is the first record in my career where I can swear on my mother’s grave that there’s not one song on there I don’t like,” Commerford said by phone.
“We recorded 23 songs in about two weeks,” said drummer Wilk. “For the first Audioslave record, we were in the studio working on arrangements all day. We took so many takes. This record ended up being more spontaneous.”
Recorded by sound engineer Brendan O’Brien, the knob-twister behind Rage’s Battle of Los Angeles and Evil Empire, and produced by bearded maverick Rick Rubin, Out of Exile also relies on the warmth of non-digital recording devices, versus Audioslave’s less sonically explosive debut.
“I think this album is 100 steps forward,” said Rubin. “The first record was really a studio project. Now they’re really a band.”
Cornell underwent rehab before recording Out of Exile and quit smoking a few months ago. He wrote most of the album’s lyrics on the patio of Rubin’s Hollywood Hills home, just down the street from the house where he lives with his pregnant wife, Vicky; their 7-month-old daughter, Toni; and his daughter from a previous relationship, 5-year-old Lily.
“My lifestyle has transformed after many years of drinking a lot, isolating myself a lot and going into long periods of depression,” said Cornell. “I couldn’t think of more things I could change. That came out in the lyrics.”
“Dandelion,” for instance, pays homage to his daughter Toni in Cornell’s new Bono-esque falsetto. And the powerful punch of “The Worm,” a Molotov cocktail of drum bursts and tweaked- out guitar, surges from past scars to present-day safety and being “reborn.”
For Audioslave, domesticity is just a part of growing up. Three out of the four guys have wives, two have small children, one is engaged and everyone forgoes booze for water and warm-up exercises.
“You don’t want to have to rely on some green Mohawk,” said Commerford. “I’m a father and I love my family and I love my job, and I’m very excited to play for a living. Everything is perfect.”
“Knock on wood, I still hope I have a lot of years in me,” said a laughing Wilk. “I want to play until I’m dead!” ~ Solvej Schou, Associated Press
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