Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine says that when he first went to the house of Chris Cornell of the Soundgarden and his colleague at Audioslave, he felt that he was entering the house of the Adams Family
Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine recalled Chris Cornell, the late leader of Soundgarden and his colleague at Audioslave, in an interview with the Canadian radio program Q on CBC. “He was a mythical guy,” the musician began by saying, “in real life, he was a super mythical guy.
“I never stopped being a fan of Chris. He was a friend, he was a bandmate, but he was a mysterious guy,” continues the guitarist of Rage Against the Machine, recalling the moment when he went home for the first time with producer Rick Rubin.
“He lived in Ojai, an hour and a half from Los Angeles, a place where the sky is always dark, in the middle of the forest, almost as if we were in Transylvania,” Morello describes, “of course Chris lived in the last isolated Spanish castle house on the hill.
The musician says that when they parked the van they saw a long staircase: “the doors opened in the style of the Adams Family, with no one opening them, and Chris appeared, walking down the stairs in a clumsy manner… Rick turns to me and says ‘let’s get out of here’ (laughs). We really thought our souls were in danger.
“I think a significant part of Chris’ artistic genius was intimately connected to those demons that had been with him since he was very young,” Morello continues, “and you feel it in his music, in his lyrics, and in his life. There were definitely nooks and crannies that I never had access to.
The musician praises the “good music” that Cornell, who died in 2017, let the world hear forever. “I think about him every day – even every day.