Heavy and melodious as always.
It took as long as the intro of the second song of the evening to bring home all the memories of Soundgarden and the early 1990s. Yes, around the same time when Britpop was kicking off and Oasis were making an early play to steal this impressionable writers heart, there was another band whose ear for melodies was combining with some heavy guitars and drums. Soundgarden may have lacked in comparison to Nirvana but they had an edge over many of their grunge rivals and the fact that they seemed to have taken a lot from The Beatles, with regards to the melodies and choruses, was a key part in their charm, even if their heaviness at times won them more plaudits. As 'Outshined' kicked in, it was obvious there was going to be a fair bit of nostalgia on show tonight.
From looking around the venue, the variances of age and people indicated the variety and differences in Cornells history with as many people cheering and hollering at the Bond theme as the cries for Temple of The Dog.
With no support act, a set time of over 2 hours allocated Cornell plenty of time to trawl his catalogue and its unlikely the choice of songs left any fan too troubled at a large omission.
At times the band seemed muted, perhaps due to the sound set-up or perhaps done deliberately to emphasise the vocals of Cornell. Theres no mistaking that Chris Cornell holds one of the most distinctive and characteristic voices in rock, and it shined again in Glasgow but his backing band also showed their mettle throughout.
Throughout the night, each member got their own moment in the spotlight and Cornell was quick to point the praise at them, even if bass player Corey McCormick did spend most of the evening involving the crowd with handclaps. The dual guitar leads of Yogi Lonich and Peter Thorn were of a high standard all night and when you consider the quality guitarists that Cornell has worked with in the past, it must be a hard task to live up to.
A drum solo is the last thing this writer wishes to hear but Jason Sutters climactic effort was rapturously received by the crowd and it wasn't the worst of its genre, if you're a fan of this type of thing, theres plenty of footage of it on Youtube.
For all that, it was still about the front man and it was no surprise when the band trooped offstage to allow Cornell a mini-solo acoustic slot, which was well received but perhaps fractured the momentum a little bit. In trying to cover every area of his career, and by having a set-list which changed every night what Cornell may have been adding in spontaneity he may have lost in building stage dynamics.
The cover of Michael Jackson's 'Billie Jean' was surprising, and in all honesty, slightly underwhelming. A slowed down version of the song may have allowed Cornell to once again show off his pipes, and who knows, there may have been a special reason for Chris to cover that track but it just never clicked. Whacko Jacko does have an formidable back catalogue but theres certainly something off about the man that can leave a bad feeling and it just felt like a wasted track, particularly when Cornell had so many of his own songs left unplayed.
And its more annoying when it was probably the weakest song of the night but that aside, the evening was a shining advertisement for the career of Chris Cornell.