Michael's Number Ones: "Be Yourself" by Audioslave

Michael Trimboli
4 days ago
11 min read

DATE	WEEKS
May 14, 2005	1

It's fucking spooky.

How else can I describe that this will be the second column discussing a band with almost the same trajectory? An all-time great hard rock band parts ways with its lead singer, and the remaining members decide to start a new project with a different singer. They recruit the former singer of a iconic grunge band. The new band scores exactly one #1 hit on my chart, spending only one week there. They break up soon afterwards. The singer goes on to do some solo work, but before any serious consideration of a reunion can happen, he dies a tragically early death. The surviving members then decide to reconcile with the original lead singer.

This column already looked at the story of Velvet Revolver and their #1 song "Slither". There's a couple key differences for me between Velvet Revolver and Audioslave. Velvet Revolver got their #1 right out of the gate, while Audioslave had to wait until their second album. Despite that, I liked Audioslave way more than Velvet Revolver. Audioslave's debut album may not have had any songs that reached the top of my chart, but they came close multiple times. It's also just a seriously great record. I owned all three Audioslave albums on CD. I didn't even listen to Velvet Revolver's first album when I wrote that column last year, let alone when it was released in 2004.

I guess in order to dig into the Audioslave story, we need to start with Rage Against the Machine and their guitarist, Tom Morello. Morello was born in Harlem, the son of a Kenyan diplomat and a white American schoolteacher. Morello's dad disowned him as a toddler and returned to Kenya, leaving his mom to raise him by herself. The two of them moved to a Chicago suburb where Morello's mom taught American history at a high school he would eventually attend.

Morello's time in the mostly white, conservative town shaped his anarchist political views, and he pursued a political science degree at Harvard University, where he graduated in 1986. He moved to Los Angeles after graduation, briefly working for California Senator Alan Cranston, but became quickly disillusioned by the world of politics. He was also becoming a proficient guitar player, and moved around the circles of the L.A. metal scene. He introduced his high school friend Adam Jones to Maynard James Keenan and Danny Carey, eventually forming the band Tool. (Tool's biggest hit on my chart, 2006's "Vicarious", peaked at #10. Keenan is also the singer of A Perfect Circle, whose biggest song on my chart, "Weak and Powerless", peaked at #5 in 2003.)

Morello joined Lock Up in 1988, but after releasing their debut album a year later, the band broke up. Morello was then introduced to Zack de la Rocha and Tim Commerford, with whom he decided to form a new band after a jam session. Drummer Brad Wilk completed the band, naming themselves Rage Against the Machine after a song De La Rocha wrote for a hardcore band he was previously in.

RATM had to be a shock to the system when they came around in 1992. The cover of their self-titled debut album featured a famous photograph of Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức burning himself to death to protest the treatment of Buddhists by the government, which was then anti-Communist and backed by the United States. While the band's pulled no punches with their politics, De La Rocha's rapping and Morello's unique guitar playing gave the band a sound unlike anything you could hear at the time.

Rage's second album, 1996's Evil Empire, went to #1 on the Billboard album chart. The band was booked for an appearance on Saturday Night Live that year in an episode hosted by businessman Steve Forbes, who was running for the Republican presidential nomination at the time. Of course, Forbes is not close to the most odious Republican presidential candidate the show has invited to host, but it shouldn't have shocked anyone that RATM was going to have something to say about sharing the bill with him. According to Morello on the recent SNL 50th Anniversary music documentary, the band hung upside-down American flags on their guitar amps, which were taken down just before their performance aired. Their second performance was cancelled, and the Secret Service detained the band in their dressing room. Lorne Michaels banned them from the show.

1999's The Battle of Los Angeles was another #1 album for the band, and they got bolder with their activism. The band's video for "Sleep Now in the Fire", was directed by Michael Moore and they performed the song in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street without a permit; Moore would be arrested during the shoot. Later, the band tried to enter the New York Stock Exchange, which may or may not have caused trading to be suspended. This all seems like a pretty harmless critique of late-90s capitalism, until you get the brief shot of a guy with a sign reading "Donald J. Trump for President". Trump was publicly musing about running for President in 2000 as a third party candidate, but his campaign never got off the ground. Maybe if he made it to Election Day and got his ass handed to him by George W. Bush and Al Gore, he would've gotten the idea out of his system and would still be hosting Celebrity Apprentice today. For all anyone knows, he might have tilted the election to Gore and we'd be in a very different version of history today.

Despite the success Rage had, things were combusting behind the scenes. It came to a head at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards that September. "Sleep Now in the Fire" lost the Best Rock Video award to Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff". (Limp Bizkit's biggest hit on my chart, "Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)", peaked at #15 in 2001.) Much like Kanye West did nine years later, bassist Tim Commerford gave far too many shits about who won or lost at the VMAs. Commerford protested by climbing scaffolding above Fred Durst and Wes Borland while they accepted the award, despite De La Rocha and Morello urging him not to pull the stunt beforehand. That was apparently the last straw for De La Rocha, who left the band one month later.

The rest of the band decided to press on with a new vocalist, and producer Rick Rubin suggested former Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell. Christopher Boyle was born in Seattle in 1964, the son of a pharmacist and an accountant. His parents divorced when he was a teenager, and he and his siblings all took their mother's maiden name of Cornell. Cornell attended a Catholic elementary school in Seattle, but when he began to ask questions about the religion, his mom pulled him out and enrolled him in public school. Cornell was using alcohol and marijuana as early as 12 years old, and soon dropped out of school and constantly stayed in his bedroom.

Cornell was able to get his life on track when he turned to music. While working in the food service industry in Seattle, he linked up with Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto to form the band that became Soundgarden. Soundgarden was on the vanguard of a burgeoning music scene in Seattle in the 1980s. They released a couple EPs on the now-legendary Seattle indie label Sub Pop before releasing their debut album Ultramega OK in 1988. Soundgarden signed with A&M Records a year later. The band's lineup solidified during this time with Ben Shepherd replacing Yamamoto on bass and Matt Cameron playing drums. (Cameron will eventually appear in this column as a member of Pearl Jam.)

In October 1991, Soundgarden's third album Badmotorfinger was released. This was two weeks after Nirvana's Nevermind and six weeks after Pearl Jam's Ten hit record stores. Soundgarden didn't go supernova immediately the way Nirvana and Pearl Jam were, but the tide was rising so much in Seattle that people were taking notice. Earlier in 1991, Cornell participated in the grunge supergroup Temple of the Dog, which formed as a tribute to Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood, who died the previous year. Once grunge became a hot commodity, people took another look Temple of the Dog's self-titled album, and the anthemic song "Hunger Strike" became a hit on alternative radio.

It was Soundgarden's 1994 album Superunknown that fully realized them becoming one of the tentpoles of grunge. That album sent five singles to alternative radio, and one of them, "Black Hole Sun", became a legit pop crossover hit. "Black Hole Sun" is one of my favorite songs ever. It's psychedelic and nihilistic, with a trippy video depicting the absurdity of living in suburbia. Even though it only peaked at #2 on the Modern Rock chart, it was named by Billboard as the #1 song for the year, the only time to date that that's happened.

Soundgarden experimented with a less heavy sound on 1996's Down on the Upside, which caused some friction within the band. The album was a disappointment compared to Superunknown, and the tension within the band finally boiled over during the ensuing concert tour. In 1997, Soundgarden officially broke up. Cornell started working on solo material after the breakup, and he released the album Euphoria Morning in 1999. He was working on a second solo album when Rubin and the remaining Rage Against the Machine members approached him with another idea.

Cornell and the Rage guys went into the studio in 2001 and cranked out 21 songs during a three-week period. Tom Morello was stunned by the chemistry with Cornell, saying, "It didn't just sound good. It didn't sound great. It sounded transcendent." Despite this, there was a good chance these recordings would never see the light of day. While they were sorting out legal and management issues, Cornell was reported as leaving the band early in 2002. It turned out it was due to the two sides' managers quarreling and nothing to do with the band members themselves. The managers were dismissed, and once the lawyers straightened out the technical bullshit, Audioslave's self-titled debut was released in November 2002.

The first single released from Audioslave was the explosive "Cochise". I first heard the song when I saw the Mark Romanek-directed video one morning on MTV2 and it felt like taking a cannonball to the chest. Everything about it kicks all kinds of ass, from Cornell's piercing vocals to Brad Wilk's concussive drumming. The biggest hit from the album was the second single, "Like a Stone". It's a brooding showcase for Cornell's vocals, and the staccato rhythm of Morello's guitar on the bridge is just brilliant. "Like a Stone" is by far Audioslave's most streamed song on Spotify, closing on one billion streams. Both of those songs peaked at #2 on my top 40.

I played the fuck out of Audioslave in high school. It was the kind of hard rock I really vibed with at the time: heavy but hooky, with intelligent lyrics. Unfortunately, that album was snakebit on my personal chart. The third single, "Show Me How to Live" got as high as #3. The fourth single "I Am the Highway" also ended up stalling at #2. All of those songs are bangers in their own ways, and I would've loved to write more expansively about any one of them.

Audioslave regrouped to work on their next album Out of Exile in July 2004, once again with Rick Rubin producing. Cornell had recently gotten sober and remarried during this time, things which were evident in his songwriting for the album. "Be Yourself" would be the first single released from the record. The song feels similar to "Like a Stone" in its execution, spare and contemplative at first, building up to something heavier later. When I actually spend time dwelling on Cornell's lyrics, they feel like they're reaching for profundity that's out of reach. "Someone falls to pieces/sleeping all alone/Someone kills the pain/spinning in silence/she finally drift away." Someone's getting excited in a chapel yard and someone's laying white roses on a grave. To be yourself is all that you can do.

Cornell claims the song is based on the struggles and tragedies he endured previously in his life, "and wanting to be able to make up for those things and wanting to be able to not be ashamed, all that stuff." I get feeling like you want to go back in time and fix the mistakes you made using the wisdom and experience you gained later in life. The phrase "be yourself" is a cliched platitude, but maybe when Cornell talks about "yourself", he means the accumulated experiences, good and bad, someone has faced to that point. Then again, I wonder if he's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't fully believe.

Even the video for "Be Yourself" feels like its going to the same well as "Like a Stone". The band performs in a bare apartment not unlike the mansion from "Like a Stone". This time, a light show behind the band illuminates them. It's not quite the same, but similar enough that it's easy for your mind to go there. Veteran music video director Francis Lawrence directed the clip. He's already been in this column for Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird" and Aerosmith's "Jaded", and we'll see more of his work to come.

I was very excited for a new Audioslave song to enter the world, and "Be Yourself" debuted at #20 on my chart in March 2005, just the third song to debut inside the top 20 to that point. At first it looked like it would become yet another #2 peak for the band when it got stuck for three weeks behind Green Day's "Holiday", then got leapfrogged by "The Hand That Feeds". Finally, it snuck in for a single week at the top before another band's chart return put a stranglehold on the top spot. We'll get to that one soon enough. Nationally, "Be Yourself" was a sizable hit, becoming Audioslave's second #1 on the Modern Rock chart and reaching #32 on the Hot 100, though today it only has a third of the Spotify plays as "Like a Stone".

Out of Exile is a much more melodic record than Audioslave. It feels like a more cohesive band, but because they don't lean as much on Morello's guitar, the album doesn't feel as intense or vital. They could still kick ass when they wanted to, as evidenced by the second single "Your Time Has Come". The video for that one was shot at a free concert the band played in Havana shortly before the album's release, the first time an American rock band had played in Cuba since the Communist revolution. On my chart, "Your Time Has Come" peaked at #7.

Two other singles made my chart afterward. The treacly "Doesn't Remind Me" got to #10, while the title track reached #16. Audioslave quickly cranked out third album Revelations in 2006, but this time worked with producer Brendan O'Brien. The absence of Rick Rubin was really pronounced, and I didn't really like that album anywhere near the first two. Other fans seemed to agree, as it only got certified Gold. The first single "Original Fire" only got to #20 on my top 40.

At the same time as Revelations, Cornell recorded the song "You Know My Name" as the theme for the James Bond film Casino Royale. The band members denied rumors of a breakup until Cornell announced he was leaving the band in 2007, and Audioslave was no more after that. Cornell went back to working on solo albums, with his fourth album Higher Truth coming out in 2015. One of the singles from that album, "Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart" reached #33 on my chart. He also got back together with his bandmates in Soundgarden, going out on tour and releasing two new studio albums.

The remaining Audioslave members eventually reformed Rage Against the Machine with Zach de la Rocha, appearing at Coachella in 2007. They set out on tour in 2022 and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame the next year. They also collaborated with Public Enemy members Chuck D and DJ Lord, as well as Cypress Hill's B-Real, on the project Prophets of Rage. No one knew it at the time, but this led to the final time Cornell performed with Audioslave, when Cornell made an appearance at a Prophets of Rage concert protesting Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017. On May 18, 2017, after a Soundgarden concert in Detroit, Cornell was found unconscious in his hotel room, and was later pronounced dead of suicide by hanging. He was 52.

Cornell's death was a gut-punch for me. He had been sober for many years, but he always talked publicly about his struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts. For a while, it seemed like he was able to outrun the demons that took the lives of Andrew Wood and Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley. But it wasn't to be. He still managed to impact two different generations of music fans with two distinctly different bands. It's not common for many singers to be able to claim that, but Cornell's voice and songwriting made that very easy. Being himself was all that he could do. Perhaps in doing so, his music made it slightly more easier for me to be myself.