There’s much to admire about this book. At over 400 pages it’s incredibly detailed and filled with quotes from band members, management, fellow musicians and people from the music industry and I for one learned a lot about the band. Where it fell down for me was the author’s constant need to add his own opinions and experiences to the narrative (something he did a lot less of in his great book on Kings X earlier this year), the more I read the more this took away from my enjoyment of the story. They say a picture says a thousand words, the author has four separate pictures in the book with each band member, it could have done without the thousand words and more from him talking about how big a fan of the band he is, the gigs he saw, the gigs he missed, what singles they should have picked, or his opinions on other music genres and singers. There’s a chapter pre- King Animal where the author stops expanding on Cornell’s solo career because it’s a book about Soundgarden, I actually wanted more on Chris and less Greg. In closing he places Chris as a vocalist, songwriter and lyricist on the same pedestal with Jimi Hendrix, Freddie Mercury and John Lennon. I will leave you guys ponder that one.
Richie.
