Chris Cornell

It's great when you play to an audience that knows the words to all your songs, and sings them back to you. ”

They're a great audience, kids. They actually respond. They don't have the references that adults have, so everything is immediate. It's always interesting to see what they react to in whatever I'm working on at the moment. And they don't even want to discuss why. That's a lesson to remember: My son doesn't care about why. ”

I wasn't good in school. I didn't do sports. I sat in the bedroom and listened to records. Because the Beatles did whatever they wanted to, I took that as a kid and said, 'That's what rock is.' ”

Radio and TV can still push a band, but things need to be shaken up. There is the Internet, but mostly what I see there is little kids on YouTube playing music. ”

If you're an American kid, you can't help but be influenced by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Rolling Stones because they're always on the radio. ”

My first favorite band that made music important to me was the Beatles. I was a little kid. I didn't know who was singing what song or who wrote what song. ”

You can really walk around a song and completely, if it's a good song, look at it from a lot of different angles. Johnny Cash with Rick Rubin illustrated that perfectly. ”

It's good for me to be involved in different things. ”

Fans should be encouraged that I want to try different things. ”

When you have four guys in a room writing songs, it different. It's great - that's what makes a band a band. Audioslave was great. ”