I just got a copy of the new vinyl double picture disc version of Chris Cornell's Carry On solo album from 2007. I am all over this album, playing on 11 tracks out of the original album's 14, mainly electric guitar (including a couple of maniacal solos such as the barn-burner above, and also on the James Bond thingy "You Know My Name" from the Casino Royale soundtrack, probably the best-known track from the album), plus National steel acoustic guitar on one cut. This picture disc vinyl version contains 2 more tracks hitherto unknown to me which were included on foreign versions of the album (the Japanese cut, for one).
I first met Chris at a memorial service for Jeff Buckley at St. Ann’s Church in early June 1997, shortly after Jeff passed. The two were friends, and Chris later wrote the song "Euphoria Morning" for him. Chris gave me the warmest smile at this very somber event, wherein Jeff’s Telecaster (a loaner from St. Ann’s Janine Nichols) was dead center on the church’s pulpit next to a large urn containing his ashes.
I wrote Chris’s manager afterward to say hello and also to express my willingness to work with Chris on any upcoming project he might be contemplating. I was a big Soundgarden fan, and had once opened for his band solo at CBGB.
I never got a formal reply. But nearly 10 years later, quite out of the blue, I got a call from producer Steve Lillywhite, whose work I'd admired ever since hearing his earliest productions (The Members, Big Country, XTC, and on through Talking Heads and U2). He was at the time heading up the A&R department at Columbia Records, but was still allowed to moonlight as a producer. He told me Chris was eager to have me play on his upcoming album for Interscope, to be recorded in LA with Steve producing—which I readily agreed to
So I flew out there shortly thereafter with my ’64 Strat, ’44 Gibson J-45, and 1921 National steel guitar, and a bunch of effects pedals, for what was supposed to be a day in the studio with Chris and Steve. They were both very warm and friendly, and they proceeded to throw a whole bunch of unfamiliar music at me. There were charts, and also some home demos Chris had made. I’m not a great sight-reader, but I handled everything they came up with with a certain esprit de corps. Chris was impressed, and at the end of the day he came over to my little workstation set up and asked: “Can you be here all week? I love the way you play.” Sure, man!
I worked out my extended revised deal with Interscope, the car rental company, and the hotel they’d booked me into—basically cleared the decks, and went to town in the studio over the next week. Looking back objectively now (haha, how could that be), thanks to this new Carry On double vinyl picture sleeve package, I would give the album a 7 for production, an 8 for creative risk-taking on Chris's part viz, the inventive songwriting, and choice of covers (a doom-laden trawl through "Billie Jean," anybody?), and 9 for his overall vocal performance. Chris possessed the leather lungs of a Viking and was certainly one of the most authoritative and commanding singers I've ever worked with, and that includes Jeff Buckley, Captain Beefheart, Lou Reed, and Nick Cave.
Turning my attention to this objet du disque nearly 19 years on, however, I am not sure that rendering the soupy glop of PVC into picture disc photos of Chris (nice photos...but still) enhances the playback quality much (I have a pretty good sound system)—and may well cause some problems there, like mucho popping and crackling on listening back. And did I mention this package is retailing for fifty bucks? If you're really into Chris and a super fan, he looks pretty damn good on the picture discs and in the gatefold. But if you're into high-end sound, well... Me, I still prefer digital to vinyl (a heretical position I know), mainly because it's a noiseless forever upon playback. Every time you play a CD you treasure, and eventually bequeath to your daisy chain of deadbeat descendants over the years, it's always gonna sound the same to them right till the very end of the line of succession, to the last syllable of recorded time as it were—just as it sounded the very first time you played it. (Although I recall when CDs first reared their shiny little circular heads, there was fear in the land amongst collectors that over the years the playback quality would diminish/drop off/degrade; ie, a limited shelf life. I dunno HOW exactly the CD would be rendered crappy and useless; maybe bits and bytes would drop off the shiny side of the disc all over your carpet like so many motes of dust as time marches on. But lo and behold, the original CDs issued in 1979 by Phillips and Sony still sound as pristine as the day they were first opened and played.)
Vinyl, on the other hand, as we all know, captures the overall analog frequencies of the original source material better than digital recordings of the same, but it is hardly forever, the playback sound degrading further every time you take the album out for a spin, as the stylus plows the vinyl furrow deeper and deeper into the groove until it becomes a noisy rut... But I digress.
This is an excellent album, and I was honored to play on it (and hey, I get no royalties for saying that; I was a gunslinger for hire). And don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia either; the entry for this album makes it sound like I just played acoustic on it. Zeesh!