Ben Shepherd: Soundgarden Lives On

In April 2025, when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its upcoming group of honorees, it was no surprise that Soundgarden was on the list. With a loyal fanbase that is still expanding even after the 2017 passing of frontman Chris Cornell, the band was originally nominated in 2019 but failed to get the nod. For Ben Shepherd, the recognition is bittersweet, as both his grief over Cornell still weighs heavily on him, and he despises what he refers to as the “politics” of the process for these types of engagements. “As a kid I was always against the Hall of Fame, thinking that kind of thing was just for sports and stuff, not music or art. I wanted to go in as the band who burned it all down. I was a young, rowdy, idealistic jackass who had no regard for authority. It was just about the music and nothing else. Awards and accolades didn’t mean a whole lot to me.”

But in reflecting on the legacy and the influence of what his music means to people, Shepherd, now 57, sees the upside of solidifying Soundgarden’s place among rock royalty. “I do love that it’s an honor for the fans and a nod to them. Our supporters finally get their say, and they deserve that. Ultimately, I’m doing this for them. I just never liked being put on a shelf. I mean, this isn’t over; as a band we’re still going, and we have more to say and more happening in the future. We’re not done just because we’re in the Hall of Fame — we’re still playing. This isn’t the end of the road for us.”

The road that he speaks of centers around the unreleased Soundgarden album, containing Cornell’s final vocal tracks, that the band began working on in 2016. Now the remaining members including Shepherd, guitarist Kim Thayil, and drummer Matt Cameron are back in the studio finishing what they started almost a decade ago. Held up by legal disputes and years of red tape, Soundgarden now has the green light to release the album, and the band is currently tracking the temporarily shelved material with producer Terry Date. 

For Shepherd, the process has been cathartic and reinvigorating, once again feeling at home locking in with Cameron’s formidable drumming and finding his space within the complexity of Thayil’s guitar work. He’s always overly self-deprecating about his abilities on bass, but his role as a chief songwriter has produced numerous hits from Soundgarden’s six albums, and his influence on bass players has been noted for decades.

Beyond his humility, Shepherd has always remained quiet when it comes to interviews and public appearances, which is why hearing him reflect now on his life in Soundgarden and love of music is all the more meaningful. Especially coming from a band that has so much more left to say. 

What stage is the Soundgarden album currently in?  

Matt’s drums are pretty much done. Kim goes in and records for a week, and then I come in and record my parts, and we swap back and forth. I’m having a hard time trying to practice the parts at home. It used to be easy for me because I could just plop on headphones or crank it on the stereo, but it’s all digital now so I have to re-figure out how to even rehearse to it. We’re making good progress and have a big portion of the album completed. There’s one song that I need to talk to Matt and Kim about, but it’s ultimately done now. It’s always hard to decide when a track is officially finished in the studio, but as far as the rhythm section goes, we’re finished. Finishing this album totally makes me miss Chris more. 

You must feel his presence while you’re in the studio. Are all of these songs based off what’s left of his vocal work? 

Yeah, we’re taking these ideas that we wrote with him and are finally recording them and completing them. These songs are already set — they’re what we have to work with — because of Chris’ vocal tracks. We’re just filling everything out around them. Even Chris’ scratch vocals are good enough to make an album; his voice was always remarkable. And thanks to these recordings, we can finally finish this record. 

I just stopped and thought, Oh my god — it’s really good to hear Soundgarden again. It went from rough takes and scattered ideas and all of a sudden Kim’s guitars are on there with Matt’s drums, Chris’ vocals, and my bass lines. It’s Soundgarden.

What led to this album getting disrupted when you initially set out to record it in 2015–16?

The last tour we went on interrupted the recording. That was part of the reason why we split in the first place; tours were being planned when we were in the studio working on a record. We wanted to keep working on what we were doing and using the momentum, and all of a sudden we’d have to stop and hop on a bus and hit the road. We didn’t want to be a band who only played the hits; we always wanted to make new music for our fans. I was so pissed off when we got word that we had to stop to hit the road. It didn’t make any sense at all. 

How good does it feel getting back in the studio to finally complete this now?

A few weeks ago was the very first time I got to go in and lay down some bass tracks. I was walking out of the control room to the kitchenette to set down my coffee cup, and they were playing back on a song, and I just stopped and thought, Oh my god — it’s really good to hear Soundgarden again. It went from rough takes and scattered ideas and all of a sudden Kim’s guitars are on there with Matt’s drums, Chris’ vocals, and my new bass lines. It’s Soundgarden. It was such a cool feeling. The one word that summed it all up for me was “mighty.” Kim and I both thought there were no real rocking tracks on this album, but nope. We all got on there and once they got fleshed out, they’re way bigger and more powerful than we imagined. It’s all really exciting. 

What can you tell us about the new material?

The first song we did together, the mighty one — seems when you first hear the demo, it’s not powerful at all. And then when you start playing it you’re like, Holy hell! I blistered my hands trying to play those parts. I was like, Thanks, Cornell. He and Kim always throw some wild riff in there that you have to nail. It’s just intuitive for them. I’ve always been amazed by those two, and that song is just whomping. These songs have been flooring me with how powerful they are. 

I’m having trouble with the timing of the song we’re working on currently. It’s a laid-back track, not a driving, powerful thing. It’s really melodic and trippy. I told our producer, Terry Date, that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do because I didn’t know what Matt heard for it, and I wanted to leave it open. Luckily Matt showed up to the studio after leaving Pearl Jam and he broke down that there is a tiny beat thrown in there that makes the timing tricky. Once he showed that to me, it made sense, and I played a part that worked. I had a couple of different interpretations of what do to, but sitting down with Matt on drums really solidified it. That’s what I miss about the old days, when all of us would be in the studio together when everyone was tracking. 

What is it like when you all get back together in the studio after so many years? 

Even when we weren’t a band when we split up, it was instantly back to the same chemistry when we’re together. It’s all camaraderie and the same knowledge. We all joke around and genuinely like to be together. And all four of us were always writing. That’s another secret advantage of our band: every member always had ideas. Having four songwriters made the album process so much better than having one person with all of the ideas. We always write to each other, and we write songs that we think the other guys will like, [whereas] the fans and outside world are an amorphous thing. We wouldn’t veer too far from who we were, and we stayed with that formula. Luckily for us, people like it. It resonates with people.

Has tracking this album felt similar to recording all of the previous ones?

Aside from Chris not being here, yes. There was one point tracking last week when I turned to Terry and said it was just like the old days, because sometimes I would get lost on the parts and I’d wind up saying that all I wanted in my headphones was the kick, snare, and hi-hat and maybe vocals. That’s how I would get through tricky parts, by locking in with Matt. This process has had me doing all of the things I used to do for Soundgarden sessions. 

There were a lot of legal issues regarding releasing this material. Are you all cleared now? 

Yeah, all of the tape is cleared from that. We went through huge lawsuits even to be able to do it, and I’m just glad all of that is behind us now. 

Do you have any idea when this album might see its release?

Obviously it would be smart to get this out in November, going into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, as a gift to the fans. But nothing is set in stone. It’s taken this long to get to this point, but we do feel the need to get this out to the fans. 

You’ve always been one of the primary songwriters in Soundgarden. How do you approach writing? 

In the old days I always wrote on a classical guitar. I would always play punk rock on it. That’s what I was always drawn to writing on. There are a few Soundgarden songs that I wrote on bass, and over time I’ve been writing on it more. I always try to get a feeling when I’m just rambling on an instrument, and then you let it tell you where it wants to go. 

You’ve always gotten a distinctive bass tone. Tell us about your playing technique. 

I’ve always felt like my fingers were never truly correct for a bass player. You see the master players with perfect finger placement and technique, and they get such an amazing sound like that. My fingers have never made the notes come out of the neck properly, and that’s something that’s always bothered me. If I A/B with somebody else they always sound killer like James Jamerson, but then you get my weirdo version of the shit and it’s all scrawny-sounding. If I sound good on an album, it’s all studio trickery. My hands are usually in an almost claw position, which I know isn’t proper, but it’s worked for me. I like to tuck a pick under my palm so I can hit notes certain ways with fingers or pick. The ignoramus in me used to think that every bass player just plays with fingers because, every picture of John Paul Jones, he was playing with his fingers. But over time I’ve understood that it’s all about the sound, and any way you need to get that, you should do it. And some things just work best with picks. 

The ignoramus in me used to think that every bass player just plays with fingers because, every picture of John Paul Jones, he was playing with his fingers. But over time I’ve understood that it’s all about the sound, and any way you need to get that.

Like so many rock players from the ’90s, you wear your bass low on your body. 

I always wear my bass low because that’s the comfortable position for me. If I raise it high, my elbow and wrist start to cramp up. I’ve always been the guy who wants to keep rehearsing and keep playing music, so I need my gear to be comfortable on me. I would do everything I possibly could to keep my physicality so I can always play. My bass tech is a genius, and one day long ago he told me that I’m too tall and my basses look too tiny on me, so he lowered my strap even more. That made it easier for me to thrum my fingers. 

You have never used a lot of pedals. 

I always just wanted the big sound of the bass and didn’t need anything else. I use a Mesa Boogie V2 preamp and a Dunlop Bass Wah sometimes. For so long there weren’t a lot of pedals made for bass; they couldn’t handle the frequencies or bandwidth of the low end. You can spend more of your time playing with pedals and getting crazy sounds out of them than you would writing songs, and that’s kind of why I never really got into them. I was nervous that I’d turn into a gearhead instead of a player. 

For so long there weren’t a lot of pedals made for bass; they couldn’t handle the frequencies or bandwidth of the low end. You can spend more of your time playing with pedals and getting crazy sounds out of them than you would writing songs.

What is it like playing in a rhythm section with Matt Cameron?

I’ll tell you a trick: If you ever get to jam with Matt Cameron, you’re fine and dandy until you look at him. Do not look at him! Once you even glance up at him, you’ll fuck up because it’ll blow your mind. You’ll lose timing. If you don’t watch, the timing is perfect. But if you watch, you get hypnotized and you space off. Really, you just ride the wave with Matt. You take what you can, you move how you can, and you just know that that fundamental force is there. It gives you absolute freedom to do what you do because you know Matt is just going. He’s so beyond just a drummer keeping time — he’s a force of nature. 

You and Kim have been writing and playing together for decades. What is it like at this point? 

His playing has a weird overcast electricity that nobody else has. Within a note you can tell that it’s him playing. Even with just a feedback swirl, you know it’s him and you know it’s Soundgarden. You can throw something insane at him, and he’ll instantly nail it; you throw any riff at him and he’ll just play it back. But his one is always in a different spot. My one is always in a different spot, too, so we collaborate that way. If we slow things down to show each other exactly what we’re doing, then I’ll never be able to play it again. I have to do it full speed or I’m lost. But he’s just always locked in. You can’t trick him with any riffs; it’s like he’s already been there. He already knows it.  

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the night before we left for the tour, I knew that something bad was going to happen. Something came over me, and I deeply felt like I couldn’t do it. I went around and said goodbye to my family. I could feel it.

Obviously, it was crushing to lose Chris Cornell. How do you remember him now that some time has passed?

I always thought we were going to be weird old men sitting out in the cabin he owned in the woods, laughing about everything. He really wanted to meet my son Noah, and he never got to. He did get to meet him over the phone, which I have a picture of. Then when he died, the very first sentence my son ever said was, “I’m sorry.” That touched me so deeply. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the night before we left for the tour, I knew that something bad was going to happen. Something came over me, and I deeply felt like I couldn’t do it. I went around and said goodbye to my family. I could feel it. We were making the same mistake we always did, which was interrupting making our record in the studio to go play some tour for some reason. 

A lot of emotions must be coming back in working on this music now.

The other day it dawned on me again, on a deeper level, that the minute we’re done with this record and the minute I play my final note on it, does that mean we’re never going to do it again? What does this mean? Without Chris we aren’t Soundgarden. Who knows, maybe selfishly we’ll just keep tracking the record so that we can keep working on it and preserving the moment in time.

What was it like working with Chris while he was around? 

Chris always just let me run free. Chris had an amazing ear, though. If someone bent a note sharp or flat, he could hear that a mile away. Working with him was pretty magical. I always felt so lucky just to be listening to him sing in the room together. One of the last conversations I had with him was right over there in my yard by my car. He asked me what I thought about the new recording, and he told me how excited he was for it. I told him I felt the opposite, that it was the most self-conscious record I’d ever made. Now I’ve either numbed or dumbed myself down to not be so self-conscious about it. I was really worried about everything at the time. We saw how they treated us after King Animal, so I felt apprehensive in releasing this. 

Chris always just let me run free. Chris had an amazing ear, though. If someone bent a note sharp or flat, he could hear that a mile away. Working with him was pretty magical. I always felt so lucky just to be listening to him sing in the room together.

In the early days of Soundgarden, back when you joined in 1990, did you ever imagine you’d reach the heights that you did?

Absolutely. I saw that from the very first show. After the show I turned to my friend and told them that they were going to be huge. Their sound was so much bigger than that room. It was a packed room at that show, and you could just tell that this band was different. I called Kim on the phone a few days after and told him that I knew they were going to make it. Even just watching them walk up to the stage and grab their guitars, and Chris sitting behind the drums, because he played them at the time, it was obvious. 

How did it come about that you first joined Soundgarden?

One day I was skipping school like normal, and I was jumping around in my bedroom with my guitar trying to learn how to play, and all of a sudden my brother Henry was standing there with a skinny dude with long hair and a jean jacket and it was Kim. Kim was really cool, and I asked him if he played guitar and he said he did, so I asked him to tune it for me. My brother was ten years older than me, and Kim was the only one of his friends who would bother talking to me because I was so young. I got to know him, and then I couldn’t believe it because my brother and Kim and some of their friends wanted to start a band and they included me. It never happened, but I stayed in contact with Kim and eventually met Hiro [Yamamoto], who was playing bass in a band with him. One night I was at a Pere Ubu concert when I learned that Hiro had left the band, and Kim asked me if I’d try out as their bass player. The night before, Nirvana had asked me if I’d play guitar for them. They asked me first, so I said I had to try out with them before I could do anything else.

Kim asked me if I’d try out as their bass player. The night before, Nirvana had asked me if I’d play guitar for them. They asked me first, so I said I had to try out with them before I could do anything else.

So you were only playing guitar at the time? 

I mostly played guitar, but one night I borrowed some gear and played with a band at this house we all used to hang out at, and everyone kept telling me how good of a bass player I was. I think it’s just because I wasn’t playing ghost-notes or anything fancy; I was just playing the songs evenly and made sure my tone was good. They were all used to our eccentric bass player friends, who were in the room complimenting my bass playing.

What was your tryout like with Soundgarden? 

I had to borrow a bass from someone who gave me a 1972 Jazz Bass, and I kept missing strings because I wasn’t used to the spacing. But then after I played one of the songs, Matt jumped up and said, “That was awesome!” I couldn’t believe it, because I was a total rookie and thought I did terribly. That bass, though, was the one I ended up using on every Soundgarden recording. It was named “Tree” because it weighed so much. I ended up buying it before I went in for the second audition. That one eventually got stolen along with most of the rest of my gear and around five albums’ worth of material on the machine we were using. I’m still not over that.

Did bass feel natural when you started playing it? 

I took to it a lot immediately. Back then I was trying to learn Charles Mingus bass lines, and Hiro Yamamoto’s, which was hard because he wrote the coolest lines ever but he was always mixed so low that you could never hear what the hell he was doing. I was also huge into the bassist of Black Flag, Chuck Dubowski. Musically, I was always into John Paul Jones and Paul McCartney, but technique-wise I had no idea what the hell to do. Sometimes when I play live, I think, Why would you ever want to play guitar when you can play bass? That thing is a twiddly wand compared to this.

You were part of the storied Seattle music scene when you were coming up. Did it feel special, in that sense, while it was happening? 

Every city in America through the late ’80s and early ’90s had that kind of scene going on, just a different mountain range, different heights. The underground was coming to the forefront. And it was all avenues – film, art, plays, the culinary arts. Everybody was doing what they were doing. It was just that generation of time. For some reason, the media picked Seattle to dump their merchandising names on everything. You know how Carol Kaye doesn’t like the Wrecking Crew name? That’s how I feel about the word grunge. I hate that term. Always have.

For some reason, the media picked Seattle to dump their merchandising names on everything. You know how Carol Kaye doesn’t like the Wrecking Crew name? That’s how I feel about the word grunge. I hate that term. Always have.

You, Matt, and Kim performed last December again with Shaina Shepherd under the name Nudedragons. Can we expect her in the Soundgarden lineup in the future? 

That’s just pure fun. I’m only focused on the studio right now, but we’ll hash out any future plans after that. There have been talks, but nothing has come of it yet. We just want to get this album done correctly and do it justice, which is why it’s smart not to have a deadline. All of the grown-up stuff happens when we’re done mixing, and that includes if we’re going to play it live or not. 

What’s your best advice to young musicians today?  

Just keep playing, man. No matter what. By the time you’re talking to another musician, you’re already involved in it. If you’re just talking music, you’re on the right path. If you’re doing it because you love it, just keep doing it and never stop. If you’re doing it to try to make it your business, I say no. That’s the wrong spirit; you won’t have the tenacity or the endurance. You’re not aiming for some mountain of achievement — you’re aiming for that joy inside. The world is constantly trying to take that away from you, so do whatever it takes to keep that inside of you and nurture it. That’s not some hippy business, either; that’s coming from the son of a drill sergeant. You have to work at it, but you have to work at anything you love. And you will never stop, because if you do, you’ll know that you’re neglecting something that you’re supposed to be doing. Just keep doing it, and get better at it. Become an expert. Approach it like you’re a connoisseur, and do it only for yourself.