Tim Commerford Quotes

'Spoonman' wasn't written for any album. It was just written for fun.

We've never been shy to admit that Metallica is a huge influence in our lives and on our music.

I'll never forget getting my first Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chain records, and hearing that wonderful, beautiful darkness. And the rhythmic intensity, that's what attracted me more than anything else.

I love '90s grunge and punk.

I love Soundgarden, I love Rage Against the Machine, Simon & Garfunkel.

Best two rock voices I've heard in a last few years both have been from grunge bands: it's Eddie Vedder and the other one is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden.

My life would have been different without Paul Stanley or Ace Frehley. They would have to be the greatest on my list as an influence to my life at 11 years old.

And if I'm honest about it, I was obsessed with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. This is like '92, right in the throes of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Nirvana. I think I probably wanted to be Kurt Cobain.

When Soundgarden formed, we were post-punk - pretty quirky.

You can't always make out the words I sing with Soundgarden.

Pearl Jam were a part of my growing up.

This is my own little rock theory: In my mind, Nirvana slayed the hair bands. They shot the top off the poodles.

Soundgarden are good friends of mine.

Two of my biggest musical inspirations are Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell.

Kurt Cobain is one of the reasons I started doing music because I just loved to watch them rock out.

I never really followed grunge.

We never considered ourselves to be a good band or anything, we just thought we were playing for fun and we wanted to play music that sounded like Black Sabbath or Soundgarden or the music we were into at that time.

I write almost all my songs on an acoustic guitar, even if they turn into rock songs, hard rock songs, metal songs, heavy metal songs, really heavy songs... I love writing on an acoustic because I can hear what every string is doing; the vibrations haven't been combined in a collision of distortion or effects yet.

Doolittle was a major influence on the Seattle grunge scene, which emerged in the early 1990s.

Everything that I do on stage comes from seeing the Black Crowes in '95 in Charlotte. For 'Let Her Cry,' I was just trying to write 'She Talks to Angels.'

What was interesting about grunge was that it was this death sentence to the rock that had preceded it, which was hair metal.

Chris Cornell painted in song the darkness and beauty of life in Seattle.

The Stones were a big influence on me and the Beatles, obviously.

Soundgarden are kind of the masters of writing songs that aren't pop cliches.

I don't specifically sit down to write a Motley Crue song, so for me, that's how it works. The things that sound like they might be Crue, I put aside on my hard drive and keep them in that pile.