Chris Cuffaro here tells Matt Thompson how he captured this band as the sonic storm was set to break.
The shoot came through SPIN. I got a studio at the lot on A&M Records.
I walked into the studio at the lot, looked around, and said, “OK, we’ve got a gray backdrop, a black backdrop; ooh, there’s some rope on the floor; there’s a great alleyway.” You start planning because you don’t want to waste people’s time. You wanna be prepared: first set-up is here, second set-up here. You try to make it as quick as possible.
You have to think about bands in those days. They would do maybe one shoot for the record label for the album cover, maybe one for publicity, and two or three more shoots with magazines — at the highest, six shoots a year. Now everyone has their picture taken six times a week.
And in those days every musician I ever shot hated having their picture taken. I’d stick out my hand and go, “Hi, I’m Chris.” And they’d go, “Hi, I hate having my picture taken.”
Soundgarden just showed up in their regular outfits; Chris [Cornell] in his goofy little jean shorts; no changes of clothes. Pretty raw. They were very young, and not very comfortable in front of the camera. And Jason [Everman], the bass player — he was gone after that. But Chris Cornell, I say it to this day: he had that it factor very few artists I shot had — even when he was young like that.
The thing I remember about that shoot was that everybody was fun; everybody was easy; no drama. I used my Hasselblad — an EL/M, which is a motordrive. Great camera.
But this photo session with Soundgarden is where Seattle came into my life. The shoot was August 24th, 1989. December 7th and 10th they play the Whisky [a Go Go] and record Louder Than Live. I saw both shows: young and the energy. Insane. Man, it was great. From that point on I was a fan.
