Unofficial SG Homepage: Badmotorfinger

CATALOG #
CD 5374 2

RELEASE DATE
Oct 08 1991

PERSONNEL
Chris Cornell: voc, gtr
Kim Thayil: guitar
Matt Cameron: drums
Ben Shepherd: bass
Scott Granlund: sax
Ernst Long: trumpet
Damon Stewart:
narration

Cover art by Big Chief's Mark Dancey. This album was nominated for a Grammy. It was released on translucent yellow vinyl in the UK and there are a limited number of copies of Badmotorfinger on colored vinyl elsewhere. There is an ultra-ultra-rare promo with a cover that has the same "wheel" motif but different colors: blue background, yellow circle, green logo with a band photo on the backside of the cover; this strange-sounding color scheme is what was originally proposed. It was also released as a promotional advance cassette with a rather unpolished version of the alternate artwork, featuring greater emphasis on purple. Check out the press release.

RUSTY CAGE [single]
Music & Lyrics: Cornell
©1991 You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature]
"The tuning on that song was pretty nutty. It's recorded with a wah wah in the low position used as a filter. That was the first time we did anything like that. It was Chris' idea; he wanted to get that weird tone that you can't really dial in on an amp. But if you use the wah wah as a filter, it gets an incredibly weird sound. And if you listen to that riff, especially if you've heard the original demos of it, it almost sounds backward." --Kim Thayil
OUTSHINED [single]
Music & Lyrics: Cornell
©1991 You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature] [bass tablature] [song of the month]
"All I can remember is that they cut the guitar solo to make the video 'single-length.' I thought that was a stupid thing. Here we are, a guitar band, and the guitar solo -- it may not be a great guitar solo -- was edited out just for the video. That's ridiculous. It was a heavy song and our most popular video, even though it was a crap video. It never kicks in or explodes; there's no dynamics. The band never loosens up and explores the riff because the solo was taken out." --Kim Thayil
SLAVES & BULLDOZERS
Music: Shepherd, Cornell; Lyrics: Cornell
©1991 Noyes/You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature]
"That's the second song we did where I blow on the guitar. I'd do it live and people would think I was playing with my tongue or my teeth or my beard. 'Hey look, he's playing guitar with his beard!' No, I was blowing on it -- making a wish!" --Kim Thayil
JESUS CHRIST POSE [single]
Music: Cameron, Shepherd, Thayil, Cornell; Lyrics: Cornell
©1991 Walpurgis Night Music/Noyes/In One Ear And Out Your Mother Music/You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature] [press release] [song of the month]
"That was our first single off Badmotorfinger, but it never got any airplay because of the references to Jesus. And MTV wouldn't play the video because they didn't like the idea of a girl on the cross. There are no guitars in the video at all. There's not even a picture of a guitar in the video. It's like this hard, rock-fast, punk-metal video that has no instruments in the whole thing. And it's a six minute video! The song's groove reminds me of helicopter blades. I bent the strings at the beginning and end of the song. That's all I remember." --Kim Thayil
When asked about the "Jesus Christ Pose" itself, Chris says: "You just see it a lot with really beautiful people, or famous people, exploiting that symbol as to imply that they're either a deity or persecuted somehow by their public. So it's pretty much a song that is nonreligious but expressing being irritated by seeing that. It's not that I would ever be offended by what someone would do with that symbol."
FACE POLLUTION
Music: Shepherd; Lyrics: Cornell
©1991 Noyes/You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature]
SOMEWHERE
Music & Lyrics: Shepherd
©1991 Noyes (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature]
SEARCHING WITH MY GOOD EYE CLOSED
Music & Lyrics: Cornell
©1991 You Make Me Sick I Make Music
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature]
ROOM A THOUSAND YEARS WIDE [single]
Music: Cameron; Lyrics: Thayil
©1990 Walpurgis Night Music/In One Ear And Out Your Mother Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature] [bass tablature]
MIND RIOT
Music & Lyrics: Cornell
©1991 You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature]
DRAWING FLIES
Music: Cameron; Lyrics: Cornell
©1991 Walpurgis Night Music/You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature]
HOLY WATER
Music & Lyrics: Cornell
©1991 You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature]
NEW DAMAGE
Music: Thayil, Cameron; Lyrics: Cornell
©1991 Walpurgis Night Music/In One Ear And Out Your Mother Music/You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics]

Produced by Terry Date and Soundgarden. Engineered by Terry Date. Recorded Spring 1991 at Studio D, Sausalito, California, USA, and Bear Creek Studios, Woodinville, Washington, USA. Additional recording at A&M Studios, Los Angeles, California, USA. Mixed by Ron St. Germain at Can Am Studios, Tarzana, California, USA. Mastered by Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk, New York, New York, USA.

The rarest non-promo issue of Badmotorfinger comes in a package made of wood and painted white, 2 halves that are hinged together in the shape of a half-oval (kind of like some toilet seats). The "cover art" is a red circular saw blade with a spark plug image inside it. Each copy has a metal plate glued into the inside of the case, next to the CD, which is engraved with a number out of 1000. The CD itself is standard-issue Badmotorfinger, with no extra songs, though the artwork on the disc is slightly different. The booklet is the same as the regular issue. The case is actually quite large; check out the image of the cover below (first row, second thumbnail from the left) -- the one straight edge (the bottom of the image) is a bit more than 7.5" (19cm) long.

SATANOSCILLATEMYMETALLICSONATAS Badmotorfinger was reissued as a limited edition (100,000 copies) 2CD set in 1992 (A&M, 75021 5401 2). The bonus disc is titled Satanoscillatemymetallicsonatas, and is commonly referred to as SOMMS. The long title is a palindrome (spelled the same way forwards or backwards).

The reissue includes different insert photos than the original release, and used copies of the 2CD set sometimes sell for as much as US$90 (the average is about US$25). Though it is not the rarest of Soundgarden treasures, it is certainly one of the most coveted. Disc I of the set is the same as Badmotorfinger above except that "Disc I" is printed at the bottom of the CD. Disc II includes the following tracks:

INTO THE VOID (SEALTH)
Lyrics by Chief Sealth; Music by F. Iommi, W. Ward, J. Osbourne, T. Butler
Published by TRO-Essex Music International Inc. (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics]
This song was originally done by Black Sabbath. Ben Shepherd heard the song and recognized that the words that Chief Sealth (for whom Seattle is named) had written in protest of the white man's settling in his territory fit the meter of the song.
GIRL U WANT
Written by M. Mothersbaugh/G. Casale
Published by Virgin Songs, Inc. (BMI)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature]
"Girl U Want" was originally recorded by Devo and released in 1980. Devo and Soundgarden both played at five Lollapalooza shows in the summer of 1996.
STRAY CAT BLUES
Written by Jagger/Richards
Published by ABKCO Music, Inc. (BMI)
Read: [lyrics]
"Stray Cat Blues" was originally recorded by the Rolling Stones.
SHE'S A POLITICIAN
Written by Chris Cornell
Published by You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)
Read: [lyrics] [guitar tablature]
This song appeared on a free double-sided flexi with the December 1991 issue of Reflex magazine. The b-side was "Christmas with the Devil" by Rights of the Accused. It also appears on the "Burden In My Hand" single (European disc #2), 1996.
SLAVES & BULLDOZERS (LIVE)
Music: Shepherd, Cornell; Lyrics: Cornell
Noyes Inneroutter/You Make Me Sick I Make Music (ASCAP)