Superunknown is the album that transformed Soundgarden from just another Seattle grunge group, into a more worldly and experimental outfit. But, the monumental album didn’t come easily, the album’s producer reveals that there was a lot of arguing and headbutting going on in the cutting room.
Michael Beinhorn joined forces with the band to produce the 1994 album now known as Superunknown. Speaking of the experience on Cobras & Fire podcast, he says that he came to the boys with the mission of creating ‘the record of their lives’ but they were more interested in getting something out quickly.
“It was interesting because I think that they were expecting that they were going to make a different record than the record than what we actually made,” he explained. “What they wanted to do was make a record relatively quickly and just get back on the road and just start touring again.
“It seemed kind of odd because the entire world was sort of looking at Soundgarden, going like, ‘OK, this is going to be the next band that hits. These guys are gonna be huge, all they have to do is make the right record.”
He continues: ”See, I came into the project with that understanding, like, ‘OK, this is my job, I have this responsibility to deliver this for this artist. This is what I’m prepared to do here,’ to help this artist do the record of their lives, basically. And I realized not long after that that we weren’t all exactly on the same page.”
Thankfully, Beinhorn persevered and together they put together a chart-topping album. He says that he was so strict with the songs Soundgarden presented that out of the eleven they wanted to release, he only approved four of them. With expectations to be met, Beinhorn sent the guys back to the writing room to come up with more music.
“They weren’t very happy to hear that. I mean, they went along with it, I was grateful, but it was tough. Like, they didn’t want to get into the experimentation part of it…,” he says of the situation.
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“Yeah, it was a hard record to make, and there was a lot of headbutting going on. I mean, there was definitely a lot of arguing.”
Check out the Superunknown classic ‘Black Hole Sun’ by Soundgarden:
