After producer Michael Beinhorn helped the Red Hot Chili Peppers break out of their funk rock pigeonhole with Mother’s Milk in 1989, his work was a hot commodity. He helped Soul Asylum break through as well with Grave Dancers Union in 1992. So when Soundgarden was searching for a producer for their next album, Beinhorn’s name came up.
However, Beinhorn’s approach to producing was a little more hands-on than some artists liked. Beinhorn himself has admitted that some of the bands he worked with got frustrated with him. Meanwhile, Soundgarden’s former manager, Susan Silver, expressed in 2009 that Beinhorn was great to work with on the business side of things. But, she said, “every musician who ever worked with him didn’t like the experience at all.” Despite this, she added, they “came through it usually with the best records of their careers.”
That’s because Beinhorn often pushed them out of their comfort zones. Or, he shook them out of their performative headspaces that said they had to please every fan with every song. That’s what happened with Chris Cornell, which resulted in one of Soundgarden’s biggest hits.
Producer Michael Beinhorn Pushed Chris Cornell to Forget About Writing To Please the Fans
Michael Beinhorn stayed present during Soundgarden’s work on Superunknown. He had a hand in teasing out all the hidden gems from the band, pushing them to their limit. Additionally, he made sure every song was good enough before it went on the album.
“I was getting songs from Chris [Cornell], and after about a month and a half, I realized that he was starting to go in a natural direction,” Beinhorn recalled in 2019. “He and I had a conversation about it, and we focused on what he really loved musically, which is something that he hadn’t really considered.”
Beinhorn continued, “He was trying to write songs for Soundgarden fans, which I strongly urged him against, because my feeling is like, ‘Look, if you write the song, and your band plays it, it’s going to sound like Soundgarden!’”
“You don’t have to write songs that are going to please the constituency of your fans,” the producer added. “They’re either going to stay fans or they won’t. All you have to do is write songs that you really love.”
This advice almost immediately led Cornell to write two of the best tracks on Superunknown. Two weeks later, he sent Beinhorn a cassette of four songs, but the first and last tracks stood out. They were “Fell On Black Days” and “Black Hole Sun”.
“From the first few notes of ‘Black Hole Sun’, I was like, ‘Oh my god! This is incredible,’” Beinhorn recalled. “I listened to the song many, many times. I just kept playing it over and over and over again, and I just called him up, and I was like, ‘This is incredible. We’re ready to record now. You’ve basically got the most important track on the whole record, and it’s one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.”
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