The Chris Cornell & Eddie Van Halen Collaboration That ALMOST Happened

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I cite my sources and they may differ than other people's accounts, so I don't guarantee the actual accuracy of my videos.

Here’s an interesting collaboration that was close to happening. During an appearance on The Mitch Lafon and Jeremy White Show podcast in 2022 Chris Cornell’s touring guitarist named Peter Thorn –who also appeared on Cornell’s 2009 record Scream, discussed how the Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman almost collaborated with Eddie Van Halen. The album was heavily criticized as Cornell ditched his historical rock sound for more pop and electronic sounds.
Thorn would reveal “They were buddies… Eddie always wanted to do something with Chris, musically,” “He loved his voice and he used to be like, ‘Man, I love him. We were always talking about doing something together.'
Thorn would reveal that rock versions were done for the album including the title track and Long Gone adding “[Cornell and I were] in a parking lot listening to [the recordings] in my car, I remember,". "And he looked at me and he said, ‘Hey what do you think if we got Eddie to work on this?'” Van Halen and Cornell’s rleationships dated back to the 90’s and Thorn being a huge Van Halen fan reached out ot the guitarist through Dave Friedman from Friedman amplification and Thorn would meet Eddie at his 5150 studios adding
"He took me into 5150 and he didn't even know [I was a fan],". "He was so humble in many ways, and sort of unassuming. He said, 'This is the studio where we've done everything since 1984.' I was thinking, yeah I know - I'm well aware!
"So we put on the track as we sat there at the console listening to this song,". "And it's me playing acoustic guitar on it… and I'm sitting there listening to it coming out of the speakers. I thought I would meet this fella sometimes but I didn't know it would be under [these circumstances]. It was incredible but I don't want to get anyone excited thinking it ever got finished because it didn't. But he did work on it.
But don’t expect to ever hear the collaboration as Thorn would reveal that Cornell never got around to doing the vocals for the tracks and Eddie meanwhile got busy with van halen’s final record which came out in 2012. However, it should be noted that while the song was never officially released or finished in the studio, it’s thought that you might be able to hear the version that Eddie played on during Cornell’s Songbook tour during the early 2010’s. He would add But if anyone has seen Chris on tour during his Songbook tour, he played to records onstage during that tour – I think it was 2011 / 2012. He would rop the needle on an album and play along; that's actually the version that Ed played on if you can find that on YouTube." I’ve put the link down below if you guys want to check it out.