From the outside, touring seems like a lot of fun. Show, party, travel. Show, party, travel. Show, party, travel. That, on repeat, on a path around the world, doesn’t seem like a bad deal. It’s the thing most upstart musicians dream of, fantasising about being headliners but also daydreaming about one day being taken out on the road by some icons to open for them. It came true for Soundgarden, but it wasn’t quite so idyllic.
The reality is very, very different. Stories are told time and time again about the actualities of touring. Especially today, they’re often horror stories: no money, little rest, no space to get a moment of peace or a break from your bandmates. In the current climate, all the issues it would naturally bring are intensified by a cash crunch. But even in the 1990s, when the situation was better, it didn’t make the emotional weight any easier.
While there are bound to be moments of intense fun during such a wild experience as rapidly touring around the world and performing for hordes of screaming crowds, the intensity is also going to boil over in other ways. It’s a boiling point of feelings and egos. If one dynamic is off, everything could collapse.
That’s what Soundgarden experienced. It should have been a dream. In 1991, as their own star was rising, the band were invited on tour with Guns N’ Roses, pairing the up-and-comers with the guys at the top. But there’s instantly a kind of disconnect as the vibe of the two acts is undeniably different. Guns N’ Roses are all hair and theatrics. Soundgarden were more straight-up grunge.
It set the vibes off on a bad path before they even left town. Soundgardens’ bassist, Ben Shepherd, wasn’t shy about it as he said of their headliners, “That kind of butt rock, I don’t like. I want nothing to do with that kind of world. I’m not a rock star, I don’t like rock stars, and I don’t want to be around them.” So given that they were about to be intensely around them, it was bound to be a disaster.
It’s hard to know who the issue was really. Given Soundgarden’s obvious disdain for Guns N’ Roses, I’d be inclined to forgive Slash and co for giving the band a slightly unkind nickname, dubbing them Frowngarden. But the band, obviously, took issue. “Why’d we get called Frowngarden? Because we weren’t party monsters,” Shepherd said.
But on their side, it all came down to a disconnect of motivation. They saw the headliners messing about and indulging in the stereotyped of tour life, while they just wanted to do their jobs, adding, “We weren’t motherfucking rock stars. We were not like that. We were there to play music. We weren’t there for the models and the cocaine. We were there to blow your doors off.”
Maybe in the end, Guns N’ Roses weren’t the kindest hosts of the younger group, but given their attitude, who can really blame them? “There we are, getting exposed to all these butt rockers, the same kind of people who would try to beat me up when I was a punk rocker,” Shepherd moaned, “I had a massive animosity towards those fans.”
