Cornell: Electro kids will reinvent rock

Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell thinks the future of rock music lies in the hands of young people who currently enjoy dance music.

And he believes they’ll one day stage a revolution on the scale of the 1970s punk movement.

His comments come days after Rob Zombie blamed Soundgarden and their grunge colleagues for rock music losing its place as a leading light in popular culture.

Cornell told Howard Stern this week: “i heard somebody quoting that 70 per cent of people – and it must be young people – are into electronic dance music. And that goes up every year. I don’t know how much more it can go up.

“All I can says is, that tends to be the beginning of a really great new movement in rock.”

He compared the statistics to those of the disco era, when the movement dominated culture from radio stations to dance halls to movie screens. “All of a sudden you had punk rock,” Cornell said.

“That came as a reaction to it. Everyone said, ‘You know – this sucks.’ So maybe that will happen now. They’ll look at each other at the rave, their E will kick in, and they’ll go, ‘This sucks.’”

Zombie told TeamRock Radio at Download last weekend: “When the grunge rock thing hit everybody thought it was cool to be anti-rock star. They sort of anti-rock starred themselves right out the door – the rap guys came in and said, ‘Fuck it. We’ll be the rock stars.’”

Cornell recently discussed how people thinking they were a “hippie” band because of their name was a blessing in disguise during their early days. The band return to the UK on July 4 for the British Summer Time festival in London’s Hyde Park, where they’ll support Black Sabbath.

Not only is one-time online news editor Martin an established rock journalist and drummer, but he’s also penned several books on music history, including SAHB Story: The Tale of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, a band he once managed, and the best-selling Apollo Memories about the history of the legendary and infamous Glasgow Apollo. Martin has written for Classic Rock and Prog and at one time had written more articles for Louder than anyone else (we think he's second now). He’s appeared on TV and when not delving intro all things music, can be found travelling along the UK’s vast canal network.