Soundgarden is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1984 by singer and rhythm guitarist Chris Cornell, lead guitarist Kim Thayil, and bassist Hiro Yamamoto. Matt Cameron became the band’s full-time drummer in 1986, while bassist Ben Shepherd became a permanent replacement for Yamamoto in 1990. Soundgarden was one of the seminal bands in the creation of grunge, a style of alternative rock that developed in Seattle, and was one of a number of grunge bands signed to the record label Sub Pop. Soundgarden achieved its biggest success with the 1994 album Superunknown, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and yielded the Grammy Award-winning singles “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman”. As of 2012, Soundgarden sold more than 10.5 million records in the United States, and an estimated 22.5 million worldwide. VH1 ranked Soundgarden at number 14 in their special 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. (More from Wikipedia)
The two are better known for their work with Eleven, a hard rock trio that formed in 1990 when Jack Irons (drums) joined Alain Johannes (vocals, guitar, sitar, horns) and Natasha Shneider (vocals, keyboards, bass) of Walk the Moon; this band was also a partial reunion of What Is This?. Eleven have opened for major bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Queens of the Stone Age, and Candlebox.
Wikipedia states: “The band [Eleven] cites their major influences as Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Beatles, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Sergei Prokofiev. With Chris Cornell [of Soundgarden and Audioslave], they recorded [Natasha] Shneider’s arrangement of Franz Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’, which appears on the album, A Very Special Christmas 3 [1997], in the liner notes of which they state they deliberately chose a classical work to help interest young people in classical music.”
(April 2015/1)
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Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider worked with Chris Cornell on his first solo album, Euphoria Morning (1999); they were also along on the band that toured to support the album. This is the only album that Cornell made after Soundgarden broke up, and before he joined members of Rage Against the Machine in forming Audioslave.
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Natasha Shneider shows up on even more records for her prowess on keyboards. In addition to the many songs that have already been mentioned, she plays clavinet on the Soundgarden song “Fresh Tendrils” from their album Superunknown (1994); harpsichord on the song “Guilt by Association” by the garage rock band Louis XIV on their album Slick Dogs and Ponies (2008); synthesizer on the song “Each to Each” on the Gutter Twins album, Saturnalia (2008); and Moog Bass and Synthesizer on the track “WYUT” – which Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider co-wrote with Natalie Imbruglia – on her album Come to Life (2009).
(April 2015/2)
