I was still working for TV3 news and living in New Zealand, but had found myself in LA, working on the final stages of Tickled. I knew Cornell had an upcoming solo show back in New Zealand, so I’d reached out to the music label to see if could get an interview. He said yes. And on a Sunday morning in 2015, on a day off, Chris Cornell drove across town to my hotel and sat down for a 30 minute interview. There was no junket hotel, no label people — just a musician driving out of their way to meet some idiot from a TV station in tiny New Zealand. He had no need to — his upcoming show had already sold out. I’m not quite sure why he did it. But I’m glad he did. I played a few minutes of that clip in Seattle, but I wanted to make the whole thing available for Webworm readers today. I’d found it last year — the unaired long edit — on a digibeta tape I’d saved in a box in New Zealand.

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