Day After Day #183: 4th of July

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

4th of July (1994)

My first memory of a July 4th celebration was in 1976. I was 9 years old and we were on vacation in Florida, so it was the first time I'd ever been in the U.S. on the 4th. It also happened to be the Bicentennial, so things were extra amped up. I remember we had sparklers and there were big fireworks displays. But then a few days later, we were back home in Canada and I didn't think about it much. Of course, as it turned out we ended up moving to the U.S. at the end of '81 and have been here ever since. 

I've never been a particularly jingoistic person, but I can appreciate the value of independence. That said, my favorite songs related to July 4 are never the typical ones. I have a few that I always tend to listen to, but Soundgarden's "4th of July" is my favorite, probably because it's not really about the holiday at all.

Soundgarden got their start in the early '80s around Seattle with a band called the Shemps that included bassist Hiro Yamamoto and drummer and singer Chris Cornell; after Yamamoto left, the band added guitarist Kim Thayil to replace him. After the Shemps split up, Cornell and Yamamoto started jamming together and were joined by Thayil, and the trio formed Soundgarden in 1984. Scott Sundquist took over on drums in 1985 so Cornell could focus on vocals. The group's first three recorded songs appeared on historic 1986 comp Deep Six on C/Z Records; it also featured songs from Green River, Skin Yard, Malfunkshun, the U-Men and the Melvins. Eventually Sundquist left the group and was replaced by Matt Cameron.

After releasing the Screaming Life and Fopp EPs on Sub Pop in 1987 and 1988, Soundgarden signed with SST and released their debut Ultramega OK in 1988. The band's sound was very heavy, balancing proto-punk influences like the MC5 and Stooges with hard rock touchstones like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. The band then signed with A&M and made Louder Than Love, a heavy album that both embraced and lampooned the metal scene. Right before the tour began, Yamamoto quit the band and was replaced by Jason Everman, who had briefly been the second guitarist in Nirvana.

Everman was fired after the tour and replaced by Ben Shepherd, who joined in time for the recording of the band's epic 1991 release Badmotorfinger. Cornell's careening vocals made songs like "Outshined," "Rusty Cage" and "Jesus Christ Pose" even more powerful. The album came out at the same time as Nevermind and Ten, but eventually audiences caught up with it. Soundgarden toured heavily for the album, opening for Guns N' Roses and Skid Row and then joining the 1992 Lollapalooza tour.

But the biggest album for Soundgarden was 1994's Superunknown, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and spawning the hits "Spoonman," "Black Hole Sun," "The Day I Tried to Live" and "Fell on Black Days." I quickly tired of the songs that got the most airplay like "Black Hole Sun" and "Spoonman," but the deep cuts on this album were my favorites. 

One of those was "4th of July," which starts with a slow, grinding guitar intro before Cornell sings quietly about an apocalyptic vision.

"Shower in the dark day, clean sparks diving down/Cool in the waterway where the baptized drown/Naked in the cold sun, breathing life like fire/I thought I was the only one, but that was just a lie/'Cause I heard it in the wind/And I saw it in the sky/I thought it was the end/I thought it was the 4th of July." 

The song picks up steam as the vision continues, with Thayil's sludgy guitar leading the way.

"Pale in the flare light, the scared light cracks and disappears/And leads the scorched ones here/And everywhere no one cares, the fire is spreading/And no one wants to speak about it/Down in the hole/Jesus tries to crack a smile/Beneath another shovel load."

Cornell told RIP magazine in 1994 that he wrote the song about an acid trip he had. "One time I was on acid, and there were voices 10 feet behind my head. The whole time I'd be walking, they'd be talking behind me. It actually made me feel good, because I felt like I was with some people...It was kinda like a dream, though, where I'd wake up and focus once in a while and realize there was no one there. I'd go, 'Oh fuck, I'm hearing voices.' '4th of July' is pretty much about that day. You wouldn't get that if you read it. It doesn't read like, 'Woke up, dropped some acid, got into a car and went to the Indian reservation.'"

Soundgarden released one more album, 1996's underrated Down on the Upside, before splitting up in 1997; the band later blamed tension among the group members and burnout from the music business as reasons for the breakup. In the years afterward, Cornell released solo albums and formed Audioslave with three-fourths of Rage Against the Machine. Cameron joined Pearl Jam in 1998 and remains in the band. Thayil and Shepherd both worked on various projects. 

The members of Soundgarden got back together in 2010, headlining Lollapalooza and then releasing a new compilation album. In 2012, they released a new studio album, King Animal. They had begun work on a new album in 2016, but the following May, Cornell was found dead after a show in Detroit. That was the end of Soundgarden.

I caught them on the Badmotorfinger tour at Avalon in Boston in early 1992, then at Lollapalooza that summer in Mansfield and one more time at Fitchburg State College in the summer of '94. The band was pretty impressive, to say the least. It's too bad Cornell isn't still around to enjoy the legacy he helped build.

Soundgarden's "4th of July" isn't your typical flag-waving anthem, which is perfectly fine by me. I'm a big fan of sludgy dirges about acid trips.