When renowned drummer Matt Cameron is inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025 with Soundgarden on Nov. 8, he will join a very elite group. Having already entered the Hall seven years ago as a member of another legendary Pacific Northwest rock band, Pearl Jam, for whom he drummed from 1998 to 2025, he’ll become a two-time inductee — an honor shared by the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Stevie Nicks, Jimmy Page, Tina Turner, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Michael Jackson, all four members of CSN&Y and the Beatles, and his Seattle peer Dave Grohl.
Cameron says, “I have to pinch myself!” when he realizes this, but his second Hall induction ceremony will obviously be much more bittersweet — because Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, who died by suicide in 2017, won’t be there to share the glory. So, Cameron’s chief concern is that Cornell will be celebrated “in the most honest, heartfelt way possible” on that special night at Los Angeles’s Peacock Theater.
“We are very honored to take part in this event, and to honor Chris’s legacy in Soundgarden and just his legacy as an artist, as a one-of-a-kind musician and frontman. And hopefully he’ll be [one day] recognized as a solo artist by the Hall or other entities as well. Because his influence is massive, and his artistry was completely unique,” states Cameron.
Cameron says “a lot of Chris’s family will be there” at the Class of 2025 ceremony, and while he’s not sure if Cornell’s daughter Toni, a stellar vocalist in her own right, will take part in the Hall’s musical salute to Soundgarden, he says the band “would certainly like to have [Cornell’s] kids up there onstage with us in some degree. … I would love to include all those kiddos in this environment, in whatever way they feel comfortable.”
After Cornell’s tragic death, the surviving members of Soundgarden were embroiled in a protracted and very public legal battle with the singer’s widow, Vicky Cornell, who sued them over seven unreleased recordings and filed another lawsuit claiming they had undervalued her share of the band. But those disputes ended in 2023, and as Cameron looks ahead to the Rock Hall ceremony with the Cornell family in attendance, he expects it to be a cordial affair. “I certainly hope so,” he says optimistically. “We’re open to everyone coming together and hopefully putting all that stuff behind us, and carrying on with positive force for the future.”
And those future plans, now that the above-mentioned lawsuit has been resolved, include the long-awaited, long-delayed release of the group’s as-yet-untitled final album, which Cameron says will be “a really nice way to finish the creative chapter in Soundgarden.”
Cornell, Cameron, guitarist Kim Thayil, and bassist Ben Shepherd began writing this album, “trading demos back and forth,” around 2015, and had recorded some sessions — “just rough rehearsals” — in early 2017, right before Soundgarden embarked on their ill-fated final tour. (Cornell was found dead in his hotel room on May 18, 2017, after Soundgarden’s gig at Detroit’s Fox Theater).
“The vocals that we’re using are from the demos that we all recorded together, and we’re just sort of building our tracks around those vocal parts,” reveals Cameron. While it has been understandably difficult and emotional working on the record, which is now “about 70 percent finished” and is “on no strict timeline” but will hopefully come out in 2026, he says, “We’re trying to stay focused on the overall sound of it, and all the reasons for us doing it. It has been tough to solo up that voice and hear it loud and clear, but I think the fans will like it. … Kim is working on his parts feverishly, and he really wants to make sure his guitar parts are exactly the way he wants them to be. That’s where it’s at right now, but we’ve got a big portion of it completed, so it’s just a matter of putting those finishing touches on it and mixing it. … It sounds killer. It’s been a really amazing and bittersweet process.”
One new track that Cameron is particularly excited about is “The Road Less Traveled,” which he co-penned with Cornell. “I wrote this music that I didn’t really know if it would fit for Soundgarden, but I just sent Chris all these musical ideas around 2016 or so, and that’s one that he really liked,” he recalls. “He made an arrangement from my demo, and then he added vocals to it, and it came out really, really good. The lyrics are mesmerizing, as always. That’s going to be a really great one for people to hear. It has all the trademark elements that Soundgarden fans might be familiar with, as well as a little bit of new territory. And there’s two or three other songs [on the new album] that do sound like the band, but I think we were able to stretch out a little bit creatively, and hopefully when people hear that song, they’ll notice that as well. I guess it’s hard rock. It’s sort of bluesy, sort of psychedelic, sort of folky — all the things that we were known for. I hope people like that one when they finally do hear it.”
Cameron doesn’t expect that “The Road Less Traveled” or any of the new album’s tracks will be debuted at the Rock Hall induction ceremony, and he doubts that the band will ever tour the album, since that would be pretty much impossible to properly pull off without Cornell. But as for who will sing in Cornell’s place at the Hall ceremony, there’s certainly an abundance of artists who’d volunteer for the job. For instance, at Los Angeles’s epic, all-star, five-hour, 42-song “I Am the Highway” Cornell tribute concert, which took place in January 2019, everyone from Metallica, the Melvins, and Foo Fighters, to Chris Stapleton and Brandi Carlile, to Taylor Momsen, Adam Levine, and Miley Cyrus, took part — demonstrating Soundgarden’s vast appeal. “That concert really was a nice reminder of Chris’s influence with a lot of different genres,” Cameron remembers fondly.
Cameron says Soundgarden have “everything wrapped up” when it comes to the band’s Rock Hall ceremony setlist and guest stars, although he’s been ordered to keep the details under wraps for now. He does reveal that original bassist Hiro Yamamoto, who co-founded Soundgarden in 1984 and left the band in 1989, will participate, which he says “will be a nice addition; he had a really strong connection with Chris.” He also says they’ll keep the setlist “Soundgarden-centric” — that is, no songs from the Pearl Jam/Soundgarden supergroup Temple of the Dog, of which Cameron was a member, although he jokes about becoming a three-time Hall inductee if Temple ever make it in.
As for who will induct Soundgarden, some of the band’s first choices, like Ann Wilson (whose Seattle band Heart were inducted into the Hall by Cornell in 2013), Tony Iommi, Jimmy Page, and Trent Reznor, are unable to make it due to tour commitments or inability to travel. But it will be a special night no matter who does the honors. Soundgarden have only played together a few times since Cornell’s death — at the 2019 “I Am the Highway” tribute concert, in 2021 with Brandi Carlile, at 2022’s Taylor Hawkins tribute, and at a December 2024 benefit fronted by Seattle jazz diva Shaina Shepherd (no relation to Ben) under the anagrammatic name Nudedragons. “We haven’t really gotten together that much, other than finishing the last Soundgarden album,” says Cameron. “No real live performances.”
While the two other members of Seattle’s 1990s grunge holy trinity, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, were respectively inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on their first nominations and actually in their first years of eligibility, it took three times for Soundgarden, who’d been eligible since 2012, to get in — despite the fact that they arguably bridged the worlds of heavy metal and college/indie rock more effectively than any of their peers. And while there was a time when the band members might not have cared about this accolade, it is truly vindicating and meaningful now.
“In the early days, it probably didn’t really matter to [Cornell] or us much. But we got nominated for a Grammy in 1989 for our Ultramega OK record, and it was really nice just to get recognition from the industry in any way, shape, or form. I always personally felt like it was a nice acknowledgement for what we were doing,” says Cameron. “In terms of what Chris might’ve liked, I think as he got older, he really was open to acceptance by the music industry, by different established entities like the Hall of Fame or the Grammys. I personally think he would’ve been extremely proud to have seen this [Hall induction] occur.
“It’s just so mind-blowing,” Cameon muses. “To think that this little band that started in a living room or a basement somewhere, playing local clubs, could morph into this phenomenon that had a reach outside of its own scene.”
Watch Matt Cameron’s full interview in the video above, which originally ran on Gold Derby, in which he also discusses what he really thinks of the term “grunge,” how touring with metal bands like Guns N’ Roses and Skid Row divided some early Soundgarden fans, and who he’d like to see get in the Rock Hall next.
