Soundgarden Bassist Denies He Was Homeless

Tweet

Soundgarden bassist Ben Shepherd has admittedly had a rough stretch -- including a bad break-up with his fiancée and an addiction to drugs and alcohol -- since the band broke up over a decade ago. Spin recently suggested that a "broke" Shepherd was essentially homeless prior to Soundgarden's recent reunion. Shepherd, though, her refuted that claim on the official Soundgarden site, saying his words were "sensationalized."
 
Beyond the Upside: A Decade of Soundgarden
 
"It makes me feel embarrassed for the truly homeless people to be associated at all in any way with the likes of me. I seem to have been lucky, as most of you, in never having to survive day to day (on the streets) anyway," Shepherd wrote. "I say what I mean with someone else's alphabet, so it is no wonder to me that my blathering can be so easily 'shined up' or misinterpreted to whatever purpose, especially to a stranger who has no idea of my horrible humor, or my delusional ideas … Sure I've been couch surfing but that's a far cry from the plight of many many millions of good people worldwide."
 
Soundgarden Rock Lollapalooza Warm-Up Show in Chicago
 
Shepherd described his other difficulties to Spin this way: "Soundgarden broke up; my other band, Hater, broke up; my fiancée broke up with me; and then I broke three ribs. I got addicted to pain pills, drank a ton, and wound up OD'ing on morphine. I was laid out in my house for five days, and no one knew it. It was a fucking horrible time -- this total rock & roll cliché."

• 
  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
• 
  MOVIES The 10 Best Zombie Movie Scenes
• 
  TV The Most WTF? Moments of 'Mad Men'
• 
  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The Joy Formidable | 2011

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”

More Song Stories entries »

Twitter