According to ultimateclassicrock.com, Eddie Van Halen and Chris Cornell came very close to collaborating on one of Cornell’s songs according to the late singer’s former guitarist Pete Thorn. Thorn’s resume also includes working with Don Henley and Melissa Etheridge. Thorn stated that, “They were buddies back around the late, I believe it’s like kind of the late ’90s, early 2000s, and Eddie always wanted to do something with Chris, musically, He loved his voice and he used to be like, ‘Man, I love him. We were always talking about doing something together.'” He nearly had his chance when Cornell was working on his 2009 solo album Scream, that was produced by Timbaland and notable for its pop and electronic elements.
Thorn explained that, “I produced up a couple of versions of a song called ‘Long Gone’ and ‘Scream,’ the title track from the album, in a very stripped-down kind of acoustic way, with brushes on the snare drum and upright bass and stuff, and me playing acoustic guitar, So Chris listened to them he’s like, ‘I love this, man.’ … And he looked at me and he said, ‘What do you think if we got Eddie to work on this, if we would ask him to play on it?’ And 45 minutes later, he texted me, He said, ‘Ed wants you to call him. Here’s his cellphone number.'”
The guitarist met with Van Halen at his 5150 Studios and showed him the Scream tracks. Van Halen liked them and even recorded some guitar parts for the title track, however, a proper collaboration never happened. Thorn added that, “I don’t want to get anybody excited thinking that this ever got finished, because it didn’t. But he did work on it, And, you know, I would go up there over the next couple of weeks, and he had played on it. I would listen to it and just be like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening. This is myself and Eddie on a track.’ And then, it’s a long story, but it never got a vocal on it by Chris. You know, that was what it was. And Ed got busy doing the next Van Halen record right around then and producing things up and … it just never ended up getting finished.”
The version with Van Halen remains locked up at his studios where he originally recorded his parts to tape. “So somewhere at 5150,” Thorn said, “there’s a 24-track reel with that on it.”
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