SOUNDGARDEN Members Talk Reunion With MTV NEWS

The four members of reunited grunge legends SOUNDGARDEN spoke with MTV News about the first moments of their reunion, which included a performance of a song called "Blind Dogs", a track they recorded for "The Basketball Diaries" soundtrack that they had never performed live. "There was three minutes of 'awkward first date,' and then it was just stories of who threw up on what when," singer Chris Cornell said of the initial meeting. "It was great."

SOUNDGARDEN released its first collection of music since 1996, "Telephantasm", on September 28 in the U.S. and September 27 internationally. This career-spanning retrospective album includes never-before-heard unreleased track "Black Rain", taken from the "Badmotorfinger" recording sessions.

"The thing that makes this work is one of the issues we had was kind of the cyclical nature of the music business: There was always a schedule, we were always late for something, or somebody was saying we were late for something, there was always sort of a two-year schedule put out, and SOUNDGARDEN didn't really start out that way," Cornell explained. "We were an indie band, and we just kind of did what we did a few weeks ahead. So now it sort of feels like we're back at that place ... we're doing what we want, when we want, in sort of a relaxed environment ... and, approaching it that way, we managed to put ['Telephantasm'] together in really a pretty short amount of time."

SOUNDGARDEN played a secret show on the Paramount Studios backlot in Los Angeles on September 27. The occasion was a launch event for Activision's new Guitar Hero: Warriors Of Rock game, which was released Tuesday (September 28) and includes a copy of the single-disc edition of the SOUNDGARDEN retrospective "Telephantasm" inside the first one million copies.

"Telephantasm" is SOUNDGARDEN's first release in 13 years and contains an assortment of studio cuts, radio hits, rare live tracks and alternate takes.

In addition to the 12-song single disc version, it arrives in three expanded editions, including a double-disc set containing 12 additional tracks — five of which have never been released — and SOUNDGARDEN's first DVD. The DVD contains 20 music videos, 13 of which have never been released.

The other two expanded editions are a deluxe three-LP vinyl edition and a Super Deluxe Collector's Edition that combines the CDs, DVD and vinyl with a poster and other goodies.