By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
April 27, 1997
At last year’s Lollapalooza in Downstate Pecatonica, three 15-year-old girls ogled Soundgarden’s bare-chested frontman, Chris Cornell, as he sang. One of them turned to the other and said, “I want to be Susan Silver,” referring to Cornell’s wife.
I asked her why, expecting the teen to gush about how cute Cornell was or how cool it would be to be married to a rock star. Instead, she said, “Then I would be powerful, too.”
In a business that is dominated by men onstage and off, Silver is an anomaly. For most of her adult life, the 38-year-old has guided the careers of superstar groups such as Soundgarden, which recently disbanded after 12 years together, and Alice in Chains. Silver got into band management for the love of music. Money wasn’t an issue. Until six years ago, Silver maintained secondary jobs to make sure the bills got paid.
Her conviction that music should always come first in the music industry has earned her a stellar reputation in the rock community.
“In a world where the music industry is a really crazy place, Susan is an island of sanity,” said director Doug Pray, who documented the music scene in Seattle in his film “Hype!” “Out of all the bands in Seattle, Soundgarden managed their career the most carefully and thoughtfully for over a decade. They did everything on their own terms–even their breakup that everyone wanted to find dirt on, where there was none. It’s all attributable to Susan. She just gets it.”
The first band Silver managed was the U-Men in 1983. She then added First Thought to her roster. By 1985, she met Soundgarden and started dating Cornell. The following year she began working as their manager and in 1990 married the singer.
She specializes in “loud rock music.” When she’s off the clock, Silver will play a variety of records, ranging from Edith Piaf and Eartha Kitt, to Jeff Buckley and Tuatara, to Spanish guitarists and gospel singers. Silver prefers to avoid the limelight, but in a rare interview, she spoke with the Sun-Times about what it took to get where she is today.
Q. A lot of people get into the music business because they secretly wish they were in a band. Are you a frustrated musician?
Silver: No. I never thought of it as a career. I played really bad keyboards in a performance once, and that was it. Oh, and I played clarinet–first chair–growing up. [Laughs.] I enjoyed playing, but I was never good at it. Even in college, I took choral classes and really loved singing. I loved it, loved it, loved it! And only after the fact did I realize how incredibly bad
I was.
Q. When you began your career, there weren’t a lot of women managing bands. Were you apprehensive about tackling a male-dominated field?
Silver: I never thought of being a woman as a hindrance. I just went forward with what I wanted to do. I think if I had thought about it, it may have been a hindrance. But I didn’t know that I couldn’t do it, so I just did it.
Q. Were you perceived as a hanger-on in the beginning?
Silver: I had already been part of a scene in Seattle by the time I started managing, and I was working all the time. So there wasn’t much time to even look like I was a hanger-on. If I was perceived that way, it didn’t matter to me because I was doing a job that I loved, even though it wasn’t a paying job. I loved being involved.
Q. You majored in Chinese at the University of Washington. Anyone who does that can’t be money-driven. When did you start earning income as a manager?
Silver [laughs]: I always had other jobs until 1991. So it was really only since then that it became my full-time, paying job, even though I had been doing it for about 12 years.
Q. How difficult is it to work with your husband?
Silver: We have pretty good boundaries. In the beginning, everything was so new and exciting that I did want to talk about [the business] 24 hours a day. There are days that I still want to do that, but I stop myself. You have to keep them separate.
Q. What’s Soundgarden’s future?
Silver: When the band’s ready to say something, that will be it. But they are respectfully disbanded.
Q. How much of a band’s success is related to its management?
Silver: It’s a partnership. The strength of an organization can really create a successful environment for an artist. Certainly, the music comes first. It’s really important for great artists to surround themselves with great management, but I think lawyers are as important as managers. My job is to present the pros and cons as thoroughly as possible, but ultimately [the choice of which label to sign with or whether to hold out for another deal] is the artists’ decision. They’re the ones who have to live with what
they decide.
It’s really a balancing act to preserve a band’s future as well as make them successful. The time we’re at right now is where there’s a heavy emphasis on chart-topping hits, and there’s less room for artist development. With Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, we got in under the wire because there still were a lot of opportunities for artist development. Thankfully, there are still some patient record companies that continue to invest in groups and realize that. But in general, the music business is much more of a song-driven market as opposed to a lifestyle market.
Q. What do many bands overlook when they sign a record deal?
Silver: It’s not that they overlook this, but nowadays bands have to be up not just on the financial aspects, but the mechanics of what they have to do to break a record [such as waiting for the right time rather than expecting a hit with your first try and knowing how radio works for and against you]. The guys in Sponge [who Silver also represents] are so on top of the game.
Bands need to have a real awareness of how incredibly competitive it is. I’m finding more and more artists are aware of how much goes into that and staying on top of their game.
Q. What keeps you sane?
Silver: Chris. And my dogs. I have three small ones here and another two at home.
Q. Taking care of bands must be easy compared to that.
Silver [laughs]: There you go! It’s all perspective.
