The trio halfheartedly considered a pairing with an old friend, Cypress Hill rapper B-Real. But it was producer Rick Rubin who suggested that the spooky musings and melodic smarts that Cornell lent to Soundgarden might withstand Rage's squall of hip-hop Zeppelinisms. And Cornell, who had just started work on his second solo album since Soundgarden's 1997 collapse (his first, ''Euphoria Morning,'' suffered far-from-euphoric sales), was willing to try -- provided some ground rules were set.
''I'm not gonna rap,'' says Cornell, who looks like the least likely MC on the planet, even with his long rocker tresses snipped into short, blond-highlighted spikes. ''There was never any discussion of me being the singer of Rage or me having anything to do with what Rage meant. It was always gonna be something new.''
When Cornell finally arrived at Rage's dingy Los Angeles rehearsal studio last February, magic ensued -- or so the musicians say. Within minutes, Cornell was roaring on what would become the 12th track on Audioslave, ''Light My Way.'' ''I had my eyes closed and my head down,'' says Wilk. ''I started playing, and I heard that voice that I'm so used to hearing on Soundgarden records -- it was surreal for me. I knew that something was clicking.''
In what Morello calls ''an amazing explosion of creativity,'' the band wrote 21 songs in 19 days. Cornell, who has sole writing credit on most Soundgarden hits, from ''Rusty Cage'' to ''Black Hole Sun,'' rarely grabbed a guitar: ''With this band, I was happy to write songs together in a room.''
And while Cornell's recent work had found him mellowing into Lennonesque pop and soul crooning, he rediscovered the high-pitched wail of his youth on all-out stompers like ''Set It Off.'' ''It was Timmy and Brad and Tom'' who inspired him, Cornell admits. ''I don't know that I would've done it on my own.''
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