Audioslave’s Like A Stone hits one billion views on YouTube

Rage Against The Machine/Soundgarden supergroup Audioslave's epic early 00s song Like A Stone joins the Billion YouTube Views Club 20 years after it was released

Audioslave, the 2000s supergroup featuring Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and three quarters of Rage Against The Machine, have passed one YouTube views for their song Like A Stone, 20 years after it was released.

The song originally appeared on their self-titled debut album in 2002. It was released as a single in January 2003, hitting No.1 on the US Mainstream Rock chart.

Audioslave were formed by guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk in the wake of Rage Against The Machine's dissolution, with the trio recruiting ex-Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell as singer. The band released three albums, Audioslave (2002), Out Of Exile (2005) and Revelations (2006), before splitting up in 2007.

Speaking to Metal Hammer earlier this year, Morello explained how the band came together after he met Cornell, who passed away in 2017, for the first time,

"When Rage broke up and Tim, Brad and I decided that we still wanted to play together, and we kept listening to [Soundgarden's 1991 album] Badmotorfinger.

"Chris has an amazing voice, but he has a dark, Edgar Allen Poe poetry to him, we wondered what he was really like, so we decided to go talk to him. Rick Rubin came with us and he doesn't leave the house for anything, unless it's in a Rolls Royce inside another Rolls Royce, but he's in my van.

"Chris lived in LA in the top of the last and loneliest mountain, it was dusk and the sunlight was going down and this mansion he lived in was creepy as hell, the gates just opened like Addams Family style, and we drove in and there is Chris, 6’2 and a half, lanky of frame, dark of countenance, and he starts slowly walking towards us and Rick freaked out and goes ‘Let's get the fuck out of here!’

"We stayed, he was the most loving and generous guy and we were in a band for six years together. That's my first memory of him."

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Audioslave’s Like A Stone hits one billion views on YouTube