Cleaning My Gun

Album: Songbook (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • This previously unreleased somber ballad is from Songbook, a solo acoustic album recorded live by Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell. On the record you hear him explaining to the audience, before playing the song, "It's about a guy who loses the love of his life and decides to maybe take himself out. Or at least he's thinking about it. He's writing a song is what he's doing."
  • The song is based on the concept of a running joke that Cornell used to have with a friend of his when he used to work at a restaurant. He explained to Spinner: "It's a joke about when somebody was feeling suicidal and went home and sort of pretended they're cleaning their gun and blow their head off. It was a metaphor for somebody who was in a bad way or a bad mood or feeling depressed. I remembered that and felt it would be an interesting approach to writing a lament like that - somebody who was down and out, and in that mood without necessarily using those words, without spelling it out."

Comments: 1

  • Mighty from CubaGun is a euphemism for “Penis.”
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