![]() ![]() I just went forward with what I wanted to do. Silver: I never thought of being a woman as a hindrance. Were you apprehensive about tackling a male-dominated field? When you began your career, there weren’t a lot of women managing bands. I loved it, loved it, loved it! And only after the fact did I realize how incredibly bad Even in college, I took choral classes and really loved singing. I enjoyed playing, but I was never good at it. Oh, and I played clarinet–first chair–growing up. ![]() I played really bad keyboards in a performance once, and that was it. A lot of people get into the music business because they secretly wish they were in a band. 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. 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. The following year she began working as their manager and in 1990 married the singer. By 1985, she met Soundgarden and started dating Cornell. She then added First Thought to her roster. The first band Silver managed was the U-Men in 1983. They did everything on their own terms–even their breakup that everyone wanted to find dirt on, where there was none. “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. Her conviction that music should always come first in the music industry has earned her a stellar reputation in the rock community. Until six years ago, Silver maintained secondary jobs to make sure the bills got paid. Silver got into band management for the love of music. 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. In a business that is dominated by men onstage and off, Silver is an anomaly. Instead, she said, “Then I would be powerful, too.” 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. ![]() One of them turned to the other and said, “I want to be Susan Silver,” referring to Cornell’s wife. At last year’s Lollapalooza in Downstate Pecatonica, three 15-year-old girls ogled Soundgarden’s bare-chested frontman, Chris Cornell, as he sang. ![]()
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