Remembering Chris Cornell - One Year On

Following on from the annus horribilis of last year, 2017 claimed its first legendary rock figure early on the morning of May 18. Having just completed a show with Soundgarden at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, Chris Cornell was found dead in the bathroom of his room at the city’s MGM Grand hotel. Once the initial shock had subsided amongst the singer’s friends, colleagues and fans around the globe, details began to emerge over the subsequent days.

The coroner ruled Cornell’s death a suicide, though the singer’s widow, Vicky, subsequently released a statement questioning whether his anxiety medication, Atvian, was to blame for his actions. Furthermore, an attorney for the Cornell family, Kirk Pasich, added that they were “disturbed at inferences that Chris knowing and intentionally took his life.”

It was a horribly tragic situation, and the world of rock quickly went into mourning. Slash, Elton John, Jimmy Page, Courtney Love and Nile Rodgers were just a handful of the stars paying tribute, while U2 and Metallica – Cornell having famously done a mash-up of both bands’ tracks called ‘One’ – dedicated songs to him at their concerts over the following days. And, of course, he was remembered by countless fans around the world, with many taking to social media to share their memories of the man and his music.

With Cornell’s death, the singer had joined several other members of the early ’90s Seattle rock scene who had sadly passed well before their time. Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley and Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood – a friend of Cornell’s whom he had formed the Seattle supergroup Temple Of The Dog in tribute to – also belong to this tragic group. Add in Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland and the mortality rate for Gen X alt.rockers is frighteningly high.

Having met and interviewed Cornell in Dublin back in 2007, I could understand why there was such extraordinary warmth towards him amongst his peers. Then touring his second solo album, Carry On – his post-Soundgarden band, another alt.rock supergroup called Audioslave, having broken up in somewhat acrimonious circumstances – the singer was supporting Aerosmith in Marlay Park.

We met in the restaurant of the Beacon Court Hotel in Sandyford, where Cornell sat quietly in a corner and happily held forth on his solo career, Soundgarden, Nirvana, the Seattle scene and anything else I cared to question him on. Though not a huge Soundgarden fan, I was immediately impressed by Cornell, who had an appealingly easygoing personality and a sharp intelligence, as well as an unaffected demeanour not always found in musicians of his stature.

There was also a comedic element to our encounter which we both appreciated: halfway through the interview, the fire alarm in the restaurant went off. We finished the conversation in the courtyard outside, Cornell reflecting on Nirvana while I had a cigarette and – in true Spinal Tap fashion – the fire drill took place in the background.

The singer at the time had been sober for a lengthy period. A Seattle native, he was – like Cobain, Dave Grohl and scores of other Gen X musicians and artists – a child of divorced parents, taking his mother’s maiden name, Cornell, as his surname after they separated. First suffering from depression and anxiety whilst a teenager, he subsequently struggled with several addictions, including alcoholism. His problems spiralled after the break-up of Soundgarden in ’97 and in 2003 – whilst he was also in the midst of a bitter divorce battle with his ex-wife, former Soundgarden manager Susan Silva – he entered rehab.

Having established themselves with records like Louder Than Love and Badmotorfinger, Soundgarden went supernova with 1994’s Superunknown, one of the acknowledged classics of ’90s alt.rock. Propelled by the massive success of the psych-rock epic ‘Black Hole Sun’ – which also boasted a memorably trippy video directed by Howard Greenhalgh – the LP became a multi-platinum smash in the States, where it topped the Billboard charts.

As was the case with the rest of the Seattle scene, and much of US ’90s alt.rock as a whole, Superunknown was dark stuff; alienation and angst ruled the day. But as with Nevermind, Ten and the other classic albums of the era, it spoke to a whole generation. I asked Cornell if Superunknown’s enormous popularity caught him by surprise.

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“Yes and no,” he mused, in a Seattle drawl reminiscent of Cobain. “I don’t think it would have been a surprise had it not been as big; we probably would have felt that it was par for the course. But it still didn’t sell as much as Nevermind or Ten. Even the follow-up to Ten sold more than Superunknown. So to us it was like, ‘Oh, now it’s our turn.’

And still, even when it was our turn, it wasn’t the same sort of overwhelming commercial success, it wasn’t hit after hit. Actually, we kind of stopped that in a way, too.

“We put out ‘Black Hole Sun’ as the second single after ‘Spoonman’, and it wasn’t what we wanted to do, but the radio stations started playing it. Then, the record company wanted the third single to be ‘Fell On Black Days’, another ballad. We thought, ‘Look, we’re selling a lot of records here to people who’ve never heard Soundgarden, and don’t really know what the band is. And if two of the first three singles are ‘Black Hole Sun’ and ‘Fell On Black Days’, we’re gonna start selling the album to people who maybe aren’t going to like it.’

“We wanted to put out ‘My Wave’ as the third single, and the record company basically said, ‘We’ll do it, cos you insist, but you’ll lose momentum on radio and your record will start to fall off the charts’. And that’s what happened!”

I asked Cornell if his life had changed dramatically as a result of Superunknown.

“The big change kind of happened with ‘Outshined’, from Badmotorfinger,” he remembered. “It was all to do with MTV, and it happened within hours of being on television. We were in the middle of Mississippi, I think, on tour, and I went into a 24-hour grocery store at 4 o’clock in the morning. The butcher, who was about 45-years-old, recognised me, and the video had only been playing for about seven hours. He said, ‘You’re from that band, you’re on TV.’ And I looked at him like, ‘That is just fucking unbelievable.’”

One of the first people I saw reacting to Cornell’s death on Facebook was Jonathan Poneman, the co-founder of the legendary Seattle label Sub-Pop, who first signed both Nirvana and Soundgarden. He was clearly deeply shocked by the news. Looking back on my ’07 interview with Cornell, I saw that Poneman had been the first person to introduce him to Nirvana, giving him a demo tape of what later became the band’s debut album, Bleach.

“Everything on that demo was released at some point; if it wasn’t on Bleach, it was part of Incesticide or a b-side or something,” said Cornell. “The artwork Kurt had done, it was just a photo he’d taken and cut and put in there. We all loved it. We all could kind of tell that this was a band who were pretty fucking incredible, which was a little bit weird, I gotta say, because it was like the tenth band in a row that had come out that year that seemed to be pretty amazing, and that no one had ever heard of. To me that was like the last one, that was the one where I went, ‘Holy fuck, where do they find these people?’

“We had played shows with The Melvins, who I think were also from Aberdeen. And then we played a show with Nirvana. They opened for us in, I think, Olympia, Washington. It was an outdoor show in a park, and there were probably 50 people there. That was one of the two or three times I ever talked to Kurt; he was really quiet then and we never became buddies. I think when he became friends with a lot of the local musicians, he quickly was a part of a group of people who were more drug-oriented.”

Post-Soundgarden, of course, Cornell had gone on to enjoy more success with Audioslave – formed with the remaining members of Rage Against The Machine after singer Zack de le Rocha’s departure – and again had topped the US charts with the band’s 2005 effort Out Of Exile. After the band’s dissolution the following year, he had re-embarked on the solo career he’d first commenced with 1999’s Euphoria Morning. While both it and Carry On had been well-received, 2009’s Scream – a collaboration with R&B producer Timbaland – raised eyebrows in certain quarters.

In an interview that year with Hot Press’ Roisin Dwyer, Cornell explained the background to the record.

“Being a fan of so many different types of music, I have a real difficulty in narrowing my focus!” he said from his Los Angeles home. “I’m always stirring around in different directions, trying to keep myself inspired. I think that’s sort of the point. I think that’s what a recording artist owes the listener, to write and record music that inspires them. That is the promise that you have to keep.”

Cornell went back to basics on 2015’s more intimate Higher Truth, which was sadly to be his last solo record. Soundgarden had reformed in 2010, releasing the well-received comeback album King Animal two years later and playing some storming live shows, including a 2014 co-headliner of the US with Nine Inch Nails. Indeed, Cornell had been extremely productive in recent times; as well as Soundgarden’s tour, he had also played reunion shows with both Temple Of The Dog and Audioslave.

That he should pass when he clearly had so much still to offer as an artist makes his death all the more tragic. He will be sorely missed. RIP.