Soundgarden and Audioslave’s Chris Cornell sadly died on May 17, 2017

Chris Cornell (July 20, 1964 – May 17, 2017) was born Christopher John Boyle in Seattle, Washington but took his mother’s maiden name after his parents split up. He was a musician, singer and songwriter, and the lead vocalist, main songwriter and rhythm guitarist for the Seattle grunge rock band Soundgarden, as well as lead vocalist and songwriter for Audioslave.

Cornell was known as a major role in the 1990s grunge movement, for his extensive catalogue as a songwriter, his almost four octave vocal range, and his amazingly powerful singing technique.

During his early life he was a loner but was able to deal with his anxiety around people through rock music and singing. But in his teenage years, he spiralled into severe depression, dropped out of school and almost never left his house, living in what was a terrible state of depression.

In a Rolling Stone interview in 1994 he said: “I went from being a daily drug user at 13 to having bad drug experiences and quitting drugs by the time I was 14 and then not having any friends until the time I was 16.”

Somehow he still managed to become a successful musician, but before that he worked at a seafood wholesaler and was also a sous-chef at a restaurant named Ray’s Boathouse.

Soundgarden years

Soundgarden was formed in 1984 by Cornell, Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto with Cornell originally on drums and vocals. In 1985, they brought in Scott Sundquist as the drummer to allow Cornell to concentrate on vocals.

Soundgarden was one of the seminal Seattle bands involved in the creation of grunge music, and were the first grunge band to sign to a major label (A&M Records in 1988). They did not achieve commercial success until the genre was popularized by them and other Seattle grunge bands Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Alice in Chains, in the early 1990s.

Soundgarden achieved their biggest success with the 1994 album Superunknown, which debuted at number one and included the Grammy Award-winning singles “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman”. In 1997, the band broke up due to internal strife over its creative direction.

Audioslave years

Cornell then formed rock supergroup Audioslave in Los Angeles in 2001 with Rage Against the Machine members Tom Morello on lead guitar, Tim Commerford on bass and backing vocals, and Brad Wilk on drums. Their sound was a blend of 1970s hard rock with 1990s alternative rock. As with Rage Against the Machine, they prided themselves on the fact that all of the sounds on their albums were made using only guitar, bass, drums, and vocals.

In its six years of existence, Audioslave released three albums, received three Grammy nominations, and became the first American rock band to perform an open-air concert in Cuba. They split up in February 2007 when Cornell issued a statement saying he was permanently leaving the band “due to irresolvable personality conflicts as well as musical differences.” The 2007 Rage Against the Machine reunion and tour involving the rest of the band as well as solo albums released that same year by Morello and Cornell cemented the end of the band.

Solo years

The period of time after Audioslave was a significant period in his career, since he had been suffering from problems with drug and alcohol abuse during his later years with Soundgarden, and had made a strenuous effort to overcome them. “It was really hard to recover from, just mentally,” he recalled. “I think Audioslave suffered from that because my feet hadn’t hit the ground yet. I was sober but I don’t think my brain was clear … It took me five years of sobriety to even get certain memories back.”

As well as his work with Soundgarden and Audioslave he released four solo studio albums. He also received a Golden Globe Award nomination for his song “The Keeper” which was used in the film Machine Gun Preacher and co-wrote and performed the theme song to the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale, “You Know My Name”.

Reunions

After more than ten years working on solo projects and with other bands, Soundgarden reunited in 2010 and made their first television appearance since their reunion on Conan O’Brien’s second episode of Conan on 9 November 2010. They toured North America in summer 2011, and in the summer of 2012, released a new single & video, “Live to Rise”, for The Avengers movie soundtrack. Their sixth album, King Animal, was released in November 2012 to largely positive reviews. They continued to tour worldwide and Kim Thayil mentioned in several interviews that they were to begin work on material for their seventh album.

On 17 January 2017, it was announced that Audioslave would reunite for their first show in twelve years at Prophets of Rage’s Anti-Inaugural Ball, to protest the inauguration of President Donald Trump. The gig took place on 20 January 2017.

Asked in February 2017 if there would be more Audioslave reunion shows in the future, Cornell replied, “It’s always a possibility. I mean, we’ve been talking about it for at least three or four years now. We were talking about actually picking dates, and it just ended up not working out because everybody’s so busy. They have another band again, they all have separate bands that they do themselves, I have Soundgarden and a solo career that’s taking up a lot of time. So, it’s really honestly as simple as we end up having a window of time where it’s comfortable for everybody and we want to do it, because I definitely feel like everybody’s up for it.”

Death

On May 17, 2017, Cornell was found dead in the bathroom of his hotel room at the MGM Grand, Detroit shortly after performing a show with Soundgarden at the Fox Theatre. The cause of death was determined to be suicide by hanging, aged 52, although his family have suggested that prescription drugs played a major role in his death.

His family have said they wanted to wait for a toxicology report before coming to any conclusions on what had happened to him, saying they believed his judgment may have been impaired by the prescription drugs he was taking on the day he died.

Chris Cornell was an amazing vocalist and was voted “Rock’s Greatest Singer” by readers of Guitar World, ranked 4th in the list of “Heavy Metal’s All-Time Top 100 Vocalists” by Hit Parader, 9th in the list of “Best Lead Singers of All Time” by Rolling Stone and 12th in MTV’s “22 Greatest Voices in Music”. His talent and genius will truly be missed!

If you need help:-

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255.

In the UK, contact the Samaritans on 116 123.

In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14.

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Check out Audioslave on Amazon