I'm writing this a bit late, because the news of Chris Cornell's death was such a shock to me, and it took some time to process. I'm still trying to process it. I wanted to write this because he was so important to me. It was crummy enough hearing in recent years legends like Bowie and Lemmy had died. Somehow this hit me extra hard. It's almost like Chris wasn't just some rock star, but almost like I lost a distant cousin or something. Damn!
First I'll focus on his death itself (as much as I don't wanna). As far as I gather, he was playing with Soundgarden at the Fox Theater in Detroit, and after the show's conclusion, he went to his hotel room. During the show, many people, including fans, noticed something was 'off', like he was very distant, and his voice was cracking a lot trying to sing certain notes. His bodyguard had a few interactions with him at the hotel, for example helping him with his computer, and giving him two Ativan pills to help him sleep. I think he took a few more himself on top of that. People have noted that this anti-anxiety pill can cause very unstable side effects in an individual, including clouded thinking and suicidal thoughts. His wife had then talked to him on the phone and noticed how he was slurring words, and something didn't seem right. He kept saying he was just 'tired'. She called the bodyguard to check up on him, who then tried to get hotel security help him get into Chris' locked room. The security said it was against their rules under the circumstances to barge in. After they left, the bodyguard kicked down the door anyway, then kicked down another door inside. Chris Cornell was found unresponsive on the bathroom floor, with an exercise band around his neck, and blood coming from his mouth. Personnel attempted CPR until paramedics arrived, who also tried to save Chris. In the early hours of the morning on May 18th, he was pronounced dead. It appeared it was a suicide, he hung himself from the exercise band by attaching it to a carabiner at the top of the door frame.
Countless people, from Chris' family and friends to fans to others, are shocked almost beyond words. How could he actually be dead? How could it be suicide? He seemed to be in good spirits and working towards many things in his life. He was the frontman of one of the best bands of all time (in my opinion THE best actually), seemed to have a loving family and lots of friends, had fame, fortune, everything one could ask for.
There are still unanswered questions. Theories abound, ranging from murder conspiracies, autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong, or a faked death. The most common consensus is that it was indeed a suicide. There is no time and space to delve into every theory out there, you can go and look for yourself, the web is a big place. The one thing I will go into now is if the assumption is true it was a suicide, how could it all happen?
At first I was like so many and thinking, there's no way, it just can't be. But tracing back his life path over the years means it's very likely. The fact he seemed happy and normal in the weeks leading up to his death does nothing to discount suicide. Often suicidal people are expert at concealing what's really going on inside. When they threaten to do it really openly, it should be taken seriously, yet still is more a cry for help, more often than not. People who are really bent on doing it DON'T want to be stopped, therefore try to do it as secretly as possible. Some hints are present though.
Look at Chris' life. From a very young age, his parents divorced, he was a sort of a depressed loner during childhood. He experimented with drugs very early on. He wasn't rich, didn't have many friends. He got kicked out of school (or dropped out). Chris managed to live independently and work hard in various jobs, for example in restaurants, while pursuing being in a band. When he formed Soundgarden in 1984, it seemed things were coming together. Over time the band became more and more successful, and they became one of the most important bands from the 'Seattle scene.'
This scene started out as a very communal and connected thing where almost everyone was friends, and they'd see each other play gigs at various small clubs around the Seattle area.
When 'grunge' exploded in 1991 (thanks to Nirvana's smash success for better or worse), it no longer was this whole grassroots thing. Chris explained how the big company interest despoiled the once organic and flourishing scene: “It’s hard not to be a little bitter about it,” he said in Rolling Stone. “We lost good friends in the process. And all of a sudden you realize that it’s turned into something that’s considered a fashion statement. It’s like mining. It’s like somebody came into your city with bulldozers and water compressors and mined your own perfect mountain and excavated it and threw out what they didn’t want and left the rest to rot. It’s that bad.”
So it could seem exciting being part of the biggest scene on the planet at the time, and you and your buddies all becoming successful musicians, but it was all at a cost. The Seattle scene was permeated with darkness and despair for all the positive moments, and drug abuse, particularly heroin abuse, was almost a local epidemic. The overdose death of Mother Love Bone Andrew Wood hit the local scene hard, and especially hit Chris hard. Andrew was one of Chris' best friends, and also his roommate at one point. This would lead Chris to form the tribute side project 'Temple of the Dog'. The death of Kurt Cobain several years later was a great blow to the world, and though Chris didn't know Kurt as a close friend, he knew him as an acquaintance and felt a palpable sense of sadness from it. Some years after that, Alice In Chains singer Layne Staley died, and then almost ten more years later, original AIC bassist Mike Starr also died. Other deaths followed. Some of these 'grunge' or 'alternative' figureheads who become casualties were not directly part of the Seattle scene, but tied into the broad musical movement as a whole, for example STP frontman Scott Weiland, or Blind Melon's Shannon Hoon. Another close musician friend to Chris who died was Jeff Buckley. But it wasn't just the most well-known people. Since the beginning of this 'alternative' music movement, people have fallen such as Mia Zapata (raped and strangled to death), Steven Jesse Bernstein (suicide), Ben McMillan (complications from diabetes), Kristen Pfaff (heroin overdose), Stefanie Sargent (asphyxia from vomit after too much alcohol and heroin), Jon Melvoin (heroin overdose), Natasha Shneider (cancer), and the list goes on and on. Imagine being Chris and seeing all these people drop like flies around you, some of which you might have known more closely. That's depressing as hell in itself. The ghosts of closer people like Andrew Wood or Jeff Buckley would be haunting Chris forever.
By 1997 Soundgarden broke up. 'Grunge' was pretty much dead by that point, or there were only a few trickles of it left. Through the next few years Chris' first marriage dissolved, and he fell into heavy drinking and also abused prescription pills (Oxycontin I believe).
Things seemed to look up after Chris attending rehab, and then meeting his second wife, then having two children (he also had a daughter with his first wife). He had played as a solo act and as part of Audioslave, and then Soundgarden reformed in 2010. You would think that things would be pretty peachy by that point, but aren't looks deceiving? Being on tour, Chris wouldn't always get to see his family. No family life is ever perfect either. Though he seemingly made it to the top, sometimes when there's not as much challenge and struggle, that can be very disillusioning. If you feel empty and you're supposed to 'have it all', where do you go from there? Or, as leader of Soundgarden, there would be immense pressure to 'deliver the goods' since the bar had been raised so high in the past (especially since 1994's masterpiece album 'Superunkown'). I was lucky enough to see Soundgarden several times after they reunited, and they put on a solid show. I did notice slowly that Chris' voice was gradually getting worse and aging, and that's a tough thing when you once hit epic heights of your singing during your heyday, and then have to contend with the effects of aging and struggle twice as hard to hit those highs. Perhaps SG could have done one last tour and finished their album they were working on, then stepped down honorably, and Chris could still pursue his solo career, but not have to do crazy power shrieking over churning slabs of heavy metal rock. He could do the soft acoustic route and not strain his voice as much, and I think he sang beautifully, even when more subdued and lower. But maybe, and I say maybe, he was feeling like an old washout, including his voice. Touring can be stressful in itself, but maybe Chris really felt it was just the same crap over and over and got tired of rehashing the same songs every night.
The fact he already had the 'equipment' to kill himself (the exercise band etc.), the fact he inserted lyrics from Led Zeppelin's 'In My Time Of Dying' into the last song Soundgarden that would ever play ('Slaves and Bulldozers'), those things alone seem to point towards him planning beforehand to off himself. Coincidental maybe. Hours before he died he wrote the lyric line (from the SG song 'By Crooked Steps') "I'm the shape of the hole inside your heart" on his Facebook page. Even on his final Twitter post, the one tag used was #nomorebullshit. That could be ambiguous in meaning, yet could also be a statement towards the effect of 'enough is enough'. And yes, people did notice he seemed 'off' and 'distant' in the hours before his death. I agree with his wife that the Ativan didn't help, and that it probably amplified his depression and impaired his judgement. He must have been taking those pills for a while up to the point of his death. Also, look at many of Chris' lyrics over the years, VERY poetic and powerful, yet very tragic and depressing, and very telling in many ways of his internal struggle.
All in all we have a man who had a lifetime history of profound depression and anxiety, substance abuse issues, suicidal ideation, tour rigors, divorce (ranging from his own parents to his own marriage), watching many friends and peers die left and right, issues and pressures of fame, crazyass Ativan pills, a set of the world's best pipes slowly failing, and just being fucking tired, also maybe other things I haven't thought of. In all that light, yes it is very believable more than anything that he chose to end his life. However, perhaps he could have 'weathered the storm' if not for many factors piling up all at the wrong time. For instance, maybe Chris would have thought things out more and stuck around, but the influence of what was in his system impaired him. You can believe all the other theories, and anything's possible, you can respect that a man had a real battle that got the best of him, he is human, after all.
Some say "how can someone even think of that, leaving a family with children behind?" Well that isn't an excuse to stay unfortunately. I agree with the idealism, it is horrible to leave loved ones behind. Yet one must understand that truly tragically depressed and suicidal people are in SUCH a dark place, NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING matters. Unless you are there yourself, you can't really judge. 'Selfishness' and all that is not even an issue in the mind of one truly hurting on that level.
Physically, some (like the ones who think the bodyguard offed him) theorize he was too tall to do it and the exercise band would stretch too easily. It only takes very few seconds of a certain pressure on the neck to make you pass out, and even if the band could stretch, Cornell could have created some distance and tension by walking away from the door frame and going to his knees. So I don't think it was physically impossible.
Anything's possible, including the other theories, but that doesn't mean him actually killing himself is impossible either.
Maybe he really didn't fully mean to die, but circumstances piled up, and he's gone, and it definitely sucks massively. Whatever you choose to believe, he's gone, and it's a travesty and tragedy rolled into one.
Now instead of ending on a sour note, I would like to pay tribute to how great Chris was in life:
-He was the leader of the best band to ever exist!
-He commanded respect not only from his peers, but even people who influenced him or came before him. During his life and following his death, tributes and accolades have come from all sorts, including: Jimmy Page, Aerosmith, Elton John, Brian May, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Pretty Reckless, Corey Taylor, Nile Rodgers, Norah Jones, Amy Lee, Nirvana, Dave Navarro, Candlebox, Queensryche, Dillinger Escape Plan, Incubus, Dave Mustaine, Living Color, Tom Morello, the list goes on and on.
-Probably the best modern rock singer of the 90's. He had such range, power, soulfulness. Listen to the high notes he hit in SG's cover of 'Smokestack Lightning', for example. Even many talented female singers would struggle to hit those notes!
-He never thought he was that good at guitar, but I thought he was great. Maybe not the world's greatest guitarist, but far, FAR from the worst. See how he could play 'Rusty Cage' and sing at the same time, that's challenging as fuck. Or his intricate finger picking on his solo song 'Seasons', and so on.
-A masterful cover artist. Check out his live cover of the Beatles' 'A Day In The Life': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2pNjgGdU7M
T
The original song was so rich with layers, and yet one man with only his voice and a guitar captures the vastness and emotion of it all.
-Some people might not known he also knew how to drum, when Soundgarden first formed, he actually was their first drummer, while doing vocals at the same time.
-Cornell was an epic songwriter, for music or lyrics. Not all his songs were amazing, but at least 90% were. He utilized interesting time signatures and alternate tunings, and tapped dynamics and emotion in ways that were so unique and creative and powerful.
-He was good soundtrack contributor, (counting his work with Soundgarden as well); from movies such as: 'Wayne's World', 'Singles' 'Say Anything', 'True Romance', 'Great Expectations', 'Basketball Diaries', 'The Avengers', 'Casino Royale', 'Machine Gun Preacher', '12 Years a Slave', etc.
-Here's a nice acting cameo Chris did in the movie 'Singles' : https://youtu.be/7J5H8YzfARE?t=24s
-Chris played music that wasn't always just for fun, it had deep, profound, emotional and existential meaning. It looked at life itself, it wasn't just about partying or something equally trivial. If anything was done that seemed like it was party rock, it was done as a tongue in cheek parody (i.e. 'Big Dumb Sex'.) Many fans saw the music as therapeutic and life-changing, and it got them through tough times in their lives.
-Though he had issues with alcohol and drugs, he never glorified them in the end, he acknowledged their negative influence and sought to transcend it all.
-Through the tragedies of his life he fought really hard, apparently harder than most had noticed or took for granted. He was a real tough survivor up to this point.
-He had godlike looks, a very handsome chap. He could go shirtless in a unpretentious and natural way.
-Chris was the only rock musician I know of to rock duct tape shorts as high fashion (check out the 'Hands All Over' video). Hah.
-In contrast to his grungy rocker side, he had sort of a high society chic side. One time he owned a restaurant in Paris called 'Black Calavados'. He also modelled for John Varvatos, etc. That could be seen as 'selling out' to the roots of grunge, or it could be seen as multifaceted.
-When in Audioslave, Chris and co. performed the first large outdoor free concert in history by an American band in Cuba.
-Cornell wrote two songs that rock legend Alice Cooper picked up and used: 'Stolen Prayer' and 'Unholy War'. Consequently, he collaborated with Alice. He also collaborated with other artists over the years, including Carlos Santana, Alice In Chains, A Perfect Circle, Slash, Eleven, etc.
-A huge part of Chris was his awesome sense of humor. Some Soundgarden songs were nonsensical and hilarious (i.e. 'Exit Stonehenge', 'Bing Bing Goes To Church', or covers of Spinal Tap's 'Big Bottom' or Cheech and Chong's 'Earache My Eye'.) This served as a good contrast or balancing element for all their serious and heavy stuff.
The humorous side shined with Chris' witty banter during live concerts. For example, one time a fan screamed "MILTON!" and Chris was incredulously like "What?! There's no one in the band named Milton. However, we are looking for a keyboard player named Milton." Or Chris would say "Thank you ladies and gentlemen, we're Def Leppard. Oh sorry, no, we're ABBA."
He was also very witty and whimsical during many interviews.
Here are a few video interview snippets that are funny, but there are countless golden moments out there...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OoqU_ijui4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvTWVUdcIXo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fweQgcTjf0
Also, Chris was funny in print interviews, here are some random excerpts (sorry I didn't mark down the sources when I originally compiled these snippets like a true fanboy nerd years ago)..
And what could possibly be the next wave from the Soundgarden? "Holograms," says Cornell, "Then the music plays and we are in your living room. No tuning problems, nobody breaks a string, and nobody's going to be too drunk."
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Soundgarden first met at a teen hop in Seattle. Chris Cornell, vocals and bare torso, takes up the story from the depths of a youth hostel bedroom in Groningen: "We were playing in a band called The Champs, dressed in tuxedos," he says. "We threw our guitars down in disgust and quit, because we weren't expressing ourselves as we wanted to. So we formed a three-piece band where I played drums and sang, and Hiro (bass) sang backups and Kim played guitar and did the doo-wops.
"We started writing jangly, creepy-crawly songs, giving them names like "Blood" and "Open Sesame" and "Bury my Head in the Sand." We supported Husker Du as a three piece, blew them away and got into a wrestling match with them afterwards. The drummer sat on us and spilt Rice Krispies in Kim's beard. All we wanted was the crowd to cheer and carry us around on their shoulders."
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(When asked about his vocal influence for singing 'Beyond The Wheel'..)
Chris: My mom screaming at me to take out the garbage or hide the pot plants when the police came 'round. She just generally screamed at me like that.
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Kim and Chris already have plans on designing a tour t-shirt to outdo last year s Total Fucking Godhead souvenirs. "Well, we might make an extra-small sized one in toddler sizes saying 'Total Fucking Butt Rash' or maybe a picture of a baby Godzilla blowing a smoke ring," explains Kim. "I think that would be adorable because punk rockers are getting, older and everyone can have their children with shirts that say 'Fuck' and 'Burp' and 'Butt Rash' on them." Ultraswell.
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Rachtman: We're about to show the debut of your new video. "Hands All Over." Do you guys like making videos?
Kim: Nope, making faces, usually.
Chris: Making this video was fun because we were in a steel foundry. And there was like a black cancer dust all over everything. We're all gonna get cancer from it and die. so I hope you enjoy it. This will be the video that killed Soundgarden.
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Seconds: Just to set the record straight, what's the hidden truth behind Soundgarden? I mean, most people have a lot of misconceptions about what you guys are really like.
Chris: Well, Kim's a crossdresser. He has a closet full of cocktail dresses, and he goes out and smokes cigarettes with long cigarette holders. Everybody else is pretty much normal.
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There are no TV monitors onstage the next night, at Jones Beach Theatre. There's not much of anything onstage - except water. Here, the rain blows in from the ocean and halfway through their set Soundgarden are deluged with sheets of whipping water as lightning flashes across the sky.
"We've got a great light show tonight," Chris tells the crowd. "Courtesy of God."
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The prospect of touring with the masters of debauchery must have brought fears of corruption.
"Most of it's tedious," explains vocalist Chris Cornell. "We just thought most of the stories surrounding Guns N'Roses were media generated -- people looking for a story. Nothing spectacular ever happened."
So the story about you being found naked with a llama, a pregnant donkey and a family size jar of Hellman's mayonnaise was completely fictitious?
"Oh no," Chris says. "That was completely true."
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{Cornell on 'Jesus Christ Pose'} "It has nothing to do with religion, but everyone seems to be cross."
(haha-get it, 'cross?')
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However, the most important question remains, "Will Beavis and Butt-Head like it?"
"They better, those little fuckers!" cracks Cornell.
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-Chris was known (especially people close to him) to be very generous and kind. He has also donated to various charities in his life, and even formed his own charity organization with his wife as described as follows:
'The Chris & Vicky Cornell Foundation was formed in late 2012 with the mission to protect the most vulnerable children. While most of their philanthropic work to date has been private and anonymous, Chris and Vicky formed the Foundation based on their personal experience working in the child protection space.'
-I feel like he deserves 200 more pages of praise, but I am at a loss for words at this point. The internet is huge (as is life), so go see his impact he made on the world as you dig further yourself.
I conclude this tribute with some favorite pics of the man.
Keep on rockin' in paradise Chris, we'll always love you and never forget!
