The following year’s Louder Than Love saw Soundgarden make strides towards taking the Seattle scene to the mainstream by being the first grunge band to sign with a major label, A&M. This heady cocktail was, of course, topped off with Chris’ multi-octave voice, which was by turns soulful and searing, but always seductive. They made their full-length debut with 1988’s Ultramega OK introducing the world to a trademark sound blending punk-rock intensity, Beatles-esque melodies, and a heavy metal groove (Chris would conclude Soundgarden’s first-ever UK show, at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies in 1989, with the words, “We’re Black Sabbath. Soundgarden was initially Chris on vocals and rhythm guitar, Kim Thayil on lead guitar, Hiro Yamamoto on bass, and Matt Cameron on drums. I don’t remember much of it, but I spent a lot of time crawling around on the stage and jumping on people.”
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“I didn’t really know what to do or how to do it,” he’d tell Rolling Stone, before revealing that the intensity of his performances was first informed by illness. Chris’ continued love of the drums very nearly robbed us of one of the finest voices in rock, before the band’s lack of a singer forced him to switch roles, something he was initially nervous about. During this period he worked as a dishwasher, floor cleaner and cook in order to get by, while concentrating on assembling the band that would become Soundgarden – a feat he achieved in 1984. In his teens he showcased a rebellious streak, dropping out of high school at 15 in order to concentrate on his musical vocation.
They’d perform covers that focused primarily on big, dynamic rock ( AC/DC, Rush) and punk ( Ramones, xes Pistols) reflective of the fusion of styles later adopted by the band that introduced him to the world. He gravitated towards music as a teen, playing drums in his first group, the Jones Street Band, named after the street he lived on. One of six children in an Irish Catholic household he’d confusingly describe as, “Urban but not really urban… suburban but not really suburban.” The divorce of his pharmacist father and accountant mother resulted in him taking the moniker the world would come to know him by – his mother’s maiden name, Cornell.
The man who could lay claim to collaborating with rapper Timbaland, and writing songs so timeless that Johnny Cash covered one, was many different things to many different people, meaning the news that the Soundgarden frontman had taken his own life at the age 52 – following a show at Detroit’s Fox Theatre – dealt a devastating blow across the music community, and beyond.Ĭhristopher John Boyle was born in Seattle, Washington on July 20, 1964. It only enhanced it.īeing a dream interviewee is just one of the many accolades you could attribute to Chris Cornell – alongside being a forefather of a musical movement that changed rock forever, a divinely talented singer, and the frontman of not one, but two of the greatest supergroups of all time. There’s no mistaking the presence of a rock God, especially one with impeccable manners, and the following 30 minutes in his personable, charming and surprisingly self-deprecating company did nothing to diminish his hero status. That dissipated the second the man himself swept in with a suave air that could give 007 a run for his money – broad smile, unquantifiable charisma, and deeply apologetic for his tardiness. In fact, so rammed was the singer’s schedule that he was 20 minutes late for our chat in a plush suite at London’s Dorchester Hotel, intensifying this writer’s nerves no end, given that it was only our second-ever interview with a bona fide rockstar. In 2006, he was in the midst of a whirlwind press jaunt to promote You Know My Name, the theme song for Casino Royale, Daniel Craig’s first outing as James Bond. Whoever said you should never meet your heroes had obviously never crossed paths with Chris Cornell. We pay tribute to the late, great Chris Cornell, as we take a look back at this incredible legacy.
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