SOUNDGARDEN FRONTMAN ENDS HIS LIFE
If we are not leading a happy productive life, we are leading probably an unhappy nonproductive life… You’re either going in one direction or in another direction. CHRIS CORNELL Singer
Chris Cornell, one of the most lauded and respected contemporary lead singers in rock music with his bands Soundgarden and Audioslave, hanged himself Wednesday in a Detroit hotel room, according to the city’s medical examiner. He was 52.
The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office completed the preliminary autopsy on Cornell, but said that “a full autopsy report has not yet been completed.” The singer was found with a band around his neck.
Cornell’s death stunned his family and his die-hard fans, who Cornell just performed for hours earlier at a show in Detroit. Soundgarden’s current tour kicked off in late April and was planned to run through May 27. He was found dead at the MGM Grand Detroit hotel by a family friend.
Cornell was a leader of the grunge movement with Seattlebased Soundgarden—with whom he gained critical and commercial acclaim. He was widely respected in the music industry: He reached success in every band lineup he was part of, his voice was memorable and powerful, and he was a skilled songwriter, even collaborating on a number of film soundtracks, including the James Bond theme song for 2006’s
Casino Royale and The Keeper from the film Machine Gun Preacher, which earned Cornell a Golden Globe nomination.
“To create the intimacy of an acoustic performance there needed to be real stories. They need to be kind of real and they need to have a beginning, middle and an end,” Cornell said of songwriting in a 2015 interview with The Associated Press.
Cornell, who grew up in Seattle, said he started using drugs at age 13 and was kicked out of school at 15.
“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,” he told Rolling Stone in 1994. “There was about two years where I was more or less agoraphobic and didn’t deal with anybody, didn’t talk to anybody, didn’t have any friends at all.”
But at 16 he grew serious about music, learning to play the drums while also working as a busboy and dishwasher.
He eventually became a Grammy winner with Soundgarden, formed in 1984 and coming out of the rapidly growing Seattle music scene, which included Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains.
The band marked a mainstream breakthrough with
Superunknown, its 1994 album that won them two Grammys and launched five hits, including Black
Hole Sun, one of the most popular rock songs from the 1990s.
The group, formed with guitarist Kim Thayil and bassist Hiro Yamamoto, broke up in 1997.
In 2001, Cornell joined Audioslave, a supergroup that included former Rage Against the Machine members Tom Morello, Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford.
Audioslave disbanded in 2007, but Cornell and Soundgarden reunited in 2010 and released the band’s sixth studio album, King
Animal, in 2012. Cornell also collaborated with members of what would become Pearl Jam to form Temple of the Dog, which produced a self-titled album in 1991. In 2011, Cornell was ranked ninth on Rolling Stone’s list of the best lead singers of all-time, selected by its readers.
He also released solo albums: 1999’s Euphoria Morning, was a dark album that was initially supposed to be titled “Euphoria Mourning.”
“It was a pretty dark album lyrically and pretty depressing,” he told Rolling Stone in 2015.
Cornell referenced death—and suicide—in a 2007 interview with the AP: “If we are not leading a happy productive life, we are leading probably an unhappy nonproductive life. If a person doesn’t have enough food, they actually are hungry. If they don’t have enough money it’s not that they have no money, they actually have something and it’s called poverty.
“There’s no ‘just kind of flatlining coasting.’ You’re either going in one direction or in another direction. All that came out of me trying to imagine why somebody would be, for example, a suicide bomber.”