Off stage, our heroes suffer just like we do

The death of Chris Cornell had been on my mind all day, but it was late afternoon on Thursday when I made a connection so grim that I startled myself.

Cornell was the lead singer of Soundgarden, one of the bombastic, no-frills Seattle bands that stripped away the garish film of pretense and ego that had gunked up so much 1980s hard rock.

Soundgarden performed in Detroit on Wednesday night, and Cornell was found dead in his hotel room there just past midnight Thursday. The Wayne County medical examiner said his death was a suicide by hanging.

“I feel really sorry for the next city,” Cornell had said on stage, an apparent compliment to the raucous Detroit crowd. That next city was us; Soundgarden was due to headline Friday night during the Rock on the Range three-day festival that wraps up tonight at Mapfre Stadium.

It was close to 5 p.m. Thursday when I finally hit upon an unsettling coincidence, dating to exactly 37 years earlier.

Ian Curtis was the lead singer of a post-punk band from Manchester, England, called Joy Division. Curtis hanged himself on May 18, 1980, just as the band was set to embark on its first U.S. tour. If you’ve never heard of Joy Division, you might know the band that rose from its ashes. With Curtis gone, the others pushed on as New Order, creators of achingly sublime pop music that within a single song can make you dance and break your heart.

Curtis and his legend grew to near-Messianic proportions, driven by fans like myself who identified with lyrics of shame and desolation that seemed to gain weight after his death.

New Order, though, largely steered clear of that. It took years for the band to shake free of Joy Division’s squandered promise and strike off in another direction. The band rarely addressed Curtis’ death, but in 1987, drummer Stephen Morris said Curtis’ posthumous reputation as a brooding rock deity was not the guy he knew.

Curtis, he said, was “an ordinary bloke just like you or me. Liked a bit of a laugh, a bit of a joke.”

It’s a statement so obviously true and so easy for fans to reject out of hand. Rock and roll is larger than life. The proof is right there in Soundgarden’s album titles: “Ultramega OK,” “Louder than Love,” “Superunknown.” Their last record, released in 2012, was “King Animal.”

It has always been this way. “I am the Lizard King,” proclaimed Jim Morrison of The Doors, nearly 50 years ago. “I can do anything.”

It seemed that Cornell could too. Even if you weren’t a fan, it was a losing prospect to argue that he wasn’t one of rock’s most charismatic frontmen. His vocal range was massive, often a melodic, crystalline scream flying above the band’s bottomless rumble.

Cornell spoke candidly about his bouts of depression and drug abuse. He brought up death in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone.

“I’ve lost a lot of young, brilliant friends, people that I thought were very inspired,” he said. “They’re all young, and these guys all had limitless potential in their lives in front of them.”

The Seattle scene that provided a much-needed burst of adrenaline and authenticity to a bloated genre was battered by drug abuse and suicide. Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone died of an overdose in 1990, and Kurt Cobain by suicide in 1994. Alice in Chains’ singer Layne Staley died in 2002, after years of severe drug abuse. At 52 years old, Cornell has followed them.

On wax, they were visionary. On stage, they were giants.

Awestruck by sound and fury and kaleidoscopic lights, we forget then that they’re no different from our siblings, parents, spouses and children. Sometimes that means they are coping with depression or other mental illnesses, with addiction, or both. They may despair, but with treatment and support and understanding, they might see what we do. That they are a gift, always. Never a burden.

When the stage lights snap off and the house lights come on, we know who they are.

Ordinary blokes, just like us, for better and for worse.