View gallery
One of many loudest voices in rock fell silent on Might 18, 2017. Chris Cornell, finest often known as the vocalist for the legendary rock band Soundgarden, handed away on the age of 52. His demise, dominated a suicide, despatched shockwaves all through the music world, and the loss continues to be felt to this present day. Cornell’s legacy grows with every passing 12 months as numerous new listeners uncover the music he made whereas a part of one of many ‘90s largest bands.
Nevertheless, Cornell made music outdoors of Soundgarden. The person who embodied the “Loud Love” philosophy – featured on the Loud Love Collection – shared his skills with a handful of teams, a lot of which featured his Seattle and grunge contemporaries. Right here’s a glance again at a part of Chris Cornell’s music legacy.
THE SHEMPS
Chris Cornell in his pre-Soundgarden band, The Shemps. (1982)
Hiro Yamamoto, SG’s authentic bassist, is second from the appropriate. pic.twitter.com/n7FMYu8MuA
— Corbin Reiff (@CorbinReiff) March 1, 2021
The muse that will make up Soundgarden started in 1981 when guitarist Kim Thayil and bass participant Hiro Yamamoto started enjoying music collectively whereas rising up in Illinois. The 2 attended Evergreen State Faculty in Olympia, Washington, earlier than transferring to the College of Washington to be nearer to Seattle’s music scene, based on Kyle Anderson’s guide, Accidental Revolution: The Story of Grunge.
Yamamoto started enjoying bass in a canopy band known as The Shemps, and the group put out a “vocalist needed” advert in an area paper. The person who ultimately crammed the function was a younger drummer named Chris Cornell, who needed to check out singing.
“I aggravated the shit out of them by spending my entire childhood beating on issues,” Chris instructed Classic Rock magazine in 1996. “I drove them to distraction, and I by no means thought they’d give me a drumkit in 1,000,000 years. By the point I used to be 15, my mother had nearly given up on me. However she will need to have figured that at the very least I had an curiosity in one thing apart from medication or being a prison, so she purchased me a snare drum. After a few days whacking that, I purchased the remainder of the package for $50 from a man I knew. Two weeks later, I used to be in my first band.”
The band performed “principally basic rock tunes (and by all accounts, they performed the tunes comparatively poorly),” based on Anderson. Yamamoto ultimately left the group, and Thayil stepped in as a alternative bassist. The Shemps lasted till 1984 earlier than calling it quits. Afterward, Cornell and Yamamoto moved in collectively, the place they started jamming earlier than bringing in Thayil.
SOUNDGARDEN
Soundgarden fashioned in 1984. The group took its title from A Sound Backyard, an artwork set up in Seattle. Initially a three-piece, the fledgling group employed Scott Sundquist to play drums, permitting Cornell to focus primarily on singing. “Individuals hated us to start with,” Chris instructed Basic Rock in 1992.“I’d come on stage with no shirt on, whipping my hair round and customarily being a sweaty younger rock man. I used to have about 50 ribbons in my hair, which didn’t precisely please the jocks within the viewers. They had been in all probability anxious as a result of they discovered me a bit too enticing.”
Sundquist left in 1986 to spend extra time together with his household, and the group discovered his alternative in Matt Cameron, drummer for Seattle band Pores and skin Yard. The band launched their debut EP, Screaming Life, in 1987 on the fledgling label Sub Pop. They adopted it with 1988’s Fopp earlier than signing with legendary punk label SST to launch their debut full-length, Ultramega OK, in 1988. The group signed with A&M Information and started engaged on Louder Than Love, their major-label debut.
Louder Than Love peaked at No. 108 on the Billboard 200, however the music and cultural landscapes had been shifting. Because the ‘80s was the ‘90s, the sound coming from the Pacific Northwest was beginning to take maintain. Finally (A&M) is gonna anticipate us to promote data, however I don’t actually really feel any stress at this level,” Cornell instructed the Los Angeles Times in 1991, proper earlier than the band was about to launch their new album, Badmotorfinger. “I’m glad with the concept each time we launch a file it sells extra and we’ve got an increasing number of individuals coming to our reveals.”
“I don’t suppose a band ought to compromise themselves for something. Not for an viewers, not for a file label. As a result of I don’t suppose a fan is gonna imagine in what you do,” Cornell instructed the instances. “Followers make investments so much into teams they select to be followers of. . . . It’s figuring out with any person, which is usually a actual highly effective factor in any person’s life. The sensation that you just’re true to your self interprets virtually each time to your viewers. That’s the primary level that rings true for us and retains it inspiring and retains followers impressed. I’m undoubtedly happy with that.”
Founding member Hiro Yamamoto departed after Louder Than Love’s launch, and the band changed him with Ben Shepherd. The brand new lineup would keep constant till Cornell’s passing. Shephard’s addition revitalized the band, and that reveals on 1991’s Badmotorfinger. The album hit No. 39 on the Billboard 200 and marked a turning level within the band’s historical past, with singles “Outshined” and “Rusty Cage” turning into staples of MTV’s 120 Minutes and Headbanger’s Ball.
Then, grunge blew up. Nirvana’s Nevermind arrived in September 1991, a month earlier than Badmotorfinger. By the next 12 months, each main label was making an attempt to signal their very own Seattle band, which was “actually surreal for us,” Cornell instructed Rolling Stone in 2014. As grunge turned a defining sound of the last decade, the band started engaged on its subsequent album, 1994’s Superunknown.
“[When] Soundgarden made Superunknown, we had been a band for a very long time – like, over eight years. Superunknown was one of the dramatic shifts in what we had been doing musically. I don’t suppose I spotted it on the time,” Cornell instructed Rolling Stone in 2014 when discussing the album’s reissue.
“I by no means felt unhealthy about being lumped in with different Seattle bands,” continued Cornell. “I believed it was nice. However I additionally felt like all of us had been going to need to show that we might additionally exist with autonomy, and we deserved to be enjoying on a world stage, and we deserved to have movies on TV and songs on the radio, and it wasn’t only a fad just like the ‘British invasion’ or a ‘New York noise scene.’ Superunknown was that for me. It was displaying what we had been [was] not only a taste of the month. We had the duty to grab the second, and I believe we actually did.”
Boasting the band’s most widely-known track – “Black Gap Solar” – and a handful of equally profitable songs (“Fell on Black Days,” “Spoonman”), Superunknown debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 2000 chart. Thus far, it’s been licensed platinum six instances by the RIAA. It launched the band into a brand new degree of economic success, placing Soundgarden on the identical degree as Nirvana, Alice In Chains, and Pearl Jam.
In 1996, the band launched Down on the Upside. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, however the band would name it quits a 12 months later. “We broke up as a result of we had been bored of the periphery, all the issues which can be outdoors of the band enjoying music and writing songs, enjoying reveals – that half obtained actually boring,” Chris instructed OnstageWeb in 2012, per Loudwire.
The band would keep dormant for twelve years. They reunited in 2010 and launched Telephantasm: A Retrospective, which included the unreleased track, “Black Rain.” In 2012, they launched King Animal, the sixth and last album. The band continued to tour North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe till Cornell’s demise in 2017.
In January 2019, Soundgarden carried out for the ultimate time. The surviving members joined for a five-hour tribute live performance that featured Melvins, Foo Fighters, Metallica, and appearances by Perry Farrell, Juliette Lewis, Brandi Carlile, Dave Grohl, Geezer Butler, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Hawkins, Chris Stapleton, and extra, per Yahoo. Afterward, the title Soundgarden was retired.
TEMPLE OF THE DOG
On March 19, 1990, Cornell’s buddy and roommate, Andrew Wooden, died from a heroin overdose. Andrew was the lead singer of Mom Love Bone, one of many early pioneers of the choice metallic scene of the ‘80s and ‘90s. “I don’t actually keep in mind doing a lot else after the funeral different than simply being swept up within the grief of the second,” Cornell instructed Rolling Stone in 2016, “however after a few weeks, I wrote two songs [“Say Hello 2 Heaven” and “Reach Down”] for Andy.”
“I initially had this concept that possibly as a tribute I might file them with the band and it might be a cool as a tribute,” added Cornell. “Additionally, it might be cathartic and take up a while as a result of from hour to hour it was simply type of troublesome to cope with. However then I type of forgot about it. Two weeks later, I bumped into [Mother Love Bone’s bassist] Jeff Ament someplace. I can’t recall the place. He stated he heard the songs, he liked them, and needed to file them. That made me glad since he had the identical concept with out me bringing it up.”
The band would encompass Cornell and Ament, Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, Mom Love Bone guitarist Stone Gossard, Gossard’s buddy Mike McCready, and a person who flew as much as Seattle from San Diego to audition for Gossard/Ament/McCready’s new band: Eddie Vedder.
“We solely had 9 songs for the album, and that didn’t appear full to me. It appeared like ten songs was an entire album. I believed that “Starvation Strike” can be a superb message to finish the album on, nevertheless it wasn’t full,” Cornell instructed Rolling Stone. “It was only one verse. I used to be singing the refrain within the rehearsal house, and Eddie simply form of shyly walked as much as the mic and began singing the low ‘going hungry,’ and I began singing the excessive one. After I heard him sing, the entire thing got here collectively in my mind. I simply felt like, ‘Wow, his voice is so nice on this low register. He ought to sing on it. I’ll sing the primary verse after which he’ll are available in. Though it’s the identical lyrics, it’s a distinct singer, and it’ll really feel like two verses.’”
“Starvation Strike” turned a staple of different radio of the ‘90s, peaking at No. 4 on the US Mainstream Rock charts. The album failed the chart. Cornell and Cameron returned to Soundgarden, whereas the remainder of Temple of The Canine continued to carry out collectively as Pearl Jam.
SOLO CAREER
When Soundgarden ended, the A&R Information issued a press release that the band had “mutually and amicably disbanded to pursue different pursuits.” SPIN reported on the time that Cornell was “anxious to start out a solo profession.” Chris would have a strong solo profession, releasing Euphoria Morning in 1999. It arrived to usually favorable opinions and peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard 200.
“My solely path once I recorded my first solo album was I needed something that wouldn’t be a Soundgarden track,” Cornell instructed The Stranger in 2015 “(A) As a result of I’d been writing a lot in that context, and (B) as a result of I had such a excessive regard for the band that I didn’t need to corrupt it by performing some barely extra industrial model of the identical factor—which is often what occurs, particularly with singers of a band.”
Cornell was capable of have interaction in music past the confines of the grunge or various label. His 2007 album, Cary On, noticed him cowl Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” The 2009 album, Scream, featured a Justin Timberlake cameo (“Take Me Alive”). Chris launched Larger Fact in 2015, and in 2020, No One Sings Like You Anymore, Vol. 1, his first posthumous album, was launched.
AUDIOSLAVE
On the flip of the century, two of the largest bands of the ‘90s had damaged up: Soundgarden and Rage In opposition to The Machine. RATM’s lead singer, Zack de la Rocha, left the group, leaving Tom Morello, Brad Wilk, and Tim Commerford in a disaster. Music producer Rick Rubin prompt the three play with Cornell, and the outcome was the brand new band, Audioslave.
Audioslave launched three albums – the self-titled debut in 2002, Out of Exile in 2005, and Revelations in 2006. In the course of the recording of the primary album, the group knew that they had one thing particular happening. “[Cornell] stepped to the microphone and sang the track, and I couldn’t imagine it,” the guitarist stated. “It didn’t simply sound good. It didn’t sound nice. It sounded transcendent,” stated Morello, per MTV.com. “And … when there may be an irreplaceable chemistry from the primary second, you possibly can’t deny it.”
The second Audioslave album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, whereas the primary has since been licensed triple-Platinum. The group was short-lived, nonetheless. RATM reunited in 2007, and Chris introduced his departure from Audioslave. “As a consequence of irresolvable persona conflicts in addition to musical variations, I’m completely leaving the band Audioslave,” he wrote in a press release, per MTV. “I want the opposite three members nothing however the perfect in all of their future endeavors.”
“Audioslave was a really contemporary collaboration as a result of it was very very similar to a younger band, the place you all write collectively in a room,” Cornell instructed MTV. “However my expertise, by way of songwriting and record-creating, is just not like a 19-year-old man in a rock band. For me to be glad, I believe I want to have the ability to be alone, in the long term.”
