Chris Cornell: Soundgarden singer-songwriter remembered

This week marks a year since the death of the singer-songwriter best known as lead vocalist for Soundgarden and Audioslave.

Chris Cornell at the Big Day Out in 2012. Picture: Chris Cornell.

This coming Thursday, May 17, will mark a year since the death of Chris Cornell, a singer and songwriter best known as the lead vocalist for rock bands Soundgarden and Audioslave. He died by suicide at the age of 52 after a Soundgarden show in Detroit, and he is greatly missed.

In recent months I have met two musicians who knew Cornell intimately as fellow artists. First was guitarist Tom Morello, who toured Australia in late March with Prophets of Rage, a rap-rock act which also features Morello’s Audioslave band mates in drummer Brad Wilk and bassist Tim Commerford. Before the Brisbane show, I asked Morello how he would describe Cornell’s contribution to the world of music. “There were many,” the guitarist replied. “The most obvious one was that he’s one of the greatest singers in Western music; he created beautiful and terrifying melodies out of the ether. But I think his greatest contribution is that he redeemed hard rock music. With Soundgarden, for me, they were the band who didn’t back off in any way from loving metal, and loving huge riffs — but the lyrics were intelligent. It was nuanced poetry, and it was thoughtful.

“I love metal, and I love smart bands, and it was Chris Cornell who put those two things together, and then put ‘em on the radio. I think that is maybe his most important contribution.

Any band that you like that is uncompromisingly hard, and has intelligent lyrics — you can trace it back through Chris.”

Last month in Sydney I met John Carter Cash, who oversaw the recent release of an album of his father’s unpublished writings named Johnny Cash: Forever Words. On that album is an extraordinary performance by Cornell, You Never Knew My Mind, whose lyrics now offer a brutal sting in the tail given the manner of his death.

When I asked Carter Cash what he thought Cornell would be remembered for, he replied:
“I think it’s up to us to determine that. And I think if we look for the beauty and we connect with our own frailties and we realise that we are not perfect, if that brings us in closer contact with our understanding of our own reality, then I think it’s good. And to just see it as a part of the hope to be able to sometimes express hopelessness — it’s the best that we can do.

“I’ve been there; I’ve been at the bottom, emotionally and mentally, and not been able to feel like there was a tomorrow. I’ve been there. Sometimes just to know that someone else — like my father, or Chris — has been there also, and had the ability to sing about it, or to let it be known to help someone else — that’s what it’s about. I just know what it’s like to be so emptied that all you can do is be able to sing about your hopelessness. And that’s the same spirit that gets you perhaps beyond that, into another step, and another step. And so I think it’s all part of the same path: to be able to get out of the hopelessness, the first thing you have to do is be able to express it.”

On their Australian tour, the three musicians in Prophets of Rage found a special way to pay tribute to their deceased friend. When Morello asked the crowd to sing Cornell’s vocals during a performance of the Audioslave song Like a Stone while two spotlights shone on an empty mic at front of stage, we complied at full volume. During extended applause after the song ended in Brisbane, with Commerford and Morello nodding and raising their fists in appreciation, the crowd began spontaneously chanting his name.