Chris Cornell

• 1. Introduction

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  Chris Cornell was born Christopher John Boyle, and the voice he grew into covered nearly four octaves, from C2 to A5. Critic Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote that as the voice climbed, it could meet hard-rock turbulence with, at the top of its range, "full-bodied shrieks that admitted no weakness." Cornell sang lead for Soundgarden and for Audioslave. He also founded Temple of the Dog, a one-off tribute band built around a lost friend. Music journalists, fan polls and fellow musicians have ranked him among the greatest rock singers of all time. Yet his road to those stages was anything but smooth. How did a Seattle kid become a key figure of the 1990s grunge movement? What did he build with the friends and bandmates who surrounded him? And what was he carrying that audiences rarely saw?

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• 2. Seattle Boyhood

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  Chris Cornell was born on the 20th of July 1964 in Seattle, Washington, where he was raised. He was one of six children, with two older brothers and three younger sisters. His father, Edward F. Boyle, was a pharmacist of Irish Catholic descent. His mother, Karen, was an accountant of Jewish background who described herself as a psychic. When their parents divorced, the children took their mother's maiden name, Cornell.

  At Christ the King, a Catholic elementary school, he sang in front of a crowd for the first time. The song was the 1960s anti-war number "One Tin Soldier." By seventh grade, his mother feared that he and his sister were about to be expelled for asking too many questions. She pulled them out of Catholic school. In a 1994 interview with Request magazine, Cornell recalled: "With a religion like that, it's not designed for anyone to question." He later attended Shorewood High School and dropped out.

  Music found him early. He took piano and guitar lessons as a child, and he traced his influences back to Little Richard by way of The Beatles. Between the ages of nine and eleven, he lived inside Beatles records that he found abandoned in the basement of a neighbor's house. He described himself at that age as a loner, and rock music helped him manage his anxiety around other people. His teenage years were darker. He suffered severe depression, left school, and for two years almost never left the house.

  Before music paid his way, he worked as a busboy and a dishwasher. He also cut fish at a seafood wholesaler and served as a sous-chef at Ray's Boathouse in Seattle. The turning point came from his mother, who bought him a snare drum. That drum was the first instrument of his rock career, and Cornell credited her with saving his life.

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• 3. Soundgarden

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  In the early 1980s, Cornell sang in a Seattle cover band called The Shemps, alongside bassist Hiro Yamamoto. Guitarist Kim Thayil joined after Yamamoto left. When The Shemps broke up, Cornell and Yamamoto kept jamming, and they eventually pulled Thayil into the mix.

  Soundgarden formed in 1984, with Cornell playing drums as well as singing. In 1985, Scott Sundquist took over the drum stool so Cornell could concentrate on vocals. The band's first recordings were three songs on a C/Z Records compilation called Deep Six. In 1986, Sundquist left to spend time with his wife and child. Matt Cameron, then drumming for Skin Yard, replaced him and stayed for good.

  Sub Pop issued the Screaming Life EP in 1987 and the Fopp EP in 1988. Major labels came courting, yet in 1988 the band chose the independent SST Records for its debut album, Ultramega OK. That record earned a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance in 1990. Soundgarden then signed with A&M Records, becoming the first grunge band to join a major label.

  Louder Than Love arrived in 1989. Afterward, Yamamoto left to finish a master's degree in physical chemistry at Western Washington University. Former Nirvana guitarist Jason Everman filled in, but he was fired after the tour. In 1990, bassist Ben Shepherd joined, and the lineup recorded Badmotorfinger in 1991. Alongside Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam, Soundgarden became one of the most successful bands of Seattle's grunge scene.

  The Badmotorfinger singles included "Jesus Christ Pose," "Outshined" and "Rusty Cage." The video for "Jesus Christ Pose" caused widespread controversy in 1991 and was removed from MTV's playlist. Johnny Cash later covered "Rusty Cage" on his 1996 album, Unchained.

  The real breakthrough was Superunknown, released in March 1994. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and went five times platinum in the United States. "Spoonman" and "Black Hole Sun" both won Grammy Awards. The "Black Hole Sun" video took a Clio Award and an MTV Video Music Award. Critics were not uniformly won over. Rolling Stone's J.D. Considine said the album "demonstrates far greater range than many bands manage in an entire career," yet he called "Black Hole Sun" "not a very good song."

  The 1996 follow-up, Down on the Upside, was self-produced and noticeably less heavy. Thayil and Cornell reportedly clashed over Cornell's wish to move away from the heavy riffing that had become the band's trademark. Soundgarden announced its breakup on the 9th of April 1997. Looking back in 1998, Thayil said, "It was pretty obvious from everybody's general attitude over the course of the previous half-year that there was some dissatisfaction."

  On the 1st of January 2010, Cornell hinted at a return on Twitter: "The 12-year break is over and school is back in session. Sign up now. Knights of the Soundtable ride again!" A secret Seattle show followed on the 16th of April 2010 at the Showbox, billed as Nudedragons, an anagram of the band's name. A new single, "Live to Rise," came out in 2012, and the album King Animal followed that November. After Cornell's death, Thayil confirmed in October 2018 that the band had dissolved again.

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• 4. Temple of the Dog

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  Andrew Wood, the singer of Mother Love Bone, shared a Seattle home with Cornell until Wood died of a heroin overdose in 1990. During those days, Cornell wrote the lyrics to a song called "Island of Summer," and the two men sang it together. It remains the only recording of them singing side by side. It reached the public only in 2011, on Wood's collection of unreleased recordings, Melodies & Dreams.

  Grief drove Cornell to make a tribute record. While still in Soundgarden, he recorded with members of what would become Pearl Jam, and the project took the name Temple of the Dog. Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard of Mother Love Bone had teamed up with guitarist Mike McCready, new singer Eddie Vedder and drummer Dave Krusen to form Pearl Jam in 1990. The self-titled Temple of the Dog album came out in 1991 and has sold more than a million copies. Its singles were "Say Hello 2 Heaven" and "Hunger Strike." The second featured a duet between Cornell and Vedder, and it was the first time Vedder was professionally recorded.

  Vedder said of that song in the 2009 book Grunge Is Dead: "I'm indebted to Chris time eternal for being invited onto that track." Cornell had been one of the first people Vedder met in Seattle outside his own band, and the two lived as neighbors for a time. Susan Silver, who managed Soundgarden, remembered a 1990 show at the Moore Theatre where Pearl Jam, then called Mookie Blaylock, opened for Alice in Chains. Cornell carried Vedder onto the stage on his shoulders. Silver described Cornell's gesture as saying, "This is your guy now."

  McCready recalled that Vedder, who came from San Diego, felt intimidated in Seattle. According to McCready, Cornell took the shy newcomer out for beers and told him stories. McCready remembered Cornell telling him, "I give you my blessing."

  Temple of the Dog stayed mostly dormant for decades. In 1992, four of its members played as M.A.C.C., short for McCready, Ament, Cameron and Cornell, and recorded "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)" for a Jimi Hendrix tribute album. The band finally toured in the fall of 2016 to mark the 25th anniversary of the album. Vedder sat that tour out, citing family commitments. At the Paramount Theatre in Seattle on the 21st of November 2016, the crowd sang his part in "Hunger Strike," and Cornell dedicated the song to him.

  In a 2016 interview with The Guardian, Cornell said of Wood's death: "I've always had a really difficult time with loss." He called the tour "the dealing." The last time Cornell and Vedder performed "Hunger Strike" together was the 26th of October 2014, at the Bridge School Benefit in Mountain View, California.

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• 5. Audioslave

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  Producer Rick Rubin played the remaining members of Rage Against the Machine a Soundgarden song called "Slaves & Bulldozers." They were looking for a new vocalist after Zack de la Rocha left the band. Cornell was working on a second solo album, but he shelved it when Tom Morello, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk approached him. Morello later recalled the first session: "It didn't just sound good. It didn't sound great. It sounded transcendent."

  The four wrote 21 songs in 19 days of rehearsal and began studio work in late May 2001. Their debut, Audioslave, appeared in November 2002 and produced "Cochise," "Like a Stone" and "Show Me How to Live." It went triple platinum in the United States. The band nearly came apart before release. Cornell was struggling with alcohol, and a slot on the Ozzfest tour was canceled. A rumor spread that he had entered drug rehabilitation, and he confirmed it to Metal Hammer in an interview conducted from a clinic payphone. He told San Diego CityBeat that the first record came during "a horrible personal crisis."

  The second album, Out of Exile, landed in May 2005 and debuted at number one on the American charts. Cornell said the songs were the most personal he had ever written. Critics who had first seen Audioslave as a blend of Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden now heard a separate identity. They also noticed stronger vocals from Cornell.

  On the 6th of May 2005, Audioslave played a free concert in Havana, Cuba. They became the first American rock group to perform there, before an audience of 70,000 people. The 26-song set was the longest the band had ever played. Cornell said he hoped the concert would help open the musical borders between the two countries.

  Revelations followed in September 2006, shaped by 1960s and 1970s funk and R&B. Two of its songs, "Shape of Things to Come" and "Wide Awake," appeared in Michael Mann's film Miami Vice before the album was out. The band did not tour behind it. Cornell wrote all of Audioslave's lyrics, while all four members shared the music credits. Wilk found the process more collaborative than the creative battle of Rage Against the Machine. Morello called Cornell's lyrics "haunted, existential poetry."

  On the 15th of February 2007, Cornell announced he was permanently leaving the band, citing "irresolvable personality conflicts as well as musical differences." Audioslave disbanded. The band did reunite for a single show on the 20th of January 2017, its first in twelve years, at the Anti-Inaugural Ball hosted by Prophets of Rage in protest of President Donald Trump's inauguration.

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• 6. Solo Years and Screens

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  Cornell began writing a solo record in 1998 with Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider of the band Eleven. The result, Euphoria Morning, came out on the 21st of September 1999. He toured behind it for seven months, playing 61 shows. The first two were at the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood, before many fans had even heard the music. The album sold 393,000 copies in the United States, which was a commercial disappointment. Even so, its single "Can't Change Me" earned a Grammy nomination, and "Wave Goodbye" paid tribute to his late friend Jeff Buckley.

  In 2015, the album was reissued under the title Euphoria Mourning. Cornell explained that he had originally intended that spelling, but his manager at the time, Jim Guerinot, suggested the version without the "u." Cornell said, "The title was so beautifully poetic to begin with, just the concept of euphoria in mourning." On later solo tours, he honored Shneider by singing "When I'm Down" over a vinyl recording of her original piano track.

  Carry On, produced by Steve Lillywhite, arrived on the 5th of June 2007 and debuted at number 17 on the Billboard charts. During the sessions, Cornell was reportedly rear-ended by a truck while riding his motorcycle in Studio City and thrown 20 feet into the air. He walked away with severe cuts and bruises and went back to the studio that day. Scream, made with producer Timbaland, followed on the 10th of March 2009. Critics largely panned it, yet it reached number 10 on the Billboard 200, the highest peak of his solo career. Timbaland called the sessions the best work of his career.

  His solo acoustic Songbook tour began on the 1st of April 2011 and drew universally positive reviews. The live album Songbook came out that November, with covers of Led Zeppelin's "Thank You" and John Lennon's "Imagine." His last studio album, Higher Truth, was released on the 18th of September 2015.

  Film kept calling. Cornell co-wrote and performed "You Know My Name" with composer David Arnold for the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale. It was the first Bond theme since Octopussy in 1983 to use a title different from the film's. It was also the first title theme left off its own soundtrack album. The song earned a Satellite Award, a World Soundtrack Award and a Grammy nomination. For the 2011 film Machine Gun Preacher, he wrote "The Keeper," which received a Golden Globe nomination. He also wrote "Misery Chain" for 12 Years a Slave and contributed to the Singles soundtrack in 1992. On screen, he even appeared in Singles, a cameo in Cameron Crowe's Seattle film.

  Some of his most affecting work came from a stranger. Rory Dela Rosa lost his six-year-old daughter Ainslee to glioblastoma in April 2008 and was soon diagnosed with the same cancer. He sent Cornell a poem, "I Promise It's Not Goodbye," and Cornell turned it into a song. In April 2009, it was available as a free download on Cornell's website, along with a request for donations. Rory died in December 2009.

  Cornell's last solo release before his own death was the charity single "The Promise," written for the closing credits of a 2016 film about the Armenian genocide. He committed all proceeds to refugees and vulnerable children.

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• 7. Depression and Recovery

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  At age 14, Cornell had a bad experience with PCP, and he later pointed to it as the root of his panic disorder and agoraphobia. He said it left a deep scar on his psyche. "From 14 to 16, I didn't have any friends," he said in 2006. He had also begun drinking and using drugs before then, using them daily by 13 and stopping for a year, before relapsing at 15. Cornell blamed alcohol for the worst of it, saying that it "takes away the fear."

  He spoke openly about depression, isolation and suicidal thoughts more than once. In a 1996 interview, he said, "I know what it feels like to be suicidal, and I know what it feels like to be hopeless." Three years later, he argued that depression could even be useful, and that it helped to remember that it might lift the next day.

  He managed his addictions until 1997. That year Soundgarden ended and his first marriage began to fail, and he turned to oxycodone and other substances. He later said he barely ate a full meal each day. The way out, he said, required changing virtually everything in his life. He had married Susan Silver in 1990, and they divorced in 2004. That same year he married Vicky Karayiannis, a Paris-based publicist, and the couple later started the Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation in 2012 to help the homeless, the poor, and abused or neglected children.

  Cornell checked into a rehabilitation center in 2002 and quit drinking and smoking around 2005. He said recovery was a long realization that being sober was better. He added that the individual has to want it. In May 2007, he received the Stevie Ray Vaughan Award from the MusiCares MAP Fund for his support of other addicts in recovery. Alice Cooper presented it. In 2011, he noticed that Soundgarden's reunion looked different, with no bottles of Jack Daniel's or beer anywhere.

  Faith was another question he turned over. He converted to Greek Orthodox Christianity in 2004 in order to marry Karayiannis. Yet in a 2008 interview, he said he did not follow any particular religion and considered himself a freethinker.

  In September 2015, a doctor prescribed him lorazepam to treat anxiety.

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• 8. Aftermath and Legacy

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  On the evening of the 17th of May 2017, Soundgarden played the Fox Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. Afterward, Cornell went to room 1136 at the MGM Grand. Around 12:15 a.m. on the 18th of May, his bodyguard found him unconscious in the bathroom. Emergency personnel could not revive him. A doctor pronounced him dead at 1:30 a.m., at the age of 52. His death was ruled a suicide.

  The Wayne County Medical Examiner released its report on the 2nd of June 2017. It found that drugs did not contribute to his death. Only prescription medications in therapeutic doses were found, including lorazepam. His widow, Vicky, said that he had slurred his words in their last conversation and mentioned taking an extra Ativan or two. After the report, she said that after so many years of sobriety, "this moment of terrible judgment seems to have completely impaired and altered his state of mind."

  The Detroit Police Department released its full report on the 11th of July 2017. It described how the bodyguard, Martin Kirsten, could not enter the room at first, and how hotel security refused to assist. Asked by The Detroit News why 41 minutes passed before a medical team arrived, police insisted that there were no gaps. Investigators had reviewed phone records and hallway surveillance video and found the timeline accurate.

  Vicky Cornell later told The Detroit News that she found the autopsy report incomplete. On the 1st of November 2018, she and the children sued Dr. Robert Koblin in Los Angeles Superior Court. They claimed he had negligently prescribed lorazepam over 20 months without seeing Cornell. Koblin denied the accusations and said Cornell understood the medication's risks.

  In the United States alone, Cornell sold 14.8 million albums, 8.8 million digital songs and 300 million on-demand audio streams. Worldwide, his records have sold over 30 million. He was nominated for 18 Grammy Awards and won three. Hit Parader placed him fourth on its list of Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists, and Rolling Stone ranked him ninth among best lead singers. Readers of Guitar World voted him Rock's Greatest Singer. In 2025, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him posthumously as a member of Soundgarden.

  His words kept turning up elsewhere. A line from "Outshined," "I'm looking California, and feeling Minnesota," gave the 1996 film Feeling Minnesota its title. Garbage's "Fix Me Now" was originally called "Chris Cornell" because singer Shirley Manson was obsessed with him. On the 26th of February 2018, his first posthumous song appeared, "You Never Knew My Mind," built from poems by Johnny Cash for the album Johnny Cash: Forever Words. At the 61st Grammy Awards in 2019, he won a posthumous award for Best Rock Performance with "When Bad Does Good."

  The surviving Soundgarden members have said they want to finish the album they were making with him. Thayil told Music Radar in July 2019 that they cannot complete it, because the master files of Cornell's vocal recordings are being withheld.

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