Whatsoever I’ve feared has come to life
In the nearly three weeks which have gone by since Chris Cornell passed, I have been revisiting vivid memories from my past. I travel back to being in the passenger seat of my Dad’s car in 1994, unsubtlety studying his reactions to the Superunknown cassette tape playing from the speakers. My Dad was my main source of musical reference. He introduced my older brother and me to the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys. He had a burning passion for music and sampled his favorite artists’ songs for us in the hopes that we’d validate his taste for great art. As kids often do though, we assumed that if our Dad loved this stuff, there was no way it could be cool. He took it in stride but I could tell it really hurt it him on some level. As we matured and came to our senses, we would eventually appreciate the genius of the music he shared with us.
Now here I was playing Superunknown for him, tense as could be, desperately seeking approval. As expected, the primal heaviness of tracks like “Let Me Drown” and “Mailman” as well as the psychedelic sounds of “My Wave” and “Head Down” were met with the ultimate indignity, him turning down the volume and using the lame dad line of the music being “too loud”. He didn’t take the tape out outright, so I knew there was still a chance he would acknowledge what I knew in my heart to be a special album. And then it happened. “Black Hole Sun” got him. “Finally, a song with some melody. This sounds like The Beatles.” he said. I smiled and relaxed, feeling vindicated and victorious.
I was 14 when I began to dabble in hard rock thanks to an old Fox network show called Sound FX and endless MTV consumption (back when they played videos!). One day, I caught the video for “Spoonman” and heard Soundgarden for the first time. I instantly loved the name and their music but most of all, Chris’s voice. I had never heard such a beautiful howl before. There was raw emotion, undeniable power and an unabashed vulnerability to be heard in his vocals.
Soundgarden entered my life during a very tumultuous time. My parents had recently divorced, my Dad moved out and I had to assume responsibility as default head of the household at a way too young age since my mother suffered from mental illness and my brother was too busy escaping reality in various ways. In the midst of all this, I began to experience paralyzing panic attacks and major depression. With Badmotorfinger, Superunknown and Down on the Upside as the soundtrack of this time, I connected deeply with Chris’s lyrics. Instead of sinking deeper into despair because of Chris’s brooding lyrics, I felt comforted and uplifted by them, gaining strength from the knowledge that there was someone else who was expressing how I was feeling and on a larger scale, the pain and doubt inherit of the human condition.
During a particularly dark period, I had a seemingly innocuous thought inspired by Soundgarden that would become a mantra of sorts which helped me push through my despair and hopelessness. I thought about the “Spoonman” video and my mind’s eye focused in on the T-shift worn by Artis the Spoonman, which read Save Yourself. As someone who was being dragged down by the tremendous pressure heaped upon me by circumstance and my own dysfunction, this simple message resonated with me in an incredibly profound way. Suddenly, I had a glimmer of hope and motivation to get beyond my fear and live a meaningful life.
By all accounts, Chris lived an incredibly meaningful life. Not only did he help pioneer the Seattle sound which has enriched my life with timeless music but in his later years he seemed to make peace with his demons and enjoy the unconditional love of family. As I scratched and clawed my way through adolescence and gradually thrived in adulthood, I remained a Chris Cornell fan. His Audioslave period was one I followed from a distance, having enjoyed the first album but not enough to stick with the band through the rest of their catalog. As a major admirer of Rage Against the Machine and their talented, charismatic frontman Zach de la Rocha, it was difficult at first not to view the Audioslave pairing as more than a music industry cash grab. As I fell in love with songs like “Show Me How to Live”, “Like a Stone” and “Doesn’t Remind Me”, I accepted the union of two of my favorite artists and embraced it.
As you get older and become mired in the bombardment of domestic life, you tend to loosen your grip on the music of your youth. I continued to keep my antenna up for new developments involving my favorite bands and became very excited by the announcement of a Soundgarden reunion and their new King Animal album. I bought the album the day it was released and consumed it for a month straight. The old feeling was back and it was exhilarating. Soundgarden’s indelible sound was intact and Chris’s voice and lyrics were as strong and soothing as ever.
Years went by and I would keep tabs on Chris and Soundgarden through Google alerts. When a tour was announced earlier this year, I felt an obligation to see them as they were on a short list of my all-time favorite bands who I had not seen play live. When they passed through town in late April, life got in the way and I felt a strange, foreboding sense that I had missed my last opportunity to see them somehow. During my getting-ready-for-work early morning routine on May 18, my wife screamed the news from another room (“eyes were waking up, just to fall asleep”). I stood stunned, not fully processing the gravity of her words. How could this have happened? They were touring and halfway through another album, he has a great family, he seemed happy…
As details trickled in, my shock turned into creeping sadness. I don’t think we’ll ever truly know what happened in that Detroit hotel bathroom. Even more disturbing is that we’ll never know why it happened. While Chris’s lyrics often plunged into the darkness, there were overriding themes of individual freedom, tolerance and love. The ultimate result of that night is the loss of a musical icon and once-in-a-lifetime talent. Conspiracy theories and the search for rationale and motive will not bring him back. My heart aches and breaks for his family. I won’t even insult them by pretending to understand what they’re going through. The world is an emptier place for Chris not being in it anymore. His legacy will remain but can never fill the void left behind in his absence.
Two more memories circle around in my mind. One of the obvious signs that my wife was the woman for me was early on in our dating when she did not hesitate to join me in a duet sing-a-long for Temple of the Dog’s “Hunger Strike.” We took turns singing like Chris and Eddie Vedder and it became a tradition any time we were fortunate enough for it to come on the radio. It always made us giggle to switch from Eddie’s signature growl to Chris’s earth-shattering shriek.
Flashback to 1995. I was in the 8th grade and our class was in the computer lab again, presumably to work on our typing skills or something like that. I took an opportunity to type out a fan letter to Chris Cornell, to let him know how much he meant to me and how his music had impacted my life and possibly saved it. I told the guy sitting next to me what I was doing and who I was writing to. He had no idea who Chris or Soundgarden were but respected the fact that they meant enough for me to spend my lab time this way. I spent the next hour writing a long, impassioned letter that I saved but never sent. To this day, I regret not sending the note. I have no idea if it would have reached him or whether or not I would have gotten any kind of response. To have lost out on that possibility is a shame and something I will always kick myself over. Hopefully, in some small way, this essay will reach him through the ether and he can find comfort in knowing how much he was loved and how much he’ll be missed by his fans the world over.