In the summer of 2003, Lollapalooza would
go on the road for what would turn out
to be the last time before becoming a
destination concert in Chicago’s Grant Park,
a victim of a music business in transition.
Jane’s Addiction is headlining to promote
its reunion record Strays, but the kids in the
crowd would slowly file out during their set.
Perry Farrell and company had already been
put to bed by Audioslave.
It had been a long road for Chris Cornell
joining up with the former members of
Rage Against the Machine to form a new
band. Management conflicts had almost
killed the supergroup in its infancy, and
Cornell himself was still reeling from the
break-up of Soundgarden. Taking the stage
with his bandmates however, he performs
like a man possessed.
It took all the voices in the room to top his.
Chris Cornell was found dead in his hotel
room after performing at a Soundgarden
concert in Detroit, Michigan. Coroners ruled
it a suicide. He was 52.
Born in 1964, Cornell was raised in Seattle
Washington, as one of six children. A
high-school dropout, Cornell worked as
a sous chef in a seafood restaurant until
he began playing in bands in Seattle’s
growing underground scene. Meeting up
with bassist Hiro Yamamoto and guitarist
Kim Thayil, they would eventually form
Soundgarden, one of the seminal Seattle
bands and one of the most successful hard
rock bands of the 1990s.
A one-man institution in the Seattle scene,
Cornell would also form the band Temple
of the Dog as a tribute to Mother Love
A mic stand is somehow cleaved in half
Bone singer Andrew Wood, who died of
three songs into the set. The band shreds
a drug overdose. Featuring the surviving
through the new Audioslave material, teases members of Mother Love Bone (all of whom
old Rage and Soundgarden songs, and
would eventually form Pearl Jam) and future
closes with a hand-clapping cover of White
Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron,
Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” Halfway
the band’s lone album would have massive
through the show, Cornell pulls a tape
success thanks to the single “Hunger
recorder out his pocket.
Strike,” a duet between Cornell and Pearl
“I have a three year-old daughter,” he barks Jam’s eventual frontman Eddie Vedder.
into the microphone. “And I want her to
Soundgarden would be amongst the first
know what her daddy does for a living! On
bands signed to Seattle’s prestigious Sub
the count of three, I want you to scream
Pop label, releasing the Screaming Life EP
as loud as you can.” Cornell holds up the
in 1987. Eventually transitioning over to
tape recorder, and on the count of three,
A&M Records, its mainstream breakthrough
the fans grant his wish, the walls literally
would be the Terry Date-produced
shaking in their response. Cornell chuckles
Badmotorfinger. The album would have
and turns off the recorder.
controversy both for the religious-themed
single “Jesus Christ Pose” (the music video
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