Unchained. “Outshined” is essentially a folk
song cranked to 11. Whether acoustic or
electric, Cornell was right at home with a
guitar in his hands. reception to his dance-rock album Scream
(produced by Timbaland), Cornell would
speak with enthusiasm about writing music
outside of his comfort zone.
As Soundgarden’s primary composer,
Cornell would also be a trailblazer with
alternate tunings and time signatures. The
majority of Soundgarden songs would be
in drop-D, but that was only the beginning.
Songs like “Rusty Cage” and “Searching
with My Good Eye Closed” would be in
the rare drop-B tuning (later revived for
the Audioslave track “Gasoline”). “Mind
Riot” would have all the strings tuned to
various pitches of E. “Limo Wreck” would
be tuned to C-G-
D-G-B-E. Singles
“My Wave” and
“The Day I Tried
to Live” were both
tuned to E-E-B-B-
B-B, and so on. A common theme through Cornell’s work
would be melancholy, with a heavy sense of
his own mortality (though he’d be capable
of sardonic piss-takes like “Big Dumb Sex”).
Suffering from depression since childhood,
Cornell would struggle with drugs and
alcohol before going completely sober in
2006. A 1994 Rolling Stone piece written
by Kim Neely would chronicle the emotions
around him and his peers following
Kurt Cobain’s death. Said Soundgarden
drummer Matt
Cameron: “Chris’s
lyrics deal with
inner struggles he’s
gone through but
a lot of people can
relate to them,”
says Cameron. “I
think the angst
this generation
is experiencing is very valid, and I think
it’s a pretty important change that this
generation of bands is actually dealing with
those issues.”
“Cornell’s work would
rarely get stagnant or
complacent, always
accepting a new
challenge. ”
Cornell’s work
would rarely get
stagnant or complacent, always accepting a
new challenge. The hit single “Spoonman”
was inspired by a list of fake song titles
the members of Pearl Jam used when they
cameoed in the movie Singles. When asked
to write the theme for the James Bond film
Casino Royale, Cornell performed all the
instruments on “You Know My Name” with
film composer David Arnold, save for the
horns and strings. Even after the song’s
massive success, Cornell would remain
humble, saying simply “I’ve written songs
for movies before.” Even after the negative
14
TONE TALK //
Cornell himself would say “Now more than
ever, there’s so much information young
people have to sift through to finally arrive
at some sense of their own identity. I think
there’s gonna be more and more people
who just give up hope. This is the first
generation that can look at the mortality of
the human race pretty realistically.”
Fell on Black Days: RIP Chris Cornell