Chris Cornell, R.I.P.

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Hewson said:
When I got home last night, MTV Classic was playing a marathon of Cornell videos (Soundgarden, Audioslave, TOTD and solo).
Had never seen the video for Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart before, but jeez...



Maybe MTV should have left it out of the rotation (and maybe Pretty Noose as well).
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I saw that with my sister and Mom last night as well when the later turned it to MTV Classic at one point. We noted the obvious situation with playing that particular one too.
 
I was never the biggest Soundgarden fan, but this got me I more than I expected. I listened the fuck out of Badmotorfinger and Ultramega OK for a little while in high school when all I had was a tape player, and then "blow up the outside world" did a brief stint as one of my favorite songs. But this was all in a very short, weird, belated "rock history: grunge" phase around the middle of high school or whenever all the 1991 Seattle stuff was coming up on 10 years old. I dug Euophoria Morning quite a bit when it came out, but I can't say I've listened to it since then. I was stupidly excited for Audioslave, and then wildly disappointed (not cos they were bad but just cos my expectations had been so high). I hate doing the thing where I don't go listen to or revisit a band/artist til someone dies, but I've been doing a little of that lately.
 
IWasBored said:
I was never the biggest Soundgarden fan, but this got me I more than I expected. I listened the fuck out of Badmotorfinger and Ultramega OK for a little while in high school when all I had was a tape player, and then "blow up the outside world" did a brief stint as one of my favorite songs. But this was all in a very short, weird, belated "rock history: grunge" phase around the middle of high school or whenever all the 1991 Seattle stuff was coming up on 10 years old. I dug Euophoria Morning quite a bit when it came out, but I can't say I've listened to it since then. I was stupidly excited for Audioslave, and then wildly disappointed (not cos they were bad but just cos my expectations had been so high). I hate doing the thing where I don't go listen to or revisit a band/artist til someone dies, but I've been doing a little of that lately.
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I think this one is affecting a lot of folks because Cornell seemed on the exterior to be a guy who had his shit together. When a Cobain or Staley or Weiland passes away, its not as out of the blue and unexpected as this was.
Then when you look back you realize just how vast and varied his catalog was, you realize the impact the guy had over the last quarter century was pretty significant though often understated, kind of like his personality.
I was always a fan, though they weren't in my top 5 bands or anything, but Badmotorfinger did make my Cobbler top 11 albums list recently.
Revisiting some of the stuff, there are some absolute gems that aren't widely known on top of all the well known material.
 
Back in the 90s when I was going through my mega Soundgarden is the best band ever phase I remember collecting any magazine that had interviews with the band. I know Cornell touched upon loneliness and wanting to be alone a lot in those interviews. It's actually what made me relate to him. I know years later I'd read about his alcohol problem and it wasn't until a few years ago where I learned he did have issues with drugs. But his addictions were low key. There was an interview I watched on YouTube with Cornell where he looked out of it and sounded kind of out of it. It was weird.
 
I loved Soundgarden and saw them a couple years ago and this hit me so hard. Badmotorfinger is my 6th favorite album and Superunknown is up there too.

Hewson has a great point about it hitting hard because he seemed like he had everything together. He'd obviously gone through a lot of shit in his life (Andy Wood, depression, drug addiction, etc.) but it seemed like he'd gotten through it and was genuinely happy. And he wasn't and it hurts to realize that.
 
It sucks to lose an artist/person like Chris. I suppose for an artist to flourish, they sometimes have to channel their dark side. Like what was mentioned earlier, Chris appeared to have his shit together. It's pretty fuckin' eerie to think about all of the big time performers who have succumbed to drugs, be they prescribed or "from the street". Yes, Chris didn't OD, but drugs did play a huge part in his decision to take his own life.
 
The thing is you can be happy with your life and if you suffer from depression and anxiety, your thoughts are irrational. You could actually be happy but spiraling into anxious hell. It's not a matter of just knowing your life is good and people love you, your brain is broken. Many take drugs to self medicate. It's too bad Chris never got relief from his broken brain, help is out there.
 
JTNash said:
The thing is you can be happy with your life and if you suffer from depression and anxiety, your thoughts are irrational. You could actually be happy but spiraling into anxious hell. It's not a matter of just knowing your life is good and people love you, your brain is broken. Many take drugs to self medicate. It's too bad Chris never got relief from his broken brain, help is out there.
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Yep. I'm on a concussion and I've been diagnosed with depression lately (which was before the concussion but could not have been more obvious anyway).

It needs to be discussed more, or failing that, less shame on needing help or asking for help.

The one message is, and it sucks to need repeated, say something.
 
coolian2 said:
Yep. I'm on a concussion and I've been diagnosed with depression lately (which was before the concussion but could not have been more obvious anyway).

It needs to be discussed more, or failing that, less shame on needing help or asking for help.

The one message is, and it sucks to need repeated, say something.
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Yup I have anxiety and I take meds no more shame it's not our fault!
 
I saw where they listed the drugs in his system no antidepressants. So sad I feel like if he had been on a drug to manage the symptoms he might have not been taking so much Ativan. We shall never know what might have made a difference though.
 
Josh Brolin's eulogy from Cornell's memorial service:


Everywhere I look, I think I see Chris walking toward me: tall, a long mane of lion curls, a slight smile under either a beard or a pencil thin mustache.

Every time I look at my phone and it says Christopher and I think it’s all been a dream, something imagined, that you create subconsciously so that it can never be realized.
Every time I think of Chris, it’s like he’s in front of me, telling me what he’s been doing: his kids, Vicky, a fair they went to, or how much fun he had when we all went karting, a song he’s mining the magic out of.
This is the thing that never goes away, the impact someone has on you. It will ebb and flow with time in its intensity, but it will always be there until someone is doing it about you.
An impact. That’s what we all hope to have: a great memory, a witticism, a song, how they deal with their children, moments, when in repose, they call you to just say “Hey, man, I miss you”.
Chris Cornell touched on happy, his kind of grace. We all have our own happy. He’d ridden his various treacherous roads on the psychic motorcycle rebelling, reacting, rebounding, etc. And now, older, familied, this was a time of just working on himself, said family, a deeper music and how to pull for more love out it all. His was an uphill climbing trajectory. There’s the professional, yeah, that too, but people don’t die professionally, they only die personally. And personally, was an uphill climb — a winded climb, just by nature of his sensitivity — but uphill nonetheless.
Chris Cornell the human being.
Chris Cornell who loved his family: Vicky, Lilli, Toni and Christopher.
Chris Cornell who was my friend: simply, my friend.
I met Chris at the Hollywood Café. I was drunk, and afterward, backstage, sat on his lap and told him how great I thought he was. He smiled, I’m sure a little irritated, but let me pontificate until I felt he had really heard how deeply he had affected me. I had a tendency to be fairly aggressive toward the things that moved me, and Chris, from the moment I heard him live (so intimate, as only he could be), grabbed each of my cells by the throat and never let go.
Chris Cornell was my friend: simply. It came from the music sure, the way his voice reached out like ET’s finger, but it was the lap dance I gave him that set it all in motion.
Over the next 7 years, Chris and I became close. I got him: the isolation, the love and tension to create, the elation of finding the love of your life and manifesting a happier life with that love, and he got me. Our lives paralleled and with that a loose friendship came true intimacy and reveal.
When you are well known for your chosen profession you have a tendency to protect yourself. You wall off and deny that people are talking about you. You know how to deflect conversations. You start to question if you know anymore what a general openness looks like.
Then, if you are diligent, if you care about your personal legacy, you fight for that intimacy.
When I told Chris that Kathryn and I were getting married he sent me a song that he had written for Vicky after they first got together, a song that he was going to sing at our wedding. His quote:
“I started writing this song years ago right after I met Vicky. I sang an early version to her over the phone before we were engaged but I felt for years that I hadn’t distilled all of the magic I felt with her into song form. About a month ago I finished it. This version played into a hundred dollar mic seems to be the only way to capture the hugeness of how I feel about her.
I was thinking recently that you might relate to it.
Big hugs to you both!
C”
Kathryn and I listened to the song just as we had listened to another of Chris’s songs early in our relationship, both of us with tears.
Once in a while someone comes along in your life who just oozes personal. You share inspirations, values, desires, wishes, hopes, like a teenage journal, hoping it will one day answer back to you.
My buddy Chris answered back.
Chris Cornell, the human being.
“Hey, man. I’m just calling to say I miss you.”
The other day I started pulling up all the emails, all the voicemails, and just gazing into the memories of different conversations, moments, milestones. My wife and I listened to him sing “Happy Birthday” on my voicemail. “Happy Birthday dear yoooouuuuu. Happy Birthday to you. I love you, man”…click.
You live a life, and to be grateful for that life lived is having lived. Chris Cornell was a human being and like all human beings, we have an expiration date; all different than one another: May 18th, 2017 was his.
But Chris will always be in my heart. I will hold him not high, not angrily, but face to face, like we were, supporting each other through this wacky, circus tent of a life.
There was a moment he wrote to me years ago, and it’s a moment I’d like to share with you. It speaks beautifully for itself as to who he was: a sensitive, protective warrior of a father. What the human aspect of everything meant to him. How he just wanted all of us to find common ground and appreciate this gift that we have for just the little while we’ve been given it.
“JB — Thought of you again today. We live above Benedict Canyon and my daughter’s Parrot flew out of a window and down over the canyon. Hoping he wouldn’t die, I dressed up like Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet and headed down into the wilds of the canyon. As I descended, I saw a female bluebird in a distant tree. Thought it was mine. I chased it around until I saw she was nesting and wasn’t in fact green.
I spent the next 2 hours in the screaming sun alternately crashing thru brush and sitting still so I’d be able to vibe out his spot. Decided it was too big a canyon and I would never find him. I cut back up behind my house and sat in the shade near where the bush whacking started.
I sat there for a half hour feeling like I betrayed a little friend who relied on me for his safety.
I waited another few minutes and gave up. I paused for one second before going inside and tried one last time to chirp for him. I waited and listened, and suddenly I heard a faint chirp back down in the brush. There he was! Wanting very much to be rescued. Little green birds that talk are the needles in the haystacks formed of needles on top of a bed of a valley of needles.
But they sometimes chirp.”
Brother, you are near, you are dear, and I’ll see you when it’s time. But for now, my heart billows and embraces everything that you were, that you are, that you forever will be. I hear you “in the haystack formed of needles/ on top of a bed of a valley of needles/ but I hear you/ and know that you are there”. Yes, I know that you are there. I’ll miss you, but I know that you are there.
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Was listening to the bonus disc of the SIngles soundtrack reissue earlier and reading Crowe's liner notes for all the songs and the glowing way he talked about Cornell (written last November) and his contributions to the project coupled with reading Brolin's eulogy just shows the man was revered by his peers. Such a tragic loss.
 
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