It forced Soundgarden to examine exactly who they were, and what it was they wanted to say. Detached from it by the passing years, their publicly expressed trepidation at somehow reducing their importance and impact wasn't just paranoia or vanity. What it wasn't able to do, though, was recreate the time in which their defining music was made – nor that heady rush of the new. King Animal was Soundgarden’s first studio record since 1996, and it marked the band's return as titans of their era. The great tragedy is that we’ll never get to know what Act III held. But then depression, in whatever form it takes, is no respecter of age.Īcts I and II of Cornell’s life had been by turns groundbreaking, uplifting chaotic, unexpected and ultimately troubled. Even in his late 40s, it seemed the spectre of death was never far from Chris Cornell’s thoughts.Īs a vocalist or lyricist he rarely took the conventional route, and suffered fools about as readily as Henry Rollins.Ĭhris Cornell was 52 when he died on May 17 – neither a youthful Roman candle burnt out too soon like Andrew Wood or Kurt Cobain, nor an elder god whose time had come, like Chuck Berry or Leonard Cohen. He continued in this stripped-back vein on 2015’s Higher Truth, a record that was inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska and Pink Moon by Nick Drake, the cult British folk musician who killed himself in 1974 at the age of 26. In 2011 he released the Songbook album, a career-spanning live acoustic album that acted as a restart after the Scream debacle. Inevitably, this exercise in toe-dipping soon turned into a fully fledged comeback, one that took in a headlining slot at the 2010 Lollapalooza festival, an appearance on the soundtrack to the first Avengers film and, eventually, a brand new album, 2012’s relatively well-received King Animal.Ĭornell didn’t abandon his solo career this time. In April 2010, the band played a reunion show at Seattle’s Showbox Theater under the anagrammatic name Nudedragons. He’d put a marriage behind him by then, too, and had had a stint in rehab to curb his drinking.Īlthough he soared with the stellar Euphoria Morning, he sometimes faltered in his solo work, and alienated a huge swathe of his audience by daring to push the musical envelope by working with dance producer Timbaland on Scream – which made some of his fans do just that.Īfter the chastening experience of his Timbaland collaboration, Cornell retreated to the safest ground possible: Soundgarden. He shone briefly and brightly at the apex of Audioslave’s career with their fully realised first and second albums, but had spectacularly fallen out with his bandmates by their third, Revelations. In songs like Hunger Strike and Times Of Trouble Cornell actually crooned. ![]() Cornell managed to transcend the fact that he was once the singer in the best band to come out of Seattle by revealing his introspective, brokenhearted side with the excellent Temple Of The Dog album – his paean to the late Mother Love Bone singer, Andrew Wood.
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