The world woke up on Thursday morning, May 18th, to the news that Chris Cornell, the dynamic and versatile vocalist/front-man for ground-breaking and revolutionary acts such as Soundgarden, Audioslave, Temple of the Dog as well as other projects and solo pursuits, had passed away. His death was deemed suicide by hanging. Chris was 52.
Despite what we may want to believe, the luxury of choice is not something we have when it comes to the things we remember. Shy of a memory impairing illness, it’s something we all live with. We can deny, suppress, forgive… but not forget. Indeed, when it comes to an artist like Chris Cornell, we should never forget.
It is an unsettling but certain truth: his loss, and the manner of his going, wounds us all. His family most of all, to whom our heartfelt condolences go out to in a sincere outpouring of love. His loss, and the manner of it, feeds our grief, wields the power to prolong mourning, to taint the past and hinder the present, painting a future that can appear all too bleak. Memories can be as devastating as the moment at hand. They can torture, taunt and haunt both heart and soul for entire lifetimes, withering the best away. Yet if we can’t always choose that which we remember, we can always choose how, and what, we remember. And Chris Cornell has left us much to remember him by.
Chris, an integral part of the groundbreaking Seattle Grunge Movement during the early 90’s, has seen his work, before and since, stand the test of time. Throughout the years, he has won endless plaudits worldwide, from Billboard Charts to Grammy’s, to being one of only a handful of musicians to record a theme song for a James Bond movie. Charismatic, caring, and criminally good-looking, Chris was the epitome of cool. Yet, like so many others, Chris had his demons, and was doing his utmost to combat them. But Chris’s voice and songs, unique and distinct, gave the world something it didn’t have before, making it a richer place.
For starters: his voice. Distinct, instantly recognisable, Chris sang with an intangibly vulnerable quality met with an ever-present undercurrent of perseverance, which helped round out his empowering lyrics. If great pain bares great art, and the goal in art is to “disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed,” then Chris knew how to do this in his singing, and in his songwriting. The uncompromising honesty with which he wrote gave character and depth to his words, embodying them within a gravity, power and vulnerability that cannot be overstated.
“Pearls and swine bereft of me. Long and weary my road has been,”
Chris’s opening lines to Audioslave’s moving ballad, “I Am the Highway,” remind us no one is exempt from mortality, of the highs and lows one lives, conveyed with the power of a biblical proverb, yet retaining the fragility and delicacy of a fallen glass. A sympathetic and emotive lyricist, Chris walked that thin but self-assured line between power and vulnerability. He painted in song the conflicts within, of taking the path less travelled, making the hard choices and recognising the falls along the way. But most of all it was about being that voice in the darkness, about giving words to what is real and true in each of us.
“I am not your rolling wheels, I am the highway. I am not your autumn moon, I am the night.” Strong, weighty words delivered so gently against a backdrop of swelling guitar sounds, and with that, a beautiful balance is struck.
If Soundgarden’s “Fell on Black Days” was a love letter from the crumbling world of one, it was also a cry of defiance, with Chris singing; “I’m only faking when I get it right.” The pain of knowing you don’t fit, you don’t belong, that you walk a different path, and of needing to be true to that, even if not faking it means risking getting it wrong, few have said it better.
Chris wrote like an artist poet, with an affinity for conjuring images poetically, using metaphors and similes like no other, to fashion images before the minds eye. “Like A Stone” is arguably the epitome of this and, unarguably, a classic for all time.
“To a place I recall, I was there so long ago.
The sky was bruised, the wine was bled
and there you led me on…I’ll wait for you there, like a stone. I’ll wait for you there, alone.”
Sharp, concise, lyrically Chris could paint the missing picture that fit perfectly on the wall in your mind, where until now only the outline of one remained.
Throughout his career, Chris wrote of romance, forgiveness, acceptance, as well as of longing, loneliness, fear and anxiety. He understood and embraced the cracks, crevices and intricacies of the human condition, those places where, as Leonard Cohen said, the light gets in. He opened a rare dialogue between his heart and soul, sharing it with millions around the world, who found they resonated with this kindred spirit, who gave them truth and light in the darkness, even when in the darkness, himself.
For many, Chris played a mammoth sized part in making it okay to not have all the answers. In his music, he explored and shared who he was, warts and all, welcoming and giving voice to anyone who connected with his music, as well as those too shy to speak up for themselves. He passed tragically, and in a tragic manner, and that cannot be denied. But that cannot be what defines him either. Here, let us remember his talent that was inimitable, his music and lyrics that were heartbreakingly honest, his songs written in pure divinity and sung in a voice unrivalled, his loving loneliness giving expression in music to that rare marriage between joy and pain. Only Chris Cornell could do what he did, as he did. Rest in peace, fellow traveller, the loss is ours. For no one sings like you anymore.
