Fell On Black Days…
This is a tough one… Grammy award-winning rock star Chris Cornell — frontman for influential bands Soundgarden, Audioslave and Temple of the Dog — died late Wednesday evening in Detroit at the age of 52, shortly after Soundgarden’s show at the Fox Theatre. Making this tragedy even worse, if such a thing is possible, CNN reports the Wayne County (Michigan) Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed that Cornell’s cause of death as “suicide by hanging.” According to several sources, a family friend called 911 around midnight Thursday morning after he went to check on Cornell and found him “unresponsive” on the bathroom floor of his hotel room. Emergency medical personnel arrived, and Cornell was pronounced dead at the scene.
Cornell first rose to fame in the late ’80s as the lead singer of Soundgarden, the Seattle-based group at the forefront of the grunge rock movement along with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Soundgarden won two Grammy Awards in 1995, for Best Metal Performance for “Spoonman” and Best Hard Rock Performance for “Black Hole Sun.” Soundgarden disbanded in 1997 but reunited in 2010 and has toured regularly since then. From 2001-07, Cornell also performed with Audioslave, a band that included Rage Against the Machine members Tom Morello, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk.
As CNN reports, the last song Soundgarden performed on Wednesday night was a snippet of Led Zeppelin‘s “In My Time of Dying.” As the song’s opening lines state, prophetically, “In my time of dying, I want nobody to mourn. All I want for you to do is take my body home.”
Rock and Alternative radio stations across the country (far too many to single out individually) altered their regular programming yesterday to pay tribute to Cornell. As befitting the mood today, this fan-shot video of Cornell performing “Fell On Black Days” on Wednesday evening seemed to be the most appropriate tribute to this extraordinary talent, gone far too soon.
