When I woke up today and found out that Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden, Audioslave, and Temple of the Dog, had died at the young age of 52, I was pretty shocked, and it seemed like the rest of the world was as well.
As the day wore on, we even more tragically learned that Cornell had died of an apparent suicide, hanging himself in his hotel bathroom. You’re lucky you got 3 hilarious blogs out of me yesterday, because this is going to be a real downer.
Cornell was on tour with Soundgarden and put off what was allegedly a normal show before returning to his hotel room and committing suicide. Apparently family and friends are shocked because they didn’t see this coming.
Cornell had been pretty open about his on-and-off battle with depression both via interview and song, even penning a song in 1996 titled “Pretty Noose”, so I guess maybe we shouldn’t be quite as shocked as we are, but that doesn’t make it suck any less.
Suicide is one of the worst ways to lose someone you love or look up to. Unlike with cancer, heart disease, or even something like a car accident or whatever, we can kind of look at it and go “Man, there’s really nothing I could have done to save them. It sucks, but it was out of my hands.” With those who die as victims of suicide, there tend to be a lot of people left behind wondering “Could I have done more? Could I have saved them?” I mean no, you couldn’t, but that guilt tends to weigh there anyway, so I feel immensely and especially bad for Cornell’s friends and family because they’re probably going through a really weird mix of grief and guilt right now and that is heart breakingly sad.
Chris Cornell had one of the most beautiful and strong voices to come out of the early-90s music and I really dug the songs he put out into the world. It really sucks that nearly 25 years after Kurt Cobain died by suicide we are losing another legend of the Seattle scene this way.
Sorry I don’t have any jokes. Sometimes I have to get serious.