Chris Cornell

Christopher John Cornell (né Boyle; July 20, 1964 – May 18, 2017) was an American musician, best known as the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, and the primary lyricist for the rock bands Soundgarden and Audioslave. He also had a solo career and contributed to numerous movie soundtracks. Cornell was the founder and frontman of Temple of the Dog, a one-off tribute band dedicated to his late friend, musician Andrew Wood. Several music journalists, fan polls, and fellow musicians have regarded Cornell as one of the greatest rock singers of all time.

Cornell is considered a key figure of the 1990s grunge movement with an extensive songwriting history, a nearly four-octave vocal range, and a powerful vocal belting technique. Cornell released four solo studio albums, Euphoria Morning (1999), Carry On (2007), Scream (2009), and Higher Truth (2015); the live album Songbook (2011); and two compilations, The Roads We Choose (2007) and Chris Cornell (2018), the latter released posthumously. He received a Golden Globe Award nomination for his song "The Keeper", which appeared in the 2011 film Machine Gun Preacher, and co-wrote and performed "You Know My Name", the theme song to the 2006 James Bond film Casino Royale. His last solo release before his death was the charity single "The Promise", written for the ending credits for the 2016 film of the same name.

Cornell struggled with depression for most of his life. He was found dead in his Detroit hotel room in the early hours of May 18, 2017, after performing at a Soundgarden concert an hour earlier at the Fox Theatre. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.

Cornell sold 14.8 million albums, 8.8 million digital songs, and 300 million on-demand audio streams in the U.S. alone, as well as over 30 million records worldwide. Nominated for 18 Grammy Awards, he won three. Cornell was ranked No. 4 on the list of "Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists" by Hit Parader, No. 9 on the list of "Best Lead Singers of All Time" by Rolling Stone, No. 80 on the list of the "200 Greatest Singers of All Time" by Rolling Stone, and was voted "Rock's Greatest Singer" by readers of Guitar World. In 2025, Cornell was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Soundgarden.

Early life

Cornell was born Christopher John Boyle on July 20, 1964, in Seattle, Washington, where he was raised. His parents are Edward F. Boyle, a pharmacist of Irish Catholic descent, and Karen Boyle (née Cornell), an accountant of Jewish background and self-proclaimed psychic. Cornell was one of six children; he had two older brothers and three younger sisters. He and his siblings adopted his mother's maiden name, Cornell, following their parents' divorce when they were teenagers. Cornell attended Christ the King, a Catholic elementary school, where he performed for the first time in front of a crowd, singing the 1960s anti-war song "One Tin Soldier". When he was in seventh grade, his mother pulled him and his sister out of Catholic school for fear they were about to be expelled for being too inquisitive. He recalled the episode in a 1994 interview with Request magazine: "With a religion like that, it's not designed for anyone to question. Being young people who have a natural curiosity and half a brain, you're going to start finding inconsistencies, which there are tons of in organized religion. We both sort of made it clear in classroom situations that we didn't get it. 'Explain this to me.' And they couldn't, so we started creating a lot of problems." Cornell subsequently attended Shorewood High School, where he later dropped out.

Cornell took piano and guitar lessons as a child. He traced his musical influences back to Little Richard via The Beatles. He spent a two-year period between the ages of nine and eleven listening to The Beatles after finding a large collection of Beatles records abandoned in the basement of a neighbor's house. Cornell described himself at this age as a loner; he was able to deal with his anxiety around other people through rock music. During his teenage years, he experienced severe depression, dropped out of school, and almost never left the house during a two-year span. At the age of 12, Cornell had access to alcohol and marijuana; he used them daily by 13, stopped for a year, but relapsed at age 15 for another year until he turned to music. At 14, he had a bad PCP experience and later had panic disorder and agoraphobia.

Cornell credited his mother for saving his life when she bought him a snare drum, the instrument he first adopted on his path to becoming a rock musician. Before he was a successful musician, Cornell worked as a busboy, as a dishwasher, as a fish monger at a seafood wholesaler, and as a sous-chef at Ray's Boathouse in Seattle.

In the early 1980s, Cornell was a member of a Seattle-based cover band called The Shemps, which featured bassist Hiro Yamamoto. After Yamamoto left The Shemps, the band recruited guitarist Kim Thayil. Cornell and Yamamoto stayed in contact, and after The Shemps broke up, the pair started jamming together, eventually bringing Thayil in to join them.

Recording career

1984–1997 and 2010–2017: Soundgarden

Soundgarden was formed in 1984 by Cornell, Thayil, and Yamamoto, with Cornell originally on drums and vocals. In 1985, they enlisted Scott Sundquist to take over as drummer so that Cornell could concentrate on vocals. Soundgarden's first recordings were three songs that appeared on a compilation for C/Z Records called Deep Six. In 1986, Sundquist, who by that point had a wife and a child, decided to leave the band and spend time with his family. He was replaced by Matt Cameron, the drummer for Skin Yard, who became Soundgarden's permanent drummer.

Soundgarden signed to Sub Pop, releasing the Screaming Life EP in 1987 and the Fopp EP in 1988 (a combination of the two was issued as Screaming Life/Fopp in 1990). Though the band was being courted by major labels, they signed to independent label SST Records in 1988 to release their debut album, Ultramega OK, for which they earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best Metal Performance in 1990. The band subsequently signed with A&M Records, becoming the first grunge band to sign to a major label.

In 1989, Soundgarden released their second effort and their first album for a major label, Louder Than Love. Following the album's release, Yamamoto left the band to finish his master's degree in physical chemistry at Western Washington University. He was replaced by former Nirvana guitarist Jason Everman. Everman was fired following the band's tour in support of Louder Than Love. In 1990, they were joined by a new bassist, Ben Shepherd.

Along with Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam, Soundgarden quickly became one of the most successful bands from Seattle's emerging grunge scene in the early 1990s. With Shepherd, the new line-up recorded Badmotorfinger in 1991. The album brought the band to a new level of commercial success and exposure amid the sudden popularity and attention given to the Seattle music scene. Badmotorfinger included the singles "Jesus Christ Pose", "Outshined" and "Rusty Cage". The three singles gained considerable airtime on alternative rock radio stations, while the videos for "Outshined" and "Rusty Cage" gained considerable airtime on MTV. The song "Jesus Christ Pose" and its music video was the subject of widespread controversy in 1991, and the video was removed from MTV's playlist. "Rusty Cage" was later covered by Johnny Cash on his 1996 album, Unchained. "Room a Thousand Years Wide" was released (along with the B-side "HIV Baby") as a 7" single through Sub Pop's Single of the Month club a full year before the release of Badmotorfinger, and later re-recorded for the album. With Badmotorfinger, Soundgarden found their first mainstream success: it was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 1992 and was later ranked number 45 in the October 2006 issue of Guitar World on the magazine's list of the 100 greatest guitar albums of all time.