“A real renaissance man”: The artist Chris Cornell thought could do anything
Chris Cornell was a consummate rock star. In fact, he probably took on the role of all-conquering, stadium-slaying megastar better than any one of his 1990s peers. He had the musical chops of Billy Corgan with none of the god complex. He had the down-to-earth charisma of Eddie Vedder with none of the adversity towards fame. He had Kurt Cobain’s skill with a hook with none of the Nirvana frontman’s shame of using it. He also had those absolutely astonishing pipes, which were entirely his own.
Yet it wasn’t enough for him. Soundgarden became one of the biggest and most successful bands of the 1990s by connecting the grit of grunge to the scope and heaviness of 1970s hard rock. This led to the grim, raw majesty of albums like 1991’s Badmotorfinger and 1994’s Superunknown, as well as hits like the deathless ‘Black Hole Sun’.
There are countless grunge nearly-men for whom this would have been everything they needed, but Chris Cornell was something entirely different. He was an artist in the truest sense of the word. He constantly wanted to push himself and the people he worked with, and as soon as Soundgarden broke into the mainstream playing moody, gritty hard rock, he wanted to move on from that.
It was these creative differences that caused Soundgarden to come to an acrimonious end in 1997, yet where Cornell went from there is as fascinating a story as any that came from the band in which he made his name.
How did Chris Cornell push himelf in his solo career?
At first, Cornell began a Jeff Buckley-esque solo career, playing psychedelic folk music that suited his expressive, expansive singing voice. Soon though, the call of rock ‘n’ roll was just too much for him and 2001 saw him join up with every non-Zach De La Rocha member of Rage Against The Machine to form Audioslave. A band that was seemingly seeking to do everything Cornell wanted to do in Soundgarden, but this time with Tom Morello on guitar. Perfect!
In the meantime, he kept up his solo career which had highs like writing the absolute banger of a Bond theme ‘You Know My Name’ from Casino Royale. Not everything was as successful as that though. His brave but utterly misguided attempt to go R&B with Timbaland on the 2009 album Scream is with a bullet the worst thing he’s ever done and its not particularly close.
Yet there is also something admirable in that. Cornell threw himself into everything he possibly could. He pushed himself and experimented and that’s far more admirable than just staying in his wheelhouse for his entire career. Its very telling that, when he curated a list of his favourite singers for Classic Rock magazine, his favourite are pretty much all figures like Tom Waits and Iggy Pop who constantly reinvented themselves.
Nowhere is this better summed up though, than the words he writes for Nick Cave. In the list, Cornell wrote “He has that incredible baritone and that haunted, tortured persona thing going on. He’s a writer, too – a real renaissance man – and that’s the beauty of the long career he’s had. He can pull anything out of the hat.”
That was the career that Cornell strived for too. In being utterly fearless in everything he turned his prodigious musical ability towards, that’s exactly what he did as well.
