“This is the man you want”: The grunge icon that almost joined Van Halen
It should go without saying that passion is everything in music. It’s ultimately what keeps the drive and the hunger for greatness forever gnawing in the stomach, but it’s a fine balance until it becomes somewhat of a poison pill. If there’s anything that the film Whiplash demonstrated, it’s that dedication can bridge into insanity, and often, there’s no coming back from it. This is a worry felt keenly by a lot of musicians, but one that Van Halen was especially aware of.
Being credited as the band that brought hard rock into the mainstream, the achievements and impact that Van Halen had on the music industry across the length of their tenure were practically limitless. But even with all their stratospheric level of acclaim, it didn’t mean they couldn’t be stopped in their tracks if someone special crashed into their orbit – and when it was Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, there was no bigger crater that set them spinning on a whole different axis.
Indeed, as far as musical virtuosities go, Alex Van Halen went more or less unmatched until Cornell entered the fray, and then he had no option but to bow to his mastery. It even got to the point where the former Soundgarden frontman considered joining Van Halen, as one special jamming session left both parties feeling as though they had a potentially unstoppable force on their hands.
Although he couldn’t specifically recall when exactly he met Cornell, in a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, the Van Halen drummer reminisced on his particular impression of the guitarist, explaining that at their jamming session, “I got behind the drums, and he started playing bass,” noting how there was some transformative quality in Cornell’s playing style. “We played for 45 minutes. This motherfucker got so into it he started bleeding. I said, ‘This is the man you want’,” doling out high praise indeed if he felt Cornell was good enough for Van Halen’s sky-high standards.
But as with many of these blazing stars, the guitarist’s talent burned bright but not for long. Admitting that he was “in a very fragile part of his life” at the time, Alex Van Halen explained that it was sometime soon after their secret session that Cornell took his own life, pulling into sharp focus not only the devastating repercussions of fame, but the level of pressures that come with this when you are harbouring an unfathomable scale of talent.
In this sense, although a Van Halen and Soundgarden crossover would have seemingly been the supergroup of dreams, it leaves the question of how much is too much in the sphere of rock and roll. It may be a genre characterised by exuberance and over-indulgence, but as the story of Cornell proves only too well, there does come a point where taking yet another bite of the cherry just becomes too rich to taste.
It’s a classic warning tale that fame and fortune are sometimes really not all they are chalked up to be, but nevertheless, it is mind-blowing to imagine what the grunge and hard rock conglomerate could have turned out to be. Chris Cornell may not have lived to see the sheer seismic space of his impact, but it’s clear that aside from his own bandmates, Van Halen will be right behind them in flying the flag of his legacy.
