The one band Chris Cornell said rocked harder than everyone: “Significant originality”
For someone who was looked at as one of the greatest rock and roll gods of all time, it’s hard to find much decadence in the way that Chris Cornell conducted himself.
He had the voice that made everyone look on in awe every single time he sang, but looking at his track record, he was happier to have written a couple of great tunes than to have to worry about where he fit into rock and roll history. But if we’re judging on the metric of rock and roll badassery, Cornell felt that he was far from the greatest rock and roll god that Seattle ever spat out.
And we’re not talking about strictly in the 1990s, either. There were a lot more eyes on the Pacific Northwest once the 1990s rolled around and people like Soundgarden started gaining traction, but it’s stunning to think of how many people came from that area. Jimi Hendrix grew up in Seattle before migrating to England, Heart created some of the most spectral music that the 1970s had ever seen, and before rock and roll even existed, Quincy Jones had lived in Seattle for a little while.
It’s not like the city was ever considered left-of-the-dial by any stretch, but it seemed like everyone was focusing on the city’s Southern cousin half the time. The Los Angeles scene was crawling with bands looking to make it, but after years of being seen as an ugly hat atop the West Coast, Soundgarden were among the first to get their songs into the public consciousness. They were the first to be nominated for a Grammy, but when everything exploded in 1991, the whole grunge movement had taken over.
Because if you think about it, the fall of 1991 will go down in history as one of the most important seasons in music. Not only did we get genre-defining albums from the likes of Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Metallica, and even non-rock acts like A Tribe Called Quest, but there was one word that was on everyone’s lips by the time winter rolled around: Nirvana. The icons might not have hit right out of the gate, but it’s impossible to even gauge what ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ did for the rock world.
Kurt Cobain did play fast and loose with how much he liked the idea of fame, but Cornell was more interested in how they presented themselves live. They weren’t ever trying to join the ranks of Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith, but their natural habit of tearing up the venue and destroying their gear at almost every show is what gave them a lot more credibility than most of the other musical giants.
After all, grunge was about punk at the end of the day, and Cornell felt that no one could get any better than Nirvana playing live, saying, “Nirvana, more than any other band, rocked way harder, had significant originality, while looking like guys you went to high school with. I think that was their secret. There was an inclusion that was long overdue, and it was what rock was supposed to be about.
There might not have been any sense of competition in Cornell’s eyes, but what Nirvana did helped the rest of the Seattle bands step up their game as well. If Cobain didn’t care that much about his self-preservation, it almost gave everyone else permission to go outside the norm, whether that was Scott Weiland wearing a dress onstage with Stone Temple Pilots or Eddie Vedder scaling the rafters in the early days of Pearl Jam.
But that lack of care about what would happen after the stage lights went down was a part of what the alternative nation was all about. The greatest bands were the ones that were treating every song like a life-or-death situation, and while Cornell and Cobain both passed way too early, they still understood that every ounce of their energy had to go into making every single fan happy.
