I’m heartbroken. For myself but also for him, his family, his friends.
I was talking about him all day yesterday, trying to describe what that voice MEANT, when it first arrived on the airwaves. That whole time is very vivid, and what it felt like to have these new sounds pouring out of the Pacific Northwest … to really get into it is to court cliche. But what can you do. I was there. I experienced it. These people – my peers, essentially, although they all were a little bit older – were describing what life felt like down on the ground. Voices of a generation.
But Chris Cornell’s voice – his actual instrument – was another thing altogether.
It’s a once-in-a-lifetime voice. It was the greatest voice to emerge from my generation. He could break your heart. He could make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Nowadays, vocal pyrotechnics are expected, and yet so much of it is empty. Howling up and down the scale to no purpose. The only response is, “Wow, she can really sing!” But nothing about how it makes you FEEL, how it FORCES you to feel. Cornell’s voice – able to go anywhere, do anything – forced you to feel stuff you might have otherwise avoided. It was a dazzler, that voice.
I must link to this post on MTV by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, which says it all, and says it beautifully and emotionally.
I want to talk about Chris Cornell — today, tomorrow, and always — in the same way I hear people older than me in record stores talking about Freddie Mercury or Janis Joplin. I want to pick up a Soundgarden LP and lightly slap the cover while locking eyes with someone younger than me and saying, “This guy. This fuckin’ guy was one of the last real rock stars.” Because he was. Or at least, every generation names their rock stars as the last, and he was one of the handful out of my generation who outlasted all the rest. Cornell was, of course, aesthetically rock: In any era, his look and comfort at the front of the stage seemed effortless. But he also approached the genre with care and reverence.
Read the whole thing.
On Facebook yesterday we were talking about Cornell’s covering of other songs. Like “Billie Jean,” a complete re-imagining of that famous song, Cornell owning it completely. My friend Michael (we dated in the year of “Black Hole Sun”, well, it was the year of that whole album, Soundgarden was the soundtrack to many of our shenanigans) mentioned that his favorite Chris Cornell cover was “Ave Maria”. I took a moment yesterday, cleared the deck, shut down the Internet browsers, to listen to it with no distractions. By the end, I was in tears.
There was much about the “grunge” scene that was missed by its critics back in the day. Or maybe the critics were just revealing themSELVES when they criticized the openness of these young mens’ howls of pain. Young men aren’t supposed to be soft. We raise them to not have feelings. And then we wonder why they become violent or self-destrucive. Well, how about DEALING – as a CULTURE – with the fact that saying to a 5-year-old “Boys don’t cry,” or saying to a 7-year-old, “Man up” is tantamount to saying “Don’t ever have feelings, kid, and good luck with that”. It is evil. I call it by its proper name. To the current punching-bag of the moment, ye olde millennials, I say: I get it. Everyone hates you now – for their OWN failings – and you do not deserve it in any way shape or form. But you are not re-inventing the wheel. You shoulda been there in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death. You should have heard what they were saying about us. Making fun of us for caring, for crying, for mourning him. Calling his pained lyrics “whining.” Yes, because God forbid we ever admit we have emotions. God forbid we ever allow ourselves the outcry, “This is unfair.” Nothing has changed. The President* refers sneeringly to Chuck Schumer as “Cryin’ Chuck” – never ever forget that this nickname came about because Schumer welled up with tears when talking about his family MURDERED IN THE HOLOCAUST. You see what I mean? Evil.
It’s the air we breathe. Cobain absorbed it, spit it out in a roar of rage. We heard and felt that rage. Cornell howled his feelings of alienation and depression in lyrics unforgettable, in chord changes that still haunt my dreams. They spoke the truth. A truth we still need to hear.
All of this is to say is that Chris Cornell’s voice – as powerful as it was – had a kind of vulnerability and sensitivity that cannot be faked. I want to say that it was earnest and sincere, qualities that are hard to come by, and often smashed to bits by our heartless culture. That “Ave Maria” is a perfect example of what I am talking about. He keeps the structure, he keeps the familiar traditional arrangement, and he sings the song, all told, pretty straight. His voice – like Judy Garland’s voice – is a vehicle for his emotion. You can HEAR it.
God, I will miss that voice.
He had such a wonderful voice. Powerful and clear. I also loved his lyrics, how much of them were about internal conflict.
If this doesn’t make you free
It doesn’t mean you’re tied.
from Superunknown
or
The day I tried to live
I stole a thousand beggars’ change
And gave it to the rich
or
Suddenly I can see everything that’s wrong with me
What can I do?
I’m the only thing I really have at all.
from Can’t Change Me
And his song Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart carried me through a disappointing ending of a relationship last year. I probably listened to it three times a day for a couple of weeks.
I am so sorry he’s gone. My heart goes out to his family.
His You Know My Name is my favorite James Bond theme.
“Arm yourself because no one else here will save you.” That voice.
I agree – his lyrics were evocative and beautiful.
He always struck me as a really sensitive person. I almost worried about him. I remember reading an interview with him back when Soundgarden first hit – I think it was in Interview magazine – and I remember thinking, “Oh God, is anyone looking out for this guy??”
That sensitivity was such a huge part of who he was. A rock star with a soft underbelly … that he let us see. :(
I so wish he had covered Judas’ 2 songs in Jesus Christ Superstar. Back in the day, my friends and I had fun casting an imaginary concert version of Jesus Christ Superstar with all of these new rock stars in the lead roles. Cobain was Jesus of course. But Judas, as we all know, has the best songs.
Heaven on their Minds – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-voeq7Cebo
and Damned for All Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbXyfU2muHc
He would have crushed these songs
Yes, he would have.
He had that gigantic Robert Plant of a voice with a very different lyric sensibility.
I thought of him when I watched the film 20th Century Women. He could have been the young man struggling to be both sensitive and masculine.
I absolutely adore his vocals in that version of Ave Maria (and that harmony with the female vocalist!), but I have spent the last 20 years wishing that whoever arranged and produced that track had TRUSTED his voice to carry the song. I would love to find a version of it with the instrumental track removed – or at least softened.
I was only 15 when Kurt Cobain died, and I was telling my mom last night that I think maybe I was too young then for his death to have the same resonance for me as Chris Cornell’s death has now. It’s hit me harder than I would have expected. I keep thinking of all the music he might have still had in him that the world will never hear now.
Natalie – I’ve seen a couple of clips out there (not of Ave Maria, but other songs) where the instrumentation is removed so you can just hear that voice, unvarnished. Like, he really could sing like that. No tricks, no auto-tune!
This is such a huge loss. He was only 52. I saw a picture of him on some red carpet with his kids and almost lost it.
When I heard the news that he was gone the first thing I thought was “damn, he is only 2 years older than I am.” Then when I heard how he passed I stumbled and remembered my own struggles with depression and the few times I had almost left this mortal coil by my own device. All those emotions just came rushing back but instead of lingering on my demons I considered how a man cherished by many, a beautiful, talented man, had must have felt so alone in crowds most of us never get to experience. It has left me in a funk the past few days where I, like many others, have been consuming music, interviews and all things Chris Cornell in remembrance of a person associated with a turning point in modern music, one could argue the cornerstone before the needle dropped on what we consider grunge.
As for the music, the song that has been resonating with me is his cover of Nothing Compares 2 U, that voice sends chills down my spine and the tears have been plentiful.
Penelope – thank you for your thoughts. I feel the same sadness when I think of the choice he made, and how bad it must have been for him to make that choice.
I love that Prince cover too!!
It was just so unexpected. Seattle is reeling. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach every time I’m reminded, which is actually a lot because I’ve been listening to him almost nonstop since Thursday. I read somewhere ages ago a quote from someone saying that all the greatest rock singers sound like they’re from outer space. I want to say that was Roger Daltrey (I could be wrong) talking about the singers of that generation – himself, Plant, etc but I always thought of that when I heard Chris Cornell sing.
One song of his I wasn’t familiar with before this week was “Misery Chain.” It has the sound and flow of an old fashioned torch song:
“When we’re gone, and it’s all said and done
What will we leave,
Stories told, will they speak of us when God only knows
What those words will be.”
// all the greatest rock singers sound like they’re from outer space. //
I love this. What a perfect way of putting it.
There’s quite a bit of his stuff I’m not familiar with – I lost track of him for a few years – I’ll have to remedy that.
and yes, unexpected. My thoughts go out to Seattle. I made the mistake of reading an article discussing the police report, which detailed his final hours. Awful. He had to have been in agony.
It’s heartbreaking.