His tragic death gives us the opportunity to remember and celebrate all these things about him, and the millions of things about him that those not close to him could never know. It’s easy to forget about that last part when we hold people up like idols. He was not just a brilliant and beloved musician, but a beloved husband and father, too. As the Singles soundtrack showed us, not just heavy, but delicate, too. So, yes, he was a man, like all of us humans, who was more than you assumed he was. Commenting on the thick cloud of pot smoke wafting onto the stage, he said they didn’t need a smoke machine for that show because the fans had created a “pot smoke machine.” And Cornell, known more for his intensity, showed a lighter side. But they had it going a year later when I saw them headline Big Music Fest in Kitchener. Not every set fires on all cylinders, it happens. It was a solid set, but I can’t say they blew me away. I saw them co-headline with Nine Inch Nails in a rain-soaked performance at the Molson Amphitheatre in 2014. But I finally got my chance after they released their reunion album, King Animal. I don’t know why, but I never saw Soundgarden in their prime, in the 90s. Heavy rock music was going through a hard time in the late 90s and into the new millennium, and I felt like Audioslave was just what we needed to show the kids how it’s done. When he joined the remnants of Rage Against the Machine in Audioslave, I was overjoyed. That album was dark and heavy, but there were so many colours to Soundgarden, and to Cornell himself, which he showed in his solo work as well. As I wrote about in my post about “New Damage,” I was reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula at the same time I was obsessed with this album, and the music’s dark intensity was the perfect soundtrack to Stoker’s gothic creep-fest. Well, there I was again, unable to stop listening to a Soundgarden album. So to the back catalogue I went, first to Badmotorfinger. So maybe I was oozing Soundgarden by that point.īy the time I decided I didn’t need to listen to Superunknown every second of my life anymore, it was summer and I still craved Soundgarden. How did you know?” “You seem like you’d like it,” he explained in his dry, eyes-half-lidded Bob way. Had it become part of my essence? There was this guy Bob in my university screenwriting class who I had just met that year and shortly after the album was released, he said something like, “I bet you’re really into that new Soundgarden album.” I said, “Yeah, I love it. As much as I was pouring the album into my ears on a daily basis, I think maybe a little of it started seeping out of me as well. It didn’t take long for it to become one of my favourite albums of all time. I bought it immediately because “Spoonman” had slayed me on the radio and MuchMusic. Later on the soundtrack, Soundgarden’s “Birth Ritual” launched its bombastic rhythmic assault on my eardrums, Cornell’s voice soaring in its high register, to show me, finally, what the band was all about.īut it was the spring of 1994 that was really “Soundgarden” to me. I’ve always known there’s a “My Shuffled Life” post in me about that song, but it just hasn’t popped up on shuffle at the right time. It was so evocative of its time to me, both in terms of pop culture and my personal life. Cornell’s solo song on that soundtrack, “Seasons,” spoke to my soul.
SINGLES SOUNDTRACK CHRIS CORNELL MOVIE
It was their appearance on screen and on the soundtrack to the great grunge-era Cameron Crowe movie Singles that brought him and Soundgarden more into my sights. I had bought into Pearl Jam in a big way by then. When I heard Cornell’s voice a couple years later on Temple of the Dog’s “Say Hello to Heaven,” I didn’t think of him as much more than the guy singing with Eddie Vedder, amazing pipes notwithstanding. They were on the periphery of my music knowledge, probably back to the Louder Than Love era (1989). It would’ve given me more time with them, and him. Now, with Chris Cornell’s passing, I wish I’d fallen in love with them earlier. I fell in love with Soundgarden a little late.
0 kommentar(er)
