Chris Cornell's voice took him far in life.
He became a rock god as the lead singer of Soundgarden and Audioslave. But his time on
Earth ultimately ended tragically prematurely. Here's a look at what the final
12 months of his life were like. Cornell occasionally wrote music for films,
and one of his contributions was the song "The Promise" for the 2017 movie of the same name,
which stars Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale. The plot of the film covers the Armenian Genocide,
which happened at the same time as World War I. Beginning in 1915, the Ottoman government
of Turkey ordered the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians, as well as
the expulsion of thousands more. The Promise director Terry George
commissioned Cornell to compose and perform a song for the film's soundtrack. Cornell then researched the subject by reading
extensively and watching documentaries, which ended up haunting him. He aimed for his song
to convey a message of hope. As he told Billboard, "The hope was built into the story. To me, the challenge was being able to distill
it in a couple of verses and a chorus." Cornell donated any money he received from "The
Promise" to the International Rescue Committee, an organization that helps political refugees and
people trying to escape countries in conflict. The song also ultimately earned him a
Grammy nomination for Best Rock Song. Cornell is of course primarily known for his
singing career, during which he was the frontman of three different rock bands: Temple of the Dog,
Soundgarden, and Audioslave. He also kept up a prolific solo career, as he released four solo
albums between 1999 and 2015: Euphoria Morning, Carry On, Scream, and Higher Truth. That last
one sold fairly well, peaking at number 19 on the Billboard album chart and generating the
rock radio hit "Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart." Clearly, the masses wanted plenty of Chris
Cornell, and he obliged, as he headed out on tour to promote Higher Truth. The latter part of
2015 saw him playing theaters and concert halls in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. Then in
early 2016, he played throughout Scandinavia and Western Europe, including a four-night stand at
London's Royal Albert Hall. He ultimately returned to North America for another leg that kept him
on the road playing shows for much of the summer. A few months before Soundgarden released its
commercial breakthrough Badmotorfinger in 1991, Chris Cornell had already emerged
onto the scene with Temple of the Dog. A supergroup consisting of members
of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, Temple of the Dog released a self-titled album in
1991 that featured the hit song "Hunger Strike." The album served as a tribute to the late
Andrew Wood, frontman of Seattle band Mother Love Bone and a close friend of Cornell's.
Wood had died in 1990 of a drug overdose. Temple of the Dog was a project with a
specific goal in mind that existed in a specific period in time. It was formed by
people who went on to much bigger things, so the fact that the band ended up
reuniting was a bit of a surprise. Cornell had occasionally joined Pearl Jam
on stage over the years, but it wasn't until November 2016 that Temple of the Dog staged
a full-scale reunion tour. They played five American cities, and Cornell hoped it would be
a cathartic experience. He told The Guardian, "I didn't deal well with
Andy's death. After he died, numerous times I'd be driving and I would
look out the window and I thought I saw him. It would take me five minutes
to update to the moment and realize, 'no, he’s actually dead.' This tour, in a
sense, is the dealing. It's facing the reality." After revisiting Temple of the Dog, the Chris
Cornell Greatest Hits wave continued when he got back together with Audioslave, which
originally formed in 2001 when Cornell joined up with three former members of Rage Against the
Machine. They released three best-selling albums in the 2000s and dominated rock radio with
hits like "Show Me How to Live," "Cochise," and "Like a Stone." They were nowhere near as
politically minded as Rage Against the Machine, but they made their feelings known when
they reunited after some time apart. On January 20, 2017, the same day as
Donald Trump's presidential inauguration, Audioslave helped organize the Anti Inaugural
Ball, a star-studded protest in the form of a concert in Los Angeles. It was a decidedly
informal affair for Cornell and his bandmates. A quick sound check served as their only
rehearsal before they performed a three-song set. According to guitarist Tom Morello,
the entire reunion was Cornell's idea. In the last year of his life, Cornell
played and recorded a lot of music, including contributing covers of a couple of
well-known songs for two very different projects. HBO's short-lived 2016 drama Vinyl, set around
a fading 70s record label, featured rock stars doing their takes on old rock and pop gems in each
episode. Cornell's contribution was a version of "Stay With Me Baby," which was originally recorded
by Lorraine Ellison in 1966. He told Vulture, "I was very honored to be asked. I
get to pay tribute to Terry Reid, whose version of the song has been a
favorite of mine for many years and be included on a great soundtrack
with an amazing group of artists." Also in 2016, Cornell contributed to
the animated Netflix series Beat Bugs. The show was built around the music of the
Beatles and featured a group of five bugs, including actual beetles, learning important life
lessons and morals. The soundtrack consisted of Fab Four favorites performed by high-profile
musical guests like Pink, Rod Stewart, and Cornell, who earned the privilege of singing
"Drive My Car" while the Beat Bugs danced around. In 2012, Soundgarden reunited after 15 years
apart with a few concert dates and the release of a brand-new album, King Animal. It worked out so
well that Cornell, guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron, and bassist Ben Shepherd reconvened
once more. They had some very ambitious plans in place for 2017: another new record, a tour, and
digging into their vault. In April of that year, Cornell told Billboard that they were halfway
through writing the new album. Each band member had been writing and recording potential
tracks on their own. Thayil told Billboard, "There's some songs that have been demoed. I
think Matt's demoed some things completely, stuff he's recorded on his computer.
Chris has demoed a few things. He's written lyrics for ideas that I've
written and that Ben and Matt have written." Thayil also noted that they were looking
into issuing various unreleased recordings, such as excised material from Screaming Life,
the band's debut 1987 EP. While those projects have yet to materialize, Soundgarden
did tour throughout the spring of 2017, which Cornell seemed to be
excited about. He told Billboard, "What I look forward to the most, because I tour
so much, especially the last couple of years, by myself, is the camaraderie. It's
what we missed when we weren't a band." Iconic singer-songwriter Johnny Cash was a
big influence on Cornell. The Man in Black even covered the Soundgarden song "Rusty
Cage" in 1996. Cornell once said of him, "I met [Cash] once or twice in my life, and he was so gracious and he was such
an influence on me as a musician." "Since that time, I've felt like he's maybe one of the bigger presences in my
life, in terms of an artist that I'm a fan of." Cornell was such a big fan of Cash that
shortly before he died, he adapted two of his poems and added original music to create
a ballad called "You Never Knew My Mind." It appeared on Forever Words, a collection of Cash's
little-known non-musical works set to melodies, released in April 2018. It marked the first
time Cornell's voice was heard on record since his passing. Johnny Cash's son and Forever
Words co-producer John Carter Cash said, "Chris took the two pieces and put them together in this one…I can't listen to
it without it laying me down." In 2004, Cornell married his second wife, Vicky,
and they went on to have two children together: a daughter named Toni, born in 2004, and
a son named Christopher, born in 2005. It wasn't long before Toni Cornell and her father
began collaborating on some musical projects. She wrote a song called "Far Away Places"
when she was just 12 years old, which her dad recorded and produced at his home studio in
Florida. The song was later released in a 2019 short film made by a Cornell family friend.
In 2015, Chris had accompanied his daughter in her first-ever public performance, as they
played Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" together at the Beacon Theater in New York City. In
a poignant Father's Day gesture in 2018, Toni released to YouTube her duet with her late
father of the Prince song "Nothing Compares 2 U." Soundgarden hit the road in spring
2017 with Cornell at the fore, and the tour arrived in Detroit for
a May 17th date at the Fox Theatre. The Detroit Free Press covered
the performance and reported, "It was clear that something wasn't
right with the 52-year-old Cornell...He often staggered back-and-forth across the
stage, and seemed weak in his movements. Just one or two songs in, it was
if the energy had exited his body, and what was left was a shell of
a man scrambling to do his job." Cornell also reportedly forgot
lyrics on more than one occasion, and his vocals weren't in sync with the
music. At one point, he wandered offstage, leaving the rest of the band to vamp
with their instruments until he returned. They finished their set with their downbeat
1991 track "Slaves & Bulldozers," intercut with elements of Led Zeppelin's "In My Time of
Dying." And thus ended Soundgarden's last show, and Cornell's final performance before
the tragic events of later that night. Following Soundgarden's show at Detroit's
Fox Theatre, Chris Cornell headed straight to his hotel room at the MGM Grand. That's
when bodyguard Martin Kirsten helped him with a computer issue and then gave him
two doses of an anti-anxiety medication. At around 11:30 PM Cornell took a brief call from
his wife Vicky, who noticed that his speech seemed slurred and that he sounded overly sleepy.
He repeatedly assured that he was just tired. "He was slurring his speech a lot." "So at that point you were thinking,
you've got to get him help." "Yes." At a quarter past midnight, Vicky called Kirsten
to have him check in on her husband, but he found Cornell's room locked. He kicked down the door,
only to find the bathroom door locked as well. After kicking down the second door, he discovered
Cornell on the floor, unresponsive, not breathing, blood coming out of his mouth, and an
exercise band firmly tied around his neck. An E.M.S. unit arrived on the scene, and a
medical professional performed CPR on Cornell, but without success. At 1:30 AM,
a doctor pronounced Cornell dead, after which homicide detectives arrived to
investigate while another officer called Vicky to tell her that her husband had
passed away. He was only 52 years old. According to a police report regarding
the scene of Chris Cornell's death, Vicky Cornell told police that her
husband was a recovering drug addict. Indeed, he had long struggled with
substance abuse, and Vicky told ABC News that her husband had suffered a
relapse in his sobriety in 2016. However, according to authorities, drugs didn't seem to
actually play a significant role in his death. "My husband was the furthest thing from
a rock star junkie. He just wasn't." An autopsy and toxicology report issued by the
Wayne County Medical Examiner's office reported evidence of several commonly abused substances in
Cornell's system. These included the painkillers naloxone and butalbital, the anti-anxiety drug
lorazepam, allergy treatment pseudoephedrine, and caffeine. However, none were present in
anything beyond small-to-moderate safe doses, leading the medical examiner to rule that these
chemicals didn't lead to Cornell's death. Police ruled out homicide , and all authorities involved
officially believe that he took his own life. If you or someone you know is having suicidal
thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
