Rock star and frontman of grunge band Soundgarden

Born: July 20, 1964;

Died: May 17, 2017

CHRIS Cornell, who has died aged 52, was an American rock singer whose first flush of fame during the grunge boom of the early 1990s gave way to an enduring career which brought critical acclaim and commercial success throughout his life.

Although his reputation was built upon his years as the frontman of key grunge act Soundgarden – Seattle natives and contemporaries of Nirvana – his return for three albums in the 2000s with Audioslave threatened to overshadow even his earlier achievements.

Cornell released four solo records (including 2009’s Timbaland-produced, partially electronic Scream – the cover showed Cornell about to smash a guitar – and 2015’s Higher Truth) and one album in 1991 with Temple of the Dog, a tribute project for his late roommate and Mother Love Bone – later Pearl Jam – singer Andrew Wood which became his first hit.

He was also an unlikely member of a very select group which also included Shirley Bassey, Duran Duran and Adele, having sang (and co-composed with David Arnold) You Know My Name, the theme to 2006’s first Daniel Craig-starring James Bond film Casino Royale.

Although the infamy of Nirvana and their iconic frontman Kurt Cobain – as well as Soundgarden’s later entry to the huge fame many of their contemporaries had already enjoyed – denied Cornell true voice-of-a-generation status, his first band were unquestionably one of the iconic American acts of the 1990s.

Their real breakthrough came in 1994 with their fourth album Superunknown and its key track and enduring classic Black Hole Sun. The fact that Cornell’s gritty baritone could turn itself to the doomy, Mount Rushmore-like balladry of this song, the yelping, feverish glam of the same album’s Spoonman and the ferocious punk of 1991’s controversial underground hit Jesus Christ Pose was testament to his vocal agility. The former two songs won the group’s only Grammy Awards in 1995.

Although Soundgarden had spent ten years working to reach this point, their huge fame brought the end quickly. There were rumours of internal troubles during the recording of 1996’s Down on the Upside, an album torn between Cornell’s desire to move towards the mainstream and the band’s intent to stick to the heavy sound which had made their name.

According to an insider speaking to Rolling Stone at the time, the rationale for the split was “we've accomplished everything we've wanted to do, there's a lot of pressure for us to be Soundgarden … maybe it's time for us to try something different for a while.”

Preceding the band’s live return in 2010 and the subsequent release of King Animal in 2012, however, Cornell insisted the band had never truly split, instead agreeing simply to go on what he called indefinite hiatus. Yet the 12-year interim period had been good to him, as he fronted the supergroup Audioslave – essentially ‘90s activist rock group Rage Against the Machine with Cornell in place of singer Zak de la Rocha, and a more epic, mainstream sound.

Their albums Audioslave (2002), Out of Exile (2005) and Revelations (2006) were substantial international hits, but within the first two months of 2007 Rage Against the Machine were back together and Cornell had dissolved Audioslave, citing “irresolvable personality conflicts as well as musical differences”.

Chris Cornell was born Christopher John Boyle in July 1964, one of six children in a suburban, middle class, Catholic Seattle family. Following the divorce of their parents Ed and Karen, the children took their mother’s maiden name, Cornell.

A self-described loner as a child, he listened obsessively to the Beatles in his early teens and dropped out of high school battling depression and substance abuse, both issues which would dog him for much of his career.

He met guitarist Kim Thayil and bassist Hiro Yamamoto playing in a local covers band called The Shemps, and the trio went on to form Soundgarden in 1984 (drummer Matt Cameron joined soon after, and Yamamoto was replaced by Ben Shepherd), signing with local label Sub Pop and eventually A&M Records, and releasing the underground hit albums Ultramega OK (1988), Louder Than Love (1989) and Badmotorfinger (1991). As the profile of Seattle’s scene grew, so did Soundgarden’s fame, and they were personally picked to support Guns N’ Roses on their Use Your Illusion tour.

After performing with Soundgarden in Detroit in May 2017, Chris Cornell died suddenly of reasons unknown at time of writing.

He is survived by a daughter born with his first wife, former Soundgarden manager Susan Silver, and a son and daughter with his second wife, music publicist Vicky Karayiannis. It was in the early stages of the second relationship that he cleaned up his drug and alcohol use, also joining the Greek Orthodox Church.

He also leaves behind a diverse and varied recorded output which deserves to be re-examined in detail for its hugely accomplished range of emotional responses to the traditional rock song, finishing with the Nick Drake, Bruce Springsteen and Daniel Johnston-influenced Higher Truth; an incomplete seventh Soundgarden album was also being worked on.

“(Music) has to either have a visceral nature, whether it’s anger or aggression or that kind of passion which shows up in rock music, or there has to be some sort of melancholy and introspection, something about it that makes you feel your own pain,” Cornell told Rolling Stone Australia of his writing in 2015. “I think (good songs) don’t work because they’re making you feel the pain of the characters, they work because they’re tricking you into feeling your own.”

DAVID POLLOCK