(Credits: Far Out / Chris Cornell)
Fri 27 March 2026 21:30, UK
It’s hard to script a better rock and roll frontman than Chris Cornell if you tried.
He never sought out to be one of the biggest names in music when Soundgarden first got started, but when anyone is gifted with that set of pipes, there’s no way for anyone to ignore them when they start coming out with tunes as forceful as ‘Loud Love’ and ‘Outshined’. But even when working on some of Soundgarden’s most mainstream hits, he felt that he needed to give a voice to the bands that fell in between the cracks of superstardom.
Because while Soundgarden was known as one of the originators of grunge rock, they never seemed to fit the aesthetic perfectly. They were a lot more adventurous with their music on everyone of their albums, and while they did have the same kind of punk rock ethos that a lot of the Seattle bands had, it was nothing compared to the ramshackle energy of Nirvana or the lack of respect for authority that Mudhoney had whenever they started making their underground anthems.
Every now and again, there would be a song on their album that would have been indebted to a band like Dead Kennedys, but Cornell’s voice always put it over the top and made everything sound a bit more like arena rock. That might have been a double-edged sword considering how many bands weren’t taking themselves seriously at the time, but Cornell wasn’t trying to become the next Axl Rose or anything.
If anything, he wanted to take the piss out of that genre, and when you listen to him channelling his inner Robert Plant, he was clearly showing the other belters of his generation how it was done. Other artists claimed to reach for the rafters and ended up sounding absolutely awful in their later years, but Cornell was always looking to improve on what he was doing, whether that meant going outside his comfort zone or coming up with a bonkers idea and seeing where the hell it took him.
After all, that’s what his favourite bands like Rush had done back in the day. The Canadian icons may have been forever cast as the “nerd band” whenever they performed, but when you look back at their career, there are more than a few rock and roll classics in their catalogue, all while being driven by the expert-level drumming of Neil Peart whenever they kicked into their tunes.
And while The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame waited a few more years before acknowledging Soundgarden, Cornell felt that they were turning over a new leaf when including Rush as well as Heart, saying, “I think for me as a fan and for me as a guy in a band, now I feel there is more integrity in terms of the organization. Because they’re recognizing a band like Heart, a band like Public Enemy tonight. (Also a) band like Rush, which is one of my favorite bands of all time. So it makes me more excited about the possibility of my future induction if it happens.”
That prog brilliance also did manage to rub off on Cornell more than a few times. Aside from the fact that Cornell had a surprisingly high range much like Geddy Lee, a lot of Soundgarden’s best songs did have a bit of a prog flair to them, each of them employing different tunings and not always relying on songs that were necessarily in the most normal time signature for the average rock and roll fan.
While it’s a tragedy that Cornell never got to see himself inducted alongside his bandmates, the fact that Lee was on hand to talk about the impact of Soundgarden was the perfect way of bringing everything full circle. There was no one else that could manage to sing like he did, and even among the presence of legends, hardly anyone could deny what he could do whenever he kicked into ‘Black Hole Sun’.
