{"id":104640,"date":"2025-08-31T08:41:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-31T08:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/104640\/"},"modified":"2025-08-31T08:41:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-31T08:41:20","slug":"how-the-beatles-became-chris-cornells-first-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/104640\/","title":{"rendered":"How The Beatles became Chris Cornell’s first love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Apple Corps \/ Press)<\/p>\n

Sun 31 August 2025 4:00, UK <\/p>\n

Chris Cornell<\/a> will forever be indebted to the rock and roll that came before him. He loved the idea of working with whatever zany idea that Soundgarden came up with, but that kind of inventive spirit only comes from someone who started off thinking that the rules were meant to be broken in music.<\/p>\n

Because looking through every one of Soundgarden\u2019s greatest records, Cornell never settled for taking the easy way out. A lot of the band\u2019s greatest hits were always slightly off in terms of structure, and when listening to their deep cuts, they seemed to be taking a punk ethos and mixing it with progressive tendencies, like the shifting time signatures across Badmotorfinger or constantly switching up their tunings to create beautiful ballads like \u2018Burden in My Hand\u2019 after they got famous.<\/p>\n

Then again, Cornell never saw those kinds of practices as taboo or anything. Joni Mitchell had employed strange tunings all the time, so what was wrong with him making his own version of that and throwing his Robert Plant-like wail over everything? But before Zeppelin or Mitchell, rock and roll was already progressing by leaps and bounds throughout the 1960s.<\/p>\n

And when looking through some of Soundgarden\u2019s best moments, it\u2019s not hard to see some of their songs as a love letter to the more eccentric members of the counterculture. Their occasional humour in songs like \u2018667\u2019 or \u2018Big Dumb Sex<\/a>\u2019 feels like a heavier version of something that Frank Zappa would have written, and their need to intentionally make things sound dissonant is ripped straight from Lou Reed\u2019s playbook.<\/p>\n

But like all artists who dare to dream big, Cornell was going to be pulling from The Beatles whether he knew it or not. Nothing that The Beatles did was meant to fit in a neat box, and when Cornell started to become interested in music, he remembered that the Fab Four\u2019s records were his musical gateway into more eclectic material.<\/p>\n

While many bands may have started with The Beatles, Cornell saw those albums as a musical blueprint for him, saying<\/a>, \u201cThe Beatles were my first love. My friend John Zimmer\u2019s oldest brother was kicked out of his house, and his parents put all of his stuff in the basement. He had about 15 Beatles records. So I stole the whole stack. For over a year, I listened to nothing but The Beatles. It was my music school.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would be hard to hear any Soundgarden song and think that Cornell was trying to write the next \u2018She Loves You\u2019, but that was never his intent, either. The band\u2019s later period was usually when things started to get really interesting, and outside of Soundgarden\u2019s material having the same eclectic mix as The White Album, a track like \u2018Black Hole Sun\u2019 feels like Cornell took the bones of \u2018Helter Skelter\u2019 and turned it into a haunting ballad.<\/p>\n

Even though Cornell would later branch out into everything from prog rock to punk to new wave music, there\u2019s a reason why The Beatles were forever a part of his musical DNA. Many acts can feel larger than life when they come out with a new record, but before they were even broken up, the Fab Four had transcended the heights most people thought of for a pop group. They were truly musical deities in many people\u2019s eyes, and while they did spend time reminding people they were still human, it\u2019s hard to believe that much quality material wasn\u2019t created by musical gods.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n

The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Apple Corps \/ Press) Sun 31 August 2025 4:00, UK Chris Cornell will forever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[50967,96,128,10447,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-104640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-chris-cornell","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-the-beatles","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}