Chris Cornell, for all his sonic bite and bark, always came across as a gentle soul in archival footage and interviews.
Like many great artists, perhaps he was able to channel most of his inner rage and angst through the iconic music he created.
His wife Vicky seemed to suggest as much recently, too, as she reflected on his tragic and shocking suicide:
“Chris did not suffer suicidal ideations and Chris was not even depressed. Chris was in recovery, and he had been on a benzo. But again, even looking back, nothing even at that very moment felt like — it’s impossible. It came from nowhere, and so it’s a very traumatic kind of loss.”
The late metal legend has been in our hearts and on our minds these past few days in particular as this week was the 29th (jesus!) anniversary of Soundgarden’s flawless opus, ‘Superunknown.’
As album anniversaries are apt to do, we couldn’t help but go down a Chris rabbit hole on the internet, searching for nostalgic footage of the band firing on all cylinders live in that unstoppable early 90’s era.
And in doing so, the social media rabbit hole led us down a particularly interesting old interview with Chris where a particularly clueless interviewer was forcing a very awkward conversation with Chris right as he finished playing a huge festival set in 1992.
Things started off jovial enough, but quickly got awkward as hell when the interviewer essentially referred to Soundgarden as ‘noise’: “What do you want to reach with this noise? Do you want to spread aggression?
Cornell didn’t lose his cool and was ever the gentleman about it, but also started giving some good ‘ol sass back to the interviewer, having a good time at his expense. Watch the clip below, and hat tip to Grunge Bible:
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