DISGRACELAND - Chris Cornell: Bad Trips, Crooked DEA Agents, and Four Octaves of Sheer Power

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

As a teenager, Chris Cornell was traumatized by a bad PCP trip that turned him into a recluse for years. Music pulled him out of the darkness when he discovered his four-octave voice by accident – A voice he used to incredible effect as the frontman for both Soundgarden and Audioslave. But the darkness never really went away – it was there in his hometown of Seattle, where tragedies closed the chapter on grunge, and in his music, which was authentic to the very end. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including suicide. If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. This episode was originally published on May 23, 2024. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTER Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: Instagram YouTube X (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group TikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Chris Cornell are insane. He was a latchkey kid who was doing weed, pills, and LSD by the age of 14. A traumatic experience with PCP turned him into a recluse for years. Music pulled him out of the darkness when he discovered his four- octave voice by accident. He was robbed by crooked DEA agents, developed an addiction to oxy-cruly.

cotton while trying to jumpstart a creative comeback. It was part of the only rock band in history to send a song that featured a guy playing the spoons up the charts. That song, like the best of Chris Cornell's songs, was great music. Unlike that loop I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Montage Mystique MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to cold-hearted by Paula Abdul. And why would I play you that specific slice of Lakers Girl cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on September 5th, 1989.

And that was the day that Chris Cornell's band Soundgarden released louder than love, an album that got them on tour with Guns and Roses, inspired Metallica to write one of their biggest hits of all time, and pushed Chris Cornell to the forefront of a new musical movement in America. On this episode, PCP, a four-octave range, crooked DEA agents, The Spoon Man, and Chris Cornell. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland. Chris Cornell killed himself.

That sucks. Suicide sucks. It's happened too many times to too many great artists. Kurt Cobain, Michael Hutchins, Chester Bennington, Anthony Bourdain, and Chris Cornell, dead in 2017, at just 52 years old. If you've ever heard Soundgarden, audio slave, or a Temple of the Dog, then you know that Chris Cornell had a monster voice. four octaves of sheer power.

Power that Chris Cornell once had no idea that he possessed. Imagine standing in front of a microphone inside a recording studio and laying down a track with your band. The guys in your band are so loud that you have to push your voice to the limit in order to be heard, only to find that you're now pushing beyond that limit. Everyone's like, dude, what are you doing? How'd you do that? And you don't know. You just did it.

And now you can access that power anytime you want. That's how it was with Chris Cornell, stumbling into that God-given talent with ease. But if you've heard Chris Cornell's acoustic cover of nothing compares to you, the ballad written by Prince and made famous by Shnade O'Connor, you know the real reason he was one of the greatest to ever do it. Because he was capable not only of great power, but of tremendous restraint.

And that restraint, that nuance is why on his best day, nothing compared to Chris Cornell. Chris never met Prince, but he did run into him at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Chris was walking down a hallway when a guest room door up ahead swung open. His royal badness appeared, no shirt, rocking a purple headband, struggling to wheel a room service cart out into the hallway. Prince locked eyes with Chris Cornell, and Chris could see the shock. The panic. Prince wrestled with the room service cart some more.

The silverware and plates now clanking around and making a hell of a racket. With great effort, he finally managed to move the cart fully into the hallway and then slammed the door behind him without saying a word. Prince. Such a rock star that he couldn't even say hello to a fellow rock star. I'm not judging, and neither was Chris Cornell. He didn't take offense. He could relate.

Chris was shy. private. He was allergic to the fame side of this business, all that being recognized everywhere business, especially the being expected to engage with the person who recognized you business. Chris Cornell's definition of a working musician was simpler than that. But as soon as Soundgarden got famous, he discovered that the world of rock and roll was anything but simple. 1992. Soundgarden's third studio album, Bad Motorfinger. The one The one that was supposed to make them huge was doing just that. Not never mind huge, not Nirvana huge, but it was all good.

Kurt, Grunge, Seattle, that rise in tide was lifting all boats. It lifted Soundgarden, and that's Chris Cornell, of course, and guitarist Kim Thale, bassist Ben Shepard, and drummer Matt Cameron, to an opening slot on Guns and Roses as Usier Illusion Tour. And as openers, there were strict rules to follow. 1. No upstaging Axel Rose. 2. No walking out onto Axel's metal catwalk, which extended from the main stage. And three, don't leave yourself out in the open backstage where, God forbid, Axel could run into you.

Which is where Chris Cornell found himself now. Standing backstage after Soundgarden's opening set. When suddenly, here comes Axel fucking Rose, baseball cap, tight red shorts, fur coat, sunglasses, doing that streetwalking cheetah strut with his jacked bodyguard by his side. Shit, Christ thought. Maybe Axel won't notice. Maybe his bodyguard will take pity and won't beat the piss out of me. Axel was close now, passing right in front of him, the moment of truth.

Chris braced himself for a lecture, a kick to the nuts, some hardcore welcome to the proverbial jungle shit. He tensed up. Axel made eye contact. And then Axel said, hey bro. Hey, bro. Axel Rose and his bodyguard kept walking. There was no dressing down, no penalty. The so-called rules, they were a joke. It all was. I mean, look at these guys, guns and roses.

Once a lean five-piece, it required nothing but themselves to absolutely kill in some tiny club on the strip and now playing hockey arenas with two keyboard players, two keyboard players, three backup singers, giant inflatables flying around. It was crazy. Axel was pricing out blimps for the next leg of the tour. Chris Cornell watched the sunfold before his eyes,

not with awe or even respect, but with fear. Fear that this was where a Soundgarden was headed. That in order to reach this level, you had to change, compromise who you really were. He didn't want to do that. Not for a record label, not for an audience, and certainly not for Axel Rose, which isn't to say that Chris Cornell and Soundgarden didn't want to write hit songs.

Their new single, Outshined, was holding up pretty well on the rock charts. But Chris was proud that they'd made it happen their own way, by remaining true to themselves and by being authentic. There's this fallacy that American indie bands in the 1980s and 1990s were allergic to having hits, and that's simply not true. Soundgarden, for example, would gladly have a hit. Just look at Sub-pop Records, one of the most important American indie labels during this period, and also the label that released Soundgarden's first single in EP.

When Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Pullman co-founded sub-pop in Seattle in 1986, they had Motown on the brain. They went after a certain kind of band and a certain kind of sound. They hired an in-house producer, an in-house photographer, and they even flew into journalists from England to write about the thing that they had created, thus drumming up interest for what? For the cool factor? Fuck no.

Interest so that they could sell more records. And that's not to say that indie music and later grunge didn't enjoy being imperfections like flannel shirts and lace up Doc Martins for all the rage. It made the music human. But Chris Cornell had, as Bruce Pavett put it, a seemingly flawless nature. He was polished in looks and in sound. A long-haired Pacific Northwest of Donis with a voice as smooth as the bare chest that he routinely took to exposing on stage. And because of this, Chris Cornell stood out from everyone else in Seattle. But this didn't happen overnight.

For a while, all Chris wanted to do was not stand out. In fact, all he wanted to do was hide. 1978, 14-year-old Chris Cornell was freaking out. A latchkey kid, for years now, left to his own devices, smoking, drinking, getting high. One thing led to another. weed, pills, LSD, booze. But the PCP was clearly a mistake. It turned his good day into a bad day, the worst kind of day, a black day.

A day that envelops you, suffocates you, shuts out the lights, everything in your own head twisted and haunted and blanketed in a drop-tuned doom. Chris just wanted it to go away. Whatever was now invading his own mind, that is, just to leave him alone. but it wouldn't leave. Days turned to weeks and weeks to months. For about two years in his teens, Chris Cornell was a shut-in,

all because of a bad trip on Angel Dust, a trip that turned him into an agoraphob, one who fears public places. He dropped out of school, he isolated. Then his mom bought him a snare drum. Soon he picked up the remaining pieces of whole kit, and he rescued a stack of Beatles records from a neighbor's basement. He met Hero Yamamoto, a bass player,

Heroes bug, Kim Thail, a guitarist, both Seattle transplants from Chicago. The first day the trio jammed, they wrote three songs. The next day, they wrote five more. But within two months, they had 15 songs, and they just needed a singer. None of them. Least of all, Chris, knew that one of Seattle's greatest voices

was currently sitting on his ass behind the drum kit. But like all young and hungry indie bands, If you need something, you do it yourself. Chris didn't expect his voice, though, to do that. And when it did, Chris Cornell sealed his fate in an instant. And that fate was not to be stuck inside his own head, some pathetic PCP casualty, but to be compelled by the act of making music,

knowing without any reservation that he was going to make music for the rest of his life. Even if that meant washing dishes or cleaning fish guts on the side until he was 80 years old, Play, sing, tour. This was Chris Cornell's life now, and it was simple. 1988, 24-year-old Chris Cornell was doing what he loved, hitting the road with his band in their Chevy. America, a blur outside the window as they tore ass through Louisiana.

Chris no longer playing drums, but singing lead. His band Soundgarden touring in support of Ultra Mega OK, their full-length debut on SST Records. SST. Come on, man, are you kidding me? Black Flag, the Minutemen, Housker Do, the meat puppets. They were all on SST. It was the coolest indie label going. Subpop was cool, too, no doubt. And those guys were Soundgarden's friends. But SST was SST. And they wanted Soundgarden. They wanted Chris Cornell. But SST wasn't alone. Every record label wanted to sign Soundgarden. Every major label.

And remember, this is the late 1980s. This is before the word grunge. entered the lexicon. Before Seattle became the new Athens or Minneapolis, Chris Cornell and Soundgarden were that good and they were that compelling. But unlike most bands, eager to make that jump to the big time, Soundgarden knew they weren't quite ready yet. Chris Cornell had the wisdom and the foresight at just 24 years old to know that he needed more time. And not a defined amount of time. It could be weeks or months or even years. But the point was to wait until the industry needed. them, not the other way around. Because if Chris Cornell signed with major label A&M records at this moment, he knew he would be forced to change, forced to sacrifice his authenticity, which at this

point was a polished hybrid of metal, hardcore, and psychedelic rock, wholly unique to the split camps of punk and hair metal dominating Seattle at the time. And again, I'm not saying that by turning down A&M, Chris Cornell and the guys in Soundgarden were turning down the opportunity to make a hit record. Being authentic and being a huge star not mutually exclusive. Chris was turning down the notion of selling out. If Soundgarden went to the big time before they were ready, before the industry was ready, they would fail and they'd never have a hit. The hits would come at due time, the way that they wanted. This particular strategy wasn't just Chris's idea. It was recommended by Chris's girlfriend at the time, Susan Silver, who also happened to be Soundgarden's manager.

The strategy worked. It allowed Soundgarden to retain their indie credibility, and it got them in with the SST crowd far beyond the borders of Seattle, and it only made the majors want the band more, just like everyone else did. But you can't please them all. Particularly members of law enforcement here in Louisiana who assumed that your long hair, Washington State plates, and buttholes surfer's bumper sticker on the back of your van,

equaled probable cause. Soundgarden's drummer Matt Cameron was behind the wheel when he saw the blue lights in the rearview mirror. He didn't panic. He knew the band was clean. Cleaner than your average rock band. Only their sound guy, Hallerman, was holding, and that tiny bit of weed was stashed safely inside his toolkit.

Matt pulled over. The cops walked up. Chris got a good look. Dark sunglasses, big guns, and their badges. Not local police, not troopers. DEA? The fuck? Everybody out!

The narcs had them surrounded. The band did as they were told, lined up along the side of the highway where Louisiana DEA were now looking them up and down. Don't even think about making a run for it, one of the officers said. Look behind you. That there's the Louisiana swamp.

You run out there. You're done for. We'll chase you like we're trained to do, and chances are we'll catch you. But if we don't catch you, The swamp will. Can't even begin to count how many burnouts like you have gone missing out there, thinking they can run away, thinking they're different.

Soundgarden was different. You were more likely to find philosophical discussion in their dressing room than chicks and dope. Not that the DEA would believe it. Belief was relative. Seeing was believing. And right now the NARCs wanted to see what they believed was there. So Chris Cornell and Soundgarden stuck between armed DEA officers and a swamp crawling with gaiters and snakes consented to having their van searched.

The officers found Hallerman's weed, which, by their logic, was communal property. And even though it was a tiny amount, half a gram at most, and remember this was 1988, so half a gram was enough to put them all under arrest, which was the DEA's intent. That is until they found the cash, $1,200. Soundgarden's meager earnings from ticket and merch sales on the tour so far. The NARCs, though, they defined it differently, of course. In their eyes, it was drug money, subject to seizure, and that was the bad news. The good news was that it made things even.

The money settled their tab, so to speak. Well, that and the weed. The DEA kept it all and just sent the band on their way, humiliated, stripped of all their cash, honest cash that was now lining the dirty pockets of dirty cops, all the way to their next stop, New Orleans. where that night they played a show for four people. Three, if you didn't count the bartender. If you've ever toured the country as an indie rock band, label or no label,

super unknown as it were, sorry, couldn't resist. You don't have to share this exact experience to sympathize with what I'm describing here. Life on the road is a struggling band on the come-up, is equal-parts exhaustion and disappointment. Defeat lurks around every corner. It breaks more bands than it makes. But Chris Cornell was determined. This is what he was going to do for the rest of his life.

Even if it meant he'd be penniless, playing for three people at a French quarter-adjacent shithole. It beats sitting inside an empty room stuck inside his own head, navigating whatever dark spaces still remained following that ill-conceived drug trip all those years ago. He'd found his place here in Soundgarden, cranking out their brand of Sabbath and Zeppelin sludge, Kim Thail's heavy riffage threading itself around Chris's four-octo voice.

but they didn't take themselves or the lineage of their music too seriously. Songs like Jesus Christ Pose and Big Dumb Sex took the piss out of rock and roll martyrs and macho, lethario fuckos alike. Their music was smart, just like their strategy. A strategy that was beginning to pay dividends, as planned. Just as Chris and his girlfriend and manager Susan Silver hoped, the industry continued to lend an ear to what Soundgarden was doing and continued to up the ante.

Before long, A&M Records had tripled their original offer. When Soundgarden finally made that jump to the majors, they made it while maintaining the very essence of who they were. And they didn't forget who got them there. In the liner notes, for Louder Than Love, their 1989 A&M Records debut, Soundgarden thanked Subpop, SST, and the Louisiana DEA. The irony being that within about five years' time,

every one of those narcs that pulled them over outside New Orleans would have a Soundgarden CD on permanent rotation in their shitty Camaros, and Soundgarden would have a lot more than $1,200 in an envelope to show for it. Right now, however, in the fall of 1989, Chris Cornell and Soundgarden just had a killer rep and a killer record, so killer that it directly inspired Kirk Hammett to write the riff to Metallica's mega hit, Enter Sandman, after he binged louder than love at like,

3 o'clock in the morning, which is, as Kirk knows, the best time to listen to Soundgarden. Loud, but I digress. Kirk Hammett, he was an early Soundgarden convert, as was Axel Rose, who took Soundgarden out on tour with him just a few years later. And it was on this tour that Chris Cornell once again confronted the fear of selling out. That fear that in order to proceed in the natural order of things, to go from Big Tour opener to Big Tour headliner, he and Soundgarden would be required to compromise who they were and what they did. It seemed inevitable. How one day you just wake up and everything has changed and not for the better either.

There was no explaining it. It just happened. You found yourself in that place. Chris Cornell knew that place better than most. He put pen to paper and began to immortalize that place in a song. A song that would soon reveal him at his most vulnerable. At the very moment, he seemed totally invincible. We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

The intersection of the 5 and the 91 freeway, it's a very slow pursuit, followed by numerous highway patrol vehicles. But because of the intensity, it seems like people have heard about what's going on. The presuming vehicle of O.J. Simpson is still traveling very slowly northbound along the five freeway. 1995, America was glued to the television set. Just as they had been for the past year, ever since O.J. Simpson drove his white Broncos south on the 91 freeway, California Highway Patrol all over its ass. Now the juice was on trial for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman. A trial that completely saturated the culture. From the morning news to the late-night talk shows, it was the biggest reality show at the dawn of reality TV.

OJ was all anyone talked about. Did he do it? Was he guilty? If the glove did not fit, should they... Okay, you get it. But the judge presiding over the case, Judge Lantzito, wanted to talk about things besides It's OJ Simpson. He wanted to talk about himself. Because Judge Edo, like Johnny Cochran and Cato Caelin

and so many others taking part in this real-life TV drama, saw an opportunity to parlay his unexpected notoriety into something bigger. So there was Judge Edo basking in his own spotlight, in newspapers and on TV. This time, not as a supporting player, but as the lead, Your Honor Dujure being asked questions about his life, his childhood, his hobbies. Questions like, Judge, what music do you listen to? Judge Lansito had his answer ready for that one. I really like Soundgarden. Chris Cornell could not believe that shit when he read it. The OJ judge, a fan of Soundgarden, was far out. So was the size of this arena's Soundgarden was headlining

tonight. Chris walked through it in awe. But Chris didn't have an Axel Rose Clause. Other bands, other stars weren't banned from backstage, like these two guys just up ahead waiting to pay their respects. They wore matching black suits, black hats, black sunglasses. Chris knew who they were before we even got close. Just like the whole Judge Edo thing, he couldn't believe this either. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the Grammy Award-winning writing and production team behind some of Janet Jackson's biggest hits. Bending the knee, here for him, Chris Cornell, Soundgarden's fourth studio album and their third for A&M, Super Unknown, changed everything.

Not just the band's lineup, with Ben Shepard replacing original member Hero Yamamoto on bass, and not just the band's sound, which is both more Beatlesque and more Prog Rock than ever before. It was Soundgarden's first album to be released in the wake of the Grunge phenomenon, and their first to debut at number one on the Billboard chart. In the first week alone, in March of 1994, it sold over 300,000 copies. By years end, that number had increased to 2.5 million. Not only their biggest selling record to date, but their best. Just as Soundgarden, Chris Cornell and Chris's now wife, Susan Silver, designed it to be.

Authentic and a hit. Like Spoon Man, the album's first single, a song that couldn't have been written or performed by anyone Originally, the name of the fictitious band in Cameron Crowe's 1992 movie singles, a movie that capitalized on the grunge scene and featured appearances in the film and on the soundtrack by Soundgarden and other Seattle bands. Spoon Man was inspired by a guy everyone in Seattle knew. Soundgarden invited artists The Spoon Man, a local street performer, to do his thing on the actual track, which he did, playing the spoons like a man possessed. The stainless steel slapping between his fingers and his arms and legs so hard and so intense that his hands began to bleed, his heart began to pound, and then artist the Spoon Man passed out in the recording studio during the take.

How's that for authentic? Super Unknown was a vibe all around. Dark psychedelia on Black Hole Sun, thick, gnarly guitars on Fourth of July. Fell on Black Days was both dark and groovy, and it was all about. out, to paraphrase Chris Cornell, that universal experience we've all had in some way, where one day you wake up and realize that your good life was actually headed in a negative direction. You didn't see it coming. It just happened. It was happening in Chris's hometown. Corporations and conglomerates doing what they wanted with Seattle. Total exploitation in the name of

discovery. Every bespoke subset of every subscene in town picked over by A&R men looking for the next Nirvana, the next Pearl Jam, the next Chris Cornell. Every rock band clutching what they thought was a golden ticket, when in reality it was just fool's gold, chewed up, spit out. Now, the most myopic definition of quote-unquote grunge and quote-unquote Seattle being sold for thousands of dollars in the New York Times this glossy fashion supplement. And when the circus packed up its tents and skipped town, they left it all to rot. A once vibrant, authentic thing drained of its color. And there were real casualties, too. One month after Super Unknown was released, in April of 1994,

Kurt Cobain put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Losing Kurt heard as much as losing Andrew Wood did three years prior. Andy wasn't just a friend. At one time, he was Chris's roommate. Chris processed his grief partly by writing songs and then recording and releasing those songs as Temple of the Dog. A Seattle Supergroup, he formed with members of Andy Span. and Mother Lovebone.

But the physical and emotional release provided by Chris's four-octave voice wasn't going to cut it forever. Not this time. Chris lost it. He self-medicated with a bottle. He became the cliche he'd avoided for so long. Exactly what the DEA thought he was

and out-of-control rock star. Fuck philosophy discussions backstage. That shit was in the past. That was before Kurt and Andy. Chris and the guys in Soundgar, and were now channeling Keith Moon and Joe Walsh, ripping steel doors from their hinges, turning tables into kindling,

violence, destruction, zero fucks. Their tour manager got scared. He called up Susan Silver from Europe out on the road and asked for her guidance. And what the hell was he supposed to do? Susan's answer was simple. Leave them alone. But struggling with great loss

wasn't the only issue. Chris began to experience problems with his voice. The band was forced to. cancel shows. He drank more. Pills, oxy, volume, cocaine. Those would come soon enough too. Tensions rose. Tensions within the band and tensions threatening to split up Chris and Susan's marriage. So Soundgarden doubled down, producing their fifth studio album, down on the upside, by themselves. 100% them, 100% uncompromised, 100% killer. Chris wanted that to be enough. He wanted the answer to That simple, that music, the thing he had given his life to, saved it all in the end.

But music wasn't saving anything. Grunge, alternative, whatever you wanted to call it. The thing Soundgarden was at the center of had successfully killed all that hair metal that previously dominated the charts, and now it had mutilated the dead body and was wearing the celebrity skin suit. Axel rose with a flannel shirt tied around his waist. Kurt's widow, Courtney, ready for her close-up and all that. other nonsense. In a roundabout way, it was Chris's greatest fear coming to life. He and Soundgarden

had sold out, just not of their own accord. It was enough to drive you back into your own head to those black days, the ones you first encountered almost two decades prior. Back when you were just 14, high on PCP, scared, confused, the whole world rewinding now. Back through A&M and then SST, all the way to subpop and beyond. The spoon man's spoons rattling, the shell making its way back inside Kurt's shotgun, all the way back to when there was only one snare drum before anything made any sense at all, any real sense, until the tape rewound all the way off the reel and unspooled itself and collapsed to the floor in a pile. Chris Cornell was by most accounts a really solid dude, kind, kid, kid, and,

caring, thoughtful, that rare breed of rock star who is refreshingly down to earth. He's the guy who made a Chicago kid, by way of San Diego, feel at home in Seattle, welcoming a young Eddie Vedder into the fold with open arms while recording the Temple of the Dog album. Because of Chris's generosity, Eddie Vedder was able to hear himself on record for the first time. That in part imbued Eddie with the confidence to make even greater records with his new band, Pearl Jam. And as Eddie later said, I'm indebted to Chris, time. eternal. Chris Cornell was also the guy who opened his own wallet to make sure Ulaan Johannes' band 11 could open for Soundgarden on tour. That never happens. And Chris Cornell was the guy

who convinced Richard Patrick at the band filter to stick it out in rehab. All that Jesus talk rubbed an atheist like Richard the wrong way. He felt like checking out after a few days and Chris told him the stay. Chris also told him, you don't have to think of God as the helper. Instead, Think of GOD as a group of drunks. And these other people here, Chris included, they were your helper, your higher power. You needed that. You needed them because you can't do it alone.

Of course, Chris knew what he was talking about. He was here in rehab because the people around him saw that he needed help. His drinking was out of control. He developed an addiction to OxyContin. He was using value, coke, even crystal meth, not eating for days. losing weight. He and Susan had a daughter, but their marriage was now going through the same

strains that had resulted in Sound Gardens breakup five years prior. It was 2002. The year of the debut of Audio Slave, the rock and roll juggernaut that partnered Chris with Tom Morello in the rhythm section of rage against the machine. They were the ones who stepped up, along with Susan, and told Chris he needed to do something or he'd be dirt in the ground with Kurt and Andy. So he did. He put in the work and came out on the other side. Just like he once pushed past his own perceived limitations to reveal a four-octive voice, he was now pushing into a new stage in life,

a stage that included divorce. Then another marriage, more kids, more music, a bond theme song, solo albums that found him outside his comfort zone, or more like it, his comfort zone had shifted a bit and this was who he was now. Like Scream, his third solo record produced by R&B mainstay, Timbaland. probably the last person anyone expected to work with Chris Cornell.

The critics hated it even worse than they hated audio slave, which at the time was not as well received as it is now in hindsight. Even worse than the critics were his own peers. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails logging on to Twitter to write, You know that feeling you get when somebody embarrasses themselves so badly you feel uncomfortable? Heard Chris Cornell's record? Jesus. Chris shot back a quick response.

What do you think Jesus would Twitter? Would he come back aside, that shit stung? To have someone you respected and admired shit all over your music. For doing the same thing Trent Rezner was doing. Making art the way he wanted to make it at that moment. Humiliated for being what Chris thought was authentic. And once again asking himself if he had finally become the thing he feared. If next up, he'd be buying a blimp for his spectacle of a tour

or frantically shoving a room service card into a hotel hallway to avoid interaction with the common people. It's impossible to know if any of these things were going through Chris Cornell's mind in the early hours of May 18, 2017, when he stepped into the bathroom of his MGM Grand Hotel Room in Detroit and took his own life. But whatever he was thinking was undoubtedly clouded and complicated and far from simple. And that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brubon. running. And this is disgrace land. All right, discos, thanks for stepping into the black hole sun with me here. Apple podcast listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on. That way you won't miss any episodes. This week's question of the week is, which artist's follow-up band was better or more

impactful than their breakthrough band? I'm obviously asking because of Chris Cornell, 617-90666-36-3.8 with your answers. And you might just hear yourself in my responses in the after-party bonus episode. coming up in your podcast feed right after this. Hit me at Disgraceland Pod on the socials and leave a review for Disgraceland on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. All right, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours, truly,

and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com

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