By Keith Sharp
Fans who attended Soundgarden’s May 17th concert at Detroit’s Fox Theatre could not have known they had witnessed lead singer Chris Cornell’s final performance.
Hours later, a 911 emergency call led medical attendants and local police to a hotel room at Detroit’s MGM Casino Grand where Cornell was found unresponsive on the bathroom floor. Cause of death has now been determined as suicide by strangulation.
Cornell, age 52, formed Soundgarden in Seattle in 1984, with fellow band members Kim Thayll, Hiro Yamato and Matt Cameron, emerging with Nirvana, Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam to launch the Grunge movement which revolutionized pop music in the early Eighties. Soundgarden was the first major band to sign to a major label (A&M) and enjoyed their greatest triumph in 1994 with the release of the band’s `Superunknown’ release which spawned two monster singles “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman”
Soundgarden disbanded in 1997 after the Grunge movement had lost its lustre to form another influential band, Audioslave, but reformed his original band in 2010 and released `King Animal’ in 2012.
The band, which had enjoyed record sales topping 10.5 million, were enjoying a strong comeback and were in the midst of a 2017 U.S tour when Cornell’s life ended in a Detroit casino hotel bathroom. They were due to play on Friday at a Rock In The Range festival at Columbus Ohio in a lineup which also featured Metallica and Korn.