Rock & Roll Heaven: Chris Cornell

After a nearly seven year break, this piece marks the return of my "Rock & Roll Heaven" series, which began nine years ago.

It was originally intended to be a week-long mini-series of articles. That first week included pieces on Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Michael Hutchence, and Jim Morrison. However, I also offered that I might consider continuing the series with additional occasional pieces. 

After receiving positive feedback, the series continued over the next two years. The musicians highlighted after the original mini-series were Karen Carpenter, Ty Longley, and John Bonham. All articles in the series can be enjoyed by simply clicking on the series 'label' at the bottom of this piece.

Bonham, the drummer for Led Zeppelin who Rolling Stone magazine has ranked as the top drummer of all-time, died in September of 1980. He was just 32 years old. The alcoholic Bonham died after a two-day drinking binge.

That factor is a hallmark of my series. All of the artists portrayed were icons in their generation, and died young under controversial or dramatic circumstances. 

Icon of his generation. Death under controversial circumstances. That perfectly fits the loss earlier this year of Seattle grunge band icon Chris Cornell. The lead vocalist for Soundgarden and Audioslave, Cornell's death on May 18, 2017 was ruled a suicide. He was known to have suffered from substance abuse issues and depression.

Like many popular rock artists of the early 1990's, Cornell emerged from the Seattle, Washington scene. He was born in Seattle on July 20, 1964, and so was less than three years younger then me. 

He helped form Soundgarden in 1984, and by 1990 the band was receiving a Grammy Award nomination for their debut album. They continued to record and tour together through 1996, and their 1994 album "Superunknown" won the band a pair of Grammy Awards.

One of those 1994 Grammys was "Best Hard Rock Performance" for the song "Black Hole Sun", perhaps their most well known among the wider music-listening public.

Of those early 1990's years with Soundgarden, Cornell stated the following:

"Nobody came to Seattle to sign a band or write about you or put your song on the radio, so everything there was very genuine. I’m privileged to have been in that place at that time. I also put a lot of energy into that. We really had to beat the doors down."

In 1990, Cornell had to cope with the death of his close friend and roommate, Andrew Wood. A fellow musician from Seattle, Wood died in March 1990 following a heroin overdose. In an interview with Jim Farber for The Guardian just a year ago, Cornell stated: 

“I’ve always had really difficult time with loss. I didn’t deal well with Andy’s death. After he died, numerous times I’d be driving and I would look out the window and I thought I saw him. It would take me five minutes to update to the moment and realize, ‘no, he’s actually dead.’

Cornell recorded a 1990 tribute album to Wood with a project band known as Temple of the Dog. This band included members who would go on to form Pearl Jam. 

Temple of the Dog featured the first recordings by Eddie Vedder. Originally from San Diego, his friendship with Cornell helped legitimize Vedder in the Seattle music scene. The two would remain close friends, and Cornell would go on to work with Pearl Jam a number of times over the next two decades.

In 1985 at age 20, Cornell began dating Soundgarden's manager, Susan Silver. They married in 1990, had a daughter in 2000, and divorced in 2004. Later that year he married Vicky Karayiannis. The couple would have two children, a daughter born in 2004 and a son a year later.

His Irish-Catholic father and Jewish mother were both alcoholics according to Cornell. If true, that propensity towards addiction was already going to be a factor at some point in his life.

Cornell stated in a 2006 interview with Dorian Lynskey for SPIN magazine that his early life had been "pretty great." But then a bad experience after trying PCP at age 14 left him with panic disorder and he slipped into depression through his teen years.

Rock & Roll Heaven: John Bonham

Embed from Getty Images
The late John Bonham was the drummer for Led Zeppelin

Sometime on September 23rd, 1980, John Bonham began to drink. This was not an unusual event in Bonham's life. He was a big drinker.

But the binge that he was about to undertake was a big one even by his standards. Over the next day and a half, Bonham, would take approximately 40 shots of vodka in a drinking binge that would end his life.

John Bonham was the drummer for the legendary rock band 'Led Zeppelin', and he was universally considered one of the greatest drummers in the history of rock music.

As he undertook that final late September alcohol binge, he and his mates in Zeppelin were in preparations for their first world tour in over three years, a tour that would never take place.

The legendary original Led Zeppelin lineup was born as a band in London, England in the latter half of 1968, at the height of the 1960's 'flower child' and 'hippie generation' crazes. Jimmy Page, who was and is universally regarded as one of the greatest guitarists on the planet, and his band 'The Yardbirds' had just broken up.

Page met up with singer Robert Plant and began to consider putting a new band together. It wasn't long before the talented Bonham, who both men knew from studio sessions, would be recruited heavily and agree to join the band.

With the addition of bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones the four men originally set out as 'The New Yardbirds', but following their first touring effort it was obvious to all that they had little in common with that original band. The band's name was changed to 'Led Zeppelin', and the rest is music history.

Rock & Roll Heaven: Karen Carpenter

Karen Carpenter at the White House in 1972
(Photo: Robert L. Knudsen via Wiki Commons)

On February 4th, 1983, one of the most beautiful voices in the history of modern popular music was silenced forever when Karen Carpenter was rushed to a California hospital and pronounced dead. She was only a month shy of her 33rd birthday. The cause of death was heart failure brought on by a long term battle with anorexia.

Back in November of 2008, I began what was to be a series of articles called "Rock and Roll Heaven" that would examine the controversial deaths and lives of artists in the modern music world. At that time the series began with articles on Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Michael Hutchence, and Jim Morrison. This examination of Karen Carpenter continues that series.

Karen and her brother Richard were born and raised in Connecticut, but their parents moved out to California in 1963. Richard became a piano prodigy, but Karen was more of a tomboy into sports and showed little interest in music as a young girl. On entering high school she joined the school band, and from that developed an interest in playing the drums.

Karen fell in love with the drums and became an outstanding drummer. She joined up with Richard and a friend named Wes Jacobs, and the three became 'The Richard Carpenter Trio', playing mostly jazz at local clubs. They also played with a band known as 'Spectrum' and recorded numerous demos, but they had little recording success throughout the mid-1960's.

Karen and Richard finally were signed to a recording contract by A&M Records in 1969, and then in 1970 released their second album and first big smash titled 'Close to You'. The album and the two hugely popular singles "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and "We've Only Just Begun" proved to be hits, the songs becoming modern masterpieces.

Rock & Roll Heaven, or Gone to Hell?

This past week I've brought you a series of mini-bios on rock stars who died young: 60's & 70's hippie icons Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison; 80's MTV generation star Michael Hutchence; 90's grunge-rock star Kurt Cobain.

Each of these young people died at those youthful stages of their lives thanks to conditions largely brought on by themselves: illicit drug use, excessive alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity.

In general, they were killed by their full immersion into the 'sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll' lifestyle.

There really is not a lot of redeeming value, but there are plenty of valuable lessons to be learned. They all seemed to have some similarities in background including unusual or unstable family situations as youngsters.

Most were the loner, artistic types whose outwardly extroverted lifestyles belied a depressed introverted reality only made worse by their substance abuse. They simply couldn't manage to face life squarely.

Many didn't become parents themselves, never found the joy that raising a child and caring for something deeply outside your own self brings. They never grew up. And they often left a trail of death and destruction in their wakes.

Rock & Roll Heaven: Kurt Cobain

The tragic, untimely loss of young superstar talent in the rock-n-roll world has often been associated with the hippie-era, flower child period of the late 1960's and early 1970'2.

But the passing years have shown that it is not times that are to blame, but the choices these individuals made within a culture and lifestyle that often encourages those choices.

The perfect case in point came over three decades after the deaths of Janis and Jimi, with the death of garage band, grunge-rock legend Kurt Cobain. On April 5th, 1994, Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the popular band 'Nirvana', killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head at his home in Seattle.

Cobain had chronic suicidal tendencies that manifested themselves many times over the years, and increasingly in the months leading to his death. These incidents, and indeed his final demise, likely grew out of a bout with classic, severe depression made worse by the abuse of alcohol and drugs, particularly heroin.

He was just 27 years old. Sound familiar? The more things change in the rock world, the more they stay the same.

Rock & Roll Heaven ?

"If there's a rock-n-roll heaven, you know they got a hell of a band" are the famous lyrics from a song that was itself called "Rock and Roll Heaven" released as a comeback reunion hit by the 60's duo The Righteous Brothers.

 In 1974, the song rose to #3 on the U.S. charts, talking in its lyrics about the untimely deaths of a number of rock, soul, and pop music stars.

The song perfectly leads into a special series that I will be doing here at the blog next week called 'Rock and Roll Heaven'.

Each day from Monday through Saturday, barring some incredibly major world news event, I will do a mini-bio on some of the legendary rock stars over the years who have died young. I will explore how they died, how they lived, their contributions to music, their home lives, etc.

For diehard fans of particular stars, it may be old ground. But for many, it will be a nostalgic trip back in time, and not just to the psychedelic 60's and turbulent 70's, but also to the 80's and 90's and beyond. And hopefully for everyone, I will mix in enough lessons to be learned from those lives.

There will be good, bad, and ugly, and there will be criticism of legends. The following is the schedule: Janis Joplin (Monday), Jimi Hendrix (Tuesday), Kurt Cobain (Wednesday), Michael Hutchence (Thursday), Jim Morrison (Friday) - and then there will be a wrap-up piece.

If it goes well, and folks want to see a few more, I will consider it as an ongoing feature into the future. So stay tuned here each day next week to find out whether they have a hell of a rock band in heaven, or whether simply these burned-out stars went straight to hell.

NOTE: all entries in this series into the future can be viewed by simply clicking on the 'Rock and Roll Heaven' link at the bottom of each article in the series