Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil Speaks on Chris Cornell’s Sudden Death “It Seemed Unfathomable”

In an excerpt of Soundgarden co-founder and guitarist Kim Thayil”s new memoir A Screaming Life: Into the Superunknown with Soundgarden and Beyond, recalls the shocking death of frontman Chris Cornell. He describes the awful experience of learning of Cornell’s sudden death after a phone call from drummer Matt Cameron. Cornell died in May 2017 after taking his own life in a hotel room just after Soundgarden played a show in Detroit.

“‘We’d been on the road for an hour or two when Matt called me. ‘Kim, I’m reading a lot of weird shit on the internet. Somebody posted ‘RIP: Chris Cornell’ on my Facebook page.’ That didn’t seem possible to me. We’d just seen him a few hours ago. ‘Aw, it’s probably just bullshit,’ I told him. I didn’t want to believe anything could have happened to Chris,” wrote Thayil.

Thayil also ruminated on the changing tenor of Chris Cornell over the years, which made the suicide all the more upsetting and shocking. Chris’s death and the manner in which he died were so unexpected, if something like that happened when the band were younger in the late eighties or maybe even the mid-nineties, on the heels of the deaths of Andy Wood, Kurt Cobain, and Chris’s good friend Jeff Buckley, it might have made more sense. Decades later, at his age, and being a father, it seemed unfathomable.

“We all got on our phones and computers to see if we could learn anything. It seemed more like a hoax or prank; these kinds of things happen all the time on the internet, where anyone can post anything on social media. Someone’s ‘joke’ goes horribly awry. This wasn’t a joke. [Band associate] Paul [Lorkowski] finally got confirmation that Chris had died by suicide in his hotel room, not long after the show. I roused [bassist] Ben [Shepherd] to break the news. We still couldn’t believe it, though, like Are you sure? People were panicking and hyperventilating,” said Thayil

The surviving Soundgarden members have been working on finishing up a new album featuring the final recordings by Chris Cornell. Kim Thayil’s memoir is available to pre-order from Amazon.