Red Mosquito

96583UP wrote:my guess at this point is this was a mixture of fatigue, dehydration, ativan, a person that already has a crazy imagination, history of depression, history of addiction, and something else tbd (maybe he drank that day or took something else) that put him in a place where he lost touch with what was an imagination and what was real. there was no note left. long and premeditated this did not appear to be.

separately, a few questions have popped in my head the last few days on this:

Why was the body guard the one giving Cornell the two Ativan? Was Cornell not supposed to keep them himself?

Why was the body guard fixing his computer? Who actually fixes a computer these days? Either they work or they don't. If they don't, you go to the apple store.

verb_to_trust wrote:Didn't that guy also bust Chris's stalker though a while back?

stip wrote:I was playing around with a longer post on this, but I may not get to it, so I'll just say this here. Like most of us of a certain age, grunge was my formative musical experience, and everything resonated incredibly powerfully. Even my lesser lights in the big 6 (I always included STP and the Pumpkins-it feels right spiritually, if not geographically) were still tremendous talents, and I just couldn't believe that there was this much talent coming out of this one moment in time. 1991-1996 saw Ten, Nevermind, Gish, Badmotorfinger, Core, Dirt, Vs, Siamese Dream, In Utero, Jar of Flies, Vitalogy, Purple, Mellon Collie…, No Code, Tiny Music…, Down on the Upside. 6 bands. 5 years. 16 classic albums. Four genre-defining singers coming out of the same god damned town. What a time to find yourself first opening up to music. This became the benchmark against which we all came to measure what music could do. Even if we left these songs behind we expected new music to make us feel the same way.

During those formative years, struggling with the transition into adulthood, I found the darkness and the bleakness in grunge utterly compelling. It felt true, in a way that joy and light and peace and acceptance never did – at least not without being earned, purified through suffering. But one of the things that spoke to me the most about Pearl Jam, which I wasn't able to articulate until I was a bit older and started writing and talking about them in a systemic way, was that optimism that was underneath the music. Everyone was a lost soul looking for another human being to walk down a long, dark, lonely, road. But only Pearl Jam's music reflected that this road lead to a way out. For everyone else, as history seems to have played out, the road was the final destination.

Cornell's story is really striking in this regard. He's someone who seemed to make it out, and maybe he did, but the darkness and the demons stayed with him. Even if they were under control, all it takes is that one slip, that one bad night, that one mistake. And his death, or really what his death demonstrated, has made the music more vital. As I've grown up, and started a family, and a career, and have generally lived a very happy life there's a way in which the grunge themes that seemed so powerful became, if not nostalgic, at least historical. Something that no longer rang true in the present, and that you interacted with from a distance and as memory. These songs were still great, but I had to remind myself that they were still great. They were no longer living truths. And as such, I had a tendency to become ever so slightly dismissive of them. A little overwrought and over the top. Music for white suburban first world problems. Music for teenagers that play an important part in your transition to adulthood, but that are best left behind afterwards. Fondly recalled, but not taken with the same deathly seriousness.

I love Pearl Jam in part because their music grew past those themes. Themes of alienation became social and political, or personal in a way that reflects a life being lived. When there was a grievance it was a grievance with the world, rather than sullen personal, static, experience. And the best songs were inspirational - reflecting a desire for a better life. They were written from a place of wisdom and experience - from someone who completed their journey and made it out alive, rather than from someone still stuck on the long, lonely road. And even if I preferred the songs written on the road, I was glad that they moved past it. The fact that they grew, that they weren't stuck in that moment, made those earlier moments feel more authentic - an important piece of a larger, more vivid picture. A central chapter in a complex and moving arc, rather than the entirety of the story itself. It's why a middle aged album like Lightning Bolt, filled with middle aged themes like love, fear of loss, fear for the world we leave behind, both resonant with me and make the earlier work simultaneously more vital.

But this also reflects the thoughts of someone who left that road behind. Pearl Jam speaks to my experiences. Chris Cornell's tragic death has been a stark and powerful reminder that not everyone escapes, or that you can escape and find yourself wandering back in a loop that feels closed, even if it isn't. That these songs no longer speak to my direct experience doesn't mean they have nothing to say. And in the last few days I find these lonelier, angrier, more hopeless and nihilistic songs have recaptured much of the dark power and terrible beauty that they lost.

Chris Cornell was not one of my favorites in the grunge pantheon, but he was still in the pantheon. I was drawn more to Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Alice in Chains. But there were still a large number of his songs that I adored, and Soundgarden was my younger brother’s first favorite band. I have vivid memories of him listening to my copy of Superunknown on my Sony discman on long driving vacations with my parents. And given the place that grunge holds in the formation of my identity during those critical years, and Chris’s place within that story, his death hurts, and hurts more for seeing how raw that wound is for so many other people.

I have also received enough 'Eddie is the last man standing' texts from my friends that I find myself incredibly grateful for the fact that he is, especially since, 20+ years ago, he seemed the person the most likely to go first. Many of us have bemoaned the celebratory atmosphere that defines the modern Pearl Jam concert experience. But maybe we should be celebrating the vanquishing of our demons, and finding passage into safer harbors. I had the following thought watching the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony on my bootleg periscope feed - especially with the Alive - Given to Fly - Betterman run of songs.

Eddie was set up to be a martyr. That mystique was one of the things that drew us to him, and to the music. The scene was full of them. But what makes Pearl Jam's story special, possibly even unique, is that this messiah didn't have to die to liberate his followers. Instead it was the followers who helped saved the messiah. The night of the Hall of Fame I celebrated that as much as the music and the history. And that's why songs like Alive or Betterman can have their meaning almost entirely inverted from the original intent, and feel as powerful as ever. Even more.

In the face of the alternative that is, I think, something to celebrate.

Rangi Guy wrote:I spoke with mum about this earlier today - she thought Chris was an actor she'd seen play Jesus in a movie

LoathedVermin72 wrote:He's got the pose down

knee tunes wrote:I hollered to my neighbor that Chris Cornell died.

she replied, oh from what.

I told her that I wasn't sure and ran back in the house real quick

LoathedVermin72 wrote:He's got the pose down

Spoiler: show

TMZ wrote:Chris Cornell was messed up during his Detroit concert ... hours before he committed suicide -- this according to a longtime confidant who was present and working the event.

Ted Keedick, who worked with Chris for the last decade as his house engineer and tour manager, tells TMZ, "Chris was out of character from note 1 of the show. I've never heard or seen him that way before, at least if we did not cancel a show."

Keedick says Chris seemed "high" and "f***ed up," but not depressed. In fact, Keedick says during sound check Chris was in good spirits. It's consistent with what Chris' widow says of her phone conversations with Chris before and after the show. Vicky Cornell says Chris told her he had taken "an extra Ativan or two" and she was so alarmed she called hotel security to check on him. Chris' own security guy discovered the singer had hanged himself in his room.

Keedick says Chris was off during the entire show, saying, "I'd never heard his voice that way before. He was having serious control problems."

Keedick was positioned in the middle of the audience with his mixing board, and at one point during the concert he was so concerned he phoned someone backstage and asked what was wrong with Chris.

As we reported, Chris had struggled with drug abuse for years, but his wife says he was clean when he died. Based on Keedick's account, it appears he fell off the wagon before his last concert.

dprival78 wrote:

TMZ wrote:Chris Cornell was messed up during his Detroit concert ... hours before he committed suicide -- this according to a longtime confidant who was present and working the event.

Ted Keedick, who worked with Chris for the last decade as his house engineer and tour manager, tells TMZ, "Chris was out of character from note 1 of the show. I've never heard or seen him that way before, at least if we did not cancel a show."

Keedick says Chris seemed "high" and "f***ed up," but not depressed. In fact, Keedick says during sound check Chris was in good spirits. It's consistent with what Chris' widow says of her phone conversations with Chris before and after the show. Vicky Cornell says Chris told her he had taken "an extra Ativan or two" and she was so alarmed she called hotel security to check on him. Chris' own security guy discovered the singer had hanged himself in his room.

Keedick says Chris was off during the entire show, saying, "I'd never heard his voice that way before. He was having serious control problems."

Keedick was positioned in the middle of the audience with his mixing board, and at one point during the concert he was so concerned he phoned someone backstage and asked what was wrong with Chris.

As we reported, Chris had struggled with drug abuse for years, but his wife says he was clean when he died. Based on Keedick's account, it appears he fell off the wagon before his last concert.