Chris Cornell: A Look Back At His Underrated Solo Career
Twenty-five years ago this weekend, Chris Cornell kicked off his solo career with Euphoria Morning. It’s understandable that his solo career wouldn’t be the first thing that you think of when you think of Chris Cornell.
Obviously, his biggest contribution to rock music was as a member of Soundgarden, a band that is somehow not yet in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, although they should have been years ago. In between Soundgarden’s classic albums Louder Than Love (1989) and Badmotorfinger (1991), he fronted the one-off supergroup, Temple of the Dog, who released a single album, which is also an absolute classic. After Soundgarden, he got together with former members of Rage Against The Machine to form Audioslave, a band that has its own share of classic material (particularly from their 2002 debut).
I had been listening to Chris Cornell’s music for a decade by the time he released Euphoria Morning; I was turned on to Soundgarden with 1989’s Louder Than Love. I saw them for the first time at a New York City club called the Ritz in January of 1990, on the bill with Canadian metal legends Voivod; Faith No More opened. It was one of the most powerful performances I’ve ever experienced. The band and Cornell were so powerful, so abrasive, and, frankly, not very commercial. It would have been hard to imagine how popular Soundgarden and Cornell would eventually become. And you would not have predicted that the longhaired screaming banshee fronting the band had a quieter and more vulnerable side. But then again, we all contain multitudes, right? We just may not realize it when we’re younger.
Temple of the Dog, a tribute to his late friend, Mother Love Bone’s Andrew Wood, showed a different side of him. And that introspective, quieter side emerged again with his debut solo track, a one-off from the soundtrack to 1992’s Singles, “Seasons.”
It was nothing like anything we’d heard from him before. Fans were clearly excited to hear what he could do outside of the band. He didn’t follow up until he released “Sunshowers” on the soundtrack of 1998’s Great Expectations.
Both songs pointed at what was to come with Euphoria Morning (which was later reissued as Euphoria Mourning, Cornell’s original intended title for the record). Cornell produced and recorded the album with Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider from the band Eleven, who opened for Soundgarden a few years earlier. Together, they made a record much different than anything Cornell had done with Soundgarden. It felt like an “adult” album without being “adult contemporary.”
The first single and leadoff track, “Can’t Change Me,” was definitely different from Soundgarden. Built on a rockabilly riff that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Johnny Cash record from the 1950s and featuring a harmonica solo by Cornell, it was interesting but was not the album’s highlight.
The album peaks in the middle: “Wave Goodbye” is a moving tribute to Jeff Buckley, who died two years earlier. Buckley, a friend of Cornell’s, was an influence on the song and the album. His sole album, Grace, showed new possibilities of combining Zeppelin-like vocals, loud guitar with more nuanced arrangements and vulnerable lyrics, and clearly Cornell noticed. “Wave Goodbye” hits differently today, now that Cornell is no longer with us.
But the album’s highlight, and one of Cornell’s most soulful performances ever, is “When I’m Down.” Listening to this recently, I recalled the lyrics to Soundgarden’s ballad, “Black Hole Sun”: “Nobody sings like you anymore.” It’s a beautiful soul ballad; underappreciated in its time, I still hold out hopes that a great singer covers this song and brings it to a wider audience.
Euphoria Morning is a good album, but not a classic. It pointed an exciting way forward after Cornell’s career fronting an iconic rock band. Of course, it would be years before he followed it up, because he soon hooked up with the former members of Rage Against The Machine to form Audioslave. By 2007, that band had broken up after three albums, and Cornell returned to his solo career. Carry On didn’t really hold up to Euphoria Morning; Cornell didn’t seem to have a clear vision for the album.
That wasn’t the case with the very controversial follow-up, Scream. Produced by hip-hop hitmaker Timbaland, it was a daring experiment. The thing about experiments is they don’t always work. That said, the album had some great songs, like “Ground Zero,” “Long Gone” and “Never Far Away.”
The album was not well-received, which may have led Cornell to return to his comrades in Soundgarden in 2010. After a victorious reunion tour (for my money, those shows were the best ones I’d seen since that first club show in 1990), they hit the studio for a new album. 2012’s King Animal was a solid album; for some reason the songs I love are packed towards the end: “Taree,” “Attrition,” “Worse Dreams,” “Eyelid’s Mouth,” and especially their last song, “Rowing,” which haunts me to this day.
Soundgarden remained a band through the rest of Chris Cornell’s life, even as he did a Temple of the Dog reunion tour (and here’s hoping that they one day release a live album of that tour, which was mind-blowingly incredible) and did an Audioslave reunion gig. He also did frequent solo acoustic tours. I remember being amazed by them. In the early days of Soundgarden, it seemed like looking at the audience made him uncomfortable. But the guy doing these shows was funny, warm and actually seemed to be enjoying himself. It was really fun to watch him having fun.
His best solo album, and one of the best albums in his extensive discography, is his final release, 2015’s Higher Truth. A mostly acoustic album of introspective songs, it has a warmth and intimacy that he brought to his solo shows, but that wasn’t present on his previous albums.
His solo shows influenced the album. He told Rolling Stone, “For the first time as a solo artist, I felt like I had my own specific identity. It allowed me to draw a line through my whole career and make sense of it as one body of work.” But this album felt like a new beginning. It feels more like Cat Stevens than the Stooges; more like Nick Drake than Black Sabbath.
Of course, his ending was tragic and is still hard to process. Chris Cornell was the singer and songwriter for three legendary acts. But for those who listened to Higher Truth, we know that he accomplished something very difficult. He did, in fact, establish his own specific identity as a solo artist with his final album.
