With this month being the 2-year anniversary of Chris Cornell’s death and the final Soundgarden tour, fans have been looking back at videos from Cornell’s final shows and his remarks onstage, as it’s the only insight we have to his mindset near the end, as Cornell did not do any interviews in May 2017.
Cornell told fans on May 6, 2017 that someone the night before told him to ‘be careful’ in Tuscaloosa when he told them where the next tour stop is.
“Why is it rough? You guys all look pretty cool. The last time we played, we played actually one time in Nevada on my birthday, and there were people in front knocking each’s teeth other out, concussed. They stayed in it, they just stayed in it.
There was nobody there anymore, but they stayed for the whole show. That’s like fuckin’ Tahoe, it seemed kind of cool, kind of groovy, but you guys seem great.
Maybe it’s just a town where you don’t go buy drugs at night. That’s pretty much every town.”
Vicky Cornell has said that Chris Cornell was abusing the prescription drug Ativan prior to his death, even sharing an email he sent to a colleague mentioning a relapse.
Vicky launched the Addiction Resource Center (ARC) for Chris, an online resource for people and families struggling with addiction, last year.
At a Soundgarden show in Jacksonville, Florida on April 29, 2017, Cornell made some bold remarks about rich people before performing “Beyond The Wheel.”
“This is a young man’s take on our country, our government, and all governments sending young men off to war. We were young men when we wrote this song. At the time, we didn’t want to have our lives interrupted so that we could go out and maybe die and make more people more money that we didn’t know.
We’ve done well in music, but honestly in the last 30 years I’m not really friends with anybody that’s a billionaire or owns a business that is worth more of than all of us put together and doesn’t give a shit about all of us, so that is what this song is about.
It was about people, small groups of people, with lots of money, who don’t give a shit about me, and they don’t give a shit about you.”
May 6, 2017. Soundgarden in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Chris told the crowd that someone the night before had said “Be careful!” when he told them where the next tour stop was.😂 #RollTide #Soundgarden #ChrisCornell
Here’s the video:
Drawing Flies: https://t.co/fQNMjptRVo pic.twitter.com/QSGtod7XrT— Legacy of Chris Cornell (@LegacyOfChris) May 6, 2019
