Chris Cornell’s closest friends said there were no warning signs that the Soundgarden frontman would take his own life following his Detroit concert earlier this month. A new CNN report details how Cornell optimistically discussed wanting to make ‘real history’ at the Global Citizens Festival just hours before his death.
“Nobody saw this coming, his band mates didn’t see this coming. It’s totally out of character for the Chris that I’ve known and worked with for the last 10 years,” his longtime manager, Ron Laffitte, told CNN ahead of Cornell’s private funeral on Friday in Los Angeles. “It’s incredibly bizarre. I have to think that something threw him off the tracks … he must have been out of his right mind.”
Laffitte said he spoke to Cornell on a daily basis and on the afternoon of his death, they were discussing plans for him to perform at the 2017 Global Citizens Music Festival this September in New York. He sounded upbeat when he talked about plans for the future, according to Laffitte.
“He was just really excited about this specific idea that we were going to do. He said, ‘We aren’t just going to make pop history with this one, brother. We are going to make real history,'” Laffitte said on Thursday. “I would say the last couple of months, he was as optimistic and happy as I can ever recall him … He was so excited about all these things and a new record we were going to put out in the fall.”
