Chris Cornell’s daughter Lily Cornell Silver interviewed The Pretty Reckless singer Taylor Momsen on her ‘Mind Wide Open’ podcast. Momsen opened for Soundgarden on their final tour and was in Detroit the night Chris Cornell died in May 2017.
Lily praised Momsen’s work with Soundgarden’s surviving members, stating she first met her at the 2019 Chris Cornell tribute show when she fronted Soundgarden. Lily said, “The work you’ve done with Matt [Cameron] and Kim [Thayil] has been so rad, and awesome to see. It warms my heart to see that.”
Momsen discussed her mental health struggles in the last few years with two tragic losses. She said, “It started with your father, losing him.”
“I love your father, I loved their music, I love Soundgarden so much to my core that I still don’t know how to put it into words. So to be on that your opening for them was just the most incredible honor and experience of my life. Obviously it ended very tragically, so it’s a bit bizarre to bring this up with you.”
Taylor discussed a tragic accident that changed her life, “I was starting to write music and had a couple of songs that I was really proud of. I was calling our producer Kato, who is much more than just our producer; he was my best friend in the entire world, essentially the fifth member of the band… There would be no The Pretty Reckless if I had never met Kato…
As soon as we started to put plans in motion, I got the call that Kato had died in a motorcycle accident. That was the nail in the coffin for me, where I just spiraled downward so quickly into depression and this dark hole with no light that I didn’t see a way out of.”
Taylor said she couldn’t listen to music for awhile, but going back to her favorites drew her back in, leading to the new album ‘Death By Rock and Roll.’
“If you’re standing on a frozen lake, and you’re on one side and have to get to the other side, it’s going to seem like an impossible task. If you just look down and just put one foot in front of the other foot, pretty soon you’re going to turn around and be closer to the other side than the side you started from, and that’s living.”
