As someone who has myself repeatedly sang the Audioslave song "Like a Stone" on both my own guitar and with karaoke tracks (and also filmed myself performing it....) I must say: I am seriously feeling a particular type of way right now. Especially because, you might be surprised to know, the only reason I discovered Cornell and the song "Like a Stone" in the first place was because Scott Weilands death in Dec. 15 had made me get a little curious in that particular era of rock music that, for the most part, I have usually just ignored. "Like a Stone" became a sort of permanent fixture for me not long afterwards, and I have probably listened to it a few times a month since. In fact, I was even plotting to write something about it one day, because I just find that one song and its lyrics so particularly moving...mostly because of the pagan element that Cornell presents when he sings the second verse, which is of course my favorite:
On my deathbed I will pray
To the gods and the angels
Like a pagan to anyone
Who will take me to heaven
To a place I recall
I was there so long ago
The sky was bruised
The wine was bled
And there you led me on
Then and now I find this verse so moving like I say, because it sounds more like something that should have been written in the ancient, pre-Christian world , rather than the one in which we find ourselves now (where the Gods have been largely eradicated, save for one) and, in most rock music, you usually don't see this sort of thing being done, although it works very well when it is.
At any rate, the one thing I would like to write in regards to this sad unfortunate death, perhaps speaking from the point of view of a performer myself, is that, on some level, I can understand where Cornell is coming from with committing suicide, and I can especially understand it when one thinks of what the man did for a living... which, yes, sounds very awesome at first, because he was a rich rock star who was still touring even the night of his death, but then you must remember exactly what type of rock star Cornell was, and the truth is that he came from that middle 90's style of rock and roll which has always been particularly marked by depressing lyrics, morose songs, and just an overall sad and tragic vibe.
I am not an expert in the mind of man, and I am certainly not a psychologist or anything, but personally I can't help but sit here now and remember something my now deceased grandfather said to me years ago, when he was talking about country western singers, many of whom he was, for an Italian from Brooklyn, rather deeply passionate about: "Perhaps the reason life often ends so badly for these guys," he said to me, "is because they're constantly sitting there singing these sad songs over and over and over again, even long after the sadness of whatever they wrote about is probably over...."
This was basically the first thing I thought when I heard that this singer actually went so far as to hang himself (I think that is a particularly violent way to go) and I even, a moment after I thought it, saw someone else thinking it in the comments on the TMZ website I read the news on ...and they said something along the lines of "...yeah...surprise surprise, who would have thought that the dude who sang 'Black Hole Sun' for the past 20 years would kill himself? Surprise surprise..."
Reading this and thinking this really made me take a step back and think for a moment: I understand the idea seems ridiculous to most people, but is it perhaps the case that the manner in which we ask our performers , especially our musicians, to constantly give us the same performance over and over again, even literally 50 years after they've written the song, perhaps spoiling the entire artistic process as we know it? Like, is it maybe the case that this is a little too much to expect from performers and that we are sort of, you know, ruining them? Again, speaking as someone who was/is a musician and who loves to perform songs, but who also loves to sit back and write like this, I have to tell you that , though it is often fun to perform the same song repeatedly, night after night, you also sometimes reach a point where you just want to be done with that particular song for awhile....and in my own case, since I am not famous like Cornell,
I have always had that glorious option, the moment I want to put a song on the back burner, to put it there, for a few months or so, or maybe even forever, but in the case of Cornell ... and many, many others ... it would seem to me that these performers are actually tied to these songs to the point where they're, eventually, suffocated by them completely. In fact, I don't even think I'll use the word tied here. I think a better word for it would be chained. These guys are literally chained to these songs and I do not think it's any coincidence that it's the lead singers who are always the ones who seem to get the most stressed out about it of them all, and wind up doing things like committing suicide, since it's the lead singer who is the one who has to feel more than just the music each time the song is performed. He also has to feel the words and the theme of the song. I have said for many years now that most people who have never sang or performed music just do not realize how much different it is than merely listening to it, or watching it. Listening to music is very passive: oftentimes, even when you think you are listening intently, you are often a little sidetracked and the emotions of the song go in one ear and out the other.
Actually performing the song yourself, however, especially as the singer, is a different story entirely. You are right there in the beating heart of the song and its "feelings". You are drinking all the wine down completely. And, though a song is not a drug, and it can't literally kill you, I still do think that it can sort of break you emotionally, especially if you are being exposed to it repeatedly when you do not want to be and you're sick of it. At that point, even the best songs, anyone should know, can easily start to sound not only horrific, but even torturous. I was writing it a few weeks ago when I was trying to discuss the way we try to force feed kids old books that we think are 'so grand': Start playing a Beethoven sonata at 2 in the morning while everyone is trying to sleep, and it doesn't sound like a beautiful sonata anymore. It sounds, instead, like nails on a chalkboard. It drives you loony. It may even make you want to ...you know...end your life. Perception, place, and mood changes everything. A rainy thunderous day to a family who had plans to go to Six Flags could be the final twig that snaps and causes a divorce. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, I'm watching the rain and listening to the thunder from my bedroom window inspired as hell by it, completely uplifted.....
Perception changes everything. Singing a song only when you want to sing it , or hear it, changes everything. Being forced into a mood by someone else can ruin your life......
Paul McCartney, for instance, once said somewhere, I remember reading, that he felt like music often healed him, even physically speaking. I have often believed the same thing myself, and sometimes I will wake up feeling very bad physically, tired and fatigue, maybe with a pounding headache, and I'll drift off into happy songs and an hour goes by and then I feel alright, as though I never had a problem at all. But of course ...what songs am I listening to during that hour that make me feel alright?
I am listening to happy songs, positive songs, and uplifting songs. Songs of sunshine and beaches and good, happy times. Not downtrodden, rainy ,sad songs like "Like a Stone" and "Black Hole Sun' that deal with death and grimness and depression. Those songs are saved in a particular cabinet to be brought out at particular times.....
In poor Cornells case, however, this cabinet of sad rainy death songs was shattered open and invaded by society itself, when he just so happened to get famous for singing a particularly well-composed song that came to him during a bad, black mood rather than a positive, cheerful mood. He then got trapped for the next "100 years" basically forever going backwards to that one song, that one bad mood, and that one state of mind. And not only did he keep going backwards to it himself, but in fact he was endlessly encouraged to go backwards to it by all of us who kept insisting to him that the time he sang "Black Hole Sun" was actually the greatest thing he had ever done in his life, period. In addition, not only were we beyond elated and interested to keep hearing Chris sing that one song every time we saw him, but we also kept telling him that he should keep writing songs exactly like that one, if he wanted us to remain interested in him as a person and an artist....
Imagine, for a moment, doing this sort of thing with literally anything else besides a well-written song. Like, say you yourself happened to get very, very upset one night, and, in a rage, you wrote a one page suicide note, which was of course very angry and depressing, and then the next day --after you were somehow saved from going through with the suicide -- someone told you "I'll pay you 100 bucks to write it again, in the exact way you wrote it the first time, every day, just before you go to sleep...." Assuming that the suicide note was very in depth and detailed and referencing specific memories and moments of your life that had driven you off the rocker, one imagines that most people would probably not want to keep writing it over and over again, even if they were getting paid $100 bucks a night for it. And yet, this is basically exactly what we ask our songwriters to do, over and over again: We ask them to return to one specific mood that they were in, 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, just because we happened to hear the recording in our car and we love it. But we, of course, aren't nearly as attached to the rotten thing as they are, because we did not write it, we don't have to sing it, and we also get to just click out of it and shut it off the moment we want. We get to move on and change moods. We get to say , maybe, after 10 years, that we hate the song "Black Hole Sun" and we don't even know how we ever liked it in the first place. We get to choose new songs, new artists, new instruments, and new words to express ourselves. But this poor dude, and all other musicians, do not get this choice.
They get literally chained to this thing in the absolute worst of ways, and honestly, judging by how many of them seem to take themselves out in this gruesome fashion, especially the ones who are from this era of music when rock just so happened to get sad for a little while, I definitely think there might just be a little "something something" to what I am saying here. I think that, for as good as these artists have it, we also might just be driving them a little crazy with all the absurd demands we put on them. A lot of people, for instance, and I said this same thing when Scott Weiland died, and I've also said it for years about Morrison and Cobain, but a lot of people, you're going to see if you follow this news now about Cornell's suicide, will say that he did it "...because artists are weird and get like that". They'll try to blame it on him as an artist. They'll try to say that rock is obviously demented perhaps or that music as a whole and his "weirdo lifestyle" led him to an untimely and grim pass. They'll say it was him, him, him, and never them, them, them. They'll act as though this is some sort of result of being an artist, like this is what eventually has to happen to artists or something. As though its just inevitable.
As you can imagine, as a performer myself and also as someone who greatly admires these artists and who thinks that they have often saved my own life with their art, I don't agree with this idea for shit. What I think instead is just what I've already explained to my reader: These artists - especially these famous music artists - are victims of our society almost just as much as they are winners of it. From down below in the trenches here, fame seems like the greatest dream of all time, as though its a dream where nothing can go wrong, but the actual reality of living the fame is something quite different, especially for a star like Cornell who was somewhat minor and who therefore had no real power to re-invent himself as an artist in the eyes of the wider public.
A truly major artist sometimes at least gets the opportunity to re-invent themselves once, or twice, and this is especially the case with the film actors I've noticed, who often take wildly different roles from film to film. Robert DeNiro has played a gangster, a lunatic CIA father-in-law, a comedian, a mentally challenged psychiatric patient, a cross dressing pirate, a Spanish conquistador, and an anarchist taxi driver in New York City to boot. He gets to jump to different emotions, different worlds, different frames of mind....and no one whips him for it, too too badly. He gets to escape the character if the character is depressing. He does the masochistic wife beating brawler in Raging Bull once and then he gets to walk away, scot free....
A minor music artist however does not get this freedom. He or she gets absolutely locked in the metal chain box of the one little song / role that got them famous -- the only thing anyone knows from them--- and they never get out of it, and of course they can't resist the temptation to keep going back into the box because...well, who would be able to resist that sort of temptation? Very few people would, in my opinion, when you realize just how many people are screaming for Cornell to come to town with Soundgarden, or his new band who plays all the Soundgarden songs, and perform for them.
Now for the next big thing I want to say, which might surprise some people and which I have, in fact, purposely saved for this part of the piece, is this: Believe it or not, but Jim Morrison himself , who could basically be considered the quintessential and original architect of what became the "true" American style rock and roll (dark brooding weird sexy guy thing) ... he essentially predicted all of this tragic stuff thats now happening to so many of these singers the moment he got started with itand basically gave birth to the Los Angeles, West Coast style rock and roll that is now the mainstream favorite.
How come? Well, I do not know exactly where the citation is to be found, but I will never forget, in my very early years reading Morrison interviews and listening to his taped interviews as well, hearing him say, once, that he had actually enjoyed performing more with the Doors before they had been famous, as a direct result of the fact that "...back then, every night, we used to slightly change the songs and I would change the lyrics and do a sort of improvisation thing,and it was always very exciting..." I remmeber reading it at the time and being absolutely floored by it, because it sounded more like Morrison was talking more about freestyling on the street corner as a rapper, rather than as a rocker. I remember I was deeply impressed, and moved, by what he said. As a singer, I agreed completely with him. I could see exactly what he meant. But then of course, what happened ?
Well, Jim and the Doors got famous, the records flew off across the country and globally, and the next thing they knew, they were showing up to performances and just what I've been rambling on about happened: It became a matter of "....well shit Jim, I guess you gotta perform the song 'The End' exactly like it was on the record now, every single time..." All of a sudden he was, locked like a prisoner into this one song, and the craziest part about it all , I think, is the way that Jim Morrison seems to have actually taken note of how strange and limiting this actually was/is, whereas the new artists and the new people do not seem to notice it, at all. And why they don't notice it should be obvious; By this point in time in history, the idea that every song should be performed just like it is on the record, and also that you should keep trying to re-write the same songs that got you famous, has sunk in so deeply to the culture that now it's become something that is not to even be questioned. We are like a cat chasing its own tail now because of the records....
In the past though, like when the Doors were coming up, the idea of the packaged and wide selling record was actually, for the most part, still somewhat new , and so these early performers, who built the genre, saw it (even if just from the corner of their eye) for the prison it actually was. You have to remember that these early performers all had one foot semi dipped into a culture that had never had the ability to record anything. For someone in 1961, just 30 years in the past for them was an age in which essentially no recordings truly existed. That's dramatic. And back in the 30's and 20's and earlier, in the pre-recorded age , what happened to most songs? They changed, often constantly. One needs only look at how many versions of old "folk" songs like "I've Been Workin on The Railroad" exist to see what I mean by that. Old songs in the 'pre recorded' age were extremely elastic. Now they're literally metal. "I've Been Working on the Railrod" for instance, no longer ever seems to have different lyrics. Now its always....the same.
Therefore you see that, yes, the early 60s musicians were excited by the recordings, because recordings are fascinating, but at the same time, it's clear to me by Morrisons statement ,plus some of the other bands from that time period, that they didn't exactly dig it either. Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and even the Stones themselves were all known - the Dead especially of course -- for performing the songs live, at times, far differently than they had done them on record, often to the point where fans would show up and be perplexed because it was like a whole new artist was on stage, an artist they did not know at all....
Dylan and the Dead to this day both purposely don't perform the songs anything like they did on the record, and in fact (now I am remembering, excuse me!!!) but Bob Dylan, in his book Chronicles, actually, I believe, credits the Grateful Dead, whom he toured with a bit in the late 80s, as being the ones "who revitalized him" when he thought he was finished. How did they do it? It's simple: They taught him that it's not just OK to perform your songs differently each time you sing them live, but also that it's actually, like, relieving and incredible! Because it's like a fucking rebirth, and a resurrection. The song starts showing different faces and different emotions. It starts to become a whole new song, but with a familiar thread running through it. It's actually fascinating and I have never understood why people don't like it.......
I for one as a guitar player used to take Dylans songs and perform them in a myriad of different ways from day to day, changing the instruments, where the solo would go, altering my voice, changing the tempo, the time signature, whether it was major or minor, et cetera. I often even used to perform them as rap songs . Or of ccourse if I was bored I often take rap songs and try to switch them into rock songs. I find it fascinating. But most people find it "blasphemous"....
I dunno though. I got off topic, I guess, someone would say . There is obviously a lot more I could say about this, but I suppose I do not want to write about it anymore. It makes me very sad, and I wish I did not get this news today. I'm sure that, just like Scott Weilands passing, I'll be feeling this one for awhile. Very sad. Rest in peace to yet another great artist whom this society ate up and spit out, in the gladiatorial arena called "TV" "Radio" and "YouTube", with absolutely no mercy.....
A truly major artist sometimes at least gets the opportunity to re-invent themselves once, or twice, and this is especially the case with the film actors I've noticed, who often take wildly different roles from film to film. Robert DeNiro has played a gangster, a lunatic CIA father-in-law, a comedian, a mentally challenged psychiatric patient, a cross dressing pirate, a Spanish conquistador, and an anarchist taxi driver in New York City to boot. He gets to jump to different emotions, different worlds, different frames of mind....and no one whips him for it, too too badly. He gets to escape the character if the character is depressing. He does the masochistic wife beating brawler in Raging Bull once and then he gets to walk away, scot free....
A minor music artist however does not get this freedom. He or she gets absolutely locked in the metal chain box of the one little song / role that got them famous -- the only thing anyone knows from them--- and they never get out of it, and of course they can't resist the temptation to keep going back into the box because...well, who would be able to resist that sort of temptation? Very few people would, in my opinion, when you realize just how many people are screaming for Cornell to come to town with Soundgarden, or his new band who plays all the Soundgarden songs, and perform for them.
Now for the next big thing I want to say, which might surprise some people and which I have, in fact, purposely saved for this part of the piece, is this: Believe it or not, but Jim Morrison himself , who could basically be considered the quintessential and original architect of what became the "true" American style rock and roll (dark brooding weird sexy guy thing) ... he essentially predicted all of this tragic stuff thats now happening to so many of these singers the moment he got started with itand basically gave birth to the Los Angeles, West Coast style rock and roll that is now the mainstream favorite.
How come? Well, I do not know exactly where the citation is to be found, but I will never forget, in my very early years reading Morrison interviews and listening to his taped interviews as well, hearing him say, once, that he had actually enjoyed performing more with the Doors before they had been famous, as a direct result of the fact that "...back then, every night, we used to slightly change the songs and I would change the lyrics and do a sort of improvisation thing,and it was always very exciting..." I remmeber reading it at the time and being absolutely floored by it, because it sounded more like Morrison was talking more about freestyling on the street corner as a rapper, rather than as a rocker. I remember I was deeply impressed, and moved, by what he said. As a singer, I agreed completely with him. I could see exactly what he meant. But then of course, what happened ?
Well, Jim and the Doors got famous, the records flew off across the country and globally, and the next thing they knew, they were showing up to performances and just what I've been rambling on about happened: It became a matter of "....well shit Jim, I guess you gotta perform the song 'The End' exactly like it was on the record now, every single time..." All of a sudden he was, locked like a prisoner into this one song, and the craziest part about it all , I think, is the way that Jim Morrison seems to have actually taken note of how strange and limiting this actually was/is, whereas the new artists and the new people do not seem to notice it, at all. And why they don't notice it should be obvious; By this point in time in history, the idea that every song should be performed just like it is on the record, and also that you should keep trying to re-write the same songs that got you famous, has sunk in so deeply to the culture that now it's become something that is not to even be questioned. We are like a cat chasing its own tail now because of the records....
In the past though, like when the Doors were coming up, the idea of the packaged and wide selling record was actually, for the most part, still somewhat new , and so these early performers, who built the genre, saw it (even if just from the corner of their eye) for the prison it actually was. You have to remember that these early performers all had one foot semi dipped into a culture that had never had the ability to record anything. For someone in 1961, just 30 years in the past for them was an age in which essentially no recordings truly existed. That's dramatic. And back in the 30's and 20's and earlier, in the pre-recorded age , what happened to most songs? They changed, often constantly. One needs only look at how many versions of old "folk" songs like "I've Been Workin on The Railroad" exist to see what I mean by that. Old songs in the 'pre recorded' age were extremely elastic. Now they're literally metal. "I've Been Working on the Railrod" for instance, no longer ever seems to have different lyrics. Now its always....the same.
Therefore you see that, yes, the early 60s musicians were excited by the recordings, because recordings are fascinating, but at the same time, it's clear to me by Morrisons statement ,plus some of the other bands from that time period, that they didn't exactly dig it either. Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and even the Stones themselves were all known - the Dead especially of course -- for performing the songs live, at times, far differently than they had done them on record, often to the point where fans would show up and be perplexed because it was like a whole new artist was on stage, an artist they did not know at all....
Dylan and the Dead to this day both purposely don't perform the songs anything like they did on the record, and in fact (now I am remembering, excuse me!!!) but Bob Dylan, in his book Chronicles, actually, I believe, credits the Grateful Dead, whom he toured with a bit in the late 80s, as being the ones "who revitalized him" when he thought he was finished. How did they do it? It's simple: They taught him that it's not just OK to perform your songs differently each time you sing them live, but also that it's actually, like, relieving and incredible! Because it's like a fucking rebirth, and a resurrection. The song starts showing different faces and different emotions. It starts to become a whole new song, but with a familiar thread running through it. It's actually fascinating and I have never understood why people don't like it.......
I for one as a guitar player used to take Dylans songs and perform them in a myriad of different ways from day to day, changing the instruments, where the solo would go, altering my voice, changing the tempo, the time signature, whether it was major or minor, et cetera. I often even used to perform them as rap songs . Or of ccourse if I was bored I often take rap songs and try to switch them into rock songs. I find it fascinating. But most people find it "blasphemous"....
I dunno though. I got off topic, I guess, someone would say . There is obviously a lot more I could say about this, but I suppose I do not want to write about it anymore. It makes me very sad, and I wish I did not get this news today. I'm sure that, just like Scott Weilands passing, I'll be feeling this one for awhile. Very sad. Rest in peace to yet another great artist whom this society ate up and spit out, in the gladiatorial arena called "TV" "Radio" and "YouTube", with absolutely no mercy.....
Hail Caesar -- We who are about to die -- Salute you --
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