It is 5:30AM on Friday, May 17^th, 2019. The house is silent. I’m sitting on my deck alone w/ a cup of coffee, a joint and a beautiful sunrise ahead of me. Awakened 30 minutes ago by a memory. An extremely bad memory. Exactly two years ago on this specific Friday, which was May 18^th, 2017, I was awakened by the constant vibrations of my phone blowing up. First thought was I had slept through my work shift. I didn’t. I was off. The phone is almost always turned onto Do Not Disturb after dinner. It wasn’t that night. The phone vibrations were strong and steady for about an hour before it woke me up. I grabbed the phone to look at it. It was 5:30am. There were literally dozens of texts asking me if Chris Cornell being dead was a sick joke or the real thing? At this point I was not really awake and actually wondering if I was still asleep in the middle of a very bad dream. I was shocked about the news that was all over my phone, social media and email. The disbelief. The immediate numbness. The pain. The anger. There was a full gamut of emotions bouncing through my mind and body. Was this real?” I kept asking myself over and over. This is what I wrote about Chris two years ago later that morning while trying to gather my thoughts: “I woke up groggy, heavy and asking myself if I were still in a dream. Looking at my phone, I couldn’t fucking believe what I was seeing on the screen. I did panic. I jumped out of bed saying “No fucking way” out loud, with my wife asking me if everything was okay. My response. “I guess it depends. People are asking me if Chris Cornell is really dead. I’m not sure if this is still a dream or not.” “It’s not,” was my wife’s deadpan response. “Then, Chris Cornell is dead,” was my reply. There was no fucking way one of my all time favorite musicians was dead. He was too young. I jumped out of bed to find out what was going on.

Like tens of millions of other people worldwide, Chris Cornell’s music has spoken directly to me and continues to do so to this day. His music always will speak to me in a special way. The way it speaks to you, but differently. Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger helped me survive for reals and plow through my darkest days. Back then, there were so many days when life was too hard, too heavy and I couldn’t move. It was like I was trapped or frozen. My clothes felt really heavy on my body. I didn’t want to be around anyone and completely withdrew at times. To this day, I still sometimes wonder how I survived all of this. Maybe it was listening to music with my eyes closed in the dark. Maybe I wasn’t ready to leave back then. Not sure. But, I am sure the raw power of Badmotorfinger helped keep me going. Songs like Room A Thousand Years Wide, Searching With My Good Eye Closed, Somewhere and Outshined really walloped me to the core. Those were some of my most important go to songs when life became overwhelming and heavy. They were part of the lifeboat that kept me afloat. The lifeboat of music. Some of the other bands that made up the lifeboat to keep me afloat at that time along with Soundgarden included The The, Mother Love Bone, Alice In Chains, Gruntruck, Kate Bush, Living Colour, Morphine, INXS, The Clash, The Cult and a few others I am not remembering at this moment. Back to Chris Cornell as I am reflecting on his impact on the world along with his impact on my life. The power of music is astounding and mind bending. The right musician(s) at that exactly right time can make such a difference.

Chris Cornell was a muse with a beautiful voice that had raw power coupled with a hypnotic warmth that could lift you up and then immediately become so fragile it would shatter you into tiny little pieces. He had some serious vocal range and his screams were inimitable. Chris also had a depth to his voice that matched the depth of his persona. When you were at a venue listening to Chris Cornell sing live, you could feel every note to the depth of your soul. He was without a doubt a voice of a generation as were Kurt, Layne, Janis, Jimi, Jim, Scott W. and a few others over the decades.

I am thankful for Chris Cornell. I am thankful for Soundgarden. I am especially thankful for Badmotorfinger, the album that helped keep me afloat during some of my darkest times. I was able to row out of the downward spiraling vortex I was in, because of bands like Soundgarden and albums like Badmotorfinger. Luckily, because of my work in radio, I’ve also had some wonderful brief interactions with Chris over the years. When Chris Cornell did an Mmarchive session w/ the legendary Pierre Robert at The Grape Room, we were able to talk about snowboarding. If I remember correctly, he rode a Burton. Then, the last time he came into the WMMR studio solo to perform and converse w/ Pierre Robert, we were able to talk about Gruntruck, Skinyard, Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone and other Seattle Bands he shared stages with in Seattle during the early days.

Chris’s solo music, his music w/ Audioslave and of course his music w/ Soundgarden are all sensational. Chris’s solo tours were mind bending as he filled the nights with stories and beautiful music. Chris was intelligent. Chris was passionate. Chris was hardened and delicate. Chris was powerful and fragile. Chris told beautiful stories in his songs and between the songs. Layers of wonderful stories that have given us a glimpse of who he was. Chris Cornell was a voice and a person who was a gift to a generation. It still pains the tens of millions of people worldwide who were touched by his voice and music that he is no longer here to share his gift with the world. I’m sitting here on the back deck, coffee getting cold, joint getting ashy, sun up and me, lost in all of those wonderful Chris Cornell memories still shocked and sad with disbelief he’s no longer here.

Markus