Obituaries

[gabrielle]

Quote:It was a voice that could sail above the grunge barrage of Soundgarden, with an attack to rival the band’s churning guitars; it was also a voice that gave modest acoustic ballads an existential gravity. At the bottom of its nearly four-octave range, Mr. Cornell’s voice was a baritone with endless reserves of breath and the seething tension of contained power.

Mr. Cornell could have used that remarkable instrument and his rock-star looks to play the standard heroic frontman: a chesty, cocky figure like two of his obvious influences, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and Paul Rodgers of Free. But he came from a later generation, one that had grown up on punk iconoclasm as well as metal virtuosity and that was far too self-conscious for the old rock machismo. As the main songwriter for Soundgarden — both on his own and supplying lyrics and melodies for other band members’ riffs — Mr. Cornell helped forge grunge: rock that used all its power to question rather than to exult.

Each in its own way, the leading bands of grunge — Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains — found commercial traction with music that sabotaged older assumptions about rock. There was still plenty of aggression in the music, but it was directed inward as much as outward. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/arts/...voice.html