Chris Cornell had become one of the most lauded and respected contemporary lead singers in rock music, thanks to his charismatic energy onstage and wide vocal range. He was a leader of the grunge movement with Seattle-based Soundgarden — with whom he gained critical and commercial acclaim — but also found success outside the band with other projects, including Audioslave, Temple of the Dog as well as solo albums.
His death Wednesday night stunned his family and his die-hard fans, who Cornell just performed for hours earlier at a show in Detroit.
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Police said Thursday that the 52-year-old’s death is being investigated as a possible suicide. Detroit police spokesman Michael Woody told The Associated Press on Thursday that he couldn’t release details about why police are investigating the death as a possible suicide, but noted there were “basic things observed at the scene” and another police spokesman told two Detroit newspapers that the singer was found with a band around his neck.
The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s office will make an official determination about the cause of death. An autopsy is being conducted Thursday and some information from it is expected to be released later in the day.
Soundgarden’s current tour kicked off in late April and was planned to run through May 27.
Cornell was widely respected in the music industry: He reached success in every band lineup he was part of it, his voice was memorable and powerful, and he was a skilled songwriter, even collaborating on a number of film soundtracks, including the James Bond theme song for 2006′s “Casino Royale” and “The Keeper” from the film “Machine Gun Preacher,” which earned Cornell a Golden Globe nomination.
“To create the intimacy of an acoustic performance there needed to be real stories. They need to be kind of real and they need to have a beginning, middle and an end. That’s always a challenge in three in a half or four minutes — to be able to do that, to be able to do it directly,” Cornell said of songwriting in a 2015 interview with The Associated Press.