Feeling Minnesota

Finding Focus Column, The Pine Belt News — May 24, 2017

Preface

I dove headfirst into all things Seattle when that scene started to break at the end of 1990. I had no choice. I’d just started playing in a legitimate band and we knew we weren’t going to draw a crowd anywhere if we didn’t play this new music that was exploding. I cut my teeth on Van Halen, Motley Crue, and U2 in the 1980s, but it was the guitarists from Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains who taught me how the instrument applied to the stage in the 1990s.

It was an awesome time in music that I don’t think will ever be repeated.

Soundgarden broke first with their single “Outshined” with Alice in Chains quickly following with “Man in the Box.” Almost immediately afterward Chris Cornell, along with Soundgarden drummer, Matt Cameron, and future Pearl Jam members Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, and Eddie Vedder formed Temple of the Dog and released “Hunger Strike.” Then, the newly-created genre called grunge went from a regional trend to an international phenomenon with Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Whether they liked it or not, nearly every band in Seattle experienced some modicum of fame. Bands like Screaming Trees, Tad, Mudhoney, Candlebox, Presidents of the United States of America, Brad, and just about every other band on the Sub Pop label were thrust into the spotlight.

The genre of music Chris Cornell helped create was known for being like the weather of the region where it originated — stormy, dismal, and bleak. And most all of the bands of that era seemed to have front men who were dark, brooding, and determined to burn out rather than fade away.

Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994, while tragic and senseless in its own right, was hardly unexpected. Cobain almost teased us that it was coming. In March of 1994 while on tour in Europe, he was found unconscious and unresponsive later claimed pain from “chronic stomach ulcers” caused him to “overmedicate.” Exactly one month later he was gone.

Alice in Chains lead singer, Layne Staley, openly battled heroin addiction until it drove him into seclusion in the late 1990s. He was found dead in his apartment in 2002.

Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver frontman, Scott Weiland, battled addictions to crack cocaine, heroin, alcohol and repeated brushes with the law for two decades before he succumbed in 2015.

There were only two who didn’t fall prey to the demons that often accompany rock ‘n roll fame and fortune. One was Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. The other was Chris Cornell.

Cornell owned the stage. No one from that genre had as much charisma and projected as much confidence.

Vedder seemingly met fame with an aww shucks attitude whereas Cornell seemed to greet it with an I-was-born-for-this mentality.

And, to me, Cornell and Soundgarden were the heaviest of them all. Crushing riffs intertwined with intelligent lyrics. When he sang “I’m looking California, but feeling Minnesota” you immediately knew what he meant. Former Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighter’s guitarist/singer Dave Grohl brilliantly described Soundgarden’s music as the perfect marriage of The Beatles and Black Sabbath.

That all seems like a lifetime ago.

But now, Chris Cornell’s suicide last week has brought that all rushing back.

The remainder of this column was written in two parts. Part 1 was written in real-time as news of Cornell’s death began to saturate the media. Part 2 was written after the initial shock had worn off and I’d given myself time to give it due consideration.

The song that was, and still is, playing is “Say Hello 2 Heaven” by Temple of the Dog from their album Temple of the Dog. The song, written and sung by Chris Cornell, is their tribute to Andrew Wood who was a friend to all of them and bandmate to two of them. Just as Wood’s band, Mother Love Bone, was about to rocket into fame, he died of a heroin overdose.

Give the song a listen. It is heartbreakingly beautiful.

PART 1

Please, mother mercy

Take me from this place

and the long-winded curses

I keep here in my head

It’s 7:00 a.m. Thursday, May 17. I am numb. Twenty minutes ago I received a text message from one of my oldest friends who shared that one of our musical heroes was dead. Chris Cornell, lead singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter of the band Soundgarden (and later, Audioslave), was found unresponsive in his hotel room only hours after performing in Detroit last night.

It can’t be drugs, can it? No way. He quit doing that kind of thing years ago or, at least, that’s what he’s claimed since 2005.

Heart attack or stroke. It has to be.

The next text from my friend delivered the real gut check. “TMZ is reporting he was found in his hotel bathroom with a belt around his neck.”

He came from an island

and he died from the street

and he hurt so bad like a soul breaking

but he never said nothing to me

Are you kidding me?! He has fame and fortune, he has a beautiful wife and children, he’s not terminally ill, and he’s not about to go to jail for an extended period of time. Why would he throw all that away?!? What was so dire and hopeless that the only option he felt he had was death??

His poor wife and children. What a monumentally selfish thing to do.

Now it seems like too much love is never enough

Yeah, you better seek out another road

’cause this one has ended abrupt

Why, why, why, why… that’s the only thing going through my head right now.

PART 2

Having given myself some time to stop being so monumentally selfish and subsequently insensitive, I turned my judgmental eye on the guy who stares back at me in the mirror.

I have a loving, supportive wife. We have a teenager who’s never missed being on the honor roll. I am gainfully employed at a place I love. And I live, work, and interact in a community that I absolutely adore.

Question: Why did I need to know why he did it so badly?

Answer: Because I don’t know the first damn thing about clinical depression or what might be going through the mind of someone harboring suicidal thoughts.

I’ve only personally experienced the devastating wake of suicide once. It was 30 years ago. October 20, 1986, to be exact, and I remember that morning as clearly as if it happened an hour ago. It was a Monday morning and I was getting dressed for school when my mother came through my bedroom door with tears in her eyes. “Honey, you need to sit down.”

I braced to hear something like “your father has cancer,” or “your grandmother had a stroke last night.”

Wrong. (The name has been changed to protect the privacy of the family.)

Mom: “Wes, last night John Denson took his own life.”

Me: (blank stare)

Mom: “It’s okay if…”

Me: “What do you mean he took his own life? You mean he’s dead?? I just saw him yesterday at Teke meeting!”

Mom: “Yes, honey. He’s g…”

Me: “Why?? How? How did he do this??”

Mom: “Wes…”

Me: “Mom, I’m either going to hear it from you or I’m going to hear it at school.”

Mom: “He took a 410 shotgun, pointed it at his chest, and pulled the trigger.”
Me: “How do you not know it was an accident?? That could’ve been an accident!”

Mom: “He called people. Not to tell them what he was going to do, but to tell them things like ‘thanks for being a good friend,’ and ‘thanks for being nice to me.’”

School was exactly as you might’ve imagined. Every girl I passed in the hall was either crying, had been crying, or was fighting back tears. Every guy had a look of confused fright like something evil had come in the middle of the night and taken John and it might be coming for them.

I had seen John just the day before, sat beside him at our club meeting, and he’d even given me a ride home. He appeared to be his happy, jovial self. There was nothing out of the ordinary. John was a big, big guy, but he wasn’t menacing. He was always cracking jokes. There wasn’t anyone that I knew of that didn’t like him. And he was loved. He had a younger brother and sister who both thought he hung the moon. He had a mother and father and grandparents who adored him.

Again, why?

I never wanted to write these words down for you

with the pages of phrases of all the things we’ll never do

So I blow out the candle

and I put you to bed

Since you can’t say to me now

how the dogs broke your bone

there’s just one thing left to be said

Say hello to heaven…heaven…heaven.

I can’t fathom a place so dark, so deep, so hopeless and empty that Chris Cornell and John Denson would believe death wasn’t just an option, it was the only option. One can only speculate that neither of them was capable of backing down their internal demons or could rationalize that the emotions they were feeling in that moment were temporary.

Temporary.

If I could convey to anyone reading this who may be contemplating harming themselves, Stop, Take a breath. Know that everything you’re experiencing and feeling is temporary. It will pass. But if you do feel it is all too much to bear, I pray you’ll find someone to talk to. Anyone. If you can’t find someone, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1–800–273–8255 or visit them online at www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

Just take a breath.

As my parents told me repeatedly while I was growing up, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — that we can’t talk about and figure out. And if we can’t figure it out together, I will not stop until we find someone to help us figure it out.

The world is better with you in it. I am certain of it — just as I am certain the better was better off with people like Chris Cornell and Kurt Cobain and Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson and Robin Williams.

And John Denson.

I can’t imagine a world without a Singles soundtrack, a Badmotorfinger, or a Superunknown in it. They are seminal pieces of music that are burned into my soul, and I can’t imagine what it would be like without them. You may not see it yet, but there’s a Badmotorfinger or a Superunknown in you too. You have that in you to share and contribute. It may not bring fortune and fame, but it is no less anticipated and valued.

And I’ll be the first one in line to hear it.