Soundgarden: maybe the old recordings with Cornell come out

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone Us, Kim Thayilthe guitarist of Soundgarden He told about the future of old recordings of the band made before the singer’s death Chris Cornell took place in Detroit, on May 18, 2017.

At the time of the disappearance of the frontman, the band was working on a new album. When asked if this material, the subject of “legal disputes”, can ever be published the CO founder of the band said: “I think so. Our goal has always been to complete it. I probably have enough OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) that you don’t want to leave something unfinished or incomplete in that way. I think everyone in the band feel like this. I don’t want to deal with my work, but in this case, Chris. ”

Thayil continued: “I am proud of what I did and I want it to come out. It is not an individual job. It exists as a collaboration between Matt Cameron (drums), Ben Shepherd (bass) and Chris, and takes on a completely different weight when you think about what is honored and the work that is being paid tribute to. We are collectively want to be proud of it. that the soundgarden have been since 1984 “.

He added: “It would be a great gift for fans, and, I don’t know how much strange sounds, but I feel that it is also a gift to Chris.”

Chris Cornell was found hanged in his hotel room in Detroit in May 2017, after a show in the city. Death was judged suicide.

After the disappearance between the band and Cornell’s entitlements, a legal dispute opened around several issues, including the property of the rights of the unpublished songs to which Kim Thayil refers in the interview.

In April 2023, Soundgarden and Vicky Cornell, the widow and personal representative of Chris’ “Heritage”, announced that they had reached “a friendly and extra -judicial resolution” as regards the publication of the recordings made before the death of the singer.

The resolution that Soundgarden and Vicky reached also provided that the widow would transfer the social media accounts and the Soundgarden social media website to the remaining members of the band, Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd and their managers, Red Light Management. This included the Soundgarden, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter website.

It all started in March 2021, when Thayil, Cameron, Shepherd and their business manager Rit Venerus presented documents in the state of Washington in the United States on the basis of which the district court said that Vicky Cornell had excluded them from their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, YouTube, Snapchat, Tumblr, Top Spin accounts accounts Pinterest, as well as from the official Soundgarden website by changing all the access passwords.

Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd said that their social networks were previously managed by their management company, patriot management. They then learned that Patriot had delivered all the access information to Vicky after the relationship with Patriot ended in October 2019.

The band asked a judge to order Vicky Cornell to deliver the passwords or include a final post on the platforms by saying: “Soundgarden has temporarily suspended his official social media accounts due to an ongoing dispute”.

In December 2019, Vicky filed a lawsuit against the surviving members of the Soundgarden, claiming that the group had to be entitled to Cornell hundreds of thousands of unpaid royalties dollars and the rights of seven unpublished records made before the death of the singer. Cornell is accredited as a writer in all seven songs, receiving the exclusive credit on two, “Cancer” and “Stone Age Mind”. He wrote “Road Less Traveled”, “Orphans” e “At Ophians Door” with Matt Cameron; “Ahead of the Dog” with Kim Thayil; And “Mermas” with Ben Shepherd.

At the time, Vicky said that Chris made seven recordings in his personal study in Florida in 2017, adding that there was no explicit agreement on the fact that the recordings were intended for Soundgarden, who made Chris the exclusive owner. However, the surviving members of Soundgarden replied by saying that unpublished recordings were the result of the writing and recording of sessions dating back to 2015. They also indicated public interviews with Chris and Thayil in which the Soundgarden had been said to have worked on the material since 2015 and detailed recording sessions until April 2017, just a month before Chris’s death.

Soundgarden also included several text exchanges with Vicky, in which he referred to unpublished recordings such as “SG files”. They also provided an e-mail from March 2017 sent by Vicky who said that Chris was working on “SG recordings”.

The band then denied Vicky’s statement according to which Chris’s recordings took place in his personal study in Florida in 2017, insisting on the fact that most current audio files “are significantly preceding to 2017” and that the recording sessions took place in Seattle and New York while the band was on tour.

Responding to the cause of Vicky, Thayil, Shepherd and Cameron said they “not to be in possession” of their “creative work” and they claimed that “Vicky Cornell has the only existing multitrack recordings of the last songs of the soundgarden who include the instrumental parts and the voice of Chris Cornell”. All the members of the band have worked together with these final songs, Vicky now claims the property of the last album of the Soundgarden “.

But it’s not over! Thayil, Shepherd and Cameron initially accused Vicky Cornell of improperly used the funds of the concert “I am the Highway: a tribute to Chris Cornell” (which took place in Los Angeles in January 2019). After being challenged by Cornell’s lawyers with the threat of penalties, the Soundgarden retired that part of their counter-CAUSA, while their lawyers wrote at the time that the band believes that the accusations “remain founded”.

Furthermore, in February, Vicky Cornell sued the surviving members of the Soundgarden for the purchase price of his share in the band. In the cause, Vicky Cornell said that Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd offered her only 300,000 dollars for Chris’s share. This sum, according to Vicky, is far lower than the real value of Chris Cornell’s interests in the Soundgarden, especially if we consider that the band has received an offer of 16 million dollars from an external investor for the band masters.

Beyond all this It is news of the past few days that i Soundgarden will become part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2025 in the Performer category. Seattle’s legendary grunge band was nominated for the first time for Rock Hall in 2020 (without success), and entered the lizza again in 2023 before being included this year.