"He wasn't just a friend - he was someone I looked up to like my older brother."
Pearl Jam‘s Eddie Vedder delivered a moving tribute to Chris Cornell at the band’s London gig last night (June 6).
The Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman was found dead in his hotel room on May 17/a>. He was 52. While Cornell’s death is being treated as a suicide, his family have claimed that prescription drugs may have contributed towards him taking his own life.
“You know, he wasn’t just a friend – he was someone I looked up to like my older brother,” Vedder told the crowd at the Eventim Apollo, according to a transcript shared on a Pearl Jam messageboard.
“And then I couldn’t stop the memories,” Vedder added. “And trying to sleep, it was like if the neighbors had the music playing and you couldn’t stop it. But then it was fine because then it got into little memories. It just kept going and going and going. And I realized how lucky I was to have hours’ worth of… you know, if each of these memories was quick and I had hours of them. How fortunate was I?! And I didn’t want to be sad, I wanted to be grateful, not sad. I’m still thinking about those memories and I will live with those memories in my heart and I will love him forever.”
Anthony Kiedis has also paid tribute to Cornell in recent days, saying: “He left the world in a better place.” Meanwhile, Trent Reznor has admitted he regrets criticising one of Chris Cornell’s solo albums.
The late musician’s Audioslave bandmate Tom Morello has said Cornell was “shining” the last time they saw each other, which was at the band’s anti-Trump reunion gig in January.
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