Soundgarden bassist Ben Shepherd recently reflected on the band’s final tour and the decisions that preceded Chris Cornell’s death. He shared his thoughts on Guitar World.
Shepherd expressed deep regret about the band’s recurring pattern of interrupting studio work to embark on tours. He described a premonition he experienced the night before the band departed for their final tour.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the night before we left for the tour, I knew that something bad was going to happen,” Shepherd said. “Something came over me, and I deeply felt like I couldn’t do it. I went around and said goodbye to my family. I could feel it.”
The bassist also reflected on his personal connection with Cornell and the unfulfilled moments they would never share.
“I always thought we were going to be weird old men sitting out in the cabin he owned in the woods, laughing about everything,” Shepherd said. “He really wanted to meet my son Noah, and he never got to.”
Shepherd identified the core issue that he believes contributed to the circumstances surrounding that period: “We were making the same mistake we always did, which was interrupting making our record in the studio to go play some tour for some reason.”
Shepherd’s haunting premonition would prove tragically prescient. The 2017 reunion tour marked a significant moment for Soundgarden, but it would ultimately end in tragedy that shocked the music world.
Chris Cornell died by suicide on May 18, 2017, in his hotel room at the MGM Grand in Detroit. This occurred just hours after performing at a Soundgarden concert at the Fox Theatre, as reported by PLSN. The band was on their 2017 U.S. reunion tour, with the Detroit show being their 12th out of 18 scheduled dates. The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death a suicide by hanging.
The circumstances surrounding that fateful night were well-documented. After the concert ended around 11:15 p.m., Cornell’s bodyguard Martin Kirsten accompanied him back to the hotel. Kirsten administered two doses of Ativan, Cornell’s anti-anxiety prescription medication, according to Detroit News. Later, Cornell’s wife, Vicky, called the bodyguard expressing concern because Chris did not sound okay. When Kirsten forcibly entered the locked hotel room, he found Cornell in the bathroom with a red exercise band around his neck. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead around 1:30 a.m.
The impact on the band and the music world was immediate and devastating. All That’s Interesting documented that the remaining six tour dates were canceled following Cornell’s death. The 2017 tour that Shepherd had dreaded would never be completed. The new album the band had been working on was never finished. Shepherd’s premonition about the tour interrupting their studio work took on a tragic new meaning—the interruption would be permanent.
