Chris Cornell was born July 20, 1964, in Seattle, Washington. Growing up Chris never felt very comfortable around people. He used his love for rock music to help overcome his struggle. During this time he found the Beatles albums and it didn't take long for him to fall in love with the music. Looking at his family there was no doubt to where he got his love for music. Although his father was a pharmacist and his mother an accountant, he also had five siblings. Three of those siblings, that included his older brother Peter and his younger sisters Katy and Suzy, were formed a band together called 'Inflatable Soule' in the 1990's. 

  Although music ran through his blood Chris didn't put himself out into the music world until the early 1980's when he was a member of  ‘The Shemps’ that mostly just performed around Seattle area. In 1984 Soundgarden was created by Cornell. The band first started out with Hiro Yamamoto, Kim Thayil, and Cornell himself on drums and vocals. Eventually Matt Cameron became the permanent drummer of the band, make sure Cornell could focus more of the vocals. Though the band had great success and became very well known. They were the first grunge band to ever sign to a major record label. The more music they produced the more people started to listen. Their popularity kept rising and started to reach radio stations. They won awards along with being charted by Rolling Stones with four out five stars for their album 'Superunknown'.  They still remained playing and the band stayed strong throughout all those years. They had been working on a seventh record.

 
During Cornell's band success, he went on to do his own solo work. This side of his work was a bit unexpected to the world. Cornell's solo work was more soulful and showed more despair, more emotion. He then created a new band 'Autoslave', along with members of 'Rage Against the Machine'. This band was also very successful and even become the first band to have massive free concert in Castro’s Cuba,  which remains something very huge in the music world today. Cornell's separate solo music became increasingly popular. Cornell was the first male American artist to write and perform the theme song for a James Bond movie called “You Know My Name”. He also wrote the end title song “Live to Rise” for The Avengers movie. Cornell's recent solo project was his acoustic 'Songbook' tour. This tour gave another perspective of himself to other people. Some of things people got from being at his shows was that you don't know the true beauty of music until you hear it from it's raw sound.

Cornell was a very talented musician, song writer and vocalist that connected to many people around the world. He used his music to not only to help himself but to help others as well. That legacy that he leaves behind will never go too far unnoticed.