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Soundgarden have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. See all the highlights from the ceremony below.
Last night (November 8) saw the annual ceremony take place at Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater, with the inductees including The White Stripes, OutKast, Cyndi Lauper, Chubby Checker, Bad Company and Joe Cocker.
Soundgarden were welcomed with an all-star induction that included a performance by the band’s surviving members, a group composed of fellow Seattle musicians and the daughter of the late Chris Cornell, who helped found the iconic grunge band back in 1984, and was the frontman up until his death by suicide on May 18, 2017.
They were inducted by Jim Carrey, who once hosted a 1996 episode of Saturday Night Live where Soundgarden was the musical guest. “Spank you kindly, spank you all,” he told the crowd as he opened his speech.
“You might ask why would Soundgarden – the heaviest of rock and roll royalty – want Jim Carrey to induct them into the Hall of Fame? Is there some deep, cosmic connection between them, or was the ‘Spoonman’ not available?”
Carrey went on to reveal that when he hosted SNL, he insisted that Soundgarden be the musical guest, and was gifted Cornell’s Fender Telecaster after the show. “When the Seattle music scene exploded, it resurrected rock and roll for me,” he said. “When I heard Soundgarden for the first time, I wasn’t just excited. I wanted to put a flannel shirt on and run into the streets screaming, ‘My mother smoked during pregnancy!’”
Following Carrey’s speech, Cornell’s daughter, Lily, joined the stage. “I am just really, really happy that he got to make music with his friends,” she said of her father. “At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. I know how much purpose that gave him, and how much it’s meant to people who have heard that music. That’s what I’ll be holding in my heart tonight.”
Each member of the band: guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron, bassists Ben Shepherd and Hiro Yamomoto, who left the group in 1989, also delivered induction speeches. “Chris Cornell, we are so missing you tonight on this stage,” Yamomoto said. “We’ve heard so many stories of how the music we created became your own, and that is the greatest recognition of all. To everyone else out there – especially all you brown kids – let’s rock!”
Afterwards, a performance indebted to the Seattle music scene commenced, with Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell, Brandi Carlile and Taylor Momsen of the Pretty Reckless (who served as opening act on Soundgarden’s final tour prior to Cornell’s 2017 death), joining the band onstage for ‘Rusty Cage’ and ‘Black Hole Sun’. Watch a clip below.
After the all-star Seattle performance, Cornell’s daughter Toni and Heart’s Nancy Wilson teamed up for an acoustic rendition of ‘Fell on Black Days’.
In other news, the surviving members of Soundgarden have previously spoken about an unreleased album featuring late frontman Cornell.
“There’s not a set release date or anything as of yet,” Cameron said of the forthcoming project earlier this year. “There were a couple schools of thought, like, ‘Hey, let’s put out a single’. I think eventually we decided we want to make sure the whole thing is completed before we start releasing singles. I’m excited for people to hear it.”
He continued: “We’re definitely over halfway done with it. Kim [Thayil, guitarist] is in the process of finishing his guitar parts; he wants to make sure they get exactly the way he wants them.”
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