Seattle-born vocalist and guitarist Chris Cornell delivered a tidy 90-minute solo set at the Fillmore Miami Beach on Wednesday, blending acoustic intimacy, grunge guitar tunings and a church revival fervor.
Attired in the post-grunge formal wear of jeans and a white T-shirt and surrounded by seven different guitars, the frontman for Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog and Audioslave performed material by all three groups, plus selections from his four solo CDs, for a capacity crowd.
Early selections like Ground Zero and Watch Out Two Drink Minimum, from Cornell’s latest solo studio release Scream (2009), set a template while providing an appetizer. Each was slow, and different mainly through a standard 4/4 time signature and waltzing 6/8, respectively. The two tracks pretty much summed up Cornell’s recent range as a composer.
The subsequent tune Be Yourself, from Audioslave’s 2005 recording Out of Exile, sounded like more of the slow sameness through its first chorus. But then Cornell unleashed one of his greatest assets – a soaring falsetto delivery that countered the repetition and commanded the audience’s attention.
When NBC created the TV series The Voice, Cornell’s was likely one that its producers were thinking of. His four-octave range often literally goes from whisper to a scream, containing both the powerful tenor and baritone elements of Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl and the alto and soprano span of Cornell’s late friend, Jeff Buckley. And that voice alternately silenced and incited raucous applause from the adoring Fillmore throng throughout the evening.
“Hey, what’s your shirt say?” Cornell asked someone up front. “Oh, it’s a Temple of the Dog shirt. I’ll play something by them in a few minutes.”
True to his word, the relaxed Cornell preceded a series of that group’s songs with the first of several solo highlights. Can’t Change Me, from his 1999 debut Euphoria Morning, showcased some of the singer/songwriter’s strongest flamenco-influenced guitar playing (albeit in 6/8 time again).
Temple of the Dog was a Cornell concept between himself and Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, plus members of Pearl Jam. The collective released only a self-titled 1991 album, which Cornell proceeded to play four consecutive tracks from. The ballad Say Hello to Heaven may have continued the waltz theme, but its chorus created the concert’s first singalong and showcased a facet of the singer’s arsenal that few are capable of without causing vocal damage — grunge-approved screams delivered through an operatic falsetto.
“That’s how it works,” Cornell said afterward, holding up a trophy. “I sing a song; I get a pair of shorts.” His new garment was, in fact, emblazoned with the words “Say Hello To Heaven.”
Only All Night Thing failed to reach the high bar that the first Temple selection set. Wooden Jesus featured Bob Dylan-worthy lyrical imagery (“I’ll cut you in on 20 percent of my future sin”), and the anthemic Hunger Strike caused another singalong as Cornell and the crowd traded Eddie Vedder’s lower-register chorus lines and his own high-pitched answers.
“There was a note backstage that reads ‘Ronnie wants to marry Samantha,’” Cornell announced afterward, causing a future groom to approach the stage from the back of the room. Invited up, Ronnie thanked his host as Samantha made the same trek. After he kneeled and proposed, the couple engaged in a long embrace.
“Thank God she said yes,” Cornell quipped.
The Soundgarden portion of the show then started with the hit Fell On Black Days, from the top-selling 1994 CD Superunknown, and featured more of Cornell’s flamenco picking and sustained, high-pitched vocal passages. Along with Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone, and Pearl Jam, Soundgarden was one of Seattle’s seminal grunge bands for its unorthodox guitar tunings and odd time signatures during an initial 1984-1997 run. Reunited since 2010, the group released the album Live On I-5 last year and has a new studio tune on the soundtrack to the film The Avengers.
The brooding hit Burden In My Hand, played on a different guitar in an open tuning, was the lone selection from Soundgarden’s last studio CD, Down On the Upside from 1996. Cornell’s only electric guitar tune was Mind Riot, from the band’s underrated 1991 release Badmotorfinger, again employing an alternate tuning.
In-between, he played the haunting Seasons, from the soundtrack to the Seattle-set 1992 film Singles (which starred Campbell Scott, Kyra Sedgwick, Bridget Fonda and Matt Dillon and featured cameos by the members of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam), and the gorgeously powerful Sunshower, from the soundtrack to the 1998 film Great Expectations.
I Am the Highway, from Audioslave’s self-titled 2002 debut, and Doesn’t Remind Me, from Out of Exile (and featured on Cornell’s 2011 live solo CD Songbook), coasted the show home and threatened to end it with a whimper. That 2001-2007 supergroup featured Cornell with the instrumentalists from Rage Against the Machine (guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk), but the quartet lacked both the power of Soundgarden and the funkiness of Rage, which featured rapper Zack de la Rocha from 1991 through his departure in 2000.
Yet Cornell still had a trick up his sleeve. His encores were highlighted by a 6/8-timed cover of the Michael Jackson hit Billie Jean, a tune he’d recorded for his 2007 CD Carry On. If it came as a surprise, then you couldn’t have seen his otherworldly YouTube video homage to Whitney Houston — a live cover of I Will Always Love You that he performed shortly after her death.
Despite neither being a virtuoso guitarist nor a composer who strays out of his comfort zones very often, Cornell’s soaring voice makes him one of the very few solo performers who could’ve incited this many men to hoot and holler and women to slither and sway.
And if Donna Summer had died a day earlier, Cornell probably would have honored her with an intoxicating version of Bad Girls. In waltz time, naturally.