Rock musician Chris Cornell’s wife on Friday disputed “inferences” that the rocker killed himself in a Detroit hotel room, saying he might have taken more of a drug to treat anxiety than he was prescribed.
The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office said Cornell — the lead singer in Soundgarden and Audioslave — hanged himself early on Thursday morning after performing at a concert on Wednesday night, but Cornell’s family said that without toxicology test results completed they do not know what caused his death.
On Friday, an official said the results of a full autopsy and toxicology tests could take days before they are completed and released.
Photo: AP
Cornell, 52, was found unresponsive in his hotel room hours after he performed at a Soundgarden concert.
According to the Detroit News, a police report said Cornell’s bodyguard gave him two prescription pills for anxiety after the concert. The bodyguard later found Cornell on the bathroom floor of his room with an exercise band around his neck, the newspaper reported.
The newspaper said it obtained the police report, but does not say how.
Vicky Karayiannis, Cornell’s wife, said that when she spoke to her husband after the Detroit show, he told her he might have taken “an extra Ativan or two.”
Lawyer Kirk Pasich said the musician had a prescription for the drug.
Ativan, a sedative, has side effects that can include drowsiness and dizziness, the US National Institutes of Health said.
“Without the results of toxicology tests, we do not know what was going on with Chris — or if any substances contributed to his demise,” Pasich said in a statement. “Chris, a recovering addict, had a prescription for Ativan and may have taken more Ativan than recommended dosages.”
“The family believes that if Chris took his life, he did not know what he was doing and that drugs or other substances may have affected his actions,” Pasich said.
Cornell has battled addiction problems in the past. He told Rolling Stone in a 1994 interview that he started using drugs at age 13, and was kicked out of school at 15.
“I went from being a daily drug user at 13 to having bad drug experiences and quitting drugs by the time I was 14, and then not having any friends until the time I was 16,” he said. “There was about two years where I was more or less agoraphobic and didn’t deal with anybody, didn’t talk to anybody, didn’t have any friends at all.”
“All the friends that I had were still [messed] up with drugs and were people that I didn’t really have anything in common with,” Cornell said.
Karayiannis said her husband slurred his words when she spoke with him after the Detroit show.
“He was different,” she said, adding that she contacted security to check on him.
“What happened is inexplicable and I am hopeful that further medical reports will provide additional details,” she said. “I know that he loved our children and he would not hurt them by intentionally taking his own life.”
Cornell was a leader of Seattle-based Soundgarden — with whom he gained critical and commercial acclaim.
He also found success outside the band with other projects, including Audioslave, Temple of the Dog and solo albums.
Soundgarden’s tour kicked off late last month and was planned to run until Saturday next week.
Grief-stricken fans left flowers at memorials across Seattle on Thursday for the musician.
One of the locations where people gathered was the Sound Garden art sculpture at a Seattle park, after which Soundgarden was named.
Cornell was born and raised in the city and was part of a close-knit group of artists who formed the foundation of what would become the grunge scene that exploded in the early 1990s, by combining the bombast of early 1970s heavy metal with the aggression and attitude of punk rock.
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