Ann Wilson has recently opened up about her relationship with the late Chris Cornell and her thoughts on his death. Wilson told SiriusXM in an interview, “I was not surprised when he died.. No, I was not surprised. I don’t know why I say that – it’s just something that I feel from Chris. He was so complicated. He always struggled with mundanity. He was really in another dimension, and for him to be normal was really hard.”
Cornell unfortunately passed away at age 52 by suicide on May 18th, 2017, following a sold-out Soundgarden show at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. Wilson has been close with her fellow Seattle musician, who she has repeatedly honored since his death in performances and with a cover of Audioslave’s “I Am the Highway” on her latest album, Immortal.
“Whenever I hear that song, I think about Chris a lot, because he was always at odds with his success,” she said earlier this year. “The expectations that were put on him being the voice of a generation and a superstar of the ’90s and 2000s, and stuff was too much for him. It was really uncomfortable, and he wasn’t just bragging about being uncomfortable, he was. It was too much.”
The Heart singer continued, “He basically was a real pure being – and complicated, but really pure, childlike. He had one foot in wanting to be famous, and one foot in just being so uncomfortable there, that he was caught somewhere in the middle. He was so beautiful and handsome, but tender. He was a really, really good person. But this world was just … he went as far as he could go.”
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