In my time of dying, I want nobody to mourn
All I want for you to do is take my body home
Those are the opening lines to the last song Chris Cornell ever sang on stage. It was a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time of Dying.”
Cornell and his band Soundgarden have covered the song before and they did it again to close out the show at Detroit’s Fox Theater on Wednesday. Just hours later, Cornell was found dead. He was 52.
“Honestly something looked off last night with him,” concert attendee Joey Mugan told CNN. “I just didn’t think about it because the show was great.”
Mugan managed to grab the set list from the front of the stage. On it, the encore performance is different than what was actually played, which isn’t that unusual for a live rock show.
The next morning, when he learned Cornell was dead, Mugan said it was hard to believe he had seen him perform less than 12 hours before.
In the wave of mourning that followed Cornell’s death, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page paid his respects:
In his time at the top of the rock and grunge scene, Cornell battled substance abuse and other demons that also plagued so many of his contemporaries.
“I’ve lost a lot of young, brilliant friends, people that I thought were very inspired,” he lamented to Rolling Stone in 2015. “They’re all young and these guys all had limitless potential in their lives in front of them.”
In recent years, Cornell had seemed to hit a new groove. He moved to Florida with his family and opened up about his long term sobriety.
“It was a long slow slide and then a long slow recovery, but there was self-discovery too,” Cornell told the Mirror in 2012 about his battle with alcoholism. He said having a musical identity, and supportive band members and friends, made all of the difference.
“I was very lucky I was able to see that and not take it for granted. It helped me climb out of the mire. I saw how hard it could be,” he said.
An autopsy conducted Thursday determined Cornell’s cause of death: he hanged himself.
The last song Cornell ever released was called “The Promise.” It ends with this refrain:
And one promise you made
One promise that always remains
No matter the price
A promise to survive
Persevere and thrive
And dare to rise once more
A promise to survive
Persevere and thrive
And fill the world with life
As we’ve always done
