Childhood and Early Life
Cornell was born and raised in Seattle, Washington and attended Christ the King, Catholic elementary school and Shorewood High School. His parents are Ed Boyle (a pharmacist from an Irish Catholic background) and Karen Cornell (an accountant from a Jewish background). He has five siblings: older brothers Peter and Patrick, and younger sisters Katy, Suzy, and Maggie. Peter, Katy and Suzy all performed in the band Inflatable Soule in the 1990s. Peter is currently the frontman for the New York-based rock band Black Market Radio. Katy performs as lead vocalist for the Seattle band Happy Hour Hero.
Cornell spent a two-year period between the ages of nine and eleven solidly listening to The Beatles after finding a large collection of Beatles records abandoned in the basement of a neighbor's house. Cornell was a loner; however, he was able to deal with his anxiety around other people through rock music. Before becoming a successful musician, he worked at a seafood wholesaler and was a sous-chef at a restaurant named Ray's Boathouse.
In the early 1980s, Cornell was a member of a cover band called The Shemps that performed around Seattle. The Shemps also featured bassist Hiro Yamamoto. Following Yamamoto's departure from The Shemps, the band recruited guitarist Kim Thayil as its new bassist. Cornell and Yamamoto stayed in contact, and after The Shemps broke up Cornell and Yamamoto started jamming together, eventually bringing in Thayil to join them.
Read more about this topic: Chris Cornell: Unplugged In Sweden
Famous quotes containing the words childhood, early and/or life:
“Among the most valuable but least appreciated experiences parenthood can provide are the opportunities it offers for exploring, reliving, and resolving one’s own childhood problems in the context of one’s relation to one’s child.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
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“In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)