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:
“The route through childhood is shaped by many forces, and it differs for each of us. Our biological inheritance, the temperament with which we are born, the care we receive, our family relationships, the place where we grow up, the schools we attend, the culture in which we participate, and the historical period in which we live—all these affect the paths we take through childhood and condition the remainder of our lives.”
—Robert H. Wozniak (20th century)
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)