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Cornell was born on July 20, 1964 in Seattle, Washington and lived there in his childhood and attended Shorewood High School (Washington). His parents are Ed Boyle (a pharmacist from an Irish Catholic background) and Karen Cornell (an accountant from a Jewish background).[1] He has two older brothers Peter and Patrick, and three younger sisters, Katy, Suzy, and Maggie. Peter, Katy and Suzy formed the band Inflatable Soule, a moderately popular band in Seattle during the 1990s. Peter Cornell is now in the band Black Market Radio, which released their debut album entitled Suicide Parlour in 2006. Cornell and his siblings took his mother's maiden name after his parents divorced.
Cornell mentions on the Audioslave – Live in Cuba DVD documentary that he 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 house. He then suffered from a severe case of depression during his teenage years, rarely leaving the house. At one point, he spent a whole year of his life without leaving his house, during which time he would spend his time drinking, playing drums and guitar.[citation needed] Before becoming a successful musician, he worked at a seafood wholesaler and was a sous chef at a restaurant named Ray's Boathouse.He is currently married to Vicky Karayiannis, a Paris-based publicist, and was previously married to Susan Silver, the manager of Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. He had a daughter with Silver, Lillian Jean, in June 2000. He and Silver divorced in 2001 and he remarried in 2003 to Karayiannis. She gave birth to his second daughter, Toni, in September 2004, and their second and his third child, Christopher Nicholas, in December 2005.
Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has consisted of Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), Jeff Ament (bass), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), and Mike McCready (lead guitar). The band's current drummer is Matt Cameron, formerly of Soundgarden, who has been with the band since 1998.
Formed after the demise of Ament and Gossard's previous band Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with its debut album Ten. One of the key bands of the grunge movement in the early 1990s, Pearl Jam was nevertheless criticized early on as being a corporate cash-in on the alternative rock explosion. However, its members became noted for their refusal to adhere to traditional music industry practices as their career progressed, including refusing to make music videos and engaging in a much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster. Rolling Stone described the band as having "spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their own fame."
Since its inception, the band has sold 30 million records in the U.S.,and an estimated 60 million albums worldwide.Pearl Jam has outlasted many of its contemporaries from the alternative rock breakthrough of the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most influential bands of the decade, and "the most popular American rock band of the 1990s".Pearl Jam continues to generate hit albums, tour successfully, and garner critical acclaim into the 21st century
After a long hiatus the members of ALICE IN CHAINS have decided to honor their musical legacy by taking their beloved songs to the road this spring/summer (2006). JERRY CANTRELL, MIKE INEZ and SEAN KINNEY will be joined by WILLIAM DUVALL, who will handle lead vocals for the group's five U.S. club shows and overseas festival performances in Europe and Southeast Asia.
CANTRELL says, "We're gonna take it like we always did, and we've always kind of made it up as we've gone along. If you were looking at how to really capitalize on this experience and really make dough and make it a profitable thing, a band might, you know come out with a singer, have a record ready and all that. But that's not where we're coming from with this thing. We're coming from the place of 'It feels good, and we're having a good time, so we'd like people to be a part of that.'" KINNEY told Reuters, "We're not trying to replace Layne…We want to play these songs one more time, and if it seems like the right thing to do, it'll happen. I don't know how long it will go or where it will take us. It's kind of a tribute to Layne and our fans, the people who love these songs."
The ALICE IN CHAINS legacy dates back to 1987 when the tight-knit group began a riotous ride that saw them escorted from their illegal rehearsal space by Seattle's finest to a 1989 record deal with Columbia Records. Their instantly recognizable brand of dark, moody rock would become a signature sound and a major influence on later rock bands.
ALICE IN CHAINS released their debut EP WE DIE YOUNG (July 1990) and the title track went on to be their first of many rock radio hits. The platinum-certified FACELIFT followed in August of 1990 and the video for the grinding hit "Man in the Box" went into regular rotation on MTV. In 1992 ALICE IN CHAINS began recording DIRT with Dave Jerden again producing. DIRT--which debuted at #6 on the Billboard charts in September 1992 and went platinum in less than two months--was their darkest release to that point with a heavy, guitar-driven sound and lyrics exploring a sense of alienation and addiction. 1992 also saw the release of SAP--a five-song acoustic EP. But it was Cameron Crowe's 1992 film Singles, about the lives of 20-somethings in Seattle that transformed the song "Would?" into an anthem for the brooding angst of Generation X. While the band was touring to promote DIRT, MIKE STARR left the group to be replaced by former Ozzy Osbourne bassist MIKE INEZ. In 1993, Alice in Chains' first collaboration with INEZ was two tracks ("What the Hell Have I" and "A Little Bitter") for the Last Action Hero soundtrack. JAR OF FLIES — released in January 1994 — marked a return to more mellow acoustic arrangements, punctuated by Cantrell's signature electric guitar riffs and Staley's bracing vocal intensity. It would be the first EP in Billboard chart history to debut at #1. A year later the band released ALICE IN CHAINS which also debuted at #1 on the Billboard album charts and launched a handful of hard rock singles that would cement the band’s place in the pantheon of metal legends.
Over the next few years, CANTREll, KINNEY and INEZ would go onto different projects including CANTRELL's Degradation Trip (his sophomore solo album) which was dedicated to STALEY. The 25-song double album was a stunning emotional tour-de-force, written before STALEY’s passing but often cited for the prophetic mournfulness of its lyrics. After the 2002 death of LAYNE STALEY, the members of ALICE IN CHAINS continued on with their projects until a 2005 benefit in Seattle. Overwhelmed by the Tsunami, they were moved to put together a charity show for CARE. It was the first time the band performed together in eight years. Five months later, KINNEY posed the question, "Should we go round the world and play these songs one more time." Their March 2006 performance on the "VH1 Decades Rock Live" tribute to Heart in Atlantic City confirmed that their fans still wanted to hear them live. This year, JERRY CANTRELL, SEAN KINNEY and MIKE INEZ are thrilled to be reunited and returning to the music they created and the legacy that is ALICE IN CHAINS. They are also looking forward to 2006 as a watershed moment for all of them and a chance to move into the future with the project that has meant so much to all of them.
