Remembering the triumph and tragedy of Chris Cornell, five years after death

nypost.com:

wove in a bit of Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time of Dying.” In a macabre twist, Cornell was pronounced dead just a few hours after the concert at 1:30 a.m.

on May 18. His death, at 52, was ruled a suicide by hanging.Five years after the “Black Hole Sun” singer’s death, fans are still trying to understand why Cornell suddenly fell into the darkest of places.

Although he had battled mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, as well as substance-abuse problems, the man with one of rock’s greatest voices — possessing a four-octave range — seemed to have escaped being another one of grunge’s tragic losses.“His death was a complete shock,” Mark Yarm, author of “Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge,” told The Post. “Of those four main grunge bands, we’ve lost [Nirvana’s] Kurt Cobain, we’ve lost [Alice in Chains’] Layne Staley, and we’ve lost Chris Cornell.

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam is the only one who survives.”“You felt that Chris had made it through to the other side — he was happily married, he had a family and everything,” said Chris Celona, who co-hosts the “Grunge Bible” podcast with Ethan Shalaway. “Because he had persisted and had success into his 40s and 50s, you got the sense that he was really embarking on the second or even third act of his career as kind of an elder statesman of rock ’n’ roll.” Indeed, in a 2015 interview, Cornell said he planned on rocking well into his golden years: “I would look at older blues musicians who just keep going into their 70s.