remembrance

My Friend Chris Cornell, An Appreciation

Gary Lucas — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:25:42 +0000

My Friend Chris Cornell, An Appreciation Gary Lucas July 27, 2026 - 17:25

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I just got a copy of the new vinyl double picture disc version of Chris Cornell's Carry On solo album from 2007. I am all over this album, playing on 11 tracks out of the original album's 14, mainly electric guitar (including a couple of maniacal solos such as the barn-burner above, and also on the James Bond thingy "You Know My Name" from the Casino Royale soundtrack, probably the best-known track from the album), plus National steel acoustic guitar on one cut. This picture disc vinyl version contains 2 more tracks hitherto unknown to me which were included on foreign versions of the album (the Japanese cut, for one).

I first met Chris at a memorial service for Jeff Buckley at St. Ann’s Church in early June 1997, shortly after Jeff passed. The two were friends, and Chris later wrote the song "Euphoria Morning" for him. Chris gave me the warmest smile at this very somber event, wherein Jeff’s Telecaster (a loaner from St. Ann’s Janine Nichols) was dead center on the church’s pulpit next to a large urn containing his ashes.

I wrote Chris’s manager afterward to say hello and also to express my willingness to work with Chris on any upcoming project he might be contemplating. I was a big Soundgarden fan, and had once opened for his band solo at CBGB.

I never got a formal reply. But nearly 10 years later, quite out of the blue, I got a call from producer Steve Lillywhite, whose work I'd admired ever since hearing his earliest productions (The Members, Big Country, XTC, and on through Talking Heads and U2). He was at the time heading up the A&R department at Columbia Records, but was still allowed to moonlight as a producer. He told me Chris was eager to have me play on his upcoming album for Interscope, to be recorded in LA with Steve producing—which I readily agreed to

So I flew out there shortly thereafter with my ’64 Strat, ’44 Gibson J-45, and 1921 National steel guitar, and a bunch of effects pedals, for what was supposed to be a day in the studio with Chris and Steve. They were both very warm and friendly, and they proceeded to throw a whole bunch of unfamiliar music at me. There were charts, and also some home demos Chris had made. I’m not a great sight-reader, but I handled everything they came up with with a certain esprit de corps. Chris was impressed, and at the end of the day he came over to my little workstation set up and asked: “Can you be here all week? I love the way you play.” Sure, man!

I worked out my extended revised deal with Interscope, the car rental company, and the hotel they’d booked me into—basically cleared the decks, and went to town in the studio over the next week. Looking back objectively now (haha, how could that be), thanks to this new Carry On double vinyl picture sleeve package, I would give the album a 7 for production, an 8 for creative risk-taking on Chris's part viz, the inventive songwriting, and choice of covers (a doom-laden trawl through "Billie Jean," anybody?), and 9 for his overall vocal performance. Chris possessed the leather lungs of a Viking and was certainly one of the most authoritative and commanding singers I've ever worked with, and that includes Jeff Buckley, Captain Beefheart, Lou Reed, and Nick Cave.

Producer Steve Lillywhite, Gary, and Chris on the last day of recording my guitars in LA

Turning my attention to this objet du disque nearly 19 years on, however, I am not sure that rendering the soupy glop of PVC into picture disc photos of Chris (nice photos...but still) enhances the playback quality much (I have a pretty good sound system)—and may well cause some problems there, like mucho popping and crackling on listening back. And did I mention this package is retailing for fifty bucks? If you're really into Chris and a super fan, he looks pretty damn good on the picture discs and in the gatefold. But if you're into high-end sound, well... Me, I still prefer digital to vinyl (a heretical position I know), mainly because it's a noiseless forever upon playback. Every time you play a CD you treasure, and eventually bequeath to your daisy chain of deadbeat descendants over the years, it's always gonna sound the same to them right till the very end of the line of succession, to the last syllable of recorded time as it were—just as it sounded the very first time you played it. (Although I recall when CDs first reared their shiny little circular heads, there was fear in the land amongst collectors that over the years the playback quality would diminish/drop off/degrade; ie, a limited shelf life. I dunno HOW exactly the CD would be rendered crappy and useless; maybe bits and bytes would drop off the shiny side of the disc all over your carpet like so many motes of dust as time marches on. But lo and behold, the original CDs issued in 1979 by Phillips and Sony still sound as pristine as the day they were first opened and played.)

Vinyl, on the other hand, as we all know, captures the overall analog frequencies of the original source material better than digital recordings of the same, but it is hardly forever, the playback sound degrading further every time you take the album out for a spin, as the stylus plows the vinyl furrow deeper and deeper into the groove until it becomes a noisy rut... But I digress.

This is an excellent album, and I was honored to play on it (and hey, I get no royalties for saying that; I was a gunslinger for hire). And don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia either; the entry for this album makes it sound like I just played acoustic on it. Zeesh!

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Tomorrow Never Knows

David Comfort — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:13:20 +0000

Tomorrow Never Knows David Comfort December 8, 2009 - 00:13

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remembrance

"The phony must die, says the Catcher in the Rye. Don't believe in John Lennon. Imagine John Lennon is dead, oh yeah, yeah, yeah!" Mark David Chapman's chant, overheard by his wife, days before the murder. In his Sheraton Hotel suite, he stands at the bureau, carefully arranging an altar. To the left he places a snapshot of himself, smiling broadly, arms around Vietnamese refugee children at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Next to it, he lays down his YMCA supervisor's hand-printed letter of praise for exemplary service. Behind these, he tapes to the mirror the Wizard of Oz poster he picked up downtown yesterday, the one of Dorothy wiping away the Cowardly Lion's tears before she taps her emerald slippers and returns to Kansas from Emerald City. Now the former Christian camp counselor picks up the Gideon Bible, opens it to the Gospel of John title page and, in bold letters, carefully prints L-E-N-N-O-N after it. He steps back and beholds his display proudly, imagining all the reporters crowding the room, snapping pictures. Finally he reaches into his suitcase, withdraws the .38 Charter Arms revolver, and slips it into the inside pocket of his overcoat. December 8, 1980 is an unusually warm, spring-like day in New York as the bespectacled Mark David Chapman sets out from the Sheraton on foot. Across town, John Lennon is enjoying his after-breakfast Gitane and cappuccino at La Fortuna, his favorite neighborhood cafe. His wife, Yoko Ono, is reviewing with him her arrangements for yet another busy day of interviews and photo sessions for their joint album Double Fantasy. She tells him they need to step up the publicity blitz and give Rolling Stone a good cover later this morning. John groans. This is not his favorite part of the business. The fans in front of the Dakota are growing. Only yesterday, Sunday, he'd chased after some bespectacled nerd who wouldn't stop shooting pictures of him. Yoko managed to call him off. "If anyone gets me, it's going to be a fan!" he told her, letting the kid go. As Chapman makes his way beneath the canopy of the sunlit skyscrapers, he hears the weeping of his own dear wife, Gloria. He'd left her in tears at the Honolulu airport gate. He'd had an appointment with a psychiatrist only days before, but he'd failed to show up. He assured Gloria that he was flying to New York to find a job and make a new life for them both. But he keeps hearing her crying, which again gives way to the voices of his Little People who had been with him since childhood. "Please, think of your wife," they plead. "Please, Mr. President. Think of your mother. Think of yourself!" It's 11:30 a.m. now and John Lennon is lying naked on the floor of the White Room, curled in a fetal position around a fully clothed Yoko Ono. At the periphery of the umbrellaed spots, Rolling Stone's Annie Liebowitz circles the couple with her camera exclaiming "Yes!... Hold that... Great!" Six stories below, Mark Chapman, standing at the front of a small crowd of fans now, is peering up at the Gothic, high-gabled edifice of the Dakota. Under his arm he holds The Catcher in the Rye and a fresh copy of the LP Double Fantasy. After Ms. Liebowitz takes her leave with historic celluloid, her subjects retire to Yoko's office for a phone interview with San Francisco radio personality Dave Sholin. "We're either going to live or we're going to die," John tells him. "I consider that my work won't be finished until I'm dead and buried - and I hope that's a long time." Only weeks before, during his talk with Playboy, he had been interrupted by a car exhaust backfiring outside the Dakota. "Another murder at Rue Dakota!" he had cracked. Mark Chapman keeps waiting. He has seen Lauren Bacall, Mia Farrow, and Paul Simon himself duck out from the building, but still not the prize. He bides his time chatting with a regular visitor, Jude Stein, as well as to a young local photographer, Paul Goresh, who has succeeded in snapping the Lennons here several times. Suddenly Jude alerts him to an elderly woman emerging from the lobby, hand in hand with a young boy. Jude presses forward introducing her new friend to five-year-old Sean Lennon. "He was the cutest little boy I ever saw," the former YMCA counselor would recall. "It didn't enter my mind that I was going to kill this poor young boy's father and he wouldn't have a father for the rest of his life. I mean, I love children. I'm the Catcher in the Rye." Soon after the boy is gone, a limo pulls up. The black iron gates are thrown open and John and Yoko Lennon materialize, surrounded by their staff. Goresh shoves Chapman forward. Suddenly, he finds himself standing in front of John Lennon himself, holding out his album and a pen. The star hastily autographs the album. "Is that all you want?" he asks the fan. "Yeah... Thanks, John!" the young man stammers at last. "I was just overwhelmed by his sincerity," he later recalled. "I had expected a brush-off, but it was just the opposite. I was on Cloud Nine. And there was a little bit of me going, 'Why didn't you shoot him?'' And I said, 'I can't shoot him like this.' I wanted to get the autograph." Their limo drops the Lennons off across town at the Record Plant. They spend the next six hours here, mixing Yoko's single "Walking on Thin Ice." "I may cry someday but the tears will dry whichever way," sings Mrs. Lennon, "and when our hearts return to ashes, I'll be just a story." They work till 10:30 that evening, John insisting on getting the recording just right. Yoko suggests they go out for a late dinner at the nearby Stage Deli, but John wants to return home to tuck Sean in. "See you tomorrow morning, bright and early!" he calls to his sound engineer, Jack Douglas, as he leaves. Mark Chapman is alone now at the Dakota, a solitary sentry. As the cabs speed past on 71st Street, he chats with the Cuban doorman, Jose Perdomo, about the Bay of Pigs and the JFK assassination. Suddenly, he turns toward the curb, eyes widening. The long black car with the opaque windows glides to a stop only feet away. John jumps out, carrying a tape recorder. Yoko follows. As Lennon brushes past Chapman, he gives him a sudden hard glance. "He printed me," the gunman would later confess. At that instant, "I was praying to God to keep me from killing Lennon," he went on, "and I was also praying to the devil to give me the opportunity, because I knew I would not have the strength on my own." He drops down in a combat squat, "Mr. Lennon!" he shouts. John doesn't have time to turn to the voice before four hollow-points tear through his back. "I'm shot!" he chokes, staggering six steps and collapsing inside the concierge's booth, blood spraying from his lips. Chapman drops the gun to the pavement. "Do you know what you've done!" cries Jose, rushing him, kicking the weapon across the pavement. Heart racing, hearing a woman's sobs inside the hotel foyer, Chapman begins pacing. "I was "Mr. Nobody" until I killed the biggest Somebody on earth," he later told his biographer, after being exorcised of "six demons" at Attica State prison. Two squad cars scream up. As the first team of policemen rush the suspect, he drops The Catcher in the Rye and Double Fantasy and throws his arms up, crying, "Don't hurt me. I'm unarmed. I acted alone!" The second team of officers, Bill Gamble and James Moran, dash into the cubical where Yoko is huddled over her husband, sobbing. John's eyes are glazed as Gamble and Moran carry him to their squad car and lay him out on the back seat, knowing they can't wait for an ambulance. "I'm not afraid of dying," John had once said. "It's just like getting out of one car and into another." The Beatle spends his last moments on the back seat of a speeding NYPD squad car. The phantasmagoria of the city lights flashes through the windows on his fixed pupils as the blood pours from his chest and the officers call to him as if from a dream, "Are you John Lennon? Do you know who you are? Are you John Lennon?" But their voices are drowned in the wail of the sirens. Then he hears another voice, his own, echoing within him and without him, louder and louder, delivering him to infinity.... Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream It is not dying, it is not dying / Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void It is shining, it is shining.