I'll Wait For You There, Like A Stone.....

When I’m at work I’m often cut off from the outside world as far as the news is concerned. I rarely hear or read what’s going on in the world from the time I leave the house at around half seven in the morning until I get home around six-fifteen in the evening. So when a certain song played over my earphones on the bus ride home I had no idea of the relevance it had.

You see, over the past few months I’ve started to listen to a lot of Audioslave, the hybrid super group made up of members of Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden. I’ve paid attention to them briefly over the years, but when I caught sight of the video for their 2003 release Like a Stone during a late night channel surfing session I was kind of blown away, especially by Chris Cornell’s excellent vocals, so much so that their three albums began to feature heavily on my phone’s music player.

It was last Thursday, during the aforementioned bus ride home, that Like a Stone played again. It dawned on me again just how beautiful this song was. For those who don’t know it’s a song about a man who’s basically waiting to die. All of those close to him have already gone, and he’s waiting to join them in the afterlife.

After I got home and took my dog Monty for his walk I switched on my phone again and logged onto the internet. Chris Cornell was top of the day’s trends on Facebook, and considering that I’d just been listening to the guy sing I clicked on his name. It was then I found out the tragic news that he’d died.

I’m not going to go into the circumstances surrounding his death. Countless others have done that over the past few days, but even though I was, for want of a better term, a recent convert to his work it was still a shock to hear that this wonderful piece of musical talent had passed away at a relatively young age. But what shocked me more was that I only learned of his passing after hearing Like a Stone, a song about a man who was waiting to die. Was this a spooky coincidence, or was someone, somewhere, trying to tell me something?

For me Like a Stone is probably his best piece of work. Songs like Black Hole Sun and Cochise will be played around the world for years to come, but Like a Stone, with it’s wonderful lyrics and brilliant performances will live on forever.

Chris Cornell will go down as one of the greatest singers in rock music history. He’ll be sadly missed by everyone who heard him.

Rest in peace sir.