Watch Brandi Carlile play Black Hole Sun with the surviving members of Soundgarden
The surprise guest appearance was Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd's first Washington performance together since Chris Cornell’s death in 2017
During her August 14 performance at the The Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Washington, singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile brought the three surviving members of Soundgarden onstage for moving renditions of two of the band's classic songs – Black Hole Sun and Searching with My Good Eye Closed.
You can check out fan-filmed videos of the former performance above, and the latter one below.
Carlile had previously played Black Hole Sun with Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd at the 'I Am the Highway' Chris Cornell tribute concert in Los Angeles in January 2019, but this particular guest appearance marked the first time that the remaining members of Soundgarden had performed live together in their native Washington state since the tragic death of the band's frontman, the legendary Chris Cornell, in 2017.
Carlile had previously covered the two songs in question with Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd on her 2020 Record Store Day EP, A Rooster Says.
For their part, the surviving members of Soundgarden recently regained access to the band's social media accounts and website after an intense legal battle with Chris Cornell’s estate, many parts of which remain unresolved.
A key point of contention in the battle regards the fate of a potential final Soundgarden album. Ownership of Cornell’s vocal recordings for seven unreleased tracks has been in dispute since 2019, although his widow, Vicky Cornell, recently said that “all of Chris’ music, including Soundgarden, will see the light of day.”
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Jackson is an Associate Editor at GuitarWorld.com. He’s been writing and editing stories about new gear, technique and guitar-driven music both old and new since 2014, and has also written extensively on the same topics for Guitar Player. Elsewhere, his album reviews and essays have appeared in Louder and Unrecorded. Though open to music of all kinds, his greatest love has always been indie, and everything that falls under its massive umbrella. To that end, you can find him on Twitter crowing about whatever great new guitar band you need to drop everything to hear right now.
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