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THE TEMPLE OF THE NINE
thesoberworld.com/2018/11/01/the-temple-of-the-nine
In the 1990’s, a unique cluster of musicians helped push grunge into loftier, and more
commercial heights. Among them were Chester Bennington, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell,
Shannon Hoon, Michael Hutchence, Bradley Noell, Layne Staley, Scott Weiland, and
Andrew Wood. These individuals embodied unbounded potential that ended in tragedy.
All died of either suicide or drug overdose. Wood, founder of Mother Love Bone, was the
youngest at 24 and Soundgarden’s Cornell the oldest, at 53.
Despite the disparity between their varied musical styles — grunge, rock, ska — these men
shared much in common. Jeremy Weiss, Director of the Lancaster, Pennsylvania
LAUNCH Music Conference & Festival, CI Records, noted:
I always felt that their main commonality was in their authenticity; the authenticity of
their emotion, and of their art. They seemed, somehow, “connected”, genre-wise, despite
the absence of a truly similar sound. It also seems to me that these individuals found the
acclaim hard to take, the praise uncomfortable, the expectations to be too much. Sadly,
what I think they ultimately had in common, beyond their extraordinary gifts, was real
pain, somewhat derived from the pressure of their immense successes, and perhaps,
somewhat preexisting.
That pain slowly consumed four of these extraordinary individuals, who died at their own
hands. Suicide claimed the lives of Bennington, Cornell, and Hutchence, who died from
hanging, and Cobain from a shotgun wound.
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Suicide seems so improbable. We find it difficult to comprehend feelings of depression
and discontentment among our celebrities, as we envision them to be forever basking in
the ecstasy of fame. But, once off the stage, many revert back to their vulnerable human
persona. In his article, “The Shocking Truth About the Musicians who Committed
Suicide,” Joshua Infantado, concluded that success comes with equal parts of affirmation
and disappointment:
Popularity and success in the entertainment