Sports Inspired Chris Cornell to Swear

Chris Cornell died last night. As with any celebrity death, it causes people to look back at their life’s work. With Cornell, that meant listening to loads of Soundgarden, Audioslave and Temple of the Dog. Then we mine our memories for content. In this case – something about sports. For me that meant “Ty Cobb” off of Down on the Upside. The song is awesome. The language is NSFW.

When I went to Wikipedia to try and find out why Cornell wrote a song about Ty Cobb I learned two things. First, the song wasn’t written about Cobb. Cornell wrote the lyrics about people he didn’t like and it reminded bassist Ben Sheppard of Cobb.

Second, it is one of three Soundgarden songs in which Cornell dropped an f-bomb. One of them was “Big Dumb Sex” which had nothing to do with sports. The other songs were “Ty Cobb” and “Kyle Petty, Son of Richard.” That one was recorded in the 90’s and released on an anti-violence compilation CD. It also showed up on deluxe editions of Superunknown in 2014.

Cornell also once went on a rant about the NBA taking away the SuperSonics.

So like most people, sports made Chris Cornell swear. Celebrities – they’re just like us. Except some of them make awesome music.