Total F*cking Godhead – The Biography Of Chris Cornell will be available on July 28th and will be the first comprehensive book about the late singer. The book, written by Seattle resident and rock writer Corbin Reiff, takes input from those who knew and worked with Cornell along with the late singer’s own words. Total F*cking Godhead recounts the rise of Chris Cornell and his band Soundgarden as they emerged from the 1980s post-punk underground to dominate popular culture in the ’90s alongside Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, and Nirvana.
The book also examines Cornell’s solo career as well as his time in Audioslave. The book also covers his hard-fought battle with addiction, and the reunion with the band that made him famous before his tragic death.
Last year Cutter and Kaytie had a chance to talk to Reiff about the upcoming book on Cutter’s Rockcast, which can be heard below. Reiff said he came up with the name of the book because it was a phrase used to describe Soundgarden in the 1980s:
“(Total Fucking Godhead) was a phrase the Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt had used to describe the band in one of his early columns for this local paper called The Rocket, and it just kind of stuck. And when I was thinking about Chris Cornell and contemplating titles, you can go with ‘Fell On Black Days’ and be kind of sad, or you can take a look at the guy and say that’s not what he was really about. He’s a bravado rock and roll singer that took his shirt off and screamed into a microphone, a Total Fucking Godhead, so that was the way I went.”
Reiff announced that he was writing Total F*cking Godhead in December of 2018. He interviewed Seattle producer Jack Endino, who worked on Soundgarden’s early recordings and Seattle music critic Dawn Anderson, who was the first person to ever review the band back in 1986.
Cornell died on May 18, 2017 as a result of hanging himself in his Detroit hotel room after playing a Soundgarden show earlier that evening. The 52-year-old had sedatives and an anxiety drug in his system at the time of his death.
