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SOUNDGARDEN Singer CHRIS CORNELL Dead At 52

May 18, 2017

SOUNDGARDEN singer Chris Cornell died Wednesday night, his representative has confirmed.

The representative, Brian Bumbery, called Cornell's passing "sudden and unexpected." He added in a statement: "His wife Vicky and family were shocked to learn of his sudden and unexpected passing, and they will be working closely with the medical examiner to determine the cause. They would like to thank his fans for their continuous love and loyalty and ask that their privacy be respected at this time."

The 52-year-old musician was in Detroit where he performed with SOUNDGARDEN at the Fox Theatre.

A representative for the Detroit Police told Variety that the death of is being investigated as a suicide.

"At 12 a.m. [local time], we received a 911 call from the MGM Grand Casino Hotel," Detroit Police director of media relations Michael Woody told Variety. "It appears as though a family friend was checking up on Cornell at his wife's request. He went to hotel and discovered him unresponsive on the bathroom floor. Police made the location with EMS, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

"At present our investigation is leaning toward the possibility of suicide, but we must wait for a medical report to determine the cause of death. At this time we cannot release too much information about what we observed in Cornell's hotel room or what led us to this conclusion."

SOUNDGARDEN has been working on its seventh studio album since 2015, but the band took breaks while Cornell toured his "Higher Truth" solo set and drummer Matt Cameron hit the road with PEARL JAM.

SOUNDGARDEN reunited in 2010 after a 13-year hiatus, first touring and then writing and recording "King Animal", its first new studio album in 16 years.

The band kicked off a North American tour on May 3 in Atlanta, and was scheduled to wrap up the trek on May 27 at the Rocklahoma festival in Pryor, Oklahoma.

In 2002, Cornell checked himself in to rehab for two months after years of drug and alcohol addictions, forcing his then-band AUDIOSLAVE to cancel what would have been its first tour and leading to Cornell also separating at the time from former SOUNDGARDEN manager and then-wife Susan Silver. He told The Pulse Of Radio a while back what finally led him to check himself into rehab. "I really had to come to the conclusion, the sort of humbling conclusion that, guess what, I'm no different than anybody else, I've got to sort of ask for help — not something I ever did, ever," he said. "And then part two of that is, like, accept it when it comes and, you know, believe what people tell me. And trusting in what I have been told, and then seeing that work."

In a 2015 interview, Cornell weighed in on the controversy of rockers, drugs and who's to blame for their sometimes deadly combination. The singer said he didn't believe that the music industry was responsible for the deaths of rockers Scott Weiland of STONE TEMPLE PILOTS and VELVET REVOLVER, Kurt Cobain of NIRVANA and Layne Staley of ALICE IN CHAINS. "If you go into a 12-step meeting in any city, and you count 75 people, and you ask how many people are musicians, you're gonna get two, and everybody else is gonna be from every walk of life that you can imagine," he said. "The same as Scott Weiland's mother crying, there are mothers crying who have lost their sons who are construction workers, mechanics — literally anything you can think of — and it's happening every day. And the only difference between a musician that's famous and that other kid is that we don't talk about them on the radio. That's kind of it… They're not somebody that is a public personality that's already been talked about for other reasons."

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