Credit: Kimberly AdamisAnn Wilson of Heart has released a cover of the Audioslave song “I Am the Highway” as a tribute to the late Chris Cornell. The tender, acoustic guitar-driven performance is streaming now via Soundcloud.
As a fellow Seattle-based musician, Wilson was close with Cornell, and, as she tells tells Rolling Stone, that connection led to an emotional interaction with Linkin Park‘s Chester Bennington, who took his own life two months after Cornell’s death, on what would have been the Soundgarden and Audioslave singer’s 53rd birthday.
On May 18, 2017, the day Cornell died, both Wilson and Linkin Park were scheduled to perform on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! Before the taping, Bennington asked to speak with Wilson.
“He was really a mess,” Wilson remembers of Bennington. “So anxious and sad and had to go onstage in a minute. I think that Chris’ departure hit [Chester] hard because he recognized the impulse. He had been hit by this news. There was a lot of fear there.”
She further recalls, “I said to him, let’s just breathe here and look in each other’s eyes and go ‘we’re still here right now, let’s just do this.’ A couple of weeks later, he was gone.”
Wilson adds that Cornell and Bennington “seemed to resemble each other.”
“I think they knew each other and they had probably commiserated,” she says. “I wouldn’t say one made the other happen, but Chris’ death obviously affected Chester deeply.”
Wilson’s cover of “I Am the Highway” appears on her upcoming solo album Immortal, which pays tribute to various artists who’ve died in recent years, including Cornell, David Bowie, Tom Petty, The Eagles’ Glenn Frey, Cream‘s Jack Bruce, George Michael and Amy Winehouse. It’ll be released on September 14.
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