{"id":803789,"date":"2020-02-04T08:14:01","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T15:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=947234"},"modified":"2020-02-04T08:14:01","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T15:14:01","slug":"soundgarden-respond-to-lawsuit-from-chris-cornells-widow-claim-ownership-over-final-recordings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/soundgarden-respond-to-lawsuit-from-chris-cornells-widow-claim-ownership-over-final-recordings\/","title":{"rendered":"Soundgarden Respond to Lawsuit From Chris Cornell\u2019s Widow, Claim Ownership Over Final Recordings"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Soundgarden<\/a> denied withholding royalties from Chris Cornell<\/a>\u2019s widow and rebuffed her claim that she is the sole owner of several recordings Cornell worked on before his death in a new court filing.<\/p>\n

The motion, filed Tuesday and obtained by Rolling Stone<\/i>, is a response to a lawsuit Vicky Cornell filed last December<\/a> against her late husband\u2019s former bandmates, Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd, and the band\u2019s business manager, Rit Venerus. Vicky accused the band of withholding royalties from the Cornell family to force her to turn over a handful of recordings made before Cornell\u2019s death<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Per Vicky\u2019s suit, Vicky Cornell claimed Chris made seven recordings at his personal studio in Florida in 2017, and there was no explicit agreement that that they were for Soundgarden, making Cornell the exclusive owner. Vicky claimed that she agreed to share the unreleased recordings with Soundgarden, so long as they used one of Cornell\u2019s \u201ctrusted producers\u201d (revealed in a new court document to be veteran producer Brendan O\u2019 Brien) and kept her informed about a possible album marketing strategy. She then claimed that Soundgarden eventually decided to bring in its own producer and told her that it wasn\u2019t willing to go \u201cthrough any type of approval process,\u201d ostensibly in regards to the marketing strategy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Additionally, Vicky accused the surviving members of Soundgarden of making false statements to the media about who owned the unreleased Cornell recordings, and the reason for the album holdup. She also alleged that Soundgarden was withholding money from her and her family \u201cin an unlawful attempt to strong-arm\u201d her into turning over the unreleased songs.<\/p>\n

In the new filing, Soundgarden claimed that the unreleased recordings stem from writing and recording sessions that date back as far as 2015. The band also rebuffed Vicky\u2019s claim that it\u2019s purposely withholding money from her, with the motion stating that no one in the band is being paid at the moment, and won\u2019t until \u201cthe Partnership, by vote of the Remaining Partners, formally elects to make such a distribution.\u201d The motion also takes umbrage with Vicky\u2019s decision to file her lawsuit in Florida, claiming she has no real connection to the state and that Washington would be a more appropriate jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have possession of our own creative work,\u201d Soundgarden said in a terse statement to Rolling Stone<\/em>. A representative for Vicky Cornell did not immediately return Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2018s request for comment.<\/p>\n

As far as ownership of the seven recordings, the motion notes public interviews<\/a> with Cornell and Thayill that suggest Soundgarden was working on this material as early as 2015. It also details recording sessions over the next two years, up until April 2017, one month before Cornell\u2019s death. The motion claims additional ownership evidence includes \u201cemails between the band members (including Cornell) exchanging audio files and lyrics, file metadata through Dropbox, and other tangible evidence such as full \u2018live\u2019 audio recordings of the band working on and performing the songs at its Seattle studios.\u201d<\/p>\n

Per text exchanges cited in the motion, the band claims Vicky has referred to the unreleased recordings as the \u201cSG files\u201d on various occasions, while it also cites a March 2017 email from her in which she says that Cornell is traveling for the \u201cSG record.\u201d As for her claim that Cornell made the seven recordings at his studio in Florida in 2017, the band states that not only do many of the files \u201csignificantly predate 2017,\u201d but that Cornell recorded much of his material not in Florida, but in Seattle and New York City and while touring.<\/p>\n

This last claim, in particular, plays into the jurisdictional issues Soundgarden raise, with the band claiming that neither they nor Vicky have any legitimate ties to Florida. The motion questions Vicky\u2019s claim that she is a Florida resident, acknowledging that her family may rent a condo in Miami, but saying most evidence suggests that the Cornell family\u2019s primary residence is New York City. Additionally, the band states that \u201cthe overwhelming number of relevant events occurred in Washington,\u201d and that the \u201cDefendants, most witnesses, and pertinent evidence are located in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though less legally consequential than some of the other issues, the Soundgarden motion also attempts to refute Vicky\u2019s claim that the band was \u201cuncaring following Cornell\u2019s death\u201d and includes a detailed breakdown of how the band learned of the singer\u2019s death. Following Soundgarden\u2019s May 17th show in Detroit, everyone except Cornell left for the next city, Columbus, Ohio, while Cornell stayed behind with plans to fly out the next day because he couldn\u2019t sleep on the bus. The band reportedly learned of Cornell\u2019s death after drummer Matt Cameron spotted an \u201cRIP\u201d post on Facebook.<\/p>\n

Knowing they couldn\u2019t go back to Detroit, where there would be hordes of press and police, the band continued to Columbus. There, they \u201corganized a vigil in a conference room at their Columbus hotel, where they were accompanied by their crew, assistants and friends who hugged, wept and attempted to console each other for many hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soundgarden\u2019s Response to Vicky Cornell\u2019s Lawsuit Over Unreleased Chris Cornell Recordings<\/strong><\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soundgarden denied withholding royalties from Chris Cornell\u2019s widow and rebuffed her claim that she is the sole owner of several recordings Cornell worked on before his death in a new court filing. The motion, filed Tuesday and obtained by Rolling Stone, is a response to a lawsuit Vicky Cornell filed last December against her late […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-803789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 20:00:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}