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Total F*cking Godhead: The Biography of Chris Cornell Paperback – 12 December 2020
Corbin Reiff (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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"The new Chris Cornell biography is the book his legacy deserves." —Kerrang!
"Reiff unearths plenty of unexpected details and novel anecdotes…but the book is perhaps most valuable for the way it rounds out and humanizes this man who managed to keep so many of his cards close to the vest despite decades in the spotlight." —Variety
“Total F*cking Godhead brings Chris Cornell, the voice of a generation, alive on the page. Impressively researched and compulsively readable, Godhead pulls no punches in recounting Cornell’s remarkable life and prolific career. It’s an inspired chronicle of an impassioned soul. Read it!” —Greg Renoff, author of Van Halen Rising
With input from those who knew and worked with him—together with his own words—Total F*cking Godhead recounts the rise of Chris Cornell and his immortal 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.
“From his days as a struggling Seattle musician at the forefront of the grunge scene to becoming a global icon, Total F*cking Godhead thoroughly chronicles the life story and prolific output of one of the greatest and most influential singers of all time. You will discover the man and his music all over again.” —David de Sola, author of Alice in Chains: The Untold Story
Seattle resident and rock writer Corbin Reiff also examines Cornell’s dynamic solo career as well as his time in Audioslave. He delves into his hard-fought battle with addiction, and the supercharged reunion with the band that made him famous before everything came to a shocking end.
“For those of us still trying to sort out the tragedy of Chris Cornell's death comes this loving look back at the man's life and music. I wrote my own book about grunge, and I still learned a lot from this excellent biography." —Mark Yarm, author of Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication date12 December 2020
- Dimensions15.24 x 2.21 x 22.86 cm
- ISBN-101642939781
- ISBN-13978-1642939781
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Product details
- Publisher : Post Hill Press (12 December 2020)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1642939781
- ISBN-13 : 978-1642939781
- Dimensions : 15.24 x 2.21 x 22.86 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 159,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 3,279 in Biographies of Actors & Entertainers
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Corbin Reiff is the author of Lighters In The Sky: The Greatest Concert Of All-Time 1960-2016. He is currently the Deputy Music Editor at UPROXX and has contributed to some of the biggest publications around including, Rolling Stone, Spin, The Washington Post, Pitchfork, Complex, Guitar World, and The A.V. Club to name a few. He lives in Chicago with his wife Jenna and his two dogs Page and Hendrix.
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If you're an early Chris Cornell Soundgarden person, defo the book for you and you can tell Reef writes with passion, regret, dismay and portrays genuine grief during sections regarding his own perspective on what happened. If you're an Audioslave, Songbook tour kinda person, you'll read it but it'll be a bit of a slog.
As I mentioned, found it a real effort the first half of the book for the most part. There was some good stuff in the first half don't get me wrong but it was quite slow until the point when Soundgarden was coming to it's end. Nonetheless, feels like a must buy for any fan of Chris Cornell. The less is more word choice/ count used to describe how it ended for Chris was also quite powerful too.


Chris Cornell was one of the most creatively charged and multi-talented musicians to come out of the late 80's and early 90's modern music scene. He almost single handedly drove the musical entity that was Soundgarden. The rest of the band are all excellent musicians in their own right, but it was Cornell who was at the creative core of the band, and whose songwriting and performing skills catapulted them above the rest of the Seattle music scene.
This book does little to delve into the life events that fueled his ascendancy to musical genius, nor provides insights into how his personality was shaped by the people and circumstances he encountered in his youth. It provides almost no in-depth details on his personal relationships with the rest of Soundgarden or Audioslave, members of the musical community or his manager/first wife. There was also no exploration of the circumstances behind the controversy that erupted between his widow and the remaining members of Soundgarden after his death.
Unfortunately it will probably be some time before a detailed, introspective biography of Chris Cornell appears, most likely by someone within his inner circle who decides to come forward and provide the world with a more personal and insightful look into this amazing and complex man's life, and tragic death.


Worst of all are the spelling mistakes throughout the book. I seems nobody bothered to proof read this- from uses of "too instead of "to" to downright ridiculous mispellings of commonly used words, it made it hard for me to take this book seriously at all if no one involved in it's making did.
Save your money and read the first 10 articles that pop up on google when you search "Chris Cornell interview".