History of Music #2 - You Know My Name

Hello,

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a party where a university band was performing. The party was themed around the James Bond "Skyfall", and was thus called "SkyBall". In reference to the Daniel Craig saga, the band played "You Know My Name" by Chris Cornell, the theme song for Casino Royale, as their opening song. I didn't know the song very well, it only rang a bell because I had seen Casino Royale. I've been listening to it about 10 times a day ever since, because I can't get enough of that mobility it gives me.

Chris Cornell looks like your average alternative rock singer of some crusty 2000s band on this picture. But he has the voice of the 1980s hard rock bands. Cornell was called by Sony Picture's President of Music, Lia Vollack, to compose the main theme for the movie with the score composer David Arnold. Surprised by the offer, being an American composing for a movie of considerable British influence, he thought he'd be popping a secondary song out of his brain, but certainly not THE big opening theme.

Cornell was invited to visualise some key scences of the movie in Prague, where he noticed that there was a lot of emphasis being made on Craig's Bond's emotional depth compared to Cornell's favourite James Bond - Sean Connery. Cornell wrote the lyrics while he stayed in Paris, and Arnold composed the orchestration in London.

He had some trouble finding inspiration at first, but he started relating to the loneliness that the James Bond character perspired with from what he saw in the extracts from the Prague preview. On top of that, the title he thought of, "You Know My Name", portrayed the fact that we already know James Bond, and that he's a character trapped in the life of an assassin and that we may only know him for that. When they met again, each had written the second half of the other's song. Cornell's lyrics fit Arnold's music just fine, and it was a wrap.

Chris Cornell was a very tormented man. He committed suicide in the night of may 17th to May 18th, 2017, at a relatively young 53 years old, and with a very good voice for himself. He was very close friends with Chester Bennington, the singer of Linkin Park. It's interesting to see that these two were so close knowing that their styles were not that similar - Linkin Park was into that electro-rock stuff while Cornell was more of an old-style rock dude. Yet, the both had a "screamy" way of singing, pushing at the top of their chests, distorting their faces into painful expressions. Maybe they bonded over their respective issues.

Chris Cornell was born on July 20th, 1964. July 20th 2017 was the night Chester committed suicide. Chester committing suicide on the night of Chris' birthday can be interpreted as a coincidence or perhaps as a symbol of how much the two musicians relied on one another to face their depression.

I could choose a cheesy image to shed a tear on the death of these two friends, but I'd rather post a picture of them both tightening their throats as hard as they can, in the midst of what seems to be an intense scream session. But that's what we liked about them.

Here is a link to the song, enjoy :)