Photo: Ethan Miller/ Getty

Grunge icon Chris Cornell died Wednesday night in Detroit at the age of 52. Cornell founded Soundgarden in the ‘80s and helped the Seattle grunge scene take over American rock music over the next decade. He was as essential as anyone in kicking off that movement, and remained active long after Soundgarden broke up the first time, in both his solo career and with Audioslave. As Rob Harvilla put it at The Ringer, “He would’ve been a rock star no matter where he’d been born, or when.”




Cornell was also a huge Seattle Supersonics fan. This morning, For The Win reminded me of one of his funnier concert moments, which came at a 2011 show at the Gorge Amphitheatre in central Washington. Cornell spotted a fan in a Kevin Durant jersey and spontaneously went off. This took place three years after the Sonics packed up and left Seattle for Oklahoma City. The moment is but a minuscule blip in Cornell’s legacy, but he was a Seattle patriot through and through, and the venom he had for Clay Bennett’s crew of hustlers was incredible.

[For The Win]