Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell spoke on countless occasions about how The Beatles were the first band to change his life. "Even at age nine," he once said, "they had a big impression on me, and later on my writing, without me realising it."
"That had to do with how young I was, and getting into their whole catalog at the same time," Cornell added in a 2011 interview with CTATL.com. "I had stolen a stack of Beatles vinyl that covered their whole career. Two of the records were those ‘best of’ era compilations - those double record sets where one was red and one was blue. I listened to it all but I gravitated toward the later stuff. Even though I was 9 years old, and had no way of knowing, it was influential in every way as a songwriter and as a singer."
That same year, Cornell appeared on the Howard Stern show and declared that John Lennon was probably his favourite songwriter ever.
