At the end of 2019, Chris Cornell’s widow Vicky filed a lawsuit against the surviving members of Soundgarden over royalty payments and ownership rights to seven unreleased songs by the late frontman. Now, the band is countersuing Vicky Cornell to regain control of the tracks.
The motion, which was filed on Tuesday, sees Soundgarden members Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron, and Ben Shepherd arguing that Vicky Cornell has no claims to the seven tracks. While Vicky claims the songs were solely authored by her late husband in 2017 at his very own recording studio, the band claims that the material stems from both recording sessions and collaborative writing that date back farther than a decade.
Soundgarden has countersued Vicky Cornell over ownership of final Chris Cornell recordings: https://t.co/itfhT4MOS4 #Soundgarden pic.twitter.com/R9re6XtSmB
— Consequence of Sound (@consequence) February 4, 2020
The band goes on to detail that five of the songs were cowritten by other Soundgarden members, and have been works in process from as far back as 2011. They even claim that a lot of Cornell’s writing and recording happened in Seattle and on tour.
Soundgarden even cite several emails and texts from Vicky Cornell that sees her calling the recordings the “SG files,” and they highlight both press statements and interviews where frontman Chris Cornell talks about working on new material specifically with Soundgarden.
“In part, [the band] wanted to confirm the belief that there is sufficient recorded material… for a last Soundgarden studio album – a project that the surviving band members believe they owe to Cornell, the band’s legacy, and fans,” Soundgarden’s lawsuit details. Vicky is currently in possession of the “only existing multi-track versions,” which were stored on Chris’ laptop when he passed.
Additionally, Soundgarden is hoping to regain control of their website and social media profiles.