Vicky Cornell, Band's Ex-Manager Hit Back At Soundgarden After Latest Social Media Accusations

There are three things people can count on in this life: death, taxes, and Vicky Cornell feuding with the remaining members of Soundgarden. The legal spat over two-and-a-half years in the making took yet another turn last week as the surviving members accused Chris Cornell‘s widow of locking them out of the band’s official social media accounts. These claims were quickly refuted by Vicky, her lawyer, and a former Soundgarden band manager.

On March 25th, surviving Soundgarden members Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron, Ben Shepherd, and their business manager Rit Venerus filed papers in Washington state U.S. District Court accusing Vicky Cornell of locking them out of the band’s official Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Top Spin, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Tumblr accounts, in addition to the band’s official website. They accused Cornell’s widow of changing the passwords to all of the accounts.

The band asked the judge to order Cornell to give up the passwords, or to effectively disable the accounts and post a message saying, “Soundgarden has temporarily suspended its official social media accounts due to pending litigation.”

Within days of this latest filing, Vicky fired back with her lawyer and the band’s former manager Ron Laffite behind her.

“During my six years working with Chris Cornell and Soundgarden, Chris and Vicky always controlled all of Soundgarden‘s social media accounts, both directly and through their own personal social media representative,” Lafitte said in a statement posted as a Story to the Chris Cornell official Instagram page. “At no time were any other members of Soundgarden involved, and this was true both before and after Chris died. Because of this, Soundgarden‘s attempt to seek an injunction in connection with the social media accounts is surprising to say the least.”

Cornell’s lawyer, Marty Singer, bolstered Laffite’s claims that it was Vicky who has been at the helm of the band’s social media presence since the advent of the platforms.

Ms. Cornell’s forthcoming motion will expose the truth about the Soundgarden‘s supposed social media accounts. Ms. Cornell created the social media accounts; grew the accounts by allowing them to trade on Chris‘ then-existing, popular accounts; devoted her personal time and money in growing these accounts as Soundgarden displayed absolutely no interest in social media (unless it was to promote their solo projects). Ms. Cornell has overseen these accounts for close to a decade. The fact that Soundgarden is unaware of the user-names and passwords for their alleged ‘own’ accounts confirms their utter lack of involvement in creating, growing and maintaining their alleged accounts.

Soundgarden solely wants the social media accounts in order to maliciously defame Ms. Cornell, provoke her online stalkers (as Matt Cameron has done continuously) and to instigate third-parties to harass Ms. Cornell and her minor children.

Moreover, while they now claim a sense of urgency, Soundgarden‘s claim are a stale repacking of the claims that they filed in the Florida court in May of 2020.

Finally, Vicky responded with a statement of her own posted as a Story to her personal Instagram account. In it, she takes particular offense at Soundgarden’s newfound objection to the use of the hashtag No One Sings Like You Anymore (taken from the lyrics to “Black Hole Sun” and also the title of a recently-released Chris Cornell cover album).

Sadly the other three Soundgarden members now object to a celebration of Chris‘ voice even as they take legal action to demand the use of his vocals.

In their latest attacks they claim to be against the “no one sings like you anymore” hashtag — even though that was taken from Chris‘ lyrics from “Black Hole Sun” that was created and used by fans all over the world as a mark of respect and in tribute to him since the day after he died.

My children and I are so grateful to the fans for the love and respect you have all shown to him and thereby us since that tragic night

This is only the latest development in the ongoing saga of Vicky Cornell and Chris’ estate versus the remaining Soundgarden members. It all began back in December 2019 when the late musician’s widow sued the surviving members of the band for withholding royalties. At the heart of the suit, however, lay seven unreleased recordings made by Cornell prior to his death by suicide in 2017. His wife claims that they were part of an unfinished solo project, while his bandmates maintain that they were part of a Soundgarden album. Vicky Cornell has gone on to allege that members of the band have attempted to strongarm her into handing over the recordings by withholding royalties and turning Soundgarden’s rabid fanbase against her with misleading or outright false public statements.

The latest development in the saga came in February when Vicky requested that a judge make an independent valuation of Soundgarden’s assets. According to Vicky and her attorney, the band had tried to buy her out of Chris’ share of the band’s master recordings for a measly $278,000, an amount she felt abysmally low considering she made more than that in 2018 simply off the band’s royalties.

Things had been quiet prior to that since May 2020 when members of the band filed a countersuit against Vicky Cornell for misuse of funds raised from the “I Am The Highway: A Tribute To Chris Cornell” benefit concert. The band alleges that the concert raised millions of dollars for The Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation, but that the “recipient(s) of the revenue…have not been identified.” Overall, Soundgarden accuses Vicky Cornell and the Chris Cornell estate of “fraudulent inducement” for using proceeds from that benefit for “personal purposes for herself and her family.”

[H/T Consequence of Sound]