When Bruce Dickinson joined Iron Maiden in the early 1980s and the band released albums such as The Number of the Beast (1982), Piece of Mind (1983), and Powerslave (1984), they became one of the biggest Heavy Metal acts in the world.
Dickinson’s vocal range, which earned him the nickname ‘Air Raid Siren,’ took the band’s performances to another level. Since then, he has become a reference point for countless vocalists who followed. During his career, Dickinson gave his opinion on other artists and bands, including the late Chris Cornell and Soundgarden.
What is Bruce Dickinson’s opinion on Soundgarden and Chris Cornell
“I was a massive Chris Cornell and Soundgarden fan — massive. (…) Soundgarden, to me, they were like a modern-day Led Zeppelin, updated and his voice was just the finest voice of his generation,” Bruce Dickinson said in an interview with Loudwire in 2025. Although he liked Soundgarden, one of his favorite Cornell performances was when the late musician recorded the theme of “007 – Casino Royale” (2006) as he told Songfacts in 2024.
“(Modern day) singers overall (that I admire), one who is unfortunately no longer with us, Chris Cornell, was one of the finest voices I’ve ever heard of any generation. And sadly, he’s gone. The guy from Angra (André Matos), he’s also gone. So, all of these guys have gone, and they had the ability to really move people. They could yell and scream like the best, but they had the ability to move people with their voices.”
“One of my favorite performances of Chris Cornell, to show just how damn good he was, was doing the James Bond Theme (“You Know My Name”). That’s a great vocal performance. And funny enough, he shares that honor of great vocal performances with Tom Jones, who did “Thunderball. (I didn’t have the chance to meet him) in any meaningful sense, no. Not sit down and have a nice chat with him.”
“I mean obviously, Ronnie Dio… there must be something wrong with me that all the singers that I love unfortunately are not on the planet anymore. (…) The thing about Chris, for me, was that he had a greater emotional range than Ronnie, if I’m honest. (…) Chris Cornell was taken away from us before he’d even begun to give his best, I think. Very sad,” Bruce Dickinson said.
Bruce Dickinson said Chris Cornell could outsing any Heavy Metal vocalist
Although Chris Cornell was not considered a Heavy Metal singer, his voice was so powerful that in Bruce’s opinion he could outsing any Metal vocalist. He said that in an interview with Folhateen, the teenager segment of the Brazilian newspaper Folha De São Paulo back in 1997. “The best voice I’ve heard in rock is Chris Cornell. I don’t think he’s going to sing hard rock anymore. But he can beat any metal vocalist,” he said.
Soundgarden even inspired his 1996 album “Skunkworks”, which was quite different from everything Dickinson had done in his career until then, with a grunge inspired sound. As he told Wellbeing Network when promoting the album at the time, Soundgarden was an inspiration. “There’s a couple of tracks that we don’t have vocals on, that we recorded with Jack. One of which we won’t use cause the backing track sucks.”
He continued:
“The other one sounds really cool. It’s basically ‘Headswitch’ but with the riff turned round and slowed down. So it’s virtually a half speed version of ‘Headswitch’, really heavy. It sounds great. The working title for “Headswitch” was ‘Fastgarden’, cause it’s a very Soundgarden inspired riff. So we had ‘Fastgarden’ and ‘Slowgarden’. And ‘Slowgarden’ is still in the can. I haven’t done any vocals on it,” Bruce Dickinson said.
Cornell first achieved fame as the frontman of Soundgarden, band formed in Seattle, Washington in 1984. During their career the band released six praised studio albums, the final one being “King Animal” (2012). Cornell was also the vocalist of the supergroups Temple of the Dog and Audioslave, which was formed with the members of Rage Against the Machine. As a solo artist he released three studio records, the final one, “Higher Truth”, in 2015.
During his career the musician was nominated for 18 Grammy Awards and won three. In 2025 he finally becomes part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Soundgarden. Cornell was only six years younger than Bruce, the musician tragically died in 2017 at the age of 52.