GRIEF HURTS –
March 24, 2026 – Faced with grieving the tragic death of a close friend and bandmate a few years after losing her father, Chris Cornell, mental-health advocate Lily Cornell Silver explains how she turned to inpatient therapy to face her fears.
Lily Cornell Silver, daughter of the late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, grew up feeling shy about making her own music. “There’s such a looming shadow that it felt like pressure I’d never be able to live up to,” she says. “It felt really sacred.” But in the fall of 2021, while attending college in Southern California, Silver’s friends Luis Verdin and Alex Albrecht talked her into forming a band. This time, after years of making her own music privately, she considered it. “It was my first time, to use a therapy term, to do ‘opposite action,’” Silver says. “Even though all these feelings inside are telling me I’m not good enough to do it, I know it makes me happy, so I’m going to do it anyway.”
The trio had the same drummer in mind: Graham Derzon-Supplee, who had Seattle-area roots like Silver. They called themselves Josie on the Rocks and swiftly started writing songs and playing small gigs. For Silver, who was struggling with her mental health post-Covid and still grieving her father’s death, the band gave her a sense of purpose. “It really saved me,” she says. “Having that to do every day took me out of my head and out of my own world.”
