3 Rockers From the 1990s Who Ended up Joining Famous Bands

Music can be a small world. Sometimes you just want to be with your friends. Where there might be a lucrative solo career staring you in the face, sometimes it’s easy to make the choice to play in a band with like-minded peers.

Here below, we wanted to highlight three artists who did just that, who eschewed the solo limelight for group projects. Indeed, these are three rockers from the 1990s who ended up joining famous bands.

Chris Cornell

Chris Cornell rose to fame in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the grunge group Soundgarden. Known for songs like “Black Hole Sun” and “Fell on Black Days”, the group was a mainstay on the radio and MTV. But when they broke up in the late 1990s, Cornell went his own way, releasing solo records (dropping his first in 1999). But not even his own solo project could contain the artist’s massive voice. In 2002, Cornell released the debut album with his then-new band, Audioslave. As if his legacy wasn’t already cemented, that band was the cherry on the Cornell career sundae.

Scott Weiland

Fans of hard rock in the 1990s know the name Scott Weiland. During the decade, his group Stone Temple Pilots released hit records, including the smash 1994 offering, Purple, which included tracks like “Vasoline” and “Interstate Love Song”. But later in his career, Weiland went solo, dropping his debut LP, 12 Bar Blues, in 1998. Still unsatisfied, the singer joined the supergroup Velvet Revolver, which also included big names like Duff McKagan. That band released their debut LP, Contraband, in 2004.

Mark Lanegan

During his life, singer Mark Lanegan was a part of a number of musical projects. He rose to fame in the 1990s as part of the grunge group Screaming Trees. As a solo artist, he released a dozen albums, including his first, The Winding Sheet, in 1990. But even when he was done with Screaming Trees, Lanegan wasn’t done with bands. He also played in outfits like the grunge supergroup Mad Season, which released its sole LP in 1995, and the rock project Queens Of The Stone Age, which dropped four albums with the gravely-voiced frontman from 2000 to 2013.

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