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“Jeff Ament said, ‘Could you imagine tuning the guitar to all Es? Wouldn't that be crazy? That'd be dumb’”: Kim Thayil on the time Chris Cornell tuned all his guitar strings to E – and the Soundgarden song that came from it
Thayil and Cornell's penchant for alternate tunings is no secret, and Soundgarden’s repertoire continuously pushed the envelope of what tunings are even possible
Soundgarden guitarists Kim Thayil and Chris Cornell's preference for tunings that go beyond drop D is no secret. Indeed, alternate tunings became a significant part of the band's sound – so much so that they influenced the rest of the Seattle scene, including Nirvana and Alice in Chains.
One such tuning was EEBBBE – used in My Wave and The Day I Tried to Live (from 1994's Superunknown) – as well as the notorious EEEEEE (yes, that's six Es) on Mind Riot (from 1991's Badmotorfinger).
“Chris came up with that. I think that was from a conversation he had with [Pearl Jam’s] Jeff Ament, possibly during the Temple of the Dog period,” Thayil told Guitar World in a 2021 interview. “I think Jeff jokingly said, ‘Could you imagine tuning the guitar to all Es? Wouldn't that be crazy? That'd be dumb.’
“And Chris thought, ‘What would happen if you did that?’ So he tried it and wrote a song with that. It's hilarious in that one case, how a musician might think it’d be a crazy and goofy thing to do, but a member of Soundgarden thinks, ‘Hell yeah, let's do that.’ Of course, Chris could get a song out of a weird tuning like that.”
Another artist who decided to tune all his guitar strings to the same pitch? Lou Reed – whose pre-Velvet Underground project, the Primitives (alongside future Velvet member John Cale) releasedThe Ostrichas a parody of dance crazes like The Twist.
In typical Reed fashion, he pushed the envelope by opting for DDDDDD, a curious tuning which, for obvious reasons, has since been dubbed “Ostrich tuning.”
Janelle is a staff writer at GuitarWorld.com. After a long stint in classical music, Janelle discovered the joys of playing guitar in dingy venues at the age of 13 and has never looked back. Janelle has written extensively about the intersection of music and technology and how it is shaping the future of the music industry, and has a special interest in shining a spotlight on traditionally underrepresented artists and global guitar sounds. She also had the pleasure of interviewing Melissa Auf der Maur, Yvette Young, Danielle Haim, Fanny, and Karan Katiyar from Bloodywood, among others. When she's not writing, you'll find her creating layers of delicious audio lasagna with her Anglo-Maltese, art-rock band ĠENN.
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