When Chris Cornell took his life at age 52 in May 2017, the music world mourned the death of the Seattle music pioneer and frontman of Soundgarden, which Cornell co-formed with guitarist Kim Thayil and bassist Hiro Yamamoto in 1984.

The tragedy was all the more trenchant since Soundgarden were on tour and working on the follow-up to their 2012 comeback album, King Animal.

“Strange is probably the best way to describe how I felt after Chris passed,” writes guitarist Kim Thayil in his new autobiography, A Screaming Life: Into the Superunknown with Soundgarden and Beyond. “Everything turned dark when the band ended so suddenly, taking with it a creative partnership I hadn’t fully understood until it was gone.

“Losing that left me in a constant, grim melancholy. It was a despondency so deep, it felt almost sublime. I wasn’t just feeling it – I was watching myself feel it.”

Thayil processed Cornell’s death in private and avoided the press for 18 months. When he started talking to promote an MC5 50th Anniversary tour (for which he was playing guitar), he revealed that Soundgarden had started working on the follow-up to King Animal before Cornell died, and that there were unreleased multi-track demos that featured Cornell’s vocals.

Soon after, the band started working on a new album, including a song Thayil wrote tentatively called X-Mas, which he says might have been the last thing Cornell ever recorded.

“I was thrilled, but it was also bittersweet,” Thayil writes. “Hearing Chris’s voice again, singing things I’d never heard before, was both joyful and emotional. It was like he was speaking to me from the past, reminding me of our work together. There was another surprise, too – an unheard alternate version of a song we had previously worked on, musically distinct from what he’d shared with us earlier. It was amazing.”

To plug the book, Thayil sat down with Guitar World and talked about the fertile Seattle music scene, how he altered his approach to guitar throughout the band’s career, his unconventional leads, the sources of tension that led to Soundgarden’s breakup in 1997, and the status of the band’s swan song.

You were categorized as a metal band before “grunge” became part of the vernacular. Did you feel like a fish out of water?

Yeah, because we were navigating popular culture and rock themes, but we were giving them context in a way that didn’t feel like metal. There were political and social aspects to our music that seemed closely aligned with underground punk rock.

After Nirvana’s Nevermind topped the charts, most major labels eliminated their metal departments, dumped their hair bands, and entered a mad dash to sign any loud alternative groups that might belong in the same universe as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, or Alice in Chains.

To be clear, they weren’t dropping Metallica or Megadeth. They were dropping these glam metal bands, but some of them were really damn good and wrote cool songs. It was unfortunate that record companies thought they had to stop promoting them and drop them. It’s also unfortunate that the record labels were motivated by caprice and fads.

What kind of guitar tone were you after when you started out?

Everybody talks about guitar tone now, but it wasn’t much of a topic then. We were just going with a power chord sound. I wanted to be loud. Tone wasn’t an objective.

What was your criteria for the guitars you played in the studio and on tour?

I just had to have a guitar that felt comfortable and did what I wanted. It’s like, ‘I want to play songs like the Ramones, and I want to play songs like Black Sabbath. Can this guitar do that? It can. Okay, cool.’ Being visceral was important to me. I wanted a guitar that felt responsive and a sound that leaped from the amp when I played.

The way I approached the instrument always seemed more important than what actually came out. If I wanted to play a solo that was slashing and manic, I beat up the guitar like I’m filled with that mania.

On the song Hunted Down, on Screaming Life, I wanted to be loose, wild, and feel this careening sound. On other songs, I’d want a more mellow, warm, bluesy sound, so I’d hang onto the notes and play triplets I learned from listening to Rush and Kiss.

Did you have a go-to guitar in Soundgarden?

The Guild S-100 was very versatile. I use a lot of other guitars – Gibsons, Fenders, and Gretschs – but that Guild was a big part of the Soundgarden sound, especially for noise.

You often played a sturdy meat-and-potatoes riff and then countered it with an atonal, noisy lick or an interesting effect.

I didn’t want to follow any particular scales, so I played whatever sounded right to me, whether it was crazy or kind of trippy. The pickups on that guitar were somewhat microphonic, so I could blow on the strings and it would feed back. I did that at the beginning of Flower.

But it wasn’t a shrill, out-of-control noise. It was a weird hum. And the way I set my amps and used a chorus pedal gave me feedback that grew slowly and swirled around in a psychedelic way.

Can you trace your arc of evolution as a guitarist?

A lot of it was informed by whatever I was listening to. When I was young, I liked Kiss, Black Sabbath, and Aerosmith, so I learned pentatonic scales. But I didn’t like them. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s only five notes. What about the other two?’

Over time, my playing became a mish-mash of everything I loved, including MC5, Gang of Four, the no-wave compilation No New York, Ramones, Black Sabbath, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, Frank Zappa, and Pere Ubu.

Dropped tunings figured largely into your songs as well as those of Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and even Pearl Jam. When did you discover the technique?

I was in my young twenties and hanging out with Buzz Osborne from the Melvins. We started talking about Black Sabbath, and Buzz goes, “You know they did this thing called drop D.”

We said, “What’s that?” And Buzz says, “You tune the E string down to D, and it sounds heavier.” When I got home, I grabbed my guitar, tuned it down, and immediately realized it was much easier to play chords, so I could play faster.

What was the first song you wrote in drop D?

Nothing to Say. I showed it to everyone at practice and explained the drop D sound and they loved it. The next song I did in drop D was Flower, and then Chris wrote Beyond the Wheel.

When [bassist] Ben [Shepherd] joined us, he brought in other tunings, and [drummer] Matt [Cameron] does a drop D in G, which we called “digga digga.”

He wrote Birth Ritual with that. It was cool because we were all songwriters and always tried to turn each other on to new stuff and impress each other. Suddenly, we didn’t feel limited by the intervals in which we tuned the guitar. We could do whatever we wanted.

Chris started out as a drummer and didn’t take the stage with his guitar until after 1989. Did having him onstage change the way you played?

Yeah, and at first I was resistant to it. If I wanted to solo on songs like Incessant Mace or Beyond the Wheel, having just the bass and drums behind me freed me up. But if Chris was playing chords, it framed the parameters in which I could play, which felt limiting.

Also, I liked playing riffs on my bridge pickup and solos on my neck pickup. I liked the warm sound of that, which is the opposite of what most players do. When Chris was also playing guitar, I couldn’t cut through, so I had to move to the bridge pickup.

Was that frustrating?

It was annoying, and he didn’t know it at the time, but when he switched from a Les Paul with humbuckers to a Fender Stratocaster or Telecaster, I had to adjust my playing again because his single-coil pickups were brighter than the Les Paul pickups. That’s when I started using the wah-wah.

In addition to cutting through the mix, the wah pedal added a psychedelic splash to the songs.

It was a good addition to the sound. I wouldn’t do a regular wah-wah sweep because that’s been done to death. I wanted to be noisy, so I’d kick on the distortion and step on the wah-wah. It was screechy and screamy, so now I’ve got this weird feedback and noise, and I can do some slashing stuff.

Did you get an equipment upgrade when you signed with A&M for Loud Love?

We got an endorsement deal with Peavey, and they gave us a bunch of cabinets and amps, which built up our stage gear for tour. A few years after that, we did a deal with Mesa/Boogie. But each time we did a new deal, I’d get new heads and have to learn about their different features.

The Mesa/Boogie Rectifier had settings for “modern,” “classic,” and “standard.” Some were bright and percussive, which would be great if you're playing like Metallica, but I had to scramble to set everything to “standard” or “classic” and try to make the amp sound warmer and more like an old Fender Tweed.

Badmotorfinger (1991) was more musically complex than Louder Than Love, yet Outshined, Rusty Cage and Jesus Christ Pose were some of your biggest hits.

Chris was brilliant at taking what might seem like conventional formats and breaking them up in odd ways. Outshined is mostly in 7/4, but it was built around a great riff and had a memorable vocal line. And Rusty Cage was in drop B.

The detuned string is a little looser, so it has a slightly different sound and little overtones. It sounded heavy and incredible. So, we kept going with that. On Superunknown, The Day I Tried to Live is built on descending half steps, and it’s in 7/4. And Spoonman switches between 7/4 and 4/4.

Was becoming a multi-platinum band a double-edged sword?

No, because being famous was never a goal, and we could always sleep at night knowing our songs were still weird. But being in the position we were in was definitely strange, and you don’t know what it’s going to be like until you’re there.

You described the last album you did before your breakup, 1996’s Down on the Upside, as somewhat similar to the Beatles’ White Album, for which band members came to the table with finished songs that were recorded without much collaboration.

We were always coming in with our own ideas, but when we did that album, some people wanted their songs to sound just like their demos. It was like, “Well, we’re not making four solo albums here, we’re making a Soundgarden record.”

It bothered me a little because I write with Chris and [bassist] Ben [Shepherd] in mind, and I thought they should write with me in mind. That wasn’t happening – partly because of success and partly because of arrogance.

Was Down on the Upside a misstep?

When you’ve got a number of cooks in the kitchen, there’s always going to be a little friction. But I love the album. Every song on the record is there because the band wanted to learn it and perform it.

Were tensions mounting in the band before Ben stormed offstage during a show in Honolulu in 1997?

There were frustrations, but we were still moving forward. There have always been times when one of us might have a bad gig. We all just thought, ‘Okay, now we’ll get back on track and do the next show.’

Some have viewed that moment as the beginning of the end.

The narrative that’s out there is incorrect. It was just a fucked-up show, and it happened to be the last show of the tour. We all thought we’d wait until the next tour and everything would be fine. Then, months later, Chris decided to quit the band.

Is there a general misconception about Soundgarden among people who only know you for Spoonman and Black Hole Sun?

Thematically, Soundgarden dealt with pretty big things. We didn't write about parties or cars, and we didn't write he said/she said love songs. They were slightly grander and more psychedelic. They were about identity and orienting oneself in a creative, spiritual, and social world.

You had a tremendous comeback with your reunion tour in 2011 and the studio album that followed, King Animal, in 2012. As you’ve documented in your book, Soundgarden were firing on all cylinders when Chris took his own life on May 18, 2017.

In 2023, Chris’ widow agreed to give you the vocal tracks he recorded between 2015 and 2017 for songs you were all working on. Matt Cameron has said you’ve already got eight songs for a new album. Is it difficult to work with recordings Chris made before he died?

It’s emotionally draining and there are things about it that are sad and melancholic. But at the same time, it’s exciting to finish the work that we started with Chris. It’s a tribute to Soundgarden and a tribute to Chris. To not do this would be a great disservice to everyone, including the fans who knew we were in a writing cycle while we were touring.

Will fans recognize the album as Soundgarden?

I made an aphorism earlier about having too many cooks in the kitchen. Well, now we have one less. But we have these recordings Chris is on, and we all have a strong understanding of Chris’ identity within the band, so we are going to honor that completely, even though Chris isn’t there to throw in his two cents. So, yes, it will definitely sound like Soundgarden and I’m going to sound like me.

Do you have a release date in mind?

It’s too early to say. We’re not making this with any set deadline, and we all have other things we’re doing, so we’re fitting it into our schedules when we can. The whole process is a little sideways and backward. We’re not starting from scratch, we’re rebuilding. It’s forensic.

We’re taking things apart and seeing what we’ve got in there and what we need to add to flesh everything out. And we’re planning to take our time with it.

Has age brought you wisdom or inner peace?

Yeah, and with wisdom can come things like patience. But there was never any real major internal conflict. That wouldn’t have worked. We wouldn’t have made the records we did over a long period if it was no fun.

We probably wouldn’t have even stuck it out through [1987’s] Screaming Life. We did something untraditional because it was fun, not because it was lucrative.

• A Screaming Life is out now via William Morrow.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

In Guitar World’s exclusive excerpt from Kim Thayil’s memoir A Screaming Life: Into the Superunknown with Soundgarden and Beyond, the guitarist discusses the tensions that surrounded the making of 1994 masterpiece Superunknown – and admits they’d been warned about what might happen…

Alive in the Superunknown

When I first heard Chris’s demo of Black Hole Sun, I didn’t like it. Well, I recognized it as a good song, just not a Soundgarden song. If it had been written within our first six or seven years, it might never have made it to a record, because it wasn’t the kind of song that would’ve been adopted and debuted live.

We collectively would’ve said, Oh, this is kind of a cool song, but I just can’t imagine plugging in the amp and whipping it out at the Ditto Tavern or at the Rainbow. It was not a song we would have riffed on or come up with in a rehearsal. So it likely would’ve been shelved.

I knew Black Hole Sun had potential, but it wasn’t in line with the band we had been. We were a band that wrote songs together, jammed and communicated with each other onstage, presenting music that resonated with the audience.

Black Hole Sun felt more like something Chris created alone with his tape deck. Though he understood he had to write something we would all like, it didn’t align with our live, jam-heavy roots. It was more assembled and crafted, which was becoming the trend for much of our new material, including what we wrote for Badmotorfinger.

Chris was doing a large part of the songwriting, but he was making decisions as a songwriter and engineer, more so than as a musician. He was writing more for the studio than the stage, and once the record was out, we’d be tasked with figuring out how to make them work onstage.

It was on one hand liberating in that it allowed us to expand the spectrum of material we could create and the songs that we were writing. So our body of work could move into areas our previous approach never touched on.

But it was also inhibiting in that it took our musicianship, which was both our relationship to our instruments and our relationship with each other in real time, and kind of put us in a small room (a studio) with the parameters already defined.

Though I eventually embraced Black Hole Sun as a great song, Chris understood that some of his ideas would be rejected, and thankfully, it didn’t discourage him. We all had sensitivities to rejection. If we put effort into something we believed in, it could hurt when the band didn’t like it. For me, it was tough to bring a song to the table only to hear it wasn’t liked, though we’d all faced that.

Chris, though prolific, learned not to take criticism personally and didn’t second-guess himself. He took risks without worrying about the band’s judgment or how the audience would react. If the band didn’t like it, fine – there were other songs. If they did, even better, because our best work would be what we all liked, and that’s what the audience would connect with.

When we went to record our follow-up to Badmotorfinger in 1993, Chris found a like-minded partner in producer Michael Beinhorn. After working with Terry Date on our previous albums, we wanted a change. Michael had worked with bands we respected (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soul Asylum, and some Seattle bands like Hammerbox and Love Battery), so we felt he’d understand our sound and wouldn’t radically alter our songs.

We liked the records he made. As always, we wanted someone who could capture good sounds and offer fresh ears – we didn’t need input on songwriting or arrangements, since we’d already rehearsed and preproduced most of the material. What we didn’t realize was that Michael’s approach was much more hands-on, using the studio itself as an instrument, much like Chris, crafting songs in the studio.

To a person, however, Michael’s approach – his Beinhorn-isms, that we eventually butted heads over – seemed to ultimately alienate all four of us. I can’t say that we weren’t warned, though. When word got out he was producing our next record, musician friends called us up and said, Hey, man, you might want to think twice about hiring this guy. In our arrogance, we thought, No, we know what we’re doing. We’re pretty strong-willed and assertive, and no-one’s gonna fuck with us. But it felt like to me that he did.

Michael seemed to operate under the notion that great art comes out of conflict and tension, and I often felt that he fomented this in various ways, by creating friction and conflict within the band and with him.

He would complain about the things I did and the way I did them, and he’d do the same with the rest of the band. He was also bad at eye contact. He’d chew on a straw and kind of look away while he was talking to you, which gave me the indication that he was bullshitting a lot.

Even the way he worked seemed inefficient and silly. It’s like, if you want to get to Vancouver, BC, from Seattle, you can just drive straight up Interstate 5 and you’re there. Or, you could drive east on Interstate 90 to Detroit, cross the border to Canada, drive the Trans-Canada Highway west, and end up in Vancouver, but that would be a circuitous, expensive, and time-consuming route.

I felt that Michael always took the circuitous, expensive, time-consuming route. It seemed like there was a way he felt comfortable doing things, and it didn’t jibe with the way that we wanted to do things. It was very difficult and contentious, and felt a little bit overdone and at times nitpicky. Every member of Soundgarden experienced it.

Matt turned up at the studio one day, and Michael had an excessive number of microphones set up on his relatively modest kit. It was outrageous. There were so many mics that they were impeding Matt’s access to his drums. He goes, “What the fuck is all this shit?” as he was trying to step over all the mic stands to get to his fucking drum throne.

I’ve never seen Matt that angry. He started walking around the drum kit pushing the extra mics out of his way. We ended up removing half the mics Michael put on Matt’s set, leaving just one for each drum.

Michael certainly understood things about music, but it was from the perspective of a keyboardist. He seemed oblivious as to the interests or needs of a guitarist, or at least to mine. Michael could work with Chris, because guitar wasn’t Chris’s voice yet; it wasn’t a way to express himself. To some degree, Chris was a tabula rasa and Michael could direct and mold him to accommodate his production ideas.

He had a tougher time doing that with me. I disagreed with how Michael wanted the guitar to sound and with his entire process. I knew my sound and how to achieve it with my equipment, but he spent, what I felt, was an excessive amount of time trying to dial in sounds I didn’t want, making me repeat takes endlessly.

It felt like a waste, and when it started impeding or getting in the way of my interest in playing guitar the way that I wanted to play it, I would say, “I don’t want to do that.”

Eventually, I snapped, flipped him off, grabbed my coat, and stormed out of the studio. As I walked to my van, he chased after me, lecturing me, but I flipped him off again and told him to “get Steve Vai” before driving home. That was the low point in my relationship with Michael. Ben had his own conflicts – either spitting at or throwing a mic at the control room window. Michael, though, was too scared of Ben to confront him.

Chris got so fed up with Michael’s interference that he ended up recording his own vocals. He kicked Michael out of the control room and said, “Just show me how to start, stop, and rewind the tape machine.” Michael showed him how to do that, and Chris insisted that Michael and lead engineer Jason Corsaro leave the room. He allowed the other engineer, Adam Kasper, to stay in case he needed something technical. It was hilarious.

I just don’t feel like Michael developed a relationship dynamic with us in a way that would get the best out of us. We did our best in spite of him, and sometimes by going against him. Let’s just say, it seemed to me that he didn’t make any friends in Soundgarden during the recording of Superunknown. None of us kept a relationship with him afterward.

The process was, in my opinion, unnecessarily difficult and frustrating, though the record itself turned out great. We were very happy with the album we made with Michael Beinhorn, but its success came despite, not because of, the conflict with Michael. And while it still sounds like us, there’s a different ambience, due to the production and mixing.

The biggest shift is probably Black Hole Sun, which feels more like a piano song played on guitar. The construction and arrangement were unlike tracks like Beyond the Wheel or Power Trip. But I wouldn’t say Superunknown was a huge departure – it has a different feel than Badmotorfinger, but it makes sense in the band’s growth and trajectory.

Having made Superunknown the way we did – very focused on what we could do in the studio regarding different sounds and effects – we kind of had to reinvent ourselves in order to present the songs to our fans. It seemed a little bit awkward, because it wasn’t natural for the kind of band I felt like we were and had been from the beginning.

We were no longer just being a rock band easily capable of delivering our new material as it appeared on the record. Now we had to adapt the material we created for the record to the kind of band we were live. Initially, though, Chris wanted to try to more closely represent the sounds on Superunknown.

He put a lot of time and energy into trying to replicate those tones and sounds. He went out and bought a bunch of digital rack-mounted effects and a pedal board that allowed him to click on and off preset effects. He worked with his guitar tech to design all the presets. I didn’t get this approach at all. It was antithetical to what we were about.

I thought, Fuck that. Why? That’s not natural. Something about that just felt like what the Electric Light Orchestra would do; it seemed wrong for Soundgarden. Rather than attempting to replicate what the songs sounded like in the studio, I felt like we should interpret them for our live sets.

I don’t think Chris understood that my guitar sound and style were my voice, and key to what made Soundgarden unique. Even though Chris played guitar, he wasn’t experienced enough for it to be his voice. His voice was, well, his voice. At that point, Chris used guitar mainly to record song ideas on his four-track or eight-track, so his understanding was more from an engineer’s perspective than a guitarist’s.

Before we went on tour to support Superunknown, he spent a lot of time preparing to replicate the studio sound onstage. I’d show up at rehearsal, and he’d have this elaborate digital foot pedal setup with preset effects for different songs. He’d switch between effects for Hands All Over or Loud Love, then kick on a roto vibe for the verse of Black Hole Sun and a Leslie cabinet for the chorus. It started to feel really corny.

My attitude toward all of this began to cause some friction. Chris would come in hours before rehearsal with his guitar tech to work out the presets, and when I’d turn up he’d say, “Aren’t you going to do any of this?” I already had more pedals than I needed, so why would I want to start using digital mounts? I’d be just getting further away from being a guitarist and I’d start becoming something else. I was not into that.

Chris may have taken that as a slap against what he was doing. I think he saw himself as doing work and the rest of us weren’t putting in as much effort. But we felt that he was trying to build something that we didn’t need, and that wasn’t us.

I admit, I didn’t want to change the nature of how I played and how I wanted a guitar to feel on my fingers, because that was the kind of guitarist I’d been for the last eighteen years. That was my voice. It wasn’t just what came out of the amp. It was what my fingers were doing on the fretboard. I saw no need to change, not even for Black Hole Sun.

• Excerpted from the book A Screaming Life: Into the Superunknown with Soundgarden and Beyond by Kim Thayil. Copyright © 2026 by Kim Thayil. From William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission.

As a massive fan of grunge and alternative rock, Kim Thayil has always been one of my favorite guitarists. His unique sound and innovative riffs have had a profound impact on the genre, making him a true living legend. When I had the opportunity to review Kim’s signature guitar for Total Guitar upon its launch, I was beyond excited, and I can honestly say it quickly became one of my favorite signature models I’ve ever played – and thankfully, the guitar has just received a tasty $100 discount at Sweetwater, with both the black and white colorways included.

Right from the moment I picked it up, I was struck by the Polara’s stunning design. Inspired by Kim's prized ’78 S-100, this all-mahogany beauty features gorgeous gilded gold hardware and a sleek jet-black finish that really catches the eye. The guitar not only looks great but also feels incredibly comfortable to play, with a solid build quality that assures you it can handle anything you throw at it.

One of the standout aspects for me was the chunky neck with its “vintage soft U” profile. It’s substantial without being overly rounded, which perfectly caters to fans of ’70s guitars. Playing it felt natural, whether I was cranking out sludgy D-tuned riffs or soaring into wailing solos. The upper fret access was a game-changer as well, every note feels within reach, allowing for a truly inspiring playing experience.

The tones this guitar can produce are just as impressive as its looks and playability. Equipped with Alnico II loaded humbuckers, the Polara delivers a sound that’s full, warm, and packed with punch. I could easily recreate those monstrous riffs that Kim is known for, and with a simple adjustment to my playing style, I could coax out sparkling cleans that were detailed and expressive. Engaging the onboard phase switch brought a fresh twist to the tone, making it perfect for cutting lead lines that slice through any mix.

In my review, I noted, “It’s a given that this beautiful guitar can nail Kim’s unmistakable tones, but the sheer versatility of the Polara should most definitely not be outshined by the name on the headstock.” This sentiment really captures the essence of what makes this guitar special. It’s not just about honoring Kim Thayil’s legacy; it’s about empowering the player to explore a wide range of sounds and styles.

If you’re on the hunt for a versatile and stylish instrument that truly embodies the spirit of the Seattle sound, I wholeheartedly recommend checking out the Kim Thayil signature Polara guitar. It’s a remarkable piece that celebrates one of my favorite guitarists while also standing on its own as a phenomenal instrument.

Now, it’s worth noting that Sweetwater is also offering the Deluxe variant with a $75 discount and the standard model with $50 off, if you don’t fancy rocking a signature guitar. For more deals, head to our Prime Day guitar deals hub.

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) released The Ostrich as 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.”

In more recent Soundgarden news, earlier this year, Thayil spoke about potential plans to release the band's final album with Cornell, following years of multiple lawsuits.

Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil has spoken out about potential plans to release the band's final album with late frontman Chris Cornell – which, for years, was left in a state of limbo following multiple lawsuits.

When asked by Rolling Stone whether fans can expect to finally get their hands on the record, Thayil responded, “I think so. Our objective and goal was always to complete that.

“I probably have OCD enough to not want to leave something unfinished or incomplete like that, so I think the more we can attend to our body of work and our catalog… I think everyone in the band feels that way. I don’t just [want] to attend to my work, but the collective work, and in this case specifically, the work of Chris.”

Thayil asserted that he has immense pride in what he’s done, and as a result, wants to see the album out.

“It doesn’t exist in the vacuum. It exists as a collaboration with Matt [Cameron, drummer] and Ben [Shepherd, bassist] and Chris, but it takes on an entirely different weight when you think about what it is you’re honoring, and the work that you’re paying tribute to.

“It would be a great gift to the fans. And I do think about this, and I don’t know how strange this sounds, but I feel like it’s a gift to Chris too,” he concluded.

Vicky Cornell, Chris Cornell’s widow, first sued the remaining members of Soundgarden in federal court in 2019 over recordings that she and her team alleged Cornell had made as part of a solo project – but which the band insisted were created as part of their partnership with him.

The seven disputed recordings were made by Cornell in his Miami Beach studio months before his death in May 2017. The lawsuit also alleged that the band was withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties from Vicky Cornell and the couple’s children. It was eventually settled via an amicable out-of-court resolution.

Despite being eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame since 2012, Soundgarden finally made the cut this year, alongside the White Stripes, Bad Company, and Carol Kaye, among many others.

While drop D tuning was originally introduced by classical and blues guitarists, early examples of its incorporation into the rock canon include The Beatles' Dear Prudence (1968) and Led Zeppelin's Moby Dick (1969). Tony Iommi continued to take things down a notch – sometimes as far as three semitones below standard guitar tuning – on 1971's Master of Reality.

Dropped and downtunings later became a defining characteristic of many ’90s guitar bands, but Gene Simmons recently stressed that Kiss was early to the detuning party.

“Unlike other bands, we were running around on stage on seven and eight-inch platform heels,” Simmons says on The Zak Kuhn Show. “And the weight and the physicality of doing this stuff, you're constantly out of breath.

“And we noticed early on that our voices started to go if you tune ‘A440,’ which musicians will understand. And so we started to detune half a step down. So all the strings on the guitar went up, but we all went down half a step so we could reach the high notes. And by the time we quit, we actually tuned down a full step.

“We detuned the instruments so that our voices wouldn’t break,” he adds matter-of-factly. “Not only we started doing that before there was a thing called ‘metal’ or the Seattle stuff, we just did it to save our voices.

“And then it became commonplace. So, when you hear Metallica and everybody else, they're detuned because it sounds thicker and bigger,” he concludes.

One of the biggest proponents of the '90s alternate tunings movement was undoubtedly Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil, who, in a Guitar World interview, acknowledged Kiss’ role in popularizing what were once off-kilter tunings.

“I can’t say we invented or designed these tunings,” he said.

“You’d hear stories about players like Keith Richards playing in open [tuning] and maybe only using five strings instead of six. I also remember reading about Kiss dropping their guitars half a step down and realizing a lot of rock players were doing that.”

In Gene Simmons’ recent interview with Bass Player the Kiss icon explained how Ronnie Wood is a better bassist than guitarist, why he can’t recall anything John Paul Jones played, and what makes him the Burger King Whopper of bass players.

Soundgarden’s surviving members recently reunited for the first time since 2021 to perform a six-song set at a benefits concert in Seattle.

Stepping out for a brief encore as part of the 13th annual SMooCH concert in aid Seattle Children’s Hospital’s uncompensated care fund on December 14, Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron, and Ben Shepherd enlisted some notable help for the occasion.

Seattle-based singer-songwriter Shaina Shepherd fronted the band in place of the late Chris Cornell. The set, made up almost entirely of Soundgarden songs, was bookended by Hunted Down and a cover of the MC5’s Kick Out The Jams. Guns N’ Roses star Duff McKagan provided support on Kickstand and that raucous set closer. Outshined, Flower and Beyond the Wheel also featured on the setlist.

Thayil, whose signature Guild guitars finally landed late last year, donned another interesting Guild for the performance. The electric guitar features Guild’s offset Surfliner body, but unlike the Fender-style headstock of the standard production models, it has the Gibson-esque shape as seen on his signature guitars.

He also brought out his go-to SG-alike Guild Polara guitars, while McKagan made light work of a Fender Telecaster on Kick Out The Jams.

The band were performing under the moniker Nudedragons, an anagram of Soundgarden. It was the first time Nudedragons had been used for a concert in 14 years, after Soundgarden debuted the name to perform a surprise set in 2010.

Thayil, Shepherd and Cameron had reunited in 2021 to perform with Brandi Carlile.

Since Soundgarden’s disbanding, Thayil has formed 3rd Secret, a supergroup of his own featuring Matt Cameron and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic. He’s also provided a guitar solo on I Quit, a solo track from Melvins' man Dale Crover, which features a new tuning he invented.

It is believed that Cornell’s final Soundgarden recordings will see the light of day after Cornell’s estate and the band’s surviving members settled their long-running lawsuit last year, but if anything happens beyond that is yet to be seen.

Melvins drummer Dale Crover has released the single I Quit from his upcoming third full-length solo album, Glossolalia. The track sees Soundgarden's Kim Thayil lend his guitar skills to the brooding track, which sets the tone for the rest of the album.

Speaking about the song, Crover says, “It’s about trying to control people and thinking that you’re right about everything. It’s in a tuning that I call ‘Lazy Keith Richards.’ It opens in G, but you can only tune the A string to G. I thought it would be cool to get Kim to do a guitar solo on the track.”

“That’s him after the second chorus,” he adds, referring to Thayil's warped lead guitar, which punctuates the track and amplifies its somber and disconcerting aura.

Throughout the years, Thayil has consistently expressed his admiration for the Melvins, which makes this collaboration even more special.

“At the time, they [the Melvins] were very risk-taking in their approach to both slow, heavy music and fast music. It's guitar-oriented, so it's going to appeal to my sensibilities and my instrument,” said Thayil in a 2011 interview with the Dallas Observer.

“They don't have a badly-arranged brass section behind them, which is very popular these days. A lot of the bands that I listen to these days sort of sound like the Melvins and perhaps would cite the Melvins or Soundgarden as an influence along with various other bands.”

Thayil also credits the Melvins for introducing drop-D tuning to hard rock. “I remember Buzz [Osborne] and I going to see St. Vitus in around 1986, after which we went back to Mark Arm’s apartment. We were spinning records and talking about how Kiss tuned everything to E-flat,” he recalled in a 1995 Guitar World interview.

“Mark and I planned to just drop everything down a half-step, but Buzz said that all you had to do was just drop the E string down to D. It was like, ‘Really?’ At that point, I played everything in regular tuning. I didn’t bother with different tunings because I was having a hard enough time figuring out the regular one. I mean, barre chords were my staple. And when we D-tuned and started experimenting. We’ve never stopped.”

Dale Crover's I Quit, featuring Kim Thayil, is out now. His album Glossolalia arrives September 13 via Joyful Noise Recordings.

Heart's Ann Wilson has revealed the trick she used back in the ’90s to compel her musician peers to jam whenever they passed by her house.

In an interview with the Broken Record Podcast, she recalls, “Usually, it would happen after somebody's concert, and everyone would show up for the concert. And then whoever was free afterward would show up at my house, and they'd all come in and start drinking beers and smoking ciggies and sitting up on my counters, and then pretty soon somebody has started to play.

“I was no fool – I would always have in my living room, I'd have guitars laying around, casually, and a piano and a couple of little amps.”

The musicians who happened to jam at Wilson's house included Alice in Chains' Layne Staley, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, and Kim Thayil, and Pearl Jam. The musicians were all part of the Seattle music community, who quickly embraced Wilson and her sister after they moved to Seattle, and formed their acoustic side-project, The Lovemongers.

“Oddly enough, a lot of those musicians that were part of the Seattle community then loved The Lovemongers, and we loved them, and we'd all show up at each other's shows. And it didn't matter that it was at this little club. It really didn't matter. It was just about the music and about playing camaraderie," she adds. 

In a recent interview with Total Guitar, Wilson's sister and bandmate, Nancy Wilson, described what it was like for the two of them to return to Seattle after grunge annihilated the hair metal scene. “We were so embarrassed to come back during the explosion of Soundgarden and Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam,” she admits. 

“All those guys were our brothers from our hometown. When Mother Love Bone’s singer Andy Wood died, my best friend Kelly Curtis, who managed Pearl Jam, invited us to come to his memorial party. 

“That’s where I met Chris Cornell and all these guys that I’m still really tight with – Eddie Vedder, Mike McCready and Kim Thayil. It was such a relief to be accepted into that rock community in our hometown, after the big hair and the artifice in the ’80s.”

Heart are currently on their Royalty Flush tour. The North American leg wraps up on May 24 at Atlantic City Hard Rock Live, New Jersey. This will be followed by a European and UK leg, which includes their largest-ever UK headline show on July 1 at London's O2 Arena.

Kim Thayil is not just grunge royalty, he’s one of the most influential guitarists of his generation. While Thayil may not be spoken about in the same breath as Eddie Van Halen or Jimmy Page, the Soundgarden great has had a huge effect on alternative rock. 

His masterfully crafted riffs and beautifully chaotic lead work would go on in part to define the Seattle sound and, in turn, inspire everyone from Alice In Chains to Nirvana, creating a sonic shockwave that is still felt to this day. 

Grunge fans have been eagerly awaiting the release of a Kim Thayil signature guitar since the Soundgarden axe-man helped breathe new life into this almost-forgotten model in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Now, while the project may have been plagued with bad luck over the last three decades, we are glad to see the partnership finally bear some fruit. 

Inspired by Kim’s prized ’78 S-100, this guitar is simply stunning. Not only does this all-mahogany six-string wear its gilded gold hardware and jet-black getup well, but its attractive body style is as practical as it is handsome. 

We found the Polara to be incredibly comfortable, and the build quality here is commendable. This guitar feels as solid as a rock and the chunky body means there’s no neck dive for this double-cutaway. 

Speaking of the neck, Thayil has opted for a “vintage soft U” profile, which certainly has some girth to it. Okay, it’s not as rounded as a vintage Les Paul, but it’s substantial enough to satisfy fans of ’70s guitars. 

Importantly, the Polara feels just at home playing D-tuned sludgy riffs as it does wailing solos and everything in between. That’s thanks in part to the unparalleled upper fret access. Just like a certain devil-horned Gibson, there’s no note on this neck that isn’t obtainable – this results in a truly inspiring guitar to play. 

As you’d expect, this new guitar seeks to equip players with all the tones they require to nail Thayil’s signature sounds. The Alnico II loaded humbuckers are full, warm and pack plenty of punch – just the ticket for those aspiring to recreate the monstrous riffs from across Thayil's remarkable discography. 

Turn down the gain and lighten your touch and this Guild will gift you shiny and sparkling cleans that are perfectly detailed and expressive. In the middle position, with the onboard phase switch engaged, the sound becomes noticeably thinner and more nasal – perfect if you want a lead line that cuts like a knife. 

It’s a given that this beautiful guitar can nail Kim’s unmistakable tones, but the sheer versatility of the Polara should most definitely not be outshined by the name on the headstock. 

Specs

• PRICE: $899 / £859
• BODY: Mahogany 
• NECK: Mahogany
• SCALE LENGTH: 24 3/4” (629mm) 
• NECK SHAPE: Vintage Soft “U” 
• NUT WIDTH: 1 11/16” (43mm) 
• FINGERBOARD MATERIAL: Indian Rosewood 
• FINGERBOARD RADIUS: 12.5” (320mm) 
• FINGERBOARD INLAYS: Blocks – Pearloid 
• FRETS: 22 Narrow Jumbo 
• BRIDGE: Tune-O-Matic w/ Guild Compensated Stopbar tailpiece 
• TUNING MACHINES: Grover Rotomatics 
• PICKUPS: 2 x Guild HB-1 Dual-Coil Bridge 
• CONTROLS: Neck Volume & Tone, Bridge Volume & Tone, 3-way Toggle Pickup Switch, and Phase Switch 
• FINISH: Black
• CONTACT: Guild Guitars

Kim Thayil has dismissed a review that called his guitar playing “sloppy” while detailing how his love for alternate tunings saw him disregard all he knew about shapes and scales.

In an extensive interview with Pete Thorn, Thayil – arguably the most experimental guitarist to come out of the Seattle scene in the ‘90s – wasn’t coy with his answers.

The review in question highlighted Thayil’s imperfect playing style – something man y would argue is where much of his personality comes from.

“I’ve recently read this online review, and it’s like, ‘I don’t know, I’ve seen Kim live, he is just kind of sloppy,’” Thayil begins [via Killer Guitar Rigs].

“I played about eight different guitar tunings. At some point, 30 years ago or more, the idea of patterns and scales, I just threw it out the window.”

“I now have to relearn the song on the neck visually, as well as aurally,” he adds. “Everything I’d learned when I was younger, that I taught myself about scales or patterns, those are no longer factors because we’re coming up with our own tunings, or making shit up, or adjusting things.”

1994’s seminal album, Superunknown, for instance, boasts the quirk of nearly every song being played in a different tuning. From the standard tuning of Fell on Black Days to the peculiar drop-DG of its title track, Thayil has never been averse to abusing the tuning pegs on his favored black Guild S-100. While that opens up new sonic possibilities, it also creates a raft of practical problems.

Says Thayil: “One of the first things you do when you drop your guitar is find where the octave is and build from there. [Then] I look at the song and look at the neck. ‘There’s that chord, there’s this chord.’ I picture where the chords are, I picture where the notes are. I don’t know what the mode is. It’s by ear, it’s by eye, and you just kind of learn these patterns on the songs – that’s how I play.”

“Now, if you’re playing four or five songs in those same weird tunings, but the songs are in different keys,” he continues, “and you’ve gotta remember the different patterns… sometimes you miss them, especially after a few beers!”

He was also pressed on how he navigates soloing when playing in atypical tunings. In particular, Thorn name-checked Rusty Cage, which takes a standard tuning and drops the sixth string to B (BADGBe) and Pretty Noose, from 1996’s Down The Upside, which sees Thayil using a low-down open C tuning – which later became a favourite of Canadian prog metal extraordinaire Devin Townsend.  

Says Thayil: “You start learning the patterns, you just look at the neck and, ‘I go here, and as I ascend, here’s the notes I can play.’ I can throw in these half steps now and then, and it kind of twists it into a little different mode here and there.”

Of Rusty Cage in particular, he adds: "Chris had written that in drop-D, but we'd read about other bands tuning down, so we dropped [the sixth string] down another three half-steps, which changes the position of the octave. The octave is where there'd normally be the five, so the octave was proximal; it was much easier to play the intro part where you're sliding up, hitting the octave and coming back down.”

Interviewer Pete Thorn had the privilege of playing Soundgarden classics as part of Chris Cornell’s solo band in the mid-to-late-noughties. While learning the songs in preparation, he noticed Thayil’s tendency to play high up the fretboard on the lower strings. This is particularly apparent on Badmotorfinger classic Slaves & Bulldozers, and Thorn queried the guitarist on why he played so many riffs that way.

“Because it's bendy, a little bit looser and it was a darker timbre with the thicker string,” he says. “So when you're bending up there, you're kind of bending it sharp and there's something a little bit sharp about that.”

The pair’s discussion follows on from Thayil’s chat with Guitar World earlier this year, which, naturally, includes all things tunings.

“I can’t say we invented or designed these tunings,” Thayil had said. “You’d hear stories about players like Keith Richards playing in open [tuning] and maybe only using five strings instead of six. I also remember reading about Kiss dropping their guitars half a step down and realizing a lot of rock players were doing that.”

“Heavy metal and drop D is a match made in heaven… it just works,” he went on to say. “It became really big for us – and then other Seattle bands like Nirvana and Alice in Chains.”

Thayil’s chat with Thorn also expanded on how Chris Cornell’s switch from drummer to vocalist, and then vocalist/guitarist, helped expand the band’s sound.

“As our songs advanced, we started using a lot more power chords and cowboy chords, which sounded a lot wider,” he explains. “The single-note, arpeggiated things didn't need two guitars, but Chris needed a guitar to accompany his vocals and fill space when I might do a meandering solo, which usually stopped when I got bored or Matt [Cameron, drummer] got frustrated!”

To aid in that, he explains how Cornell's amp would be positioned center stage, allowing Thayil and bassist Ben Shepherd’s “spontaneous wildness” on either flank.  

“If we're playing drunken [sic], throwing our guitars around and playing in a drop tuning, you're more likely to bend a string out of tune. You've got this really loud guitar on one side of the stage, a really loud bass on the other and perhaps they aren't syncing up tune-wise.

“So it was advantageous for Chris to have his amp right behind his head, between the drums and himself, giving him a queue for pitching. I think that was a primary advantage to orientate between the screams, feedback and spontaneous wildness of either wing to find where his voice fits."

He punctuated that point with Thorn, saying: “To me, a guitar solo was improvisation. This is either where you’re being expressive – either expressive emotively or perhaps you’re being expressive aesthetically. So if you’re not addressing the emotions, you’re addressing the ideas or the feeling of a song. And in that case, it’s going to be different from day to day.”

Thayil wanted wildness in his playing. In his Guitar World interview, he underlined how he wasn’t always looking for perfection in his playing, saying: “I’d like to remind all the perfectionist guitar nerds to listen to Jimmy Page’s solo on In the Evening. It sounds like the guitar is falling down the stairs… It’s brilliant. I remember people writing about it in the late ’70s asking, ‘Did he mean to fuck up there?’ And I’d be thinking, ‘It’s just cool!’

“The same goes for Jimi Hendrix with all that feedback. He was living it, thinking it and feeling it. Feedback was all over the place. It was part of the passion and intensity… and a lot of that fed into what I was trying to do!”

Today, Thayil plays in 3rd Secret, alongside fellow grunge alumni Krist Novoselic, Soundgarden/Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron and vocalists Jillian Raye and Jennifer Johnson.

In September, he finally released his signature S-100 with Guild Guitars – after three failed attempts and three decades of waiting.

Few musicians could say they shaped the ’90s quite like Kim Thayil. The Soundgarden co-founder laid the foundations for what would become known as the “Seattle sound” and later get referred to as grunge or alternative rock, paving the way for a whole movement of world-conquering noise that included the likes of Nirvana, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. 

Typically seen with a black Guild S-100 electric in his hands, and on occasion its S-300 sibling, his approach to guitar has been an incredibly multifaceted one, with an easily identifiable personality to his riffs and leads that ranged from the fast and furious to the doomy and esoteric. In that regard, he was and very much still is the full package and, by proxy, an inspiration to many. 

Soundgarden, who formed in 1984 and reunited in 2010 before disbanding after the tragic death of singer/guitarist Chris Cornell in 2017, rose to prominence as sonic daredevils hellbent on otherworldly experimentations – using natural harmonics and feedback to intricately detail their acid-laced hard rock. And while they embraced a number of alternate tunings, it’s arguably drop D that would end up becoming a defining feature for a lot of ’90s guitar bands. 

With the sixth string detuned a whole step to allow for one-finger power chords, its sound leant to a meatier and more muscular whirlwind of noise, inspiring some of the band’s most famous tracks such as Outshined, Spoonman and Jesus Christ Pose – anthems that, it’s worth noting, wouldn’t have sounded quite the same in standard.

“I can’t say we invented or designed these tunings,” Thayil says while sipping coffee out of a white Scrabble mug on a humid summer’s day at home in Seattle. “You’d hear stories about players like Keith Richards playing in open [tuning] and maybe only using five strings instead of six. I also remember reading about Kiss dropping their guitars half a step down and realizing a lot of rock players were doing that.”

By his own admission, his first adventures in drop D felt “kinda weird.” Early on, he’d ask himself why guitarists were purposefully choosing to play an instrument that tuned incorrectly, at least in the conventional sense. And then, of course, those lightbulb moments he built a career out of started arriving thick and fast. 

“When you’re learning, you start orienting toward what you are told is correct, but then you go on and liberate yourself from those constraints,” Thayil says. “Yes, there’s a common rule of thumb for tuning guitars, but there are other ways to approach it to facilitate playing or writing, or even just to change the tone. You loosen a string and get a different sort of sound… you can bend more, thanks to the extra floppiness!”

Do you remember when you first became aware of drop D?

“I was friends with Mark Arm [of Mudhoney fame] back in college. I don’t think Mudhoney were around at that point; I was in Soundgarden and he was in Green River. Buzz [Osborne] from the Melvins was hanging out a lot too. We’d listen to bands like the Young Gods, the Scientists and early Metallica at Mark’s apartment in the U District. 

“One time we started talking about our favorite Sabbath songs and Buzz told us about this tuning Tony Iommi used called ‘drop-D’ that made everything sound darker and heavier. I remember going home and being like, ‘Whoa, you don’t say!’ 

“I started farting around and realized you could make a power chord with just one finger. Playing them really fast up and down the neck became easy. It’s funny; I remember these purists and nitwits who would write into guitar magazines saying, ‘Drop-D is cheating; you’re not really playing if you do that!’”

It’s easy to forget that trolls existed before the age of the internet.

“Yeah! I’d be sitting there wondering, “What do you think this is… Monopoly?! Is it like ‘do not pass go’ or ‘head straight to jail’ just because you don’t approve of that tuning? What do you mean it’s not a proper way of playing guitar? ‘No wonder you’re sitting there writing angry letters to a guitar magazine instead of writing songs!’ 

“It was such a crazy thing to say: ‘Those Seattle grunge guys are cheating because it’s easier playing in drop-D!’ I’d be thinking, ‘Thank you, and you’re right, more people should be experimenting and having fun! Oh, and by the way, we’re doing this because Black Sabbath did it. Neil Young did it. Van Halen did it. How far back are we going? Are you going to tell Eddie Van Halen he wasn’t playing guitar properly?’ 

“Anyway, I went home from Mark’s that night and wrote Nothing to Say. I brought it to practice with Soundgarden the next day, saying, ‘Buzz showed me a Sabbath tuning and I came up with this!’”

That must have caused quite a stir.

“Chris and our first bassist Hiro [Yamamoto] were like, 'Whoa!' with their jaws dropped open. Chris got excited and said he had just the right lyrics to fit that idea, so he ran into another room and grabbed a pen. Then he started singing this melody that had that Dio-esque thing where he’d go up high. 

“At the time, heavy music was a bit like the Partridge Family through a distortion box. There was a lot of Aqua Net and Spandex! This thing was dark, psychedelic and trippy underneath Chris’ majestic voice. It generated a lot of attention from major labels and made me want to write more things like that. I loved the unorthodox way we were approaching heavy music.”

It almost feels like songs like Outshined simply wouldn’t have existed in standard.

“Heavy metal and drop-D is a match made in heaven… it just works. Then Chris started dropping his sixth string even further down to B, writing songs like Rusty Cage during the Badmotorfinger era. By doing that, we could make the octave by fretting up a whole step on the next string along… which sounded cool! So messing with tunings definitely spawned a lot of stuff. 

“Then Ben [Shepherd, bass] came along, and he had a background in country music with some open and slide tunings. Matt [Cameron, drums] started writing stuff with weird tunings too, like Birth Ritual, which had the sixth and fifth strings detuned. We were turning each other on to different ways of thinking.

“The drop-D thing became really big for us – and then other Seattle bands like Nirvana and Alice in Chains. Smashing Pumpkins were doing similar things, too.”

What would you say are the other defining features of ’90s rock guitar?

“Feedback was a big part of the sound. One of our first recordings was Tears to Forget, and we only had eight tracks to work with, one of which was entirely dedicated to guitar feedback. Some people thought it was funny, but it sounded cool. Utilizing unorthodox techniques became a big part of our style, like playing behind the bridge or using harmonics as part of the riff as we did on Heretic. 

“We weren’t just using harmonics as an effect or lead element; it was part of the actual riff. And we did that frequently – if something sounded strange, we’d usually be inclined to explore. We’d say things like, ‘Let’s write a song where the riff is just feedback,’ or ‘Let’s come up with a riff mainly using harmonics!’ In drop D it felt a lot easier to bend the strings, almost like lead players would in solos.”

It’s a very Sabbathy move!

“Yeah, Sabbath did a lot of that. That became a very distinct signature of Alice in Chains. Jerry Cantrell writes the coolest riffs with those howling, sexy bends. Listen to It Ain’t Like That and you’ll see what I mean. I fell in love with that as soon as I heard it. That became Jerry’s thing, riffing with those awesome bends. 

“Nobody could bend the note the same smooth way as consistently as he could. I’d say the two signature elements of Alice in Chains’ sound was Jerry’s bent riffs as well as those vocal harmonies. And if you listen to the Nirvana song Blew from Bleach, Kurt [Cobain] was using bends as part of the riff. These were things that were probably introduced early on in the Seattle scene through us.”

You have a strong identity as a lead guitarist – mixing elements of classic rock pentatonics and more atmospheric ideas that seem to capture a moment in time.

“As for the impressionistic guitar solos, I’m definitely not a metal lead player. Those kinds of solos owe more to classical, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s ‘mom music’! It’s the kind of stuff you do to tell your parents, ‘See, I’m not just making noise, I’m not a long-haired drug-taking asshole… this is real music influenced by Paganini!’ 

“I feel like those really ornate and baroque-sounding passages are almost written to show other people you’re not a fuckup. Well, in that case, go play ‘real’ music. My approach has always been more like impressionism. It’s partly blurry and down to the feel. You hear a song and then it’s time for the solo, and there’s a way to attack it – whether that’s manic and chaotic or moody or sad.”

“That’s what the takeaway should be, rather than how many notes got played, where they fell and why. If that’s the question, my answer would be, ‘I don’t know; here’s a paint-by-numbers book for you!’ Of course, there are some songs where you have to write a part that’s melodic and emphasized, complementing the vocals or riff. 

“But I like the idea of getting to the solo section and having things fall apart, like a car careening off the edge in a dangerous way or something really noisy and inexplicable. I like making people go, ‘What the hell is going on there?’”

Players that came after you – including Tool’s Adam Jones and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood – also had that esoteric approach to their leads, almost as if they were painting through their guitars.

“Totally! It is a kind of painting, just using sonic colors. Music should be evocative. There’s something one-dimensional about having the notes occur linearly and in series… it can be compelling and stand for something, making you think, ‘What an interesting series of notes and intervals.’ 

“But in terms of mood, you can create more emotive ideas by freeing yourself. Is the solo dark, strange, uplifting or casual? You can tap into all of these things. Adam Jones and Jonny Greenwood are beautiful examples of guitar players doing amazing service to the song, choosing sounds that are emotive and colorful.”

What do you remember about recording Black Hole Sun?

“I remember when I heard those little arpeggios in the verse sections, I thought, “This is stylistically not like me!” It sounded more like a piano part – or like little fairies and angels dancing on the head of a pin. I thought, ‘I don’t know, man… it’s too crystal.’ 

“Obviously, I did end up playing that part live, but the song would come in during the middle of the set when I’d already had a few beers in me. It was really shifting gears, going from playing fast and free to, ‘Uh oh, I have to play all these notes in the right place!’ 

“It almost felt like I had to pull up a stool, sitting there with my legs crossed. So I had some resistance to that verse part. On the recording, I think I just played the chorus parts and solos. 

“Chris wanted me to do the verse, but here’s the problem… there’s a Leslie on it. If you stop, there’s no way they can punch you back in exactly where you were. It was so frustrating. Eventually I turned to Chris and said, ‘You wrote this part; you can probably get further than I can!’”

The solo seems to capture those different sides of you well; it’s frenetic and ambitious, almost shredding in places, but also abstract to a certain degree. 

“I think so! I have friends who have criticized me for playing too fast. They’d say, “You play so fast – we have no idea what you’re doing… Slow down, dude!” But they’re also players who mainly like Eric Clapton, Duane Allman… that kind of stuff. 

“I am a Cream fan, and on Soundgarden’s early European tours we’d play Sunshine of Your Love at the end, mainly because we’d been drinking through the show. We all loved the song, as well as the rest of Disraeli Gears. My friends who were more into soulful and blues playing definitely wanted me to slow down. I think what I do is soulful… it’s just not blues!”

It’s the 30th anniversary of Superunknown next year. Tracks like Let Me Drown and Mailman have an almost intoxicating sense of drag to them.

“Chris wrote that opening riff to Let Me Drown, and I added the harmonies. I used to like throwing in things like that because they sounded a little bit perverted. [Laughs] Matt wrote that Mailman riff. He’s very on it when it comes to tempos. It’s one of the three or four songs on the album that Chris didn’t play on. 

“I was using a single-coil guitar, either a Strat or G&L, that was tuned down to whatever Matt had written it in. I believe it was standard but with the two lowest strings dropped down to C and G. We have so many songs in weird tunings. That’s why we’d tour with so many guitars – eight or nine in some cases – because every few songs we’d need to change tuning. 

“It’s strange that I chose to use a single-coil guitar instead of my Guild on that one. And then on the track Superunknown I switched back to my Guild and Chris was playing his Les Paul on the verses. Fell On Black Days might have even been Chris on his Gretsch. Different songs needed different colors.”

What drew you to the Guild S-100?

“I found an affordable secondhand Guild electric. It had a black finish, and I think I got it for around $235 when I was 18. The new guitars were out of my price range so I had to look at the used models. This one was in good condition and a nice color. It had peculiarities too, because of that area behind the bridge. The pickups were somewhat microphonic, so you’d get this cool feedback. 

“It wouldn’t really squeal, unless you knew how, but you’d get this nice little hum. If you stood near the amp, you could move that hum around. There was also something cool about the fact it was a little lighter. 

“I could make all those cool poses like Ace Frehley, even though he used a Les Paul. Kiss made guitars look like some kind of action instrument. The lighter Guild facilitated all those poses, which, admittedly, I didn’t make because I was still busy trying to learn what to play and not screw up!”

Were you still using Peavey guitar amps or had you crossed over to Mesa/Boogie by this point?

“I don’t actually know. There was a transition around then because I’d been using the Peavey VTMs around Badmotorfinger. Mostly because we endorsed them and they gave us a lot of gear for the road, which you need. 

“There would be times where we’d break our amps or sometimes borrow a tube from one head and put it in another. By [1996’s] Down On the Upside, we were definitely using Boogies, but I’d also sometimes track with a Music Man head or a Fender.”

Songs like Spoonman and 4th of July also became fan favorites from this era of Soundgarden, but for very different reasons.

“Spoonman was crunchy and visceral. It had that percussive sort of feel, with Matt directing that heaviness. 4th of July was not as percussive, but it had more of a droney kind of element that relied more on ambience. It was a tough song to record because of the tuning. 

“We had to use really heavy strings that would interfere with how I liked how to play, in terms of bending and finger vibrato. Heavier strings are a bit tougher, but they are able to hold the tuning better. 

“Looser strings dropped down go sharp when you squeeze the neck too hard. It was a tough one to record; you’d think you got the take and then listen back to discover the guitars were slightly out.”

Looking back now, which songs are you most proud of?

“My answer changes every time I’m asked. 4th of July has this melodic lead that I doubled an octave up. It sounds very wilting and melancholic; there’s something about it that’s really sympathetic and sad, especially against the doomy riff. It could have been more chaotic and more recognizable as me throwing a bunch of paint against a wall… or shit, as the case may be. But it required something like that – a written lead in context of the song. 

“Then there’s Like Suicide, which has a frenetic sort of chaos with a sense of melody, too. A lot of my solos are like that: a combination of punching in and Frankensteining different takes. I was tapping into the lyrics and sadness of the song, which has a Beatles-y Dear Prudence vibe. When the solo comes in, it’s not crying but rather shrieking and wailing. It’s like this inconsolable outburst of tears.”

Which players do you think impacted you most – and in what ways?

“I’d like to remind all the perfectionist guitar nerds reading this to listen to Jimmy Page’s solo on [Led Zeppelin’s] In the Evening. It sounds like the guitar is falling down the stairs… It’s brilliant. I remember people writing about it in the late ’70s asking, ‘Did he mean to fuck up there?’ And I’d be thinking, ‘It’s just cool!’ 

“The same goes for Jimi Hendrix with all that feedback. He was always pushing himself and making people ask, ‘Why did he choose to go there?!’ He wouldn’t play things the same way every time because it came from his heart, not the chart or some textbook. He was living it, thinking it and feeling it. Feedback was all over the place. It was part of the passion and intensity… and a lot of that fed into what I was trying to do!” 

While it came of age in the ’90s, drop-D tuning was around long before the grunge explosion made it a rite of passage for guitarists. The Beatles’ I Want You (She’s So Heavy), Led Zeppelin’s Moby Dick and Van Halen’s Unchained all slackened the guitar’s lowest string for extra muscle.

But in Seattle, whisperings of this mystical gateway to heavier, more sinister riffs spread like wildfire, and the alternate tuning soon became a staple of the city’s premier musical exports – although as Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil recalls, not everyone in the wider guitar community was thrilled with the development.

Along with frontman Chris Cornell, Thayil was one of the guitarists who brought drop-D tuning into the limelight with classic, MTV-bothering Soundgarden cuts such as Jesus Christ Pose, Outshined and Spoonman. And in the latest issue of Guitar World, the idiosyncratic lead player recalled how he first came across the tuning – and the surprising backlash that followed.

“I was friends with Mark Arm [of Mudhoney fame] back in college,” Thayil recollects. “I don’t think Mudhoney were around at that point; I was in Soundgarden and he was in Green River. Buzz [Osborne] from the Melvins was hanging out a lot, too.

“One time we started talking about our favorite Sabbath songs and Buzz told us about this tuning Tony Iommi used called ‘drop D’ that made everything sound darker and heavier. I remember going home and being like, ‘Whoa, you don’t say!’ I started farting around and realized you could make a power chord with just one finger. Playing them really fast up and down the neck became easy.”

Yet as Thayil was about to discover, that ease of movement wouldn’t go down well with guitarists for whom EADGBE was The One True Tuning.

“It’s funny; I remember these purists and nitwits who would write into guitar magazines saying, ‘Drop D is cheating; you’re not really playing if you do that!’” he laughs.

“I’d be sitting there wondering, ‘What do you think this is... Monopoly?! Is it like “do not pass go” or “head straight to jail” just because you don’t approve of that tuning? What do you mean it’s not a proper way of playing guitar? No wonder you’re sitting there writing angry letters to a guitar magazine instead of writing songs!’”

By this stage, drop-D tuning was a mainstay of the Seattle sound. Jerry Cantrell learned it from Thayil – who he later dubbed the best guitar player of the Seattle scene – and it dominated Alice in Chains’ 1992 opus Dirt. It also crops up on Pearl Jam’s Ten, while Kurt Cobain – who was himself a huge Soundgarden fan – used it from the outset of Nirvana’s career right up to later hits like Heart Shaped Box.

To casual observers – more specifically, folk who wrote into guitar magazines in the early ’90s – it might have seemed like a sea change in guitar tuning. But as Thayil observes, drop D had already been around for some time.

“It was such a crazy thing to say: ‘Those Seattle grunge guys are cheating because it’s easier playing in drop D!’” he reflects.

“I’d be thinking, ‘Thank you, and you’re right, more people should be experimenting and having fun! Oh, and by the way, we’re doing this because Black Sabbath did it. Neil Young did it. Van Halen did it. How far back are we going? Are you going to tell Eddie Van Halen he wasn’t playing guitar properly?’”

Regardless of its classic-rock roots, it’s not an exaggeration to say drop D would prove life-changing for Thayil, and alternative music as a whole.

“I went home from Mark’s that night and wrote Nothing to Say,” he explains. “I brought it to practice with Soundgarden the next day, saying, ‘Buzz showed me a Sabbath tuning and I came up with this!’”

Nothing to Say would feature on Soundgarden’s 1987 debut EP, Screaming Life, and its sledgehammer riff, teamed with Cornell’s banshee wails, made waves in Seattle and beyond. The band were immediately galvanized by Thayil’s discovery – and it set the stage for the next phase of their psychedelic Sabbath-meets-Beatles sound.

“Chris and our first bassist Hiro [Yamamoto] were like, ‘Whoa!’ with their jaws dropped open,” Thayil recalls. “Chris got excited and said he had just the right lyrics to fit that idea, so he ran into another room and grabbed a pen.

“This thing was dark, psychedelic and trippy underneath Chris’s majestic voice. It generated a lot of attention from major labels and made me want to write more things like that.

“I loved the unorthodox way we were approaching heavy music. It almost feels like songs like Outshined simply wouldn’t have existed in standard. Heavy metal and drop D is a match made in heaven... it just works.”

To read Kim Thayil’s full interview and a host of other ’90s guitar revelations, check out the new issue of Guitar World, available from Magazines Direct.

And for more from Thayil on pivotal moments in his career, have a read of his guide to Soundgarden’s landmark guitar moments.

In other Thayil news, the guitarist was finally awarded with his own signature Guild S-100 this month, after three failed attempts and three decades of waiting.

Few guitarists are as synonymous with Guild Guitars as Kim Thayil, yet owing to a series of twists of fate, a signature guitar never became a reality for the Soundgarden hero. Now, finally, Guild has announced the Thayil x Guild range of signature S-100 Polara models.

Two versions of the S-100 Polara Kim Thayil will be available: a flagship USA Artist Edition and a production-line guitar.

The USA model is a limited run of 30 guitars master-built in Guild’s California facility. It features a Honduran mahogany body and neck, Guild’s ’70s era enlarged headstock with slim neck shape (as specified by Thayil), and a bound Indian rosewood fingerboard with mother-of-pearl block inlays, plus Grover Original Rotomatic tuners.

This USA incarnation features custom Guild USA HB-1 humbuckers hand-wound by Jason Lollar, complete with phase switch, as well as a reproduction Guild/Mueller style bridge and compensated stopbar tailpiece.

Each guitar features a white nitrocellulose finish and comes in a custom case with a certificate of authenticity, and will be hand-signed by Kim Thayil. Accordingly, there’s a serious price tag attached: $6,999.

Far more affordable at $899 is the regular production run as part of Guild’s Newark St. Collection of guitars, which are built in South Korea, Indonesia and China.

Specs on this black-finished model include a mahogany body and set neck, ’70s large headstock with Chesterfield inlay, bound rosewood fingerboard with pearloid block inlays, Tune-O-Matic bridge and Guild compensated stopbar tailpiece.

The humbuckers this time around are “vintage-correct” HB-1 units with Alnico II magnets, which can be tweaked via an onboard phase switch.

Both S-100 models nod to Soundgarden’s discography with a King Animal logo truss rod cover and Badmotorfinger back cover.

“We’ve been talking about doing this together for many years and are excited to finally bring these guitars to life,” says Guild president Jonathan Thomas. “It's hard to look at a Polara and not think of Kim, his influence in music, and long connection to his Guilds.”

It’s about time a Thayil signature model became a reality, because as the guitarist attested to this writer in 2019, it’s been in the making for decades.

As Thayil tells it, the first attempt at making the model was in the ’90s, which failed to come to fruition after Guild was sold to Fender in 1995.

A signature model nearly got off the ground following Soundgarden’s reunion in 2010, but four years later, Fender sold the company to Cōrdoba. The new owners were initially excited about the project, but would ultimately focus their efforts on Guild’s acoustic guitar lines.

“There were three different attempts to make a signature model Guild S-100, thwarted by the fact that the company would keep getting sold,” Thayil laughed in conclusion.

Now under the ownership of Yamaha Guitars, Guild has finally been able to make Thayil’s vision a reality.

Thayil bought his first black S-100 in the late-’70s for $250 – which was considerably cheaper than Les Pauls or Strats of the era. He credits the model as crucial to the evolution of his guitar sound.

“There were things about the S-100 that I didn’t fully understand,” he told Guitar World in 2021. “I didn’t really know what distinguished it from a Les Paul or a Strat. By learning on that guitar, my style developed. It was how it made me play and what it allowed me to do.”

Among the quirks that Thayil embraced were the S-100’s “microphonic pickup”, allowing him to blow on the strings, as heard in the intro to the opening track on Soundgarden’s debut album, Flower.

Many of the band’s trademark feedback freakouts were also based around Thayil’s playing beneath the bridge, which would produce high-pitched squeals and resonances.

As Thayil puts it in Guild’s promo video for his signature model, “This guitar does some things that most guitars aren’t gonna do.”

Kim Thayil’s signature Polara models are available from early September – see Guild Guitars for more info.

Soundgarden electric guitar titan Kim Thayil recently participated as a guest instructor – along with Stone Temple Pilots guitarist Dean DeLeo and bass guitar player Robert DeLeo – at a hard rock-themed edition of the Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy Camp held in Los Angeles.

The camp ran from March 16 through March 19 and – like all Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy Camps – gave participants the opportunity to learn from, pick the brains of, and even jam with, some top-tier musicians. 

When the time came for the campers to jam with their heroes at the legendary Whisky a Go Go, naturally, some Zeppelin was in order. 

To that end, you can see Thayil – armed with one of his trademark Guild S-100s – tear through Communication Breakdown with some lucky campers below.

Cognizant of his role as an instructor, Thayil doesn't hog too much of the spotlight, but does take a quick-fire solo at one point, much to the audience's delight. 

Thayil seems right at home taking on the proto-punk classic, something you can probably chalk up to his long history with the song. 

Before Soundgarden rode the grunge wave to superstardom, Communication Breakdown featured semi-regularly in the band's setlists. 

Some Soundgarden, of course, also crept into the campers' setlist as well. With the help of Thayil and another star instructor – Whitesnake axe-slinger (and Guitar World contributor) Joel Hoekstra – another group of campers gamely tackled Soundgarden's Let Me Drown.

It's not the first time the Soundgarden legend has jammed with fans at a Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy Camp, either. Last year, he and Alice in Chains' Jerry Cantrell served as the lead all-star instructors at a grunge-themed "Sounds of Seattle" gathering.

For info on the upcoming editions of the Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy Camp – which, among many other guest instructors, are set to feature the likes of John 5, Richard Fortus and Rolling Stones bassist Darryl Jones – visit Rock Camp.

“When it comes to Soundgarden, we didn’t bend too far towards radio-friendly,” Kim Thayil says. Nevertheless, the guitarist continues, “We did end up being radio-friendly, even with our weird tunings.”

Indeed, over the course of their career, the Seattle giants not only pioneered many of the elements of the sound that would eventually become known throughout the world as grunge, but also managed, courtesy of a highly developed and often idiosyncratic songwriting and guitar approach, to bring that sound straight into the center of mainstream culture, racking up platinum albums (among them 1991’s Badmotorfinger and 1994’s Superunknown) and monster radio and MTV hits (Outshined, Black Hole Sun, Spoonman), as well as influencing scores of rock and alternative bands that followed in their wake.

Now, Soundgarden has, very deservedly, received a nomination for the 2023 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, their second time on the ballot. And while their long legacy is set in stone, guitarist Kim Thayil says that it would still be a great honor to be inducted this year.

“When I first heard about the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I thought, How do you quantify that?” Thayil says.

“But then I started hearing from friends who either were inducted or attended events, and they said, ‘Man, this is fun because of the enthusiasm the fans have for seeing a band they love and believe in having their achievements and merits recognized.’ If you’re a fan, it’s a validation of your choices and your appraisals in your musical tastes. So that changed my understanding of it, and made me realize it’s important.”

Thayil continues, “And now that Chris is gone [Soundgarden singer, co-guitarist and co-songwriter Chris Cornell passed away in 2017 at the age of 52], it’s even more important. It’s for Chris’s memory and the band’s legacy. And for our fans – for the love and commitment they’ve shown us for all these decades.”

In recognition of Soundgarden’s Hall of Fame-worthy career (you can vote for the band to be inducted here), Guitar World sat down with Thayil for a look back at the six-string moments that he believes helped to establish and cement the band’s singular and one-of-a-kind sound.

1. Hunted Down (Screaming Life, 1987)

“There's two things that come out of Screaming Life. And the first is the guitar solo in Hunted Down, which pretty much set the tone that there’s going to be some noise elements, some jazz elements, some aspect of cacophony and spontaneity that is going to be incorporated into the way I'm approaching some of our guitar solos.

“With that solo being kind of angular and slashing, I enjoyed how that fit in what would have otherwise been a short, riff-oriented, hard-rock pop song. It showed that our sensibilities were leaning a little bit toward some noisier and artier considerations.”

2. Nothing to Say (Screaming Life, 1987)

“The second Screaming Life example is Nothing to Say, which was the first song we wrote in drop D tuning. But it also exemplifies another aspect of Soundgarden, which is the heavy, drone-y, trippy riff that's contrasted with a more lullaby sort of nursery rhyme-ish, psychedelic thing in the verse, which we're playing up by the 12th fret.

“And then even another thing is the fact that we're incorporating extraneous sounds and noise from the guitar other than traditional fretted chords and scales. This is exemplified by the part where I'm playing the behind the bridge, between the bridge and the tailpiece, on the low E string, and getting a sort of harmonic effect. You'll see that turn up in other songs in Soundgarden's career.”

3. Flower (Ultramega OK, 1989)

“This is perhaps not a significant component to Soundgarden's song style or guitar style, but it was a unique one – and that’s the intro to Flower. Flower, by the way, is the second song we wrote in drop D, and it is the one single off of Ultramega OK. And the intro is me blowing across the strings.

“I’m playing my Guild S-100, and I’m using the bridge pickup setting, which is a little bit brighter. I've dropped the E string down to D, so there's gonna be some sympathetic resonance between the two D strings and the fifth string, the A. 

“The Guild has these microphonic pickups, so I can blow over the string and get this sort of sitar-like, sort of ambient effect. And it’s augmented by my use of a chorus pedal. I did that on the record, although it was a kind of a tough thing to pull off live without the guitar screeching or feeding back. And when I did do it live, it never failed to get reviewed as me playing guitar with my beard. [laughs] And I get it: Brown guy. Beard. Guitar. Guitar near face. Playing guitar with beard. No, I'm just too lazy to shave.”

4. Heretic (Deep Six compilation, 1986)

“Heretic was off the Deep Six album, which was not the first Soundgarden release, but it was the first recorded material that we released. It was a song we wrote early on, probably within the first few months of being a band, and it was a regular part of our set in ‘85, ‘86, ‘87.

“We must have released three versions: there's the Deep Six version with drummer Scott Sundquist, a B-side to Loud Love that we recorded with [producers] Steve Fisk and Terry Date, and another version we recorded with Jack Endino. 

“But all of these versions, to varying degrees, would emphasize that the guitar part incorporated three or four harmonics into the melody of the riff. And that was something that we would go on to utilize in, for instance, the song Limo Wreck, which Matt [Cameron, drums] wrote with harmonics. Chris incorporated some harmonics into The Day I Tried to Live. The ‘C’ section of Never The Machine Forever has harmonics.

“Now, we weren't the first band to incorporate harmonics into the actual musical riff. But it was definitely part of our style and identity. I think prior to that, people usually used harmonics in guitar solos, as an accent or a color part. But we very consciously used it as the musical head of the guitar riff.”

5. Tears to Forget (Deep Six compilation, 1986; Screaming Life, 1987)

“Also on Deep Six was the song Tears to Forget, which is a hardcore song that had two elements that I think distinguished it as being stylistically Soundgarden. One is the open-string drone. I would go on to continue to write songs using this kind of open-string drone. Eventually Chris would start writing songs with the open-string drone. And I think Matt and Ben [Shepherd, bass] probably did on occasion, too. But Tears to Forget was one of the first songs we recorded that had it.

“At points in the song, I have the E string open while playing the riff melody line on the A string. At other points I'm having the A string drone while I'm playing the melody line on the D string. And I probably have the D string droning at some point. So the entire song, I think, except for the chorus, has either an E, A or D string open while the melody riff is being played on the adjacent string. 

“Another important thing about Tears to Forget is that it created a buzz with the other bands on Deep Six. I remember the guys in Green River and the Melvins and Skin Yard were saying, ‘Hey, did you hear what Soundgarden did? In the Deep Six session, they committed a whole track to just feedback.’ Deep Six might have been recorded on eight track, and you’ve only got a few tracks for guitar. And one of them on Tears to Forget is the guitar just feeding back from beginning to end. We definitely did that on the Screaming Life version as well. We used it as songwriting element.

“And it would continue to be an element, even on the last album we released, [2019’s] Live from the Artists Den. The very last track is Feedbacchanal, where Ben and I, for the body of the song, are just feeding back and trying to create melodies and drones.”

6 and 7. My Wave, The Day I Tried to Live (Superunknown, 1994)

“I think it’s well-established how Soundgarden used alternate guitar tunings. But primarily, when people write about our alternate guitar tunings, they focus on the drop D, because the drop D thing that we started doing spread to Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Skin Yard and other bands. But we used a lot of tunings other than drop D. 

“One thing I think is super-interesting is the tuning Chris used for My Wave which I think is EEBBBE [not EEBBBB, as commonly reported online – Ed], and which is also used on The Day I Tried to Live. I used that tuning to write all of my color parts on those songs as well. And both of those songs were singles and videos from Superunknown.

“To me, I think that establishing radio hits and MTV videos with two songs, presumably pop songs, one in 7/4 timing that I think maybe even goes to another non-danceable time signature, I think that is paradigmatic of what Soundgarden was about, and a little bit iconic of how we would precede and ultimately incorporate ourselves into the marketplace.

“I mean, what right does something like The Day I Tried to Live have to be on anyone's radio playlist? You can’t dance to it. It's no fun at parties. [laughs] Well, we brought the music that was no fun at parties to your party!”

Rock Camp’s next Rock ’N’ Roll Fantasy Camp will be dubbed A Whole Lotta Rock and feature appearances from Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, Stone Temple Pilots’ Robert and Dean DeLeo and rock drummer Carmine Appice.

The event – set to take place March 16-19, 2023 – is themed around Led Zeppelin’s back catalog and gives guitarists and other musicians the opportunity to jam along with (and pick the brains of) some genuine rockstars. 

The LA event will also give participants the chance to perform in two of the Sunset Strip’s most famous/notorious venues, the Whiskey A-Go-Go and The Viper Room. 

As is traditional at the rock camps, across the weekend ticket holders will be split into band groups to jam and practice with a selection of pro musician ‘counsellors’ and star guests. 

Some of the counsellors signed up for next year’s event include Whitesnake’s Joel Hoekstra, former Dio/Black Sabbath drummer Vinny Appice, Mike Kroeger of Nickleback and Madonna/Ministry man Monte Pittman. 

‘Campers’ (as the event calls its ticket-holders), will also get the chance to participate in masterclasses and Q&A sessions with the guest stars, before performing onstage for two nights. Thayil will even join each group for a song in the closing performance. 

“I had such a great time at Rock Camp in February, and I’m super-excited to be coming back,” said Thayil. “Bring your favorite axe, and let’s jam at Rock Camp!”

For more information, head to Rock Camp’s official site.

The Los Angeles tribute to late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins took place at the city’s Kia Forum last night (September 27), and the six-hour all-star show featured a raft of highlights, including a partial Soundgarden reunion.

Soundgarden members Kim Thayil and Matt Cameron were joined by Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic, Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl and Pat Smear, and The Pretty Reckless vocalist Taylor Momsen for a pair of covers.

With Grohl, Smear and Thayil on guitars, the all-star lineup tackled two singles from 1994’s classic Superunknown album: The Day I Tried to Live and Black Hole Sun. Both performances have been captured in snippets of fan footage.

Thayil turned to his go-to guitars on the tracks – an EEBBBB-tuned Gibson Firebird and Guild SG in drop D – while Pat Smear opted for a Les Paul, and Dave Grohl was on – what else? – his Gibson Trini Lopez.

The performance is somewhat bittersweet given Taylor Hawkins tackled The Day I Tried to Live at a tribute concert to late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell in 2019.

Momsen has sung with Thayil and Cameron on several occasions, first at the Cornell tribute and subsequently on The Pretty Reckless’s most recent album. More recently, Thayil guested with the band on a live rendition of Soundgarden’s Loud Love.

Thayil, Novoselic and Cameron, meanwhile, currently perform together in Seattle supergroup 3rd Secret.

Other highlights from Tuesday night’s set included reunions from the likes of Them Crooked Vultures, the James Gang and the surviving members of Rush, plus performances from Def Leppard, Nancy Wilson, Queen, Joan Jett, Elliot Easton, Alanis Morissette, Alain Johannes, Pink, Kesha and many more.

Wolfgang Van Halen, who wowed the world with dead-on renditions of Hot For Teacher and On Fire at the London leg, this time tackled Van Halen classic Panama.

Kim Thayil joined The Pretty Reckless for two songs during their show at Seattle’s Moore Theater on Wednesday evening (August 31).

The Soundgarden guitarist walked on stage halfway through Only Love Can Save Me Now to recreate the searing off-the-cuff wah-drenched leads he lent to the studio version, before joining the band in a rendition of Soundgarden riff monster Loud Love.

Taylor Momsen once again channelled Chris Cornell’s wails to eerie effect during the performance – she had previously played the 1989 single with the surviving members of Soundgarden during 2019’s all-star tribute to the iconic Seattle frontman.

“Thank you to the legendary Kim Thayil for joining us for an unforgettable night at Seattle’s Moore Theater,” Momsen later said on Instagram. “I’m once again humbled to share the stage with you my dear friend, what an amazing human being.”

Of how her band’s recorded collaboration with Thayil and Soundgarden bandmate Matt Cameron came about, Momsen told Guitar World, “I had this song and called them up saying it was begging for them to play on it, sounding very much in their vein. Basically I told them, ‘If you’re not on it, we’ll just sound like we’re ripping you off [laughs]!’

“We flew to Seattle and recorded at London Bridge Studio, which is where so many iconic records were made like Louder Than Love, Pearl Jam’s Ten. I think it was their first time back since Louder Than Love so it was a cool moment for them to reflect on everything and amazing for me to see this song coming to life.

“They’re so great, they elevate everything they touch. Kim is a master – there’s no-one else like him.”

Both Thayil and Cameron play in new Seattle supergroup 3rd Secret, led by Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic, who surprise-released their debut album back in April.

Iconic Guitar Gear is a new book from Guitar World contributor Greg Prato that details the tools of the trade of famous guitarists – and you can read exclusive excerpts on Steve Vai, Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil and Jeff Beck below.

In total, Iconic Guitar Gear runs to over 300 pages and examines the essential gear choices of 150 guitarists, including Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Brian May, Tony Iommi, Jimmy Page, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Johnny Ramone, The Edge, Gary Moore, Alex Lifeson, Yngwie Malmsteen, Dimebag Darrell, Zakk Wylde and more.

The book also sets its sights on a list of astonishing bass guitar players, too, including Billy Sheehan, Les Claypool and Mike Watt, to name a small sample.

Prato – who has previously penned books including Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music and MTV Ruled the World: The Early Years of Music Video – has drawn on a huge variety of research for the book, including many interviews with the guitarists themselves, alongside techs, tutors and other tonal authorities. 

Check out our exclusive excerpts on Kim Thayil, Steve Vai and Jeff Beck below and order your copy of Iconic Guitar Gear via Amazon in Kindle, hardcover and paperback formats.

Kim Thayil, Soundgarden on his Guild S-100 Deluxe

“I got [my Guild S-100 Deluxe] when I was 18-years old at a used guitar place [in Chicago]. It was affordable, and I sat there and played songs I’d written on that guitar – and I found it so much easier to play than the Strat copy guitar I’d had. 

“It was much easier to play than my acoustic guitar. And I was looking to buy an electric guitar – I had worked all summer and saved up some money. The Les Pauls were more expensive and the Strats – they were all $500-600 at the time. And this Guild S-100 was like, 250 bucks or something like that. Used. I was like, ‘Hey…I’m getting this. I can afford this, and I can play my songs on it with little difficulty.’

“And as I learned more about guitar playing and more about various factors on the instrument – from action, frets, bridge, the nut, pickups – I came to develop how I play along with my learning of this guitar. So, it kind of got married together in some ways. 

“I learned not to be afraid of the noises or incidental things that you could do as a guitar player – because Hendrix did feedback, the Velvet Underground did feedback. And noise and looseness I learned from the MC5, and noise is incorporated in Pere Ubu.

“My guitar made some weird noises and could do some weird things that my other friends’ guitars couldn’t do. And I thought, ‘I don’t have to avoid those. I don’t have to be scared of those.’ And Daniel Ash comes along, and I’m like, ‘My guitar can do some of those things! I like those things!’ And I stuck with it.

“Because I would play other guitars and it’s like, ‘Eh…the action’s different. The neck’s a little bit too wide. I just can’t do this thing. I can’t bend the strings above the nut. I can’t bend the strings below the bridge. It doesn’t feedback as easily. And its feedback is difficult to control. I don’t want to play this Strat – its feedback is just some weird squeal. I like the feedback I get from my Guild S-100 Deluxe.’ So, I just stayed with it.”

Steve Vai on his Charvel Strat aka “The Green Meanie”

“My first real guitar was a Strat. I loved it, but it didn’t really have the sound that I liked. And when I joined Alcatrazz, I wanted a bigger sound and I needed more options on an instrument. 

“So, I went to see Grover Jackson, and he hooked me up. Besides giving me a couple of his really wonderful Jackson guitars – which I loved, because they were the only ones I could find that had 24 frets and a whammy bar – he gave me a sunburst Charvel. 

“I don’t even know the model or anything. But it was the Super Strat type of thing – with the humbuckers. And once I got it, I was with Alcatrazz and it was great. It had the sound, it had the feel. And at the time, my tech, Patrick Francis – “Elwood” – he was a very colorful guy and he liked doing things to the instrument [Francis would later join ZZ Top as their bassist]. And I told him, ‘Go for it.’

“He had a lot of fun painting it green and putting the stickers on it and all this. At the time, my palm rested on the body of the guitar. And some of those guitars, the tailpiece was kind of high, so the strings were high, so the little pad [that was added to the body of the guitar] helped me to pick more evenly. But that became my main axe. I used that quite a lot on those records after that – Alcatrazz, Dave Roth, Passion and Warfare. And then it was retired.”

Wolf Marshall on Jeff Beck’s Stratocasters and Les Pauls

“Jeff Beck also alternated a lot of Les Pauls – as well as the Strat. The famous Strat that has been stripped down to the wood – you can see when he’s playing with the band on Rough and Ready. And there’s TV performances of that – so you can actually see that guitar. 

“That’s probably the Strat that he had on Beck-Ola, and he just kept playing it. I believe he played it with Beck, Bogert & Appice, and I think he played it into his early phase of fusion – when he started playing with people like Jan Hammer and doing Blow by Blow and that period.

“Also, at that point, he had a certain Les Paul that was put together by Seymour Duncan – which looked black, but it was actually a dark brown oxblood colored Les Paul [spotted on the cover of Blow by Blow]. It’s a conversion from an early ‘50s model – it’s not a Standard – but it has humbucker pickups I believe, and Seymour Duncan did those.

“Then, as you can see from Wired, he had a different Strat – a white Strat. So, I think he alternated between that stripped down one and the white Strat. And I know that white Strats always appealed to… maybe it’s Hendrix, but Jeff is using one again now. When you view current videos of Jeff, you see him with a white Jeff Beck Strat. So, that Strat period probably goes back to 1969/‘70. 

“Plus, he sometimes used the Teles, as well – like if you look at the video for People Get Ready, it shows him with a Tele. A converted Tele… but it’s still a Tele. And I believe that was also a Seymour Duncan thing – he had one model that had a humbucker in it. So, those are the three ‘streams’ that he had.”

• Iconic Guitar Gear is out now.

As a co-founding member of Soundgarden, Kim Thayil has written and performed some of the hardest and heaviest riffs of all time, spanning the drop-D swagger of Flower to the relentless grind and pterodactyl squeals of Jesus Christ Pose.

With his trusty Guild S-100 in hand, Thayil also played a major role in helping shape a style and approach to rock guitar that focused more on the importance of songwriting and the almighty riff with the arrival of the grunge movement in the early ‘90s.

After the tragic passing of Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell in 2017, Thayil has remained active, first with Wayne Kramer's MC50, and now with new Seattle outfit 3rd Secret, which includes Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and Thayil‘s Soundgarden bandmate Matt Cameron among its ranks.

Wherever he lends his talents, Thayil‘s distinctive lead style, colorful use of feedback and punishing riff delivery is a through-line in all of his output. Here, he selects and inspects guitarists who shaped his idiosyncratic sound, loosely categorized into bands, individual players, genres and musical movements, at his request.

As a result, this one goes far beyond the 10 influences we originally requested…

1. The Beatles (George Harrison and John Lennon)

“Normally, I would start with the Beatles. But John Lennon and George Harrison didn’t have an effect on me as guitarists – the Beatles had its effect by the nature of their songs and the culture that they came about in, both socially and politically. 

“Being a little kid, the Beatles were the soundtrack to so much that was going on in the world in the ’60s and ‘70s. They were important in that way. 

“It wasn’t until I was older that I began to appreciate George Harrison as a guitarist on songs like While My Guitar Gently Weeps – where either he or Clapton, or a combination of the two, did that sort of soulful playing. As a kid, I gravitated to the guitar songs and the cool guitar riffs, and songs that had a little bit of a bounce, such as Paperback Writer or Day Tripper.” 

2. Kiss (Ace Frehley and Paul Stanley) 

“I first realized that guitar playing was cool when I heard Kiss, and that was thanks to Ace Frehley. He had a cool look, and Kiss designed themselves to appeal visually. Frehley was easily my favorite member of Kiss, and at that time I liked the songs he wrote and his costume. [Laughs]

“I didn’t know what ‘lead guitar’ was, but he was credited as the lead guitarist. I took that to be the ‘out front guitar’ – the heavy guitar that started the songs. So, if I hear a riff like Watchin’ You or Nothin’ to Lose, both start with guitar, right? I think that’s lead guitar. 

“That’s what I liked: the loud, distorted, big, heavy sound of the rhythm guitar, but I attributed that to the lead guitar, and that was being played by Ace Frehley. The guitar solos I thought were these extra flourishes that were added, and thought they were played by the rhythm guitarist because they occurred when the vocalist wasn’t singing!”

3. ‘Proto-punk’: New York Dolls (Johnny Thunders and Syl Sylvain) / Stooges (Ron Asheton and James Williamson) / MC5 (Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith and Wayne Kramer)

“Through reading about Kiss, I was connected to other ‘power chord hard rockers’ – like the MC5, the Stooges, and the New York Dolls – which was perfect, because that is a good bridge to punk rock. That was perfect timing for me; when I was 14, it was like ’74/’75. 

“I ended up really liking Johnny Thunders. I got into that sort of sleazy, loose, cool-looking playing, like Joe Perry and Johnny Thunders, and that whole thing connected me to the MC5 and the Stooges.

“I liked both periods of the Stooges – with Ron Asheton and with James Williamson. At the time, I was really into the MC5’s first album, Kick Out the Jams.

“I came to learn that a lot of the stuff I liked – which was wild and chaotic and careening out of control – was being played by Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, and a lot of the more solid/learned stuff was coming from Wayne Kramer. It was just a great balance of those two guitarists in that band.”

4. Ramones (Johnny Ramone) 

“That just set me up for the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. I got the Ramones’ Leave Home album, and that was back to those big, loud, distorted power chords that I liked with Kiss, only it's super-fast. That was a new thing to me. So, Johnny Ramone became a big influence. 

“Now, my influences went from big distorted rock to loose, wild and chaotic, and then to fast. Fast is the element that had an influence on me – and specifically, with Johnny Ramone. 

“I remember shortly after that I was turned on to the Saints’ (I’m) Stranded, and it was like the Ramones but only faster!”

5. ‘Industrial rock’: Devo (Bob "1" Mothersbaugh) / Pere Ubu (Tom Herman) 

“Within new wave, there are things like industrial rock. Industrial rock was a label they’d throw on bands like Devo or Pere Ubu, because they’d use these electronic and synthesizer sounds to emulate factory effects. 

“And there was something sort of smart and witty about those guitar players. There was something dynamic about it. Like, with Devo, there was this comic and cartoon-like element to the music that had this appeal, because it seemed smart and it moved differently. 

“It didn’t move in the predictable ways of more traditional punk or hard rock, and I started liking Bob "1" Mothersbaugh from Devo. The next big insight for me was listening to Pere Ubu’s The Modern Dance, and that guitarist, Tom Herman, because they were heavy and dangerous in these different ways.”

6. The Contortions (Jody Harris) / Richard Hell and the Voidoids (Robert Quine and Ivan Julian) 

“My best friend is a sax player, and reeds are incorporated in the work of Pere Ubu and another band, the Contortions. Both bands feature guitar, bass and drums, but they also have sax, reeds and some keyboards. 

“I became more appreciative of that because my best friend was a free jazz fan, so he turned me on to things like Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler. But with his free jazz and my punk rock, we kind of met at the Contortions. 

“Their guitarist was a guy named Jody Harris, and I had this record that was Jody Harris and Robert Quine [1981’s Escape]. Robert Quine from the Voidoids was aslo a big influence for me. That album, Blank Generation, which had Ivan Julian and Robert Quine, was just amazing stuff.”

7. ‘80s American progressive post-hardcore’: Minutemen (D. Boon) / Meat Puppets (Curt Kirkwood) / Butthole Surfers (Paul Leary) 

“Then in 1984, all this SST shit starts coming together. Besides Black Flag, you have Hüsker Dü, Meat Puppets, the Minutemen, and Saccharine Trust. I think the two guitarists that stood out for me were Curt Kirkwood and D. Boon. 

“I probably say D. Boon’s playing might have hit me a little more as being stylistically unique. His guitar playing was slashy, percussive and very thin; bright, and high-end-y. 

“I also loved Curt Kirkwood from the Meat Puppets because of the contrast between the first album and Meat Puppets II. The first album had the elements that I described in the MC5’s Kick Out the Jams. Songs like Love Offering and Blue Green God just have this wild, chaotic, loose, coming-undone sort of heaviness and speed to it. I would file the Meat Puppets’ first album with Kick Out the Jams. 

“I had to get past the vocals to get into the Meat Puppets. The guitar was so cool that it gave context to the vocals, and then they became one of my favorite bands. And the second album is beautiful. It has that wild coming-apart-at-the-seams feel, but it’s also colorful, dynamic, pretty, trippy and acidic. That became my favorite Meat Puppets album. 

“Paul Leary… I was also getting turned on to the Butthole Surfers the same time I was getting turned on to Curt Kirkwood and D. Boon. There was something with early Butthole Surfers that was aggressive and psychedelic, but not in a jangle pop way. It was psychedelic in an acid rock way. It was also loose; it seemed dangerous. I get that sense of danger from Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith and Wayne Kramer, from the Velvet Underground, and I got it from Paul Leary from the Butthole Surfers.”

8. Bauhaus (Daniel Ash) 

“In between the late ‘70s punk rock/new wave explosion and 1984/SST, there was a British post-punk thing, and I picked up on the style and elements of Daniel Ash. Once again, specifically the use of feedback, slashing, and pick scrapes and finger squeaks on the strings. 

“All these elements that were incidental, producers and recording engineers often tried to keep off the tape. It's also stuff that guitarists tried to avoid doing because they thought it was incidental, noise and unintended. 

“Ash embraced that as all part of the depth of the music and created that sort of ‘cinematic depth’ – kind of in the way that Pere Ubu had this weird literary dynamic to the way they did things. So, they weren’t afraid of the picks scrapes, the squeaks, and the use of space. It was just amazing. 

“And on some level, it’s fun and wild, but it’s also courageous and arty. It inspired me not to be afraid of these components of playing guitar. I didn’t have to work my way out of them – I could incorporate them into the songs.”

9. Jeff Beck 

“Going back to my best friend, Brad, who played sax, he was turning me on to Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy and Sun Ra, and through hearing stuff like the Contortions and Captain Beefheart I start getting an appreciation for instrumental music. 

“At some point, I heard Jeff Beck’s Wired and Blow by Blow, and it was great to hear guitar playing without a goddamned singer getting in the way of it! And I did go back and listen to Truth – because I was so moved by Jeff Beck’s playing, and it was soulful and passionate. It was at times raw, energetic and fluid, and other times it was rootsy, and sometimes from the future. 

“Then I heard Beck-Ola and Truth with Rod Stewart on it. I wasn’t a Rod Stewart fan, but I heard Truth and I was like, ‘Wow. He’s an amazing singer. Everything here is soulful – the singing and the guitar playing.’ 

“But Jeff Beck’s Wired and Blow by Blow gave me an insight into instrumental music from a guitar perspective – and not just an accompaniment for vocals or in the pop rock vein. Jeff Beck at that point was just way over my head – I was still learning power chords and thinking, ‘Let's see how fast I can play a triplet.’ Beck was this whole other universe for me at the time.” 

10. Derek Trucks 

“I think Derek Trucks is one of the most soulful guitarists I’ve ever heard. The way he plays is beautiful and can send shivers up and down my spine in ways that Jeff Beck can. 

“Derek Trucks kind of reconnected me to his slide playing. I don’t play slide, but Trucks has a beautiful voice on guitar, which is very expressive. It brings me back to the insight I might have had listening to instrumental music from Jeff Beck. 

“I like Trucks with and without vocals – whether he’s playing with his wife Susan Tedeschi or if he's playing instrumentally. It’s great; his phrasing – the dynamics and the soulfulness – and the fact that he incorporates elements of free jazz, Sun Ra, and raga into blues.”

11. Jimi Hendrix

“Can you do an 11? A lot of these elements of guitarists that have appealed to me were also present in the playing of Jimi Hendrix.

“His playing had beautiful mellifluousness, heavy dark aggressiveness, quirkiness, expressiveness and the courage to use those incidental noise elements – like feedback, dive-bombing, screeching and bending the strings way sharp. 

“Those elements that I liked from a lot of these other guitar players, Hendrix touched on a lot of that.”

Kim Thayil, his Soundgarden bandmate and Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron and Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic have formed a new supergroup, 3rd Secret.

The band also features Bubba Dupree, guitarist for D.C. hardcore vets Void and Cameron side-project Hater, plus vocalists Jennifer Johnson and Jillian Raye, who also feature in Novoselic’s Giants in the Trees.

3rd Secret announced the band and surprise-released their self-titled debut album simultaneously on Monday night. It was recorded and mixed by legendary grunge producer Jack Endino, and it’s available to hear on streaming services now.

The record certainly delivers on the promise of its lineup, with sinewy, off-kilter riffs and the odd frenzied solo from Thayil. But there’s an altogether folkier acoustic thread running through the album, too, which nods to landmark grunge recordings such as Alice in Chains’ Jar of Flies and Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged.

It seems 3rd Secret have already made their live debut, with a secret show at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, revealed in a photo shared by Cameron on Instagram.

Last year, Thayil and Cameron collaborated on The Pretty Reckless single Only Love Can Save Me Now, and the guitarist has frequently expressed a desire to work with his Soundgarden bandmates again following the death of Chris Cornell in 2017.

“I think it's very likely that Matt and Ben and I will play together,” Thayil said last month. “The three of us have an interest in doing new things. We certainly like working together.”

In the meantime, the new supergroup have launched a charmingly old-school website at 3rdsecret.com, where you can keep up to date with their future activities.

Since the tragic death of the band's frontman, Chris Cornell, in 2017, Soundgarden's three surviving members – electric guitar player Kim Thayil, bass guitar player Ben Shepherd and drummer Matt Cameron – have performed together a small handful of times.

In January 2019, the trio performed a number of Soundgarden songs – with various singers – as part of the 'I Am the Highway' Cornell tribute concert in Los Angeles, and in December 2020, they joined Tad Doyle, Mike McCready and Meagan Grandall for a version of Alice In Chains' Angry Chair at that year's MoPOP Founders Award ceremony.

Last August, meanwhile, they joined Brandi Carlile onstage at The Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Washington for moving renditions of a pair of Soundgarden classics – Black Hole Sun and Searching with My Good Eye Closed. 

In a recent interview with Lifeminute, Thayil signaled his openness to additional live performances of Soundgarden material with his former bandmates in the future. 

"I think it's very likely that Matt and Ben and I will play together," Thayil said. "I think we know that the songs that we love, that we did for decades with Soundgarden, if we're gonna play those songs again or hear those songs when we wanna hear them, at best it'll be with at least the three of us; that's the closest we're gonna get at this point. 

"So I think we'd wanna re-explore that and do that at some time in the future, and I think the three of us have an interest in doing new things," he continued. "We certainly like working together."

Any reunion under the Soundgarden banner, with or without a new singer, would almost certainly have to be worked out with Cornell's estate, which has been at loggerheads with Thayil, Shepherd and Cameron over a number of issues for years.

Last year, the Cornell estate came to a temporary agreement with the remaining Soundgarden members over use of the band's social media accounts and website, all of which the trio alleged they had been locked out of. 

Battles between the two camps – still unresolved as of this writing – also extend to the rights to the band's music catalog, royalties and the fate of a final Soundgarden album.

Brandi Carlile, for her part, has said that she'd be open to serving as Soundgarden’s new singer, if the opportunity came her way.

“I am such a Chris Cornell fan,” she told Rolling Stone’s Music Now podcast last fall. “I loved him so much. I was so devastated when he left us.”

Last September, it was announced that Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell was linking up with Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil to spearhead a grunge-focused Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp, the aptly titled Sounds of Seattle.

The event itself took place a fortnight ago (February 17-20), and now footage has made its way online, showcasing the electric guitar stars performing a number of their respective bands’ biggest hits alongside a host of camp attendees.

When the event was first announced, Thayil said he was “super excited about the opportunity to connect and re-engage with fans at the Rock ‘n Roll Fantasy Camp”. 

“The past few years have been unusually difficult and at times truly bizarre for the nation and world in general,” he added, “and for the music industry and rock bands in particular."

Well, Thayil made good on his word to reconnect with fans, and can be seen in one video onstage with a vocalist, two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer performing Soundgarden’s 1991 Badmotorfinger number Slaves & Bulldozers.

His camp co-leader Cantrell also got in on the action, with a second video showcasing the Alice in Chains icon joining up with an impromptu house band of fans for a performance of Ain’t Like That. Both videos can be seen above.

As part of Sounds of Seattle, fans were also given the opportunity to perform publicly at a handful of notable Hollywood venues, including The Viper Room and The Whisky-A-Go-Go.

Jane’s Addiction/Porno for Pyros drummer Stephen Perkins, Nickelback bass guitar player Mike Kroeger, Whitesnake’s Joel Hoekstra and Vixen’s Britt Lightning also featured at the event as guest instructors.

Last month, Megadeth's Dave Mustaine made an appearance at Florida's own Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy Camp, and joined fans in the rehearsal room to jam Symphony of Destruction and A Tout Le Monde.

Few fans of The Pretty Reckless were surprised when the band’s first album in five years, Death by Rock and Roll, debuted at Number 28 on the Billboard Hot 200 in February 2021 (the top-charting rock album that week). Anything less would have been a disappointment. 

Since releasing their first album, Light Me Up, in 2010, The Pretty Reckless have been on a steadily upward trajectory. They’ve scored four Number 1’s on the Mainstream Rock Songs chart, the most ever by a female-fronted band, and played high-profile tours with Soundgarden, Fall Out Boy, Halestorm, Evanescence and others. 

So the continued success of The Pretty Reckless is hardly a shock. What’s practically a miracle is that the band was able to survive a tsunami of tragedy and instability over the last few years and clamber back with their most personal, powerful album to date.

The flood of misfortune that threw The Pretty Reckless off course started after their highly successful and exhilarating 2017 tour with their heroes, Soundgarden. The last night of the run was in Detroit on May 17. After the show, frontwoman Taylor Momsen wanted to say goodbye to vocalist Chris Cornell. 

She knew Cornell didn’t hang out after shows and usually left immediately after Soundgarden’s set. So at the end of the concert, Momsen headed to the back door of the venue to greet the singer on his way out.

“I caught him before he left,” says Momsen over a Zoom interview. “We had a little conversation and he said, ‘It was fun touring with you guys. Let's do it again sometime.’ And then I gave him a big hug.”

Momsen pauses for a moment and softly coughs. “I still get shaky talking about it,” she says. “It was… It was all very normal. Then, I went to the parking lot and hung out with [Soundgarden guitarist] Kim [Thayil] and [drummer] Matt [Cameron] and had a normal, fun night. 

“We rolled out to the next city and when I woke up the next morning I went to the front lounge and everyone had their heads in their hands crying and they were looking at their phones in disbelief. That’s when I learned that Chris was gone.”

Momsen and her bandmates – guitarist Ben Phillips, bassist Mark Damon and drummer Jamie Perkins – did their best to bury their grief and continue touring for their third album, 2016’s Who You Selling For. 

They played summer radio shows in the U.S. and major festivals in Europe and wrapped up the year with a tour opening for Stone Sour. The Pretty Reckless took a break for the holidays and were looking forward to getting back into the rehearsal room when tragedy struck again – twice.

In January 2018, Perkins’ brother died in a car accident. But it was the death of the band’s longtime studio guitarist and producer Kato Khandwala (who also worked with Blondie, Paramore, Pop Evil and My Chemical Romance) that slammed the brakes on The Pretty Reckless’s career and led to Momsen’s three-month-long self-imposed exile from music and reality.

Khandwala, 47, had been like a fifth member of the band and played a major role in shaping their sound. He was also a close personal friend and his death from a motorcycle accident on April 25, 2018, shattered The Pretty Reckless, especially Phillips and Momsen. 

Phillips, who had worked on songs with Khandwala before meeting Momsen in 2009, felt lost and was unsure he would still be able to write without Khandwala’s guidance and friendship. 

“We really didn’t know if we could continue as a band,” Phillips says. “Kato and I always shared guitar jobs in this band; he was the second guitarist. It was very much an Angus/Malcolm Young situation. 

“I moved into songwriting so quickly when I was younger, and guitar became more of a vehicle for me to write than an instrument to really learn. And then I got into lead guitar and that became more important for me as a vehicle for creativity. Kato was totally supportive of whatever I wanted to do and always complimented that. For a while, I couldn’t believe he was gone. I still can’t.”

Momsen was equally devastated. Having left a career as a successful child actor to chase her dream of being a professional musician – trading in Hollywood sets for rock ’n’ roll stages – the instability and danger of rock was suddenly no longer alluring, exciting or escapist. It was real, raw and inescapably painful.

Even though Phillips is generally quiet and laconic and Momsen much more of an extrovert, the two have always been close. Yet after Khandwala died they separated for a while and dealt with their loss in different ways. 

Phillips tried to stabilize his environment by spending time with friends and family and regularly picking up his guitar to try out new ideas. By contrast, Momsen turned away from music, becoming unstable and self-destructive to try to obliterate the pain.

“I fell into this extraordinarily dark hole of depression for a long time,” she says. “I was devastated by loss and grief and trauma, so I just checked out. Even thinking about music caused too many painful memories. Everything brought up something that I wasn't ready to deal with, and things turned dark very quickly.”

Looking back, Momsen says her gradual decline started with Cornell’s death, though, at the time, she hid her pain as best she could. “I know now that I was not emotionally prepared to handle Chris’s death and that took me into the start of a tailspin of me falling apart,” she says. 

“The bookend of that was Kato, which was the real nail in the coffin. After that, I just said, ‘Everything I love is dead, so what's the point of anything?’ Since I was so depressed there was substance abuse, which is just a part of what came with all the loss, grief and trauma. I wasn’t suicidal. In the back of my mind, I knew I wanted to figure things out and get back out there, but I wasn’t ready yet.”

With Momsen MIA, Phillips started looking for a new producer with whom to collaborate. He immediately thought of Jonathan Wyman, a childhood friend who made records in Los Angeles and New York before giving up on the music business to move to Maine with his wife. 

Phillips had no idea if Wyman would be interested in jumping back into the fire, but when he called Wyman, the producer was intrigued about working on an album, especially with an old friend. But he wanted to work near his home, so Phillips flew to the East Coast and he and Wyman entered Halo Studios near Portland, Maine, and began to work on Death by Rock and Roll. 

Having plenty to express, ideas flowed like water from a stream, yet almost two years passed from the time the first drum track was recorded and the album was released.

At first, Momsen didn’t want to work with Phillips in Maine and couldn’t stand the thought of shaping songs with another producer. So she didn’t work on music at all. She didn’t even listen to it. The art form that had given her so much joy had become an unbearable source of pain, and in her hazy state, she felt betrayed and abandoned by what had formerly been her greatest passion.

“I really didn’t know how to get back to where I was, and I didn’t really know if I wanted to because I didn’t care anymore,” she says. “I had given up and become content sitting on my couch and kind of fading into nothing. And that's a very dangerous headspace to stay in for too long.”

After living in a self-imposed wasteland for a few months, Momsen inexplicably had a burning desire to listen to music again. She started where she first began – with the Beatles – and slowly evolved through Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones and others. The more she listened, the more she realized how much she missed hearing great songs. She also missed writing.

“It suddenly hit me that I had been depriving myself of what I loved most and I really needed it,” she says. “That naturally led me to pick up a guitar and try writing, and, as soon as I did that, the floodgates opened up.”

The process was therapeutic, and while many of the lyrics Momsen wrote were about loss, others were about embracing life. Similarly, certain guitar parts she played sounded sad, but many were aggressive and euphoric. And they kept coming and coming.

“Normally, when you write a record you're searching for inspiration and you never really know where that's going to come from, and that it can make it a very kind of torturous process because there's no real way to force it. You kind of just have to wait and pray that something strikes you. And in this case, inspiration smacked me in the face, like a brick all the time, and it just kept coming whether I wanted it to or not.”

Mostly, Momsen wrote on her Guild acoustic guitars and after she had a pile of new material she was happy with, she went to Maine and shared her new song ideas with her bandmates and Wyman. As helpful as Wyman was, his presence reinforced Khandwala’s absence, which led to a whirlwind of emotions from the musicians. Being back together opened old wounds. 

Their close friend was gone, and yet in a way, he was still present; they were using all his old gear, including Khandwala’s custom guitars, though Phillips also played his Gibson ES-335s and Les Pauls and Momsen played her Fender Telecasters and a John Lennon-style Rickenbacker. Ironically, it was Wyman who encouraged the musicians to slow down, take deep breaths and allow their emotions to work for them musically. 

“We were still definitely feeling bummed out, and Jon was very good at keeping his distance to the sensitivity of the situation,” Phillips says.

“At the same time, being very good friends with him gave him extra sensitivity and awareness of what we needed to do, and in the end having all that time opened up so many avenues we have not explored before. So it felt like this music was a gift and it was therapeutic to do – but at the same time it was torturous.”

Although Phillips and Momsen had an abundance of riffs and hooks heading into the studio, they had trouble assembling some of the passages into complete songs, which led to a frustrating but temporary creative impasse. 

Then, in July 2018, as Momsen approached her 25th birthday, she wrote the intensely personal 25, a semi-rock ballad driven by a repeating undistorted guitar line and marching drums before evolving into a roaring, full-throated chorus. 

As they worked on the tune, Momsen locked down the heaving rhythm and sang about the turmoil of young adulthood, and Phillips punctuated her riffs with echoing picked chords and a Beatles-inspired piano-inflected mid-section. The darkened room lit up. 

Around the same time, the songwriters crafted the album’s first single and title track, Death by Rock and Roll, a Zeppelin-esque tribute to Khandwala that swings like a prizefighter and features a scrappy wah-infused solo.   

“The name Death by Rock and Roll holds such weight and meaning to me that calling the song and album anything else would have felt wrong,” Momsen says. “The phrase itself comes from Kato. It was the battle cry we lived our lives by; it means live your own way and don’t let anyone tell you anything different. You know, rock ’n’ roll till I die. When Kato passed, it was something that kept ringing through my head. I couldn't get it out so I embraced it instead.”

By late summer, the band synched with Wyman (though Phillips and Momsen took co-production credit on the album) and the songs started coming more easily and sounding more natural. When nearly everything was written, The Pretty Reckless decided to bring in some guests. 

The most poignant appearances came from Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil and drummer Matt Cameron, who added their trademark playing to the rhythmically angular Only Love Can Save Me Now. For Momsen, calling the members from Soundgarden was an obvious choice.

“The way I approached them was kind of a joke,” she says. “I went, ‘Hey guys, do you want to play on this? ’Cause if you don’t, we’re just going to sound like we’re ripping you off.’ So they took a listen to it and thankfully they said they’d love to be a part of it.”

To lend a more authentic vibe to the song, The Pretty Reckless flew to Seattle to record it at London Bridge Studios, where Soundgarden tracked their 1989 major-label debut, Louder Than Love. And as soon as they started playing, the song gleamed with new life.

“You hear it and you know right away who’s playing,” Phillips says. “They come in so uniquely and so amazingly and they sound great. That, in itself, was an amazing experience. It was definitely a highlight in everyone’s life, but it was also very emotional for all of us and it was kind of a double-edged sword.”

Another highlight on Death by Rock and Roll came from Tom Morello, who had a roundabout connection with Momsen, having met her when he played with Cornell in Audioslave. The two became closer when they both performed on Soundgarden’s Loud Love at I Am the Highway: A Tribute to Chris Cornell in Los Angeles in January 2019. 

Momsen asked Morello if he would play on And So It Went, a song rooted in ’90s alternative rock that’s embellished with a lullaby melody break and chorus of singing children reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).

“We really connected with Tom, so I wanted him involved,” Momsen says. “But we didn’t write the song thinking he would play on it. We write songs we like and then ask ourselves, ‘Who can we take this to that will make it the best it can be?’ And if it’s someone outside of our core band I’ll make a phone call. 

“Tom was so correct for that song. We did our thing, and then he came in wailing like the guitar legend that he is, and the undeniable sound that is Tom Morello came in and brought everything to its full potential.”

When The Pretty Reckless finished tracking Death by Rock and Roll, Phillips felt emotionally drained and a little hesitant to unleash the music on the public. It was such a confessional project, featuring songs like the title track and Harley Darling, which were blatantly about or based on Khandwala. Though Phillips loved the music, it was hard for him to listen to it since the songs reminded him of his deceased friend.

“It’s hard to have a record come out that's missing one of its founding members,” he says. “So dealing with that is still a process for me. If I’ve learned anything it’s that I've got to get up every day, take baby steps and just don't look too far ahead in the future. For me, that’s the best way to try to accomplish the task at hand and hopefully get to love this album.”

Momsen relates to Phillips’ “baby steps” philosophy; however, she feels Death by Rock and Roll is a great accomplishment to be cherished for its sonic qualities and its authenticity, as painful as it can be to listen to.

“Sometimes it feels like a scar that’s always going to be there but doesn’t hurt the same way anymore,” she says. “It’s a part of me. Also, I know Kato’s presence is all over this album. 

"The songs were written from a place of missing him and what he gave to me as an artist while he was still here – and what he gave me as a person. And that stuff lasts forever. His memory is still here, and I think that's part of why I love music so much. Even if the artist or the person is no longer with us, the records live on for eternity.”

• The Pretty Reckless's Death by Rock and Roll is out now.

For the longest time, Kim Thayil ranked Screaming Life and Superunknown as his favorite Soundgarden discs. “I would go back and forth between the two, based on the material, the production and the feeling in the band at those times,” he says. 

Five years ago, however, while combing through material for the 25th anniversary of the band’s 1991 commercial breakthrough album, Badmotorfinger, the guitarist’s feelings began to change. 

“I spent a lot of time listening to the record again, and I got to review some beautiful animation ideas that Josh Graham, our art director, came up with. It all recontextualized the record for me; I started to hear drum and guitar parts that I hadn’t focused on before. It gave new colors to the material.”

Five years later, with Badmotorfinger marking its 30th anniversary, Thayil now considers it his favorite from the Soundgarden canon. “It's a very colorful record,” he says. “It's got depth and it's trippy. It's angular and colorful. I love it.”

Formed in Seattle in 1984 by Thayil, singer-guitarist Chris Cornell and bassist Hiro Yamamoto, Soundgarden pioneered an aggressively heavy and psychedelic sound that married the most walloping elements of heavy metal and punk, and the result soon became known as “grunge”. 

With the addition of drummer Matt Cameron (who joined in 1986), the group issued the Screaming Life EP followed by the full-length Ultramega OK on the influential Sub Pop independent label and became darlings of the college music scene. In 1989, they became the first of the area’s grunge bands to step up to the big leagues by signing with A&M Records. 

Their major-label debut, Louder Than Love, which contained grinding earth movers like Loud Love and Hands All Over, hit number 108 on Billboard and was hailed by both indie and mainstream press. Even a few big-time musicians took note, chief among them Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, who famously wrote the riff to Enter Sandman after hearing the album.

Leading into the planning stages for their fourth studio effort, the band had a definite sense that they were on the verge of something big. “We could feel increased attention on us,” Thayil says. “We were fortunate in that we received positive press for our previous records. 

“There were more people attending our shows; peers in other bands liked us. We felt as if we were communicating to the people we needed to reach. In our audience, could see ourselves. We weren’t trying to pander in any way.”

The group once again opted to work with the Seattle-based producer Terry Date, who had guided them through the Louder Than Love sessions. “We felt comfortable with him,” Thayil says. “He helped us navigate the major-label BS – dealing with budgets and record company folk. With Terry producing us, we felt like we were in a protective bubble.” 

However, the Soundgarden that set out to record Badmotorfinger was a dramatically different band than on the previous album: Yamamoto had recently left, and his replacement, Jason Everman, proved temporary. Arriving for the sessions was bassist Ben Shepherd, a veteran of various punk bands and a well-liked presence in the Seattle music scene.

“With Ben in the band, our number of songwriting combinations increased in a multitude of ways,” Thayil says.

“We were totally excited to have him. His energy and creativity, his playing and songwriting – I consider him the MVP and the defining character of Badmotorfinger. That’s an easy argument for me to make. Ben’s sparks rubbed off on the rest of us. Chris hit a more prolific stride than he’d ever had before, and we wrote in a way that perfectly suited the new lineup.”

All of those factors came together beautifully on Badmotorfinger. In terms of artistic reach, it saw the band aiming higher than ever and hitting every mark. Everything sounded bigger and grander, more aspirational but still sensationally unhinged, and the songwriting had matured in a spectacular way. 

Rusty Cage and Outshined were the MTV hits that sold the album, but further in there were ambitious and arty tracks like Somewhere, Slaves & Bulldozers and Mind Riot that went down just as smoothly as the singles. For Soundgarden, who had built tremendous goodwill among their fanbase while staying true to their ideals, it was the perfect album to break them to the masses – immediately accessible without feeling conventional. 

But as the record was released hot on the heels of Pearl Jam’s Ten and on the same day as Nirvana’s Nevermind, the timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous. Suddenly, Seattle was ground zero of a cultural zeitgeist, and Soundgarden were smack dab in the thick of it.

“Right before we released the album, you could feel things were ready to explode,” Thayil says. “There were so many bands that we knew and loved – Mudhoney, the Screaming Trees, Tad… There was Mother Love Bone, but sadly we lost [singer] Andy [Wood]. Pearl Jam were coming out with their album, and we were all anticipating [Nirvana's] Nevermind. 

“These bands were from our community, and now they were being shared with everybody. There was definitely an energy happening in town. You could feel it.”

On previous albums, Soundgarden tested out new material live. That wasn’t the case with Badmotorfinger, right?

“Right. In the past, each album was a studio interpretation of songs we had played live in clubs and venues – in some cases, for years. With Badmotorfinger, I believe all of it was interpreted first in rehearsals and then in the studio, and performed live for the first time when we started touring on the record. 

“The one exception might have been Room a Thousand Years Wide, which we released as a single on Sub Pop. We might have gotten that out there during a gig. But this was now a distinct shift in our songwriting dynamic. Songs weren’t honed and filed through live performances; they weren’t tested and refined. We weren’t able to identify songs that were fun to play or whether the crowds loved them. We had to anticipate that.”

Did you have to submit demos to the label before going in to record?

“It was protocol for them to hear what we were planning on recording. It wasn’t like we had to sell them on our songs. On Louder Than Love, they heard some material and would discuss radio potential. 

“We didn’t want to think about that kind of thing. There might have been a few demos they heard for Badmotorfinger, but they didn’t want to interfere with us too much. And after Nirvana broke, the label just left us alone. They knew they had no idea what was going on. Nobody anticipated Nirvana going through the roof, but the attitude became, ‘OK, there’s a huge audience for this music.’”

What was the veto process for material within the band? What happened if somebody came in with a riff or a song and another guy said, “I’m not feeling it”? 

“That happened a number of times. Some songs got recorded but maybe people didn't jump on them initially. Maybe the riff or the instrumental part wasn't getting through, but a year or two later it would turn up in rehearsal. Or it might sit around until the next album cycle.

“If Chris had written Black Hole Sun around Screaming Life or Ultramega OK, we would've said, ‘That is an insanely great song, but it’s not appropriate for where we're at right now. It would just be a conspicuously weird thing here. Maybe try to sell it to somebody else.’ 

“But it came about at the time it did, for Superunknown. I think for the most part, that's usually how things happen. They come about an appropriate time, because that's where you've grown.”

You recorded much of Badmotorfinger in California. What went into that decision?

“We got advice from other bands. We discussed the benefits to staying home and having the familiar comforts versus getting away from everything and experiencing something new. Terry suggested working at Studio D in Sausalito, so we went down there and recorded a lot of basic tracks. There was a progressive hippie vibe happening there. I remember playing catch with a Nerf football. [Laughs]”

Let’s talk about some of the songs. The use of a wah as an audio filter really made the opening riff to Rusty Cage so distinctive. How did that come about?

“A couple of things happened there. We were using the Cry Baby a bit more. On Louder Than Love, I started farting around with it on solos. Then Chris used it. He was really interested in getting weird sounds, and he played with it to get that kind of filtered tone. 

“My memory of the demo for Rusty Cage is that the sound was there. He would bring us a demo and we’d go through changes; mostly because I'd add a guitar solo and I'd write some guitar parts to give depth to certain sections. Ben would usually have free rein to come up with bass lines. Because it was so fast and so specific rhythmically, Rusty Cage remained basically unchanged in terms of bass and rhythm guitar, and there were no guitar solos. 

“It had a cool linear progression – it didn't repeat verse and chorus too much – so we figured there was no room for a guitar solo. It was like, ‘Let's not waste it. There's enough going on with guitar. It's fast. It's got a lot of action. It doesn't need one.’ 

“My sense is that Chris worked it out and tracked that filter intro. He wrote the call-and-response intro thing. When we played live, we just played it with straightforward, heavy guitars, but on the demo and when we recorded it, we definitely used a wah to kind of get that weird sound of the rhythm guitars.”

You played a great solo on Outshined, but I understand you weren't too pleased when it was cut out of the video.

“That was kind of an irritating discussion. We'd write a song for the album. Chris would often have three verses and three choruses. He wrote songs that were at times unbearably long without being jammy; like maybe the Allman Brothers might have a really long song because there's some great Duane Allman slide solos and twin-guitar exchanges. We had lengthy verses and stuff, so they were often cut down for radio or an MTV version.

“I remember our A&R guy, Bryan Huttenhower, was in the studio trying to come up with a single edit, and Chris came in to work on it. They figured they'd have to take out some verses or lyric lines. They came to get me and said, ‘We can't find a place to take anything out of the verse or the chorus.’ 

“And I said, ‘Well, there's three verses. You can take one out.’ But Chris, I think correctly, said that he didn't want to do that. He thought the song, the story and the lyrics developed. You couldn't remove a hunk of lyrics and have the song make sense as he intended.

“Finally, they said, ‘Well, if we take out the guitar solo, we can shorten it.’ I was like, ‘You're kidding. Then it'll be misrepresenting a guitar band or a rock band. It'll sound weird.’ Well, we listened and I was like, ‘God, fuck. You've got to shorten it, I get it. If that's it, that's it. It's not the real version.’ So I went with it, and I rationalized it to myself saying, ‘This is not the real version. The fans are going to buy the album.’”

You and Chris used tunings that went beyond drop D. You would tune the low E to a B, and on Somewhere the tuning was E-E-B-B-B-B.

“I think Ben came up with that. There were a couple songs that Matt and I wrote on which we dropped the E, and the A was dropped to G. It was natural for us to challenge and impress each other… I don't know if we were trying to differentiate ourselves. We were just this collection of weird personalities and characters.”

What about the song Mind Riot, on which you tuned each guitar string to an E?

“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. 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. 

“I think it’s certainly reflective of the kind of band we were. Ben would come up with something sideways, and then Chris, Matt and I would try to straighten it or turn it more sideways or diagonal. And the same thing – Chris would come up with something unique and interesting, and then we might add something to bring in a psychedelic or rock element to twist it more. Things got filtered, or things were rejected because it didn’t sound like us.”

What were your main guitars for Badmotorfinger? Were you primarily using your Guild S-100s?

“Yeah, I was still using the Guild S-100, but because a lot of the songs had different colors in them, Chris would have to offset my sound – or vice versa, I had to offset his sound. If he used a Gibson humbucker and had a kind of warm sound, it would be similar to the S-100. 

“Then I might have used a different bridge position, or I might try a single-coil guitar or vice versa. Because I was using the Guild a lot, Chris might have offset it with a Fender or something so we weren’t getting the same tones and colors on a song.”

In addition to guitars, would you and Chris choose different amps to complement each other’s sound? 

“We would try different things for different sounds. Very often, I would come back to whatever amp I started with, and I’d just adjust the tones and volume. There’s always a risk in doing that – for me anyway. I respond more as a player than as a listener. I react to the responsiveness of the strings and the neck. If that isn't there, then it's not me.”

You were using Peaveys, Music Mans and Mesa/Boogie amps. Does that sound about right?

“Yeah, probably. We endorsed Peavey for a while, so we were using that. And the Music Man was something I had used since my late teens back in Chicago. 

“I kept using the Music Man throughout the early days of Soundgarden until it broke. I wasn't in the habit of frequenting music stores for repairs or to find used amp heads, so that’s how we ended up using Peaveys and eventually Mesa/Boogies. 

“I remember we went to the Peavey factory. We learned from the guys there that a lot of their customers at the time preferred a certain percussiveness and brightness to their amps, and it was because of the popularity of Metallica. We weren’t so concerned with that because that’s what our drummer did. We’d do pretty radical amp settings to get the sounds we wanted. Sometimes we’d turn off the treble to get it to sound warmer.”

What was your reaction to the album after you finished it and received your reference CD? 

“It’s my personality to be the guy who says, ‘I love it, but…’ Ben, too. Chris and Matt were like that, to varying degrees. I hear echoes in my head of Ben saying, ‘We should have done this. We should have done that. This part bugs me…’ I would have those thoughts in my head, as well.

“I confess that I would play things live a little looser and free – sloppy at times – to my satisfaction. In the studio, sometimes a solo would lose its fluidity because a producer wants you to be in the pocket or to emphasize a drum sound. I remember it would get frustrating. Terry Date might say, ‘It’s a part that has to fit this way,’ and I would think, ‘Damn, I don't play like that live.’”

What was your attitude when the album was about to be released? Were you excited? Scared? A little of both?

“There was certainly a degree of anxiety. I think we were most anxious – or really, I was – because it was our first album without Hiro. He was an easy songwriting partner of mine. He would write all these riffs on bass, and I'd flesh them out. I would write guitar riffs that would stack on top of his bass ideas. So now he was gone and we had this new guy and different relationships in songwriting. And this guy was great, but it was different. It was us without Hiro.

“It was a new lineup and new material that hadn’t been tested live. The songwriting dynamic and my songwriting presence as a guitarist in a guitar band was now changed. How adaptable would our audience be? How adaptable would the band be to how this worked? 

“But at the same time, I felt very confident of the strength of the material, because it varied from a unique arrangement for a song like Rusty Cage, which I think is probably one of Chris's two or three best songs ever, and then the psychedelic elements of Searching with My Good Eye Closed. Plus, there was my debut as a lyricist...”

Yes, on Room a Thousand Years Wide.

“Matt wrote the music to that, and I loved it so much. I said, ‘I’ve got to write lyrics for this,’ because I just loved the instrumental. I had some anxiety about that. But then you had what sounds like a three-chord punk-rock song with Face Pollution, which has this crazy, Zappa-esque middle section that Ben wrote. There was so much strength and variety on the album, and we felt really good about the colors we were presenting.”

It’s been 30 years since the album came out. Does it feel like the time went by in a blink of an eye?

“That’s totally what it feels like. When I was 10 and I needed perspective, I would think back to a decade before I was born, so that’s 1950. I would be like, ‘Wow, that was a long time ago!’ To go back 30 years before I was born, 1930, that’s, like, ancient to me. There was no TV or color movies. It’s prehistoric. 30 years is a big interval, especially in popular culture. It’s a weird thing to wrap your head around.”

Mastodon’s new album, Hushed and Grim, is a staggering achievement: every second of its 86:30 runtime is crammed with arena-shaking riffs, haunting clean passages and sky-scraping solos, courtesy of ever-bankable guitarists Bill Kelliher and Brent Hinds – but there are a few special guests onboard, too, including Kim Thayil, who lends his unmistakable leads to ethereal ballad Had It All.

Now, in a new interview with Total Guitar, Kelliher has detailed Thayil’s involvement in the track, and how the Soundgarden guitarist dialed his playing into its themes of loss, which deal with the death of longtime Mastodon manager Nick John.

“I’ve always looked up to Kim,” Kelliher says. “He started coming to our gigs in Seattle and we became friends.

“I knew there would be a lot of room for him to solo on Had It All. He wanted to get it right and asked, ‘Do you need something like this or that?’ I wanted to send him the whole album so he could get a feel for the sadness and emotion.

“I said to him, ‘You guys lost Chris [Cornell], just channel that!’ because that’s what the song is about. Losing our manager, someone who we were very close to. Kim did a great job – his solos are out there and nobody plays like him.”

In the years following Chris Cornell’s passing in May 2017, Thayil has toured with MC5 supergroup MC50, performed Soundgarden material with Brandi Carlile, and served up a sizeable lead on The Pretty Reckless single Only Love Can Save Me Now. Had It All marks his latest guest solo spot.

Elsewhere in the Total Guitar interview, Kelliher reveals how the record’s other guest soloist, Marcus King, ended up tackling The Beast.

“Brent’s been playing with Marcus a lot on the side, doing shows and covers,” he explains.

“He’s a young up-and-coming blues guitarist and to my ears, they sound very similar. Marcus did a stab at a couple of solos on the record and I couldn’t really tell who was playing!”

For more on the new Mastodon album, pick up a copy of the latest issue of Total Guitar magazine, which also features a rundown of the 50 greatest Beatles guitar songs, interviews with Santana and Trivium, plus tabs of songs by Free, Biffy Clyro, Extreme and Passenger.

The Seattle scene of the late-’80s and early-’90s gave birth to a cultural and musical revolution, driven by some truly great guitar players who reimagined punk, metal and hard rock in their own image. Now, Jerry Cantrell, leader of quintessential Seattle rockers Alice in Chains, has named who he considers the greatest guitarist to emerge from the boom.

During a new Guitar World interview promoting recently released solo effort Brighten, Cantrell was asked who he’d dub the best guitar player in Seattle during grunge’s glory days.

“It’s tough to say; everybody’s so unique,” he responds. “Kim Thayil is crazy. He’s got a crazy style that is unique unto itself. It’s a blend of different styles – super-big and out of control, but right on the fucking edge of coming off the tracks and going right back on. I always admired his playing.

“I always liked Stone Gossard’s style, too. Super-punk, but also really melodic and based in some kind of regular rock, hard rock, blues-based riffs and stuff. Kurt Cobain was like a cross between punk and pop. His style had a lot of ferocity, and he wrote super-memorable, simple stuff.

“I don’t know... If I had to pick one, it would be Kim.”

It makes sense that Thayil would be the frontrunner – the Soundgarden guitarist was integral to the development of Alice in Chains’ sound, having introduced Cantrell to drop D tuning at the tail end of the ’80s.

“I remember that the Alice in Chains guys at the time were more like a glam-metal boogie band,” Thayil told Guitar World back in 2012. “One day I ran into Jerry [Cantrell] at a D.O.A. concert, and he says to me, ‘Man, I love that song Nothing to Say. What are you doing there?’ And I told him, ‘Well, it’s in drop D tuning.’ And Alice in Chains became a different band almost overnight!”

Alice in Chains would cover Soundgarden classic Hunted Down during their early years, and reprised their rendition, along with a cover of Down on the Upside’s Boot Camp, for 2018’s Rock on the Range performance, in tribute to late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell.

Thayil later returned the favor, tackling It Ain’t Like That, Drone and Angry Chair for Alice in Chains’ Museum of Pop Culture Founders Award ceremony last year.

Cantrell and Thayil are set to join forces for a Sounds of Seattle rock camp in February 2022, which also features original Pearl Jam drummer Dave Krusen – and, we’d wager, a masterclass in drop D tuning.

To read the full interview with Cantrell, pick up a copy of the latest issue of Guitar World, which also features an exclusive look back at U2’s Achtung Baby with the Edge, as well as conversations with Tom Morello, Iron Maiden and Carlos Santana.

In 1991, three albums by Seattle bands had a seismic effect on the sound of rock music – Nirvana’s Nevermind, Pearl Jam’s Ten and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger. Like punk before it, grunge was a revolutionary force, and Soundgarden, the first of those bands to sign to a major label, played a leading role as architects of the ‘Seattle Sound’. 

Badmotorfinger was the band’s third album and the first to feature the classic line-up of Chris Cornell (vocals, rhythm guitar), Kim Thayil (lead guitar), Matt Cameron (drums) and Ben Shepherd (bass). 

It was also the heaviest of those three era-defining albums of 1991 – with Thayil delivering screaming leads and scorching riffs, and combining altered tunings and odd-time meters into his own church of psychedelic noise. 

30 years on, as Thayil speaks to TG from his home in Seattle, his thoughts are focused on the album that stands tall as the pinnacle of Soundgarden’s career – a career which ended, tragically, with the death of Chris Cornell in 2017.

Most of all, he remembers the fun that he and Cornell had working as a two-guitar team. But in an hour-long Zoom call, the conversation turns to all things six-string-related.

First, he offers an apology. “I’ll try my best for you,” he grins from behind his white wizard-like beard. “But I must admit, I fail to be on a first-name basis with my gear. I can probably come up with the general make and then the specifics somehow elude me!”

Even so, he has plenty of sound advice to pass on – beginning with how an “affordable” guitar was pivotal to his development as a self-taught player.

You’ll know when you find the right instrument for you...

”Unfortunately, I don’t think this advice is given to younger guitarists. Get something that feels good to play. Don’t buy a cheap guitar that’s tough to play. It is discouraging. It will take you longer to learn those chords. You want something that will facilitate your learning and give you the rewards to encourage you to go on. 

”The S-100 is the guitar I bought when I was 18, and ultimately was the one I could afford to buy. I had started playing a few years before that, when I was 15. So at that stage I was learning new techniques and getting better gradually, as I was self-taught. But I had to buy a guitar that I could afford. 

”And the Guild S-100, which I bought in ’77 or ’78, was pretty affordable. It only cost me $250, which was way less than a Les Paul or Strat. I think friends would have directed me to those other guitars, but this one looked good – it was black – and it was in good condition with great action. When I picked it up, I found that it was easy to play and had a fast neck.”

Embrace the peculiarities of your chosen instrument...

“There were things about the S-100 that I didn’t fully understand. I didn’t really know what distinguished it from a Les Paul or a Strat. By learning on that guitar, my style developed. It was how it made me play and what it allowed me to do. 

“Weirdly it had a microphonic pickup – I could blow on the strings or talk into it and that would get picked up. Consequently, I would get this weird feedback and hum – which I would probably discourage, because the people you play with might not want to hear your guitar screaming or humming away. But I did! So eventually that would become a component of what I’d do in Soundgarden. 

“It seemed to voice really loudly beneath the bridge. There’s this good space between the bridge and tailpiece where I can hit the strings and strum it to get this ‘krring’. I noticed I could do that on the headstock, though some of my friends’ guitars didn’t do that. 

“I liked the fact I could make these weird noises with my guitar and my fretting hand adapted to that guitar, with a slightly thinner neck and lower action. I felt familiar and comfortable with it. That’s how it came to be my main guitar.”

See what you can do with similar models from the same series...

“I also started playing Guild S-300s, which came with DiMarzio pickups. I was learning about how guitars got that big, distorted sound – was it the amp or the instrument? I was led to believe it was the guitar and perhaps also the pickup. 

“All these guitarists I knew would talk about DiMarzios. So I saw this advert for an S-300, which looked a bit cooler than the S-100, a little more electric. And the ad said it came with the Guild pickups – just like on my S-100, which I knew I already liked – or two different DiMarzios, a PAF in the neck and Super Distortion in the bridge. 

“I thought it sounded like a cool guitar and decided to get one. But I never saw them in stores. I came to learn that sometimes guitar manufacturers would run ads just to test the markets. They may not have had a factory production going; it may have just been some demonstration models. 

“I guess they’d do it to bring product awareness to their brand and different lines. So these S-300s weren’t fully in production and made for test markets. Chris Cornell and Ben Shepherd really liked the sound of those guitars, because they were a bit beefier than the S-100. They didn’t play the same way. 

“The strings didn’t move as much if I was to bend behind the neck or tailpiece. They played more like a regular electric guitar, and didn’t have the weird feedback thing. But it was a nice solid sustain and very warm, which is why it ended up in the set for certain songs.”

Always go with what serves the song best...

“I played some Gibson ES-335s on [2012 comeback album] King Animal, but I was kinda forced to. The band, the crew, the producer... They all wanted me to have other guitars in my rig for different voicings. And that made sense. We’d travel with a dozen or so guitars because of all the different tunings. 

“We tried it the other way when we were goofy and naive. We’d take a break in between songs and change the tuning, which was terribly demanding of the attention of our audience! With techs and a bigger collection, you can swap guitars and you’re ready to go in an alternate tuning. So, get a Firebird, because you played it on this song so it works well there. 

“I used a lot of Teles on the Down On The Upside tour. I don’t use them as much anymore. Because of the bridge and how they’re made, they’re great for standard tunings but I don’t find them great for some open-tunings like C or G. The Guilds stay in tune – that’s another great thing. They come stock with Grover tuners, which hold up perfectly for all the weird tunings we used.”

Thicken your guitar parts for more motion...

“I always liked using multiple guitar tracks. Whatever I play, I like to double it with another track, doing that on different parts for colour. And then Chris started doing that, so it’s tough to tell who is playing on that album. If you hear two guitars, both could me. Or a couple of me, and a couple of Chris. Or one of me and one of Chris... Or even five each! It would depend on the song. 

“There were a number of tracks that Chris didn’t play on – usually the faster songs or maybe a riff I wrote that was more difficult for him to play. In those cases, you might hear three or four guitars and they’re all me. We liked thickening parts so they were slightly out of sync. That would bring a cool motion to it. 

“I heard Led Zeppelin doing it and even some hardcore bands like Minor Threat. And that made me think about not making things perfectly in-sync, and try to get two unique performances that are naturally a little bit out. It’s not the regular sweep of a delay effect or modulation effect, it’s an irregular sweep, which is a little bit more trippy. I liked that a lot. I would always insist on doing it!”

Think hard about the right tempo and feel for each riff...

“Sometimes I naturally play behind the beat, like on the track Outshined. I definitely like playing that way. Matt [Cameron] was and is such a great drummer – he knew exactly how to direct and accent the groove towards my playing style. I always liked dragging the beat. It sounded a bit heavier when being on the beat could be too mechanical and stiff to my ears. 

“Producers like it when you’re on the beat – they like to encourage that because it makes them look good, like they know what they’re doing. They also don’t like noise, because that’s how they represent their skills as an engineer. Unfortunately, I like all those noises [laughs]. I like disassembling the things they want to assemble. Noise and playing behind the beat are both things we would do and I will probably continue to do.”

Use extra gain only when you need it...

“Initially I didn’t use any overdrive or distortion pedals in the band, back when I was the sole guitarist. I only started when we had began using two guitars. If Chris was playing, I’d use the gain or boost just for solo sections or other colours I would add. 

“When it was just bass and drums behind me, I didn’t need that. I’d just start soloing and there would be nothing else framing me or constraining me. When there’s another guitar in there, if it’s a linear note it’s less constraining. If it’s a chord, it will limit the frame in which I play – the sounds start competing so to cut through I’d add the gain. 

“I didn’t try out lots of pedals or anything. I knew what I wanted to change over the years but when I found what I needed, I’d often stick with that. On more recent tours it’s been the MXR CAE Boost/Overdrive. Back in the day, it was an Ibanez Tube Screamer. And the stereo chorus was Ibanez, too, the lavender-coloured one [CS9]. So yeah, it was purple and green for me!

“I also tried a bass distortion that was designed by Paul Barker from Ministry: he gave me a couple of these pedals I ended up using for my guitar. They had the coolest screaming sound but I just kept blowing them. They’d last for two shows and then die so I’d have to get another one.

“So, in the end, I started sticking to mainly boosts. I like the tone of the guitar and my fingers. I still wanted gain and to sound heavy, but I didn’t want to lose the personality... Or lack of personality, may I add, in my sound.”

Think long and hard about what each pedal does to your tone...

“When you have a distortion or fuzz pedal it changes the character of your guitar, which is why I prefer not to use them. Some bands – like Mudhoney, for example – love fuzz pedals. I find them limiting; they compress and limit things. You end up taking a lot of dynamics out, and a lot of our riffs were very dynamic-oriented. 

“That was our interpretation and mood for when playing live. The expression and expressiveness was important to how we played the song and interpreted it. That might have swung from day to day. I like those dynamics – going from loud to soft, total aggression to something more fluid. 

“Distortion and fuzz pedals kinda ruined that – they squished everything into a box and killed the dynamics. It also created a tone that overshot what you get out of your fingers and guitar. Eventually I found I had more range without fuzz. If you get 10 players using the same fuzzbox with the same settings, it’s going to be hard to distinguish who is who. 

“Unlike synthesizers, which totally kill the element of attack and dynamics to the point of making a two year-old and concert pianist sound the same, the guitar is a real musical instrument that allows for own interpretation and expressiveness. Which is why I avoid fuzz boxes. I don’t need them to create a tone or sound. I basically need more volume and a bit more gain at times.”

Don’t automatically dismiss digital gear...

“Before Black Hole Sun, I was mainly using chorus as my modulation. After Superunknown came out, I swapped in a Rotovibe to try and simulate the Leslie cabinet heard on the recording. But actually, over the last 10 years or so, I’ve been using a digital approximation instead of an actual Rotovibe. 

“I wish I could remember which one it is – my guitar tech just said, ‘Try this - go between setting A for fast and setting B for slow!’ And I was like, ‘All right, this works!’ So for Black Hole Sun, I’d use a slow setting for the choruses and the faster one for the verses and was very happy with it.”

Try using about your wah more like an envelope filter or EQ shift...

“I used my Cry Baby for Rusty Cage to help change the colour and timbre of the song. I guess the opening part has a bit of an Eastern feel, which is the kind of sound I had picked up from The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Interestingly, it was a sound we all liked – Chris loved The Beatles too. 

“Live on stage, sometimes I might have gotten bored and I might have moved my wah more. But generally I like keeping it up and open, and then leaving it there. Sometimes I might slowly move it as the song flows, just to get a 360 effect. It’s my flat impression of a Leslie, I guess [laughs]!”

Write songs that celebrate your weirdness...

“If you listen to Badmotorfinger, you might notice there are so many distinct feels across the record – different interpretations of the heavy, dark and psychedelic things we liked in music. I really like Room A Thousand Years Wide because it’s solid, heavy, repetitive and insistent. 

“I like the psychedelic components of Searching With My Good Eye Closed. I’m really drawn to that. And out of the singles, I liked Jesus Christ Pose the most because of its manic-ness. It sounds like a race car or train that’s gone out of control or off the rails... It’s just trying to hang onto itself. I like that side of it. 

“That song has wild elements but at the same time it’s very precise. The drum parts are challenging and there’s a very fast, rhythmic demand on the guitar, and yet it sounds like it’s spinning out of control.”

Pay close attention to your song arrangements...

“Rusty Cage is probably one of the coolest arrangements we’ve ever done. I’m so proud of Chris for writing that one. That is the most risky and courageous arrangement. The song doesn’t repeat in a traditional arrangement. Chris had this lean towards radio-friendly writing. 

“He’d write songs that pushed the envelope. They were uneasy, they weren’t formulaic, but they would address an arrangement that might be good for radio. Rusty Cage is not that! It goes from one place to another hooky guitar riff that isn’t established in the verse or the chorus... It’s brilliant. I love how it switches groove.”

Alice in Chains electric guitar hero Jerry Cantrell and Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil are set to co-lead a rock camp titled, appropriately enough, the Sounds of Seattle.

Set to take place over Presidents' Day weekend, February 17-20, 2022, in Los Angeles, the camp will also feature original Pearl Jam drummer Dave Krusen. The event is presented by Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp.

“The past few years have been unusually difficult and at times truly bizarre for the nation and world in general, and for the music industry and rock bands in particular," Thayil said of the camp in a press release. "I am super excited about the opportunity to connect and re-engage with fellow musicians and fans at the Rock ‘n Roll Fantasy Camp.”

In addition to learning from and jamming with the grunge legends, the camp will provide attendees with the opportunity to perform publicly at legendary Hollywood venues The Viper Room and The Whisky-A-Go-Go.

Other instructors at the camp include Jane's Addiction/Porno for Pyros drummer Stephen Perkins, Nickelback bass guitar man Mike Kroeger, Whitesnake guitarist Joel Hoekstra, Vixen guitarist Britt Lightning and other hard rock luminaries.

For more info and to book your own spot, stop by Rock Camp.

During her August 14 performance at the The Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Washington, singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile brought the three surviving members of Soundgarden onstage for moving renditions of two of the band's classic songs – Black Hole Sun and Searching with My Good Eye Closed. 

You can check out fan-filmed videos of the former performance above, and the latter one below.

Carlile had previously played Black Hole Sun with Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd at the 'I Am the Highway' Chris Cornell tribute concert in Los Angeles in January 2019, but this particular guest appearance marked the first time that the remaining members of Soundgarden had performed live together in their native Washington state since the tragic death of the band's frontman, the legendary Chris Cornell, in 2017.

Carlile had previously covered the two songs in question with Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd on her 2020 Record Store Day EP, A Rooster Says. 

For their part, the surviving members of Soundgarden recently regained access to the band's social media accounts and website after an intense legal battle with Chris Cornell’s estate, many parts of which remain unresolved. 

A key point of contention in the battle regards the fate of a potential final Soundgarden album. Ownership of Cornell’s vocal recordings for seven unreleased tracks has been in dispute since 2019, although his widow, Vicky Cornell, recently said that “all of Chris’ music, including Soundgarden, will see the light of day.”

In the ongoing legal battle between the surviving members of Soundgarden and Vicky Cornell, widow of late frontman Chris Cornell, the band members have now accused Cornell of locking them out of the official Soundgarden social media accounts and website.

Soundgarden electric guitar player Kim Thayil, bassist Ben Shepherd and drummer Matt Cameron have asked a judge to order Cornell to relinquish the passwords.

On March 25, Thayil, Cameron, Shepherd and their business manager Rit Venerus filed papers in Washington state U.S. District Court accusing Cornell of locking them out their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, YouTube, Snapchat, Tumblr, Top Spin and Pinterest accounts, as well as Soundgarden's official website, and changing all the passwords.

In addition to the request to hand over the passwords, the band has also asked that if this doesn’t happen, a posting be put up on the appropriate websites stating "Soundgarden has temporarily suspended its official social media accounts due to pending litigation."

The report from Billboard also states that the members claim the accounts are in a “state of neglect," that Cornell is identifying herself as Soundgarden and that she is removing posted comments from fans.

Additionally, there have been no news items added to the band's official website since October 2019 and no new posts to the band's Twitter account since January 2020, and the band’s Facebook “official store” page is non-operational.

Soundgarden's former management company, Patriot Management, reportedly handed over the band's social media account passwords to Cornell in October of 2019, after the band terminated services with the company.

According to the filing, the band says Patriot confirmed in an email in December 2019 that "Vicky [Cornell] has since changed all the social media passwords for the band accounts and will not share them with [Patriot] as she wants the band, and I quote, 'to sue her for them.’"

This is the latest development in a string of disputes between Cornell and Soundgarden. In December 2019, Cornell sued the band, claiming they were withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties which were owed to her and her family. The dispute also involved copyright issues regarding seven audio recordings made by Chris Cornell before his death in May 2017.

Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd countersued in response, calling her complaint an “offensive recitation of false allegations and accusations.”

More recently, we reported that, according to court documents, Soundgarden had received an offer worth $16 million from an unnamed third party seeking to purchase the band's recorded music catalogue. 

Cornell, in turn, alleged that the band offered to purchase her stake – which she inherited from her late husband – for the “villainously low figure of less than $300,000.”

The lawsuit revealed that Cornell had offered the band $21 million for their own shares, which they had turned down. According to Cornell’s lawyer, Marty Singer, this was “not because they wanted to preserve their life’s work but because they know that they will make even more off of future exploitation of the music that Chris wrote and the legacy that he created (which has lined their pockets for years)”.

The remaining Soundgarden members responded to Cornell’s lawsuit, stating that the buyout offer “demanded by the Estate has been grossly mischaracterized and we are confident that clarity will come out in court.”

Death by Rock and Roll, the new album from The Pretty Reckless, dropped today, and with it, Taylor Momsen and co’s long-awaited collaboration with Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil and Matt Cameron.

Only Love Can Save Me Now features several signature Soundgarden traits, with an opening riff in 7/4, a range of modal motifs and nearly a full minute of wailing, wah-drenched Thayil leads.

Momsen had previously performed with Soundgarden at 2019’s all-star tribute to Chris Cornell, but as for how her band’s recording debut with Thayil and Cameron came about, she told Guitar World, “I had this song and called them up saying it was begging for them to play on it, sounding very much in their vein. Basically I told them, ‘If you’re not on it, we’ll just sound like we’re ripping you off [laughs]!’

“We flew to Seattle and recorded at London Bridge Studio, which is where so many iconic records were made like Louder Than Love, Pearl Jam’s Ten. I think it was their first time back since Louder Than Love so it was a cool moment for them to reflect on everything and amazing for me to see this song coming to life.

“They’re so great, they elevate everything they touch. Kim is a master – there’s no-one else like him.”

Thayil isn’t the only guitar legend who crops up on Death by Rock and Roll – standout single And So It Went plays host to the trademark Whammy squeals of Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello.

Soundgarden lead guitarist Kim Thayil once called Black Hole Sun the band’s Dream On, but this brooding, psychedelic rocker is no ordinary power ballad. Composed by the band’s frontman, Chris Cornell, the song uses 11 of the 12 notes in the chromatic scale in a highly effective manner that makes perfect melodic sense without any dissonance.

Contrasting guitar textures - upper-register arpeggios with warbling rotating speaker vibrato on the verses and heavy, overdriven lines and power chords on the choruses - reinforce the composition’s drama and tension without relying on the obvious “soft/loud” approach often overused by Soundgarden’s grunge counterparts.

One lesser-known detail of Soundgarden’s Superunknown album is that Cornell recorded almost all of the rhythm guitar parts himself while Thayil’s role was exclusively devoted to playing lead. According to producer Michael Beinhorn, Cornell used only three guitars: a Gretsch Duo Jet, a double-cutaway Gretsch Silver Jet and a Fender Jazzmaster, with the Duo Jet being his sole instrument for Black Hole Sun.

Most of Cornell’s guitar tracks were recorded using a Marshall JMP 50 half stack and Mesa-Boogie Dual Rectifier Solo half stack blended together. On Black Hole Sun, the Marshall provided brighter tone with defined string attack, while the Mesa delivered darker tone with bigger body and bottom-end girth, and both amps were set to moderate levels of overdrive.

The song’s most distinguishing tonal characteristic is the warbling vibrato on the verse’s guitar part, which was created using a Leslie Model 16 rotating speaker cabinet driven by the Marshall head. The rotating speaker effect gives what would otherwise be a sparse- and small-sounding part plenty of texture and body to fill the sonic space and engage the ear, and it enhances the trippy mood of Cornell’s cryptic lyrics.

GET THE SOUND, CHEAP!

● Gretsch G5230T Electromatic Jet
● Blackstar HT-5R MkII
● Boss CE-2W

TONE TIP: Use the CE-2W’s vibrato setting (far right) with the Rate and Depth controls each set to 7-8 to duplicate the Leslie’s distinctive warble.

ORIGINAL GEAR

GUITAR: 1989 Gretsch G6128T Duo Jet with ceramic-magnet Filter’tron humbuckers (bridge pickup), master volume: 10, bridge volume: 10, master tone: 10

AMP: Late-Seventies Marshall Model 1987 JMP 50-watt Lead head (Presence: 4, Bass: 5, Middle: 8, Treble: 6, Volume I: 7, Volume II: 5, Input I top left, jumper from Input I bottom left to Input II top right) with Marshall Model 1960 4x12 angled cabinet with G12H 30-watt Greenbacks; 1993 Mesa-Boogie Dual Rectifier Solo head (Orange/Vintage channel, 6L6 tubes, Master: 7, Presence: 2, Bass: 6, Mid: 6, Treble: 5, Gain: 5, Orange Gain switch: Variable High Gain, Rectifier switch: Vacuum Tubes, Power switch: Spongy) with Mesa-Boogie 4x12 with Celestion Vintage 30s.

EFFECTS: Leslie Model 16 rotating speaker cabinet (fast setting)

STRINGS/TUNING: Strings/Tuning: Ernie Ball Regular Slinky .010-.046/Dropped D (D, A, D, G, B, E)*

PICK: Dunlop Tortex 1.00mm

Soundgarden, along with the Chris Cornell Estate, UMe and Artists Den, have announced a lineup of events and new products titled Soundgarden: Live From the Artists Den.

The events will feature a reimagined experience of Artists Den's concert taping of Soundgarden at the Wiltern in Los Angeles on February 17, 2013, in support of their King Animal album. There will be stops in Los Angeles and New York as well as a special screening in Seattle. The new Live From the Artists Den features 21 songs never before released on a Soundgarden concert film, including 17 making their first appearance on a live album.

You can watch a trailer for the new film above.

Soundgarden: Live From The Artists Den will be released in a variety of formats on July 26. The limited-edition Super Deluxe box will feature the complete 29-song concert film in 5.1 surround sound and stereo on Blu-ray, and more than 30 minutes of bonus interviews with the band, in addition to four black 180-gram audiophile LPs, 2CDs, a 40-page photo book, four band member lithos, and replica artist all-access pass and ticket stub from the original show. Additional products scheduled for release include: 4LP 180-gram audiophile black vinyl, limited edition 4LP color vinyl (each disc will feature a unique combination of splattered colors), Blu-ray and 2CD. Digital live album and digital live video will be available for preorder on May 31.

Speaking about Live From the Artists Den, Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil said: "We were very proud and excited to document the performance of our new material from King Animal and to celebrate with each other and our fans."

On behalf of the Estate, Vicky Cornell said: "This live show was really special, and I know how much fun Chris had that night. The idea of giving fans the opportunity to experience it in its entirety is something I'm proud to share with them."

In advance of the album release, Artists Den will present Soundgarden: Live From the Artists Den immersive events of the full 29-song show in New York and Los Angeles, as well as an additional screening in Seattle. The stops in New York and Los Angeles will each showcase 12 HD camera angles customized for an immersive multi-screen viewing experience. A live remix of the original multitrack 48-channel audio will be presented in L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound, an ultra-high-resolution audio technology from L-Acoustics. The 360-degree real time mix synced to on-screen footage and further complemented by a light show.

Tickets for the Soundgarden: Live From the Artists Den immersive events will go on sale today, May 16 at 5 p.m. EDT / 2 p.m. PDT as an exclusive bundle which includes the 2 CD.

The events and screening are being held at the following venues:

June 17 - Los Angeles, CA - The Wiltern (Immersive Event) 
June 18 - New York, NY - Brooklyn Steel (Immersive Event) 
June 23 - Seattle, WA - The Showbox (Screening Only)

Pre-orders and tickets for Soundgarden: Live From the Artists Den are available here.

Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil was born on this day in 1960. In honor of his 58th birthday, check out this live video of Soundgarden performing a short set at Rhino Records Westwood in Los Angeles on September 24, 1989.

The Rhino appearance was staged to promote the recent release of Soundgarden’s major label debut album, Louder Than Love, which had been issued roughly three weeks earlier, on September 5, 1989. The performance captures the band’s brief lineup with former Nirvana guitarist Jason Everman, who joined following original Soundgarden bassist Hiro Yamomoto’s departure after the recording of Louder Than Love. Everman was then replaced by Ben Shepherd, who remained in the band—which in addition to Thayil included drummer Matt Cameron and late frontman Chris Cornell—for the rest of their initial run, as well as their more recent reunion album and tours.

For the Rhino gig, Soundgarden cranked through five Louder Than Love tracks—“Get on The Snake,” “Ugly Truth,” “Big Dumb Sex,” “Hands All Over” and “Gun”—before closing with “Beyond the Wheel,” from their 1988 effort, Ultramega OK.

Check out the full set below:

Friday night, during their performance at Seattle's Safeco Field, Pearl Jam paid tribute to Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, covering "Missing," an early Cornell solo rarity, and jamming with Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil during their encore.

"Missing" is a track taken from Cornell's obscure 1992 solo EP, Poncier, which collects his contributions to the soundtrack of the Cameron Crowe film, Singles. You can see Pearl Jam's live cover of the song above. 

During their encore, the band also welcomed Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil onstage for a trio of covers: MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams,” the Stooges’ “Search and Destroy” and Dead Boys’ “Sonic Reducer.” The latter two songs also featured Mark Arm and Steve Turner, of fellow Seattle grunge luminaries Mudhoney. 

You can check out fan-filmed footage of the covers below.

Former MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer has announced a tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of the band's seminal debut album, Kick Out the Jams.

For the tour, Kramer will be joined by Soundgarden's Kim Thayil, King's X's Dug Pinnick, Fugazi's Brendan Canty and Zen Guerilla's Marcus Durant. The band will play Kick Out the Jams in its entirety, along with other MC5 classics. Though a full itinerary is still forthcoming, the group has announced that the tour will end with an October 27 show in the band's native Detroit.

“The message of the MC5 has always been the sense of possibilities: a new music, a new politics, a new lifestyle,” Kramer said in a statement. “Today, there is a corrupt regime in power, an endless war thousands of miles away, and uncontrollable violence wracking our country. It’s becoming less and less clear if we’re talking about 1968 or 2018. I’m now compelled to share this music I created with my brothers 50 years ago. My goal is that the audience leaves these concerts fueled by the positive and unifying power of rock music.”

“The MC5 were one of the few bands that I idolized growing up in DC," Canty added. "They had politics, chops, and unfathomable energy. They played protests, and made music that sounded like a celebration of the movement at the same time. They informed so many of us in the punk rock world. No matter where you heard it, hearing Kick out the Jams for the first time rewrote what you thought you knew of the Sixties, and a band's potential."

"It’s been great getting to know and play with Wayne," he continued. "He still can play like a motherfucker, and his politics are front and center. He is smart and righteous, and I’m happy to be in his army on this one.”

Kramer and drummer Dennis Thompson are the only surviving members of the band's classic, Kick Out the Jams-era lineup. Vocalist Rob Tyner died of a heart attack in 1991, guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith died of heart failure in 1994 and bassist Michael Davis died of liver failure in 2012.

Since the release of their excellent 2012 reunion album, King Animal, Soundgarden have been spending some time revisiting their storied past.

In 2013 came a remastered reissue of 1990’s Screaming Life/Fopp album, itself a compilation of two late-Eighties EPs. Then, earlier this year, in recognition of the 20th anniversary of 1994’s Superunknown, the band released updated versions of the landmark album, including a five-disc “Super Deluxe” edition that included demos, rehearsals, B-sides and more from the sessions.

Now, Soundgarden have essentially raided their own vaults for the new Echo of Miles: Scattered Tracks Across the Path, a three-disc release that gathers together rarities under three headings: An “Originals” disc presents Soundgarden compositions that have appeared as B-sides, on soundtracks or other compilations or that have remained unreleased; a “Covers” disc collects their interpretations of other band’s songs from over the years; and “Oddities” includes remixes and other bizarre musical moments from the band’s history.

Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil has been hinting at a project of this scope for years, and the finished product is a virtual treasure trove of goodies, as well as essential listening for any Soundgarden completest.

Just prior to the release of Echo of Miles, Thayil sat down with Guitar World to discuss this trip through Soundgarden’s lesser-known past—and also talk about what’s coming up in the near future.

GUITAR WORLD: Echo of Miles is the Soundgarden compilation album that we’ve been hearing you reference for years. Now it’s finally here.

Yes. This goes back at least 20 years. Of course, I’ve never referred to it as a compilation…although it is a compilation. [laughs] But I tend to think of a compilation as songs that have appeared on albums, or things that are arranged for other purposes, like greatest hits records, or best of’s. Or, back in the Fifties and Sixties they made “rocking” albums and “candlelight” albums.

But this is kind of a banding together of a bunch of songs that were non-album tracks, with the exception of a couple songs that were on greatest hits compilations. But the band has never been that thrilled about producing things like B-sides, or material for international releases, or songs on movie soundtracks. You know, we enjoy being on movie soundtracks but we also want these songs to be part of a Soundgarden album.

You’ve divided the material into three separate discs: Originals, Covers and Oddities.

Basically it’s three albums. And we contemplated releasing the three albums in a serialized fashion, perhaps over months, or maybe over a longer period of time. But we thought that ultimately we’d release them all at once. But that’s one of the strange things about this [project]. In my liner notes I had a hard time establishing the identity of this kind of an album. It’s a collection, but 20 years ago I perceived “Originals” as being ultimately another Soundgarden studio album.

Because they were loose ends—a song here, a song there. And these were all songs that we loved, because we went through the whole birthing process of writing them, learning them, recording them, mixing them. If we went through that entire process it’s because we believed in a song. And then to see that song as part of an EP that was released only in Japan was a little disappointing. We would have loved to have put those types of songs on an album here.

But, of course, back in the day, with Louder Than Love, Badmotorfinger, Ultramega OK, we would orient our recordings toward vinyl and a single disc. So we were limited to only putting 11 or 12 songs on an album. Starting with Superunknown we oriented toward CD. And, if you notice, everything since then on vinyl is a double album—Down on the Upside, Superunknown, King Animal. We decided we were not going to force ourselves to omit material. So that was kind of the impetus for this.

When you were putting this material together was there anything that jumped out at you or surprised you?

There’s a lot of material that jumped out. The covers album…I really enjoy the way the covers album is set up, the way the songs flow, and listening to some of the performances. Because when we originally did many of those songs we would self-critically compare them to the original versions that we were covering. And you’d always say, “Well, I’m not playing guitar like this guy…” “Maybe this is sloppier…” “I think Chris [Cornell, vocals] is doing something here the original singer wasn’t doing…” Things like that.

You’re always evaluating your performance against the original. But given this much time, I can now listen to these covers independently and not have to juxtapose them against the originals and see the flaws. Now I see them standing on their own as being standout performances by Soundgarden. The stuff with Ben [Shepherd, bass] in the band, or some of the early John Peel stuff with Hiro [Yamamoto, original bassist] in the band, it’s all very good.

And it surprised me and impressed me that I could appreciate these covers on that level. There’s the whole session of recordings that includes [the Rolling Stones’] “Stray Cat Blues,” [Black Sabbath’s] “Into the Void,” the Devo song “Girl U Want,” “Touch Me” by [Seventies British pop group] Fancy—those were all done pretty much in, like, one day. And the guitar styles are so different from each other. We’re doing Devo, and then an hour later Black Sabbath. Then the Rolling Stones. Then Fancy, which, as far as the guitar playing, is reminiscent of Mother Love Bone. And I’m playing all the guitars on all these tracks in one day. It was fun and it was funny to have to do all these different styles and colors. And it’s like, How could we do that so easily when at other times we struggled with our own songs?

Let’s talk about the song “Storm,” on the “Originals” disc. It’s a new song but also an old song. Can you talk about the history of that one?

There are individual songs within this collection that have strange stories, and “Storm” is one of them. Chris wrote a demo of it in ‘85 that had some weird vocals and guitar effects. There was no real guitar part but there was a cool bass line. Then he showed it to the band, and Hiro interpreted the bass line into something pretty much like a bass solo, and I wrote those guitar parts with the seventh chords, some ninths in there, some other things.

And our drummer at the time, Scott Sundquist, interpreted the drums as, like, rolling thunder. And locally, we played that song live all the time. It was a favorite—I know our peers in Green River, Mother Love Bone, Nirvana, Skin Yard, Melvins, all these bands we played with all heard the song because it was always in our set. Then when we got Matt [Cameron, drums] in the band we started writing new material, so a lot of the old material got pushed back. We tried doing “Storm” with Matt and it was a little bit of a different feel, so it kind of went from heavy rotation to medium rotation to low rotation. And that was it. It kind of got shelved.

So how did it come off the shelf?

We thought about how we never gave this song a good studio recording. So we decided to try it. We had some spare time, and then in May [producer] Jack Endino was available. He was the one who was so acquainted with our early material, and he loves this song so we thought we’d give him a chance at recording it. So it’s a brand new recording of a song we haven’t played live since ‘86 or ‘87. For all practical purposes it’s a new song, but it’s also something from 30 years ago.

I know you’re also currently working on a reissue of [1988’s] Ultramega OK. When will we see that? And is there any new material from Soundgarden on the horizon?

Well, a couple weeks ago Jack Endino and I finished up the remaining songs for Ultramega OK. It sounds way better, bigger and warmer than the original. We’re gonna sit on it for a few months and let everyone else hear it, see how we feel about it. We pulled the record from SST so it belongs to us now. So we’ll have to negotiate a new contract with a label and then we’ll hopefully put it out within a year. As for new material, when Soundgarden gets back from Australia in February and Matt’s Pearl Jam obligations are done, we’ll get together again. We’ll definitely start working on new music in 2015, for sure.

Got a question for your favorite guitarist? Let us be your go-between. The concept is easy — you submit your queries and we pass them on to some of the world's greatest guitarists. Only the sharpest and funniest questions will be used.

This month, we're giving you the chance to ask Soundgarden's lead guitarist Kim Thayil anything you want! No part of his career is off limits!

Just email your questions to dearguitarhero@guitarworld.com and put "Kim Thayil" in the subject line. Remember to include your name in the email body, so you can get credited in the magazine, and impress and annoy your jealous friends!

Photo: Stuart Sevastos

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As another bonus, you'll receive Asking Alexandria’s EP of covers, Under The Influence: A Tribute To The Legends of Hard Rock! This latest collection features the band covering songs by their idols.

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It was the late 1980s, and I was a young impressionable aspiring guitar player.

Unlike many of my metal and punk peers, I did not have a “cool” older brother or sister to expose me to underground music. I would sit with my guitar and try and play along to my sister’s Jack Wagner record and my dad’s random collection of Broadway musicals searching for something inspiring.

The guitar ended up back in the closet within minutes. It was the '90s that really got me into music and would eventually help form my musical identity. It wasn’t long before Guns N' Roses were blasting through my bedroom at full volume. Sure, I had heard Bon Jovi and Poison, but this was edgy.

[[ Preview Exclusive New Tracks by Kim Thayil, Ben Weinman, Tosin Abasi, Misha Mansoor and Dweezil Zappa! ]]

I immediately craved more, and the Seattle music scene was there to give it to me. Grunge had become a household name, and attached to every popular grunge band was a handful of influences that would lead me down a rabbit hole of musical wonderment.

Of all the amazing music that was hitting me during this time, Soundgarden was, without a doubt, the band that influenced me the most in terms of the way I think about and write music.

Jump ahead 10 years to 2005. Dillinger was playing a small club in Seattle named Neumos. I’m sitting backstage pacing around trying to calm my nerves, as I do, and I look up — and Kim Thayil is staring down at me.

“Hey man, you're you,” I said. Before a word came out of his mouth, I could tell he was one of the most humble dudes I would ever meet in this crude business. With a warm smile, he told me he had heard good things about us and was looking forward to seeing us play. Now I was really nervous.

After the show, I walked backstage covered in sweat and blood, completely exhausted. Kim is standing, staring at me and smiling from ear to ear. He told me it was one of the greatest shows he'd ever seen and that he had no idea how I could physically do what I do. I immediately was rejuvenated. It was one of those moments where I knew I was doing something right. It didn’t matter if I ever made money or whether people liked my music or not. One of my biggest influences was now a fan.

Recently, Kim and I have become reacquainted and even started collaborating on a song. It’s been an amazing experience, and getting to know him better as a person has been really rewarding. Kim is one of the weirdest, interestingly sarcastic and eccentric people I've ever met. And that's saying a lot. I've met a lot of fucking people on my journey.

[[ Preview Exclusive New Tracks by Kim Thayil, Ben Weinman, Tosin Abasi, Misha Mansoor and Dweezil Zappa! ]]

BEN WEINMAN: Your parents are from India. I’ve always loved Indian culture and music (I even married someone named Adishakti Kaur). How has your background and upbringing influenced what you do musically? My parents really didn’t listen to anything but show tunes and watch old musicals, so I have no idea how I’m even a straight man, let alone an experimental metal guitar player.

KIM THAYIL: I'm not sure that my parents being from India had an overt influence on me, because they were raised in a fairly Western culture, India having been part of the British Empire and all. My folks met in church choir and immigrated, as people did in the '50s and early '60s, with a church sponsorship. My mom was a classically trained pianist from a very young age and graduated from the Royal Academy of London at 18.

I didn't benefit from her education, because my folks were struggling students. My mom never taught me a note, but she helped provide an environment that was pro-music. They were always singing around the house. However, like your folks, they were enamored with musicals and variety shows, such as Lawrence Welk. The cool thing was my parents were involved with a congregation that liked the folk music of the progressive, educated proto-yuppies of the '60s. This included Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash and other gospel-related artists who ventured into the pop market during the '60s and '70s.

Being raised in Chicago had a strong influence on me. My neighbors and friends as a kid listened to Motown and R&B, as did my folks, because of the gospel connection, along with the proximal fraternity of their peers and friends. Strangely, I was drawn to radio songs in my dad's car that evoked emotional responses that left my parents curious and dumfounded.

I eventually visited India when I was 8, and that's where I first heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band! My older cousins had that, as well as other Beatles albums! I would play "Day Tripper" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" over and over to pass the time in a place that didn't have baseball or cartoons. My big cousin, Jai Boy, had a guitar, and he let me fuck around with it when he wasn't around. All my family sang gospel and folk. Indian music, however, was present as an ambient or sentimental reference. I, of course, tripped out on this as being source material for the Beatles!

So, I guess musicality was present in my family, but Indian music culture came via Western pop, while I, an American, was visiting India. Weird!

The fact that we are straight men likely has nothing to do with our unfortunate musical upbringing, nor our birth, although these are both factors in what many believe is a sexual-identity question related to our biology. We rock, and that could be due to our biology, but not necessarily our genetics, and if our genetics, not necessarily our birth. People confuse biological determinism with genetic propensity. We are who we come to be, and evidence shows little to contradict that. We also have will and volition, but that won't change the fact that we are rockers, even if we weren't born that way.

[[ Preview Exclusive New Tracks by Kim Thayil, Ben Weinman, Tosin Abasi, Misha Mansoor and Dweezil Zappa! ]]

WEINMAN: How have accolades such as being named one of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitar Players and winning multiple Grammy awards affected your outlook? When you were starting out, did you ever imagine how far your music and playing would take you?

THAYIL: I never thought I would have this success, but once I knew this might be something I would pursue, I thought I could achieve success. I never thought it was beyond me and always thought it would be attainable as long as I persevered and enjoyed the work and the camaraderie of my partners.

The accolades ultimately are flattering, but my parents value these achievements more than I can. I do value and appreciate this recognition, but on a very important and political level, this is not what I believe rock is about. It's not Franky and Annette, or Vegas, or MTV. It should be ultimately transgressive and subversive. It also is not about merely appeasing the fans. We have a responsibility to bring them along, if they wish, on our exploratory musings and not to patronize them.

This is an issue with many musicians I know who also feel there is a responsibility to do more than merely amuse or entertain. We don't have to presume we are artists in any academic sense, we just have to not give them what they may want, but provide the opportunity to want something other. Without this view of what we do, we would not have had the Ramones, Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Black Sabbath, Nirvana, MC5, Metallica, Public Enemy, Radiohead, Husker Du, Pink Floyd or countless others.

How about a Hall of Fame for achievement in popular music sales? Now that would be something both Captain Beefheart and Deep Purple could be proud of!

WEINMAN: We have had many conversations about music and your band, but I don’t think I've ever expressed how interesting it is, as a fan, to hear your stories about the Seattle music scene. I have to say maybe the coolest thing I’ve gotten from our conversations is the impression that all you guys are really positive about each other. Hearing you speak about Cornell and the other guys as brothers after all these years is really touching.

And the comradery you've managed to maintain with the Pearl Jam camp throughout the years is unbelievable. What advice do you have for younger bands that are coming up in a technological age where most communication and collaboration is through social media and not as influenced by the local subcultures we all came up in?THAYIL: I'm sure young musicians will find a way to establish a sense of community and shared identity that will ultimately define their subculture(s). Regionalism might be dead, and that might be a good thing. Transcultural sharing is a benefit to decentralizing social and artistic communities. Rather than colluding, artists can be challenged by other input culturally. This should spur growth creatively, socially and ultimately economically. Until then, we still have to deal with parental-approved weenie pop-rock ditties.WEINMAN: What was life like for you, creatively and personally, after Soundgarden called it quits in the mid-'90s? I know you collaborated with a bunch of people during that time, including one of my favorite guys, Jello Biafra.THAYIL: After Soundgarden, I felt some relief from having to maintain the expectations our band and its success had placed upon itself. I felt free to do whatever — and nothing. I knew the kind of material I had might suffer without the shared vision of Matt, Chris and Ben, and I had no interest in doing a second-rate Soundgarden. After the band tucked it in, the record label was sold, and most of the staff was fired. Our management was the next to downsize, and it became a PO box + Vm. This was all fine with me. publishing was not necessary to my enjoying playing or writing. Life without managers, lawyers, salesman and accountants in my music was liberating for me. Living without popular culture and its commodification was an important intellectual and artistic ass wiping! I wanted to move on and do whatever I thought was fun. I did not want to work from the ground up with a another bunch of guys after throwing all my volume into Soundgarden. However, I was always designing that ideal in the back of my mind.WEINMAN: Soundgarden was one of the first bands to introduce me to odd time signatures and highly dissonant guitar chords (which are largely what I’m associated with as a player). Which bands were you guys listening to while forming your sound during the early years?THAYIL: In our early years, Chris, Hiro and I listened to many different bands and genres individually. Hiro originally played mandolin before learning bass. He liked a lot of folk and art rock before turning on to new wave and punk. Chris liked everything from Joe Jackson to Rush. I had liked metal and art rock before the new wave/punk explosion. By the time Soundgarden formed, we had all been in various bands, mostly punk rock bands for Hiro and me. Chris and I briefly played in a band that did Hendrix, Stones and Doors covers. (Yikes!) As a band, Soundgarden listened to a lot of music before and after our practices/jams while drinking beer and discussing the merits of the artists and their material. Bands we collectively loved included dark, melancholic and angular British bands from the late '70s and early '80s such as Joy Division, Bauhaus, Killing Joke, Gang of Four, Wire, PIL and Young Marble Giants. These bands tended to build songs around the bass. We were equally enthralled with American progressive post-hardcore bands from SST, Touch & Go and Homestead records like the Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Big Boys, Butthole Surfers, Sonic Youth, Husker Du and, of course, Black Flag. All these bands were very guitar-centric! WEINMAN: So I see you've been sticking with the Mesa Boogie stuff all these years. I also use Mesa. I run two Mark V heads, which I love. What are you playing through these days?THAYIL The guitar signal is split (via a Radial JX44) into one Mesa Tremoverb 2x12 combo and one Mesa Electradyne 90w head, which then runs into two 4x12 cabinets. Both amps are active all the time. The Tremoverb has EL34 tubes installed and has a driven, midrange-focused sound. The Electradyne runs on 6L6 tubes and compliments the Tremoverb with more of a full-range (more highs and lows) sound. The Tremoverb stays on the Modern High Gain channel all the time and is usually fairly compressed and driven. The Electradyne alternates between the Lo- and Hi-gain channels as needed. Additional gain and drive comes from boost and distortion pedals or right-hand dynamics. Between the two amps, the full frequency spectrum and dynamic range are covered.Also, the Electradyne's two 4x12 cabinets are set up on either side of the Tremoverb combo — which spreads the sound across the width of the stage and provide lots of potential pockets for interesting feedback (on a good day...). WEINMAN: We have talked at length about the difference between bands using your music as inspiration (like the Dillinger Escape Plan) and bands who have just tried to sound like Soundgarden. Why do you think all these bands are just horrible? Do they just not realize the true spirit of what you guys do?THAYIL: I'm very proud of the bands I like and listen to that have cited Soundgarden as an inspiration. I'm a bit embarrassed by those who attempt to imitate us. The forward-thinking bands I listen to don't sound anything like us, but are willing to work with odd timings, tunings, noise, feedback, harmonics, etc., within the context of the song. The imitators sound like bad impressionists who grasp onto the most pedestrian and commercial aspects of what we do without any of the risk. Of course, Soundgarden is a bit more difficult to imitate than, say, Nirvana, Alice in Chains or Pearl Jam. Nirvana has been victimized by many grave robbers over the years. They were ultimately the more successful and commercial band whose accessibility provided what may have appeared to be a lucrative opportunity for imitators. I won't mention any of these names, but I would like to reference some those bands I like who have tipped their hat our way: Sunn0))), Boris, Storm of Light, Om, High on Fire, Oneida, Eagle Twin, Lichens, Mastodon, Neurosis, Ghost and, of course, the Dillinger Escape Plan!For more about Ben Weinman, who forms Guitar World's ultimate Prog Roundtable with Animals As Leaders' Tosin Abasi and Periphery's Misha Mansoor, plus a Tosin Abasi poster and features on Metallica's Kirk Hammett, a seven- and eight-string buyer's guide and more, check out the September 2013 issue of Guitar World at the Guitar World Online Store.

Guitar World magazine has launched its Ultimate Subscription Offer!

Receive 12 issues (13, actually) of Guitar World AND instantly download four exclusive tracks: "Optimist" by Tosin Abasi and Misha Mansoor, "Pessimist" by Tosin Abasi and Misha Mansoor, "Nanna Banana" by Ben Weinman and Kim Thayil and "Vices" by Ben Weinman and Dweezil Zappa.

As yet another bonus, you'll receive Asking Alexandria’s EP of covers, Under The Influence: A Tribute To The Legends of Hard Rock! This latest collection features the band covering songs by their idols. Songs include “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake, “Separate Ways” by Journey, “Hysteria” by Def Leppard and “Kickstart My Heart” by Mötley Crüe.

All this for only $14.95!

For more information, HEAD HERE!

Last November, Soundgarden took part in SiriusXM's Town Hall series, which featured an intimate Q&A and performance with the band for a handful of lucky spectators at New York City's legendary Electric Lady Studios. Below, watch the band discuss Johnny Cash's cover of "Rusty Cage," following be a performance of the Badmotorfinger classic.

In a recent Guitar World interview, guitarist Kim Thayil discussed the band's path to their new studio album, King Animal, which began with the band regrouping in order to take creative control of their online presence.

"I think it was in January 2010 that we restarted our fan club, put up a web page and began to develop a web site," said Thayil. "We were working on merchandising deals for T-shirts and posters and some of our records, and making them available online. Then we started in on the social media stuff. Because we had no e-presence. And all the rumors and interest that was generated from that led to offers for us to play live.

"It was just a matter of time before we got in a room together to jam. And that was fun. It went well. So it was, 'Let’s play a show.' We did a few shows and then we played Lollapalooza. And through performing and rehearsing, we naturally jammed and improvised and introduced riffs and ideas to one other. That stimulated the interest in writing and recording together. And now here we are."

Read the full interview here.

Last night, Soundgarden hit the stage on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ripping through two cuts from their latest opus, King Animal. You can watch footage of the band performing "By Crooked Steps" and "Been Away Too Long" below.

"It was just a matter of time before we got in a room together to jam," guitarist Kim Thayil recently told Guitar World of the band's 2010 reunion. "And that was fun. It went well. So it was, 'Let's play a show.' And through performing and rehearsing, we naturally jammed and improvised and introduced riffs and ideas to one another. That stimulated the interest in writing and recording together. And now here we are."

For more on the making of King Animal, gear and Thayil's bizarre arsenal of tunings, pick up the Holiday 2012 issue of Guitar World on newsstands now, or in our online store.

Can a Seattle anarchist, two liberal East Coast rockers and a Southern thrash man co-exist in peace and harmony? Pantera’s Diamond Darrell, Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil and Skid Row’s Snake Sabo and Scotti Hill sit down and face the nation.

They were summoned from the most distant reaches of the Unites States: four heavy metal dignitaries, representing three different schools of rock guitar. Given the divergent philosophies of the parties involved and the increasingly fragmented state of hard rock, there’s genuine fear that, far from proceeding harmoniously, this conclave of magnaheavies will degenerate into a vulgar street brawl.

Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil, debonair in an old flannel shirt, is the first member of the distinguished panel to enter Guitar World’s luxuriously appointed conference room. The master of all things grungy and alternative clutches a small plastic bag in his right hand.

“It’s a box of Clorox,” confides the swarthy Seattle native. “I’ve got to wash my clothes after this is done. You can tell how well a band is doing by their laundry service. I think Guns N’ Roses has someone whose sole purpose is to dry clean. Skid Row sends their laundry out to a service every morning. We still have to do our own.”

Next to arrive is Pantera’s Diamond Darrell, one of thrash music’s finest new talents. The good Texan is immediately recognizable by his blue Dean Flying V guitar, an impressive thatch of curly hair and unusually long goatee, which he has partially dyed blood-red. When photographer Lorinda Sullivan compliments the cowboy from hell on his startling mane, he sneers good-naturedly. “My hair’s a pain in live performance. I’m always inhaling it: I almost choked to death a couple of times.”

After several minutes of general introductions, hors d’oeuvres and Rolling Rock beer and light conversation, the East Coast contingent arrives. Skid Row’s Dave “The Snake” Sabo and his collaborator, Scotti Hill, burst in and immediately inquire about the evening’s refreshments. After it is announced—to much applause and enthusiastic whooping—that

GW is picking up the tab, Darrell, Sabo, Hill and Thayil, distinguished headbangers of state, sit to talk.

*****

GUITAR WORLD The musicians assembled here all grew up in a different region of the United States—Skid Row on the East Coast, Soundgarden in the Northwest and Pantera in the South. How, if at all, were your careers influenced by your point of origin?

SNAKE SABO Location was a real important factor in our success. Kiss was the first band that made a real impact on me, and they were from New York City, which is only a 35-minute drive from where I was born. It probably sounds silly, but their proximity made me feel that I could accomplish what they had accomplished. Success didn’t seem as remote as it might have if I had lived in middle America.

Also, all of the record companies had offices in Manhattan, which was just across the Hudson River. So when I started writing music and getting demo tapes together, I just talked my way through every door I could. I was very fortunate in that sense. Eventually we were signed to a New York–based label.

GW How about you, Kim?

KIM THAYIL We were affected by our location, but for the exact opposite reason. I think our sound developed because Seattle is relatively isolated. We were allowed to evolve naturally, independent of commercial pressures and various media trends. We didn’t really have the opportunity or desire to play for record people. No one even thought of getting signed, so we just did our own thing.

We were more influenced by Washington’s strong punk, hardcore and alternative scenes than by anything that came out of Los Angeles. Whenever bands like Sonic Youth, Minor Threat, Big Black from Chicago, the Butthole Surfers from Texas and Black Flag came into town, all the local musicians went to see them.

Scotti and Snake were fortunate to grow up near New York, because it has such a rich musical history. We had to create our own history. Our main point of reference was each other. On the positive side, it was a very supportive environment. All the bands went to each other’s gigs, and we constantly exchanged ideas.

DIAMOND DARRELL We had the worst of all worlds in Texas, in that we didn’t really have a supportive local scene or any record companies. I was mostly influenced by bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest—Metallica’s Kill ’Em All was also a hell of an inspiration.

GW All of you have at one time or another cited Kiss as a primary influence.

SCOTTI HILL I didn’t know I was going to be a guitar player until I heard Kiss’ Alive! I still remember the first time I heard it—I was with my cousin, down in his mom’s basement, drinking my first shot of sloe gin. I couldn’t believe the sound of the music and the intensity of the crowd. The next thing I knew, I was standing on a couch playing air guitar.

GW In the April 1992 Guitar World interview with Darrell, he said he felt that buying a Les Paul and a Marshall was the “easy way out,” because you know they’re going to sound good.

THAYIL I agree—that is the easy way out. These days, everything sounds like it’s being played through a Les Paul and a Marshall. And if you don’t have that combination, somebody will try to make you dial it in.

GW Maybe that’s why people dig you guys: you each have your own signature sound. Scotti and Snake, what are you two using on tour?

SNAKE A Les Paul and a Marshall— Ace Frehley gave them to me! [laughs all around] Actually, we’re using the same things we used in the studio. I’m still using a Rivera amp and an old Ibanez Tube Screamer for my dirty sound, and I’ve added a few things to my rack to help improve my clean sound.

GW All of you seem pretty lowtech. Have you ever investigated any multi-effects units?

DARRELL I never really understood people who were into those things. I mean, just what I need—30 different choruses and 75 watery reverbs. I think those boxes were designed for people that either play New Age music or sit in their room, shoot crank and go, “Wow! Far out!” You can spend so much time fooling around with those things that you never get around to practicing.

THAYIL It’s like you want to tell people, “Remember how good it sounded when you just plugged your guitar into the amp?” Why spend your whole life—and your bank account—trying to duplicate that sound electronically? It doesn’t make sense.

GW Snake, your tone radically changes during the course of a Skid Row performance, so I would imagine your setup is more complex.

SABO You’re partially right. I’m usually the guy who plays the random clean, acoustic and electric 12-string parts, but my setup is still pretty simple. I know it looks like I have Sky Lab under the stage, but I just have a couple of heads and one effects unit—everything else is just backup in case my rig goes down in the middle of a set. I went through hell on the first tour, because my ADA occasionally malfunctioned and I didn’t have anything to fall back on. I vowed that something like that would never happen again.

HILL We’ve taken precautions, but so far neither one of us has had any real problems with the Riveras on this tour. I’ve just had to change my tubes once.

DARRELL I’ve never had any problems. Randalls are solid-state, and they rarely ever give me any trouble. You could drop one off the Empire State Building and it would still work.

GW Darrell, what was your first setup?

DARRELL Dude, I went through a lot of ’em. My first killer amp was a Sunn Beta Lead. It was solid-state, but that Sunn was incredibly loud. I used to say to my friends, “Hey, check it out, it’s only on two.” After that, I bought a Yamaha tube amp with a 12-inch speaker. It sounded good, but I could never get enough drive out of it.

SNAKE I know that amp! Did it have a little parametric EQ built in? I knew a guy in Jersey that had one. He was our local Eddie Van Halen clone. He could play anything by Van Halen, which, at the time, really impressed me.

THAYIL [rolling his eyes] Every town had one of those.

DARRELL Hey, watch it man—I was that dude in Texas. I always played “Eruption” in my solo. Of course, I always fucked up the ending. [laughs all around]

After the Yamaha, I won a Randall halfstack in a contest. As soon as I plugged in, I knew the amp was for me. It really had balls—but it wasn’t perfect. It was a little fuzzy sounding, so I tried cleaning the sound up a little bit with one of the blue MXR sixband equalizers. It was like night and day! That box is god! It’s weird—none of the other MXR equalizers affect my sound in the same way. I’ve got to have the blue one.

GW Darrell, you also get a lot of mileage out of something very simple—your Rocktron Hush 2-B noise gate.

DARRELL You’re right. I set the gate real high to produce the tight, ferocious, rhythmic punch that you hear at the end of “Domination” and in the opening of “Cowboys from Hell.” It’s a little tricky to use live; my guitar tech has to open and close the gate manually. I have everything worked out with him. Basically, he opens the gate for feedback, solos and squeals, and closes it for the tight rhythm parts. It keeps him real busy.

GW One of the biggest trends in rock these days is the renewed interest in rhythm guitar. Why do you think that is?

DARRELL I used to take really long lead breaks, but lately I’ve been keeping my solos to a minimum. I’ve become more interested in creating a band sound than trying to outshine the other guys.

THAYIL I bet the first thing everybody here tried to do was play fast. After a while, though, you realize that speed doesn’t matter. Guitarists are a dime a dozen, and everyone is faster than the next. So it gets down to trying to explore your personal style, whatever that may be. Besides, all this fast stuff just doesn’t rock. Kiss and AC/DC are two great examples of bands that never got caught up in pyrotechnics.

HILL Groove is the shit, man!

THAYIL I remember reading something when I was growing up that really offended me. Someone said they were influenced by Van Halen and Bach. What the hell does Bach have to do with rock and roll? Nothing. I hate when people try to “legitimize” rock by saying that they’re involved in jazz or classical music. Rock doesn’t need that kind of legitimacy. It shouldn’t be accountable to parents, or the musical establishment—and it certainly shouldn’t be accountable to the “nose-in-theair” music establishment. Rock has started to turn into that. People discuss Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s arpeggios and analyze this mode and that mode. It’s sick.

I just don’t understand the point of trying to defend something that obviously stands on its own merits. People are moved by rock music without having to justify it by any established criteria. When I was a kid, my friends would try to convince me that certain rock musicians were better because they inserted jazz or classical references in their playing. I never understood that. Rock, jazz and classical music are separate things.

DARRELL Randy Rhoads was the only guy who was able to pull that off, and that was because he rocked.

GW Kim, you’re not solo-oriented, but whose lead playing inspires you?

THAYIL I was more into punk rock, and punk rock isn’t very technical. I like Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers, who reminds me of Hendrix because he never overplays. I also dig Zoot Horn Rollo from Captain Beefheart’s band. It sounds like he’s improving because his rhythms are so weird, but from what I understand, his parts are all worked out. Neil Young’s one-note solo in “Cinnamon Girl” is amazing. Ron Ashton of the Stooges is another great player. Lou Reed’s playing on “White Light, White Heat” is scary. I also like the first two Van Halen records.

GW Which Soundgarden song is the most difficult for you to perform?

THAYIL The most difficult song for us, by far, is “Jesus Christ Pose.” It’s real quick, and there are weird muted parts. If I’m being animated onstage, it’s real easy to screw up.

GW What’s the tough song for Skid Row?

HILL I play so shitty live, it doesn’t matter. [laughs]

SABO I had a really bad experience in Iceland while playing “Wasted Time.” My hands started cramping up, and my fingers just went completely out of control. I butchered the song so bad that I was embarrassed to be there. I wanted to walk offstage, because I felt I had let the band and the audience down. I never felt that way in my life. After the show I just sat in a corner and banged my head against the wall. I wanted to quit life. It killed me. The rest of the band was real supportive, and told me it was okay, but it really didn’t help.

Later, thank God, I found a solution to the problem. I went to the chiropractor who works with Guns N’ Roses, and he showed me how to prevent what happened with the help of massage. I haven’t had a problem since.

HILL I’ve had little physical things go wrong right before really big gigs. You know, those shows where management is saying things like [assumed a gruff voice], “This is really fucking important. If you don’t do good, your career is over!” I’ll wake up in the morning of the show screaming, “Oh shit, I can’t feel my legs!” [uproarious laughter all around]

DARRELL I’m not tryin’ to be different, man, but I have so much fun onstage. I’ve never had any problems executing any of my parts. The lead on “Domination” flips me out a little bit sometimes, because it has a real weird stretch, but that’s about it. We write the songs for the stage. Sorry, I tried hard to think of something...

HILL How about when your spit gets caught in your facial hair?

DARRELL Actually, that is a big problem!

GW Darrell, what’s the best thing about being the only guitar player in Pantera?

DARRELL The freedom. It’s very easy to improvise and play different variations in a trio format. But when there are two guitars, you’re always hemmed in by what the other person is playing. My main points of reference are the first two Van Halen records. I’m pretty much influenced by the old school.

GW Are your recorded solos improvised?

DARRELL Definitely. I’m always trying to add things at the last minute, always trying to top myself.

HILL Yeah, I’ll play the greatest thing I’ve ever played in my life and then say, “Let me try that again.” When we were recording “The Threat,” I remember Snake played a great solo, but was still biting his fingernails down to the bone. It was like, “Hey, Snake, you want some salt for that?”

GW Kim, you have the best of both worlds. Sometimes Chris plays rhythm, and sometimes you play by yourself.

THAYIL It’s nice to have that option, but I generally prefer to be the only guitarist because it gives me more freedom. Like Darrell was saying before, another guitar part can really box you in. I’ve also noticed that if I screw up a guitar part, people look at me, and if Chris screws up a guitar part, people still look at me—because I’m the main guitar player.

GW I think it’s significant that, despite the regional and stylistic differences that separate the three bands gathered here, we’ve managed to find a lot of common ground.

HILL All that’s missing is someone from North Dakota.

GW Yeah, I wonder why there are no guitar heroes from North Dakota?

HILL I’m sure there will be. Some North Dakotan is probably out there, even as we speak, burying everybody.