Last week, stoner rock die-hards choked on their bongs when they learned that drone-metal icon Matt Pike had been replaced in legends of the genre, Sleep. Bubba Dupree, himself a hero of avant-garde metal in ’80s thrash trailblazers Void, is filling his shoes.

Yet Sleep aren’t the first major-league band Dupree has found himself involved with. In the late ’90s, he was on the verge of being drafted into Seattle grunge greats Soundgarden, as revealed in guitarist Kim Thayil’s new memoir, A Screaming Life.

In the fall of 1996, Soundgarden was on the verge of collapse.

The final album from their original tenure, Down on the Upside, showcased an increasingly fragmented songwriting approach. Thayil and bassist Ben Shepherd were creatively checking out. And the guitarist was growing frustrated with management interference in their touring lineups, which included artists he didn’t feel were a good fit, among them Pond, Rocket From the Crypt and a newly punk-oriented Moby.

The one unlikely saving grace was Moby’s guitar player for their European run: Bubba Dupree, who Thayil grew close with during the tour.

Meanwhile, frontman Chris Cornell could see the unhappiness in the ranks – and he was desperate to do something about it.

“Once again, Chris wanted to save Soundgarden,” Thayil recounts. “We were all moody, introspective, and contemplative people, more likely to brood than act, but Chris didn’t want the band to implode due to inaction on everyone’s part. We all knew there was unhappiness, but it wasn’t being addressed in a meaningful way.”

Cornell’s solution was to hire Dupree as another guitarist, in the hope that fresh blood would re-engage the rest of the band – even going so far as to suggest Dupree take over his own rhythm duties.

“Bubba would solve a couple of problems: it would free Chris from playing guitar and satisfy Ben and me,” Thayil reasons.

“While most of Soundgarden’s early and some later material only required one guitar, some songs needed two parts. Having Bubba play the second guitar would allow Chris to focus on vocals and improve everyone’s performance. It would elevate the vocals, guitar, and possibly reignite Ben and me creatively.”

Initially, Thayil and Shepherd were excited about the idea – it would bring, as Thayil puts it, “another talented, cool-­looking brown guy who could take over Chris’s parts and bring fresh ideas”.

Ultimately, however, the group were conflicted by their own admiration for the new recruit.

“He needed his own band, where his creativity wouldn’t compete with four other songwriters. He shouldn’t be a backup guitarist playing our old material, just like he didn’t need to be part of Moby’s punk project. His songs deserved their own voice.

“We all wanted Soundgarden to move forward, but we weren’t sure this was the solution to our problems. I appreciated Chris’s effort to reengage us, even if it ultimately didn’t work.”

Just a few months after the lineup change was discussed, Soundgarden would play their final show on February 9, 1997 in Honolulu, Hawaii. It would be 13 years before they played together again.

Outside of Soundgarden Chris Cornell got his wish to delegate guitar duties: to Tom Morello in Audioslave, and to Alain Johannes, or Pete Thorn and Yogi Lonich in his solo bands. But we never did get the chance to hear what a Bubba Dupree collaboration would sound like..

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.

Soundgarden’s Ben Shepherd first appeared in the pages of Bass Player for a 1993 feature on alternative-rock. He was even on the cover, but that doesn't mean he was happy about it.

Speaking to Bass Player again in 2013 he revealed, “I was bummed out because Ray Brown was also in that issue, and I felt he deserved the cover.”

In the wake of original bassist Hiro Yamamoto's departure following the release of 1990’s Louder Than Love, Shepherd converted from guitar to bass guitar specifically for Soundgarden.

And despite the adage that guitar players make lousy bass players, his transition to the lower register proved remarkably seamless.

“Sometimes I would go for a note and miss it entirely, either on the fingerboard or with my plucking hand because the string spacing was so different from playing guitar. I'd hit the gap. Rookie mistake!

“But I played pretty well immediately, because of Hiro's influence and some other real bass players I knew growing up.”

Shepherd’s detuned, thunderous bass tone and askew songcraft factored immensely as the band refined its grungy sound throughout the decade on Badmotorfinger, Superunknown, and Down on the Upside.

Along the way, the most commonly-seen bass guitar was a 1972 Fender Jazz Bass, which Shepherd used on many seminal recordings.

“That bass belonged to the Wood brothers [Andrew Wood fronted seminal Seattle-scene bands Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone].

“I bought it to try out for Soundgarden, and I played it on every Soundgarden record and every tour. I called it Tree because it was so heavy. At that time it felt like it weighed more than I did because I was scrawny as hell.”

“Then my bass tech said, ‘This bass looks tiny on you.’ So I lowered the strap so it would look cooler, and I straightened out my arms so I could just use my fingers.

“That's why l always wore it long, and I'm tall enough to get away with it looking exaggeratedly long. I could still touch all the strings where I wanted, but you have to contour your body, and be willing to throw your whole body into it.”

When the dust settled in 1997, Soundgarden called it quits. Shepherd and drummer Matt Cameron kept working together, as their Hater side project with Monster Magnet's John McBain (formed in 1993 with Shepherd on guitar) evolved into Wellwater Conspiracy.

“I didn't even like doing that stuff, especially the shows. I never felt comfortable. Those Hater songs were built around being played exactly the same every time. I'm way more of an improv person.”

Shepherd was off music altogether by 2008, completely disenfranchised after being robbed of all his gear just as he was about to mix his first solo album.

“They took everything. I slipped into a comatose state soon after and went to work as a carpenter's grunt. After a two-year, anti-music funk I decided to start playing again, and my friends cajoled me into making a new record.

“I told everyone that we could do whatever we wanted because no-one would hear it anyway. But then Matt Chamberlain and Greg Gilmore started showing up, volunteering their ace drumming. Once those guys started laying down drum tracks, I started thinking, ‘Oh man – now it's real. I have to up the ante.’”

At this point, Shepherd had made the switch to a Fender P-Bass.

“When I started playing again I bought a stock Precision right off the rack, and that's the one I used. It sounds and plays completely different from my old Jazz.

“Jazzes are too little for me. And when you hit a note and pluck through the string toward your hip, it disappears, kind of like a raindrop hitting cement instead of deep water. I like immediate response and heaviness. That P-Bass grabs the note immediately and reflects it back the other way.”

As fate would have it, just as he was finishing his album, Shepherd got the call he'd been waiting on for what must have felt like forever: Soundgarden was back in business.

“It's ironic that two days before the call, I was finishing my solo album and telling everyone I would never be in another band – ever. I’d help other guys make records; it's fun to be a part of a creative process and play live, but for me nothing compared to Soundgarden taking the stage.

“I had been waiting for those guys, and then all of the sudden there we were working at Pearl Jam's warehouse. I was bummed that it wasn't just the four of us at some friend's house, but we were lucky it turned out that way because Kim's guitar tech, Josh Evans, started recording us from the second we all put on our instruments and started jamming.

“I knew we'd always be in business together, so we might as well do the cool part – make music.”

The 40th Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony took place over the weekend (November 8), and as usual the event was filled with star-studded collaborations.

The White Stripes, Bad Company, Soundgarden, Carol Kaye, Cyndi Lauper, Joe Cocker, Outkast and Chubby Checker were all among the Rock Hall’s Class of 2025, along with Warren Zevon, Thom Bell, Nicky Hopkins, Lenny Waronker and Salt N Pepa.

Soundgarden were inducted by Jim Carrey, who paid tribute to the band’s late singer Chris Cornell, remembering the time they crossed paths on Saturday Night Live – and was gifted a prized electric guitar signed by all Soundgarden members.

“I met the band in 1996 when I was hosting Saturday Night Live for the very first time, and I insisted on Soundgarden as the musical guest,” Carrey remembered. “By then, the lineup was Chris [Cornell], Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron on drums, and Ben Shepherd on bass. They launched into the dark, epic beauty of Pretty Noose.

“I stood right in front of them, letting the waves of electricity wash over me, like an audio baptism. They pushed me under and when I came up I was free.

“After the show, they handed me what is to this day, one of my most prized possessions. The Fender Telecaster Chris played on the show, signed by the whole band.

“Tonight, we make sure that Chris Cornell, Kim Thayil, Hiro Yamamoto, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd go down in history as one of the most majestic, powerful and influential bands ever to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Long live Chris Cornell. Long live Soundgarden.”

Carrey’s tributes to Cornell and Soundgarden were accompanied by a performance from the surviving members of the band, who were fronted by Taylor Momsen and Brandi Carlile for covers of Rusty Cage and Black Hole Sun, respectively.

It was a heroic outing for grunge music. For Soundgarden’s set, Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready – wielding a Gibson Les Paul for the occasion – doubled up Thayil’s riffs on Rusty Cage, while Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell layered up the leads for Black Hole Sun with his G&L Rampage.

It wasn’t the only performance dedicated to Soundgarden and Cornell. Toni, Chris’ daughter, was joined by Nancy Wilson for an acoustic rendition of Fell on Black Days, performed underneath an in memoriam photograph of the late vocalist.

Elsewhere on the docket, The White Stripes were honored by pop-rock duo twenty one pilots, who performed Seven Nation Army, and Olivia Rodrigo, who – fresh from her festival-stealing Glasto headline set – joined Feist with her acoustic guitar to sing We’re Going to Be Friends.

Flea also played bass for Stevie Wonder on a cover of Sly & The Family Stone’s Dance to the Music, and The Killers honored Warren Zevon with a performance of Lawyers, Guns and Money. Zevon was inducted by David Letterman, who, in his own speech, also recalled the time Zevon had gifted him a guitar.

Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi closed out the show with a cover of The Beatles’ With a Little Help From My Friends. Bryan Adams, Cyndi Lauper and Chris Robinson were among the song’s guest stars.

Trucks and his trusty Gibson SG were on guitar duty for the song, and though the spotlight was firmly on the singers, he still found room for some trademark fingerstyle licks sans slide.

You can catch up on the 40th Annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and rewatch all the action at Disney+.

Soundgarden bass player Ben Shepherd has opened up on the fears he harbored going into what would prove to be Chris Cornell's final tour before he died.

The Seattle heavyweights toured the US in 2017, but the run of dates was cut short following Chris Cornell’s death in May that year. Even before they hit the road, Shepherd felt uneasy.

“I always thought we were going to be weird old men sitting out in the cabin he owned in the woods, laughing about everything. He really wanted to meet my son Noah, and he never got to,” Shepherd tells Bass Magazine of the impact of Cornell's passing.

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the night before we left for the tour, I knew that something bad was going to happen,” he continues. “Something came over me, and I deeply felt like I couldn’t do it. I went around and said goodbye to my family. I could feel it.

“We were making the same mistake we always did, which was interrupting making our record in the studio to go play some tour for some reason.”

The band's last album, King Animal, came in 2012. At the time, it was their first record in 16 years, and landed after Soundgarden reformed in 2010. That was later followed by a collection of B-sides and rarities, Echo of Miles, but the record they were writing before that ill-fated tour was never finished.

At first, the band was hesitant to continue without Cornell, and have only taken the stage for a string of charity shows in the intervening years, including one fronted by Guns N’ Roses’ bassist and fellow Seattle native Duff McKagan. But the situation has since shifted.

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2019, guitarist Kim Thayil confirmed that they were looking to complete their demoed material, but the Cornell estate was holding onto the frontman's recordings.

The dispute, which stretched several years, was resolved out of court in 2023, and back in May, Thayil said the new album “would be a great gift to the fans.”

In his Bass Magazine chat, Shepherd confirmed that Terry Date – who has worked with Korn, Deftones, and the Smashing Pumpkins – will be producing the new LP. He first worked with the group on 1989's Louder Than Love, and its 1991 follow-up, Badmotorfinger.

"The first song we did together, the mighty one – seems when you first hear the demo, it’s not powerful at all," Shepherd says of the new material. "And then when you start playing it you’re like, Holy hell! I blistered my hands trying to play those parts.

"I was like, Thanks, Cornell. He and Kim always throw some wild riff in there that you have to nail. It’s just intuitive for them. I’ve always been amazed by those two, and that song is just whomping. These songs have been flooring me with how powerful they are."

The band is set to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this weekend, alongside a Seattle-heavy cast of vocalists, including Brandi Carlisle, the Pretty Reckless’ Taylor Momsen, and Jerry Cantrell.

Soundgarden has previously performed with Carlisle, who said she hoped to be the band’s new singer in 2021.

Joe Satriani has paid tribute to late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell with an instrumental cover of Audioslave’s Be Yourself.

The track, which also features drummer Kenny Aronoff, is part of bassist Mark Menghi’s King Ultramega project – an ongoing tribute to the singer in honor of Soundgarden’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inauguration in November.

Satriani eases back on the fretboard fireworks in the cover, translating Cornell’s vocal line and Tom Morello’s sparse lead lines into more of a laid-back, low-gain bluesy vamp than you might expect from an Audioslave cover.

Only when it gets to Morello’s wah-wah solo does Satch engage the drive and add some modal embellishments, otherwise dialing into the pure melody of Cornell’s vocals.

“[Chris Cornell] was a brilliant vocalist and communicator,” says Satriani. “He often used his voice like an instrument, shaping the tone of his voice like a guitarist would finesse riffs and phrases.

“I took a deep dive into his magical sensibilities and came up with a multi-tracked guitar production approach that I felt would pay proper homage to his brilliance.”

“I remember like it was yesterday,” adds Menghi. “I was on a run through some crazy trail, just zoning out and the original song came on through my headphones… as I was running, I remember hearing Chris sing, ‘to be yourself is all that you can do,’ it was like he was talking to me… then thought to myself, ‘I can totally hear this as an instrumental a-la Satch style…’

“My hope is that whomever is listening to this song hears Chris over Joe’s guitar and understands that we are paying homage to Chris with our take on this tune.”

The song follows King Ultramega’s previous cover of Soundgarden classic Rusty Cage, which featured Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher and Alice in Chains’ William DuVall.

Be Yourself is out now. Proceeds from the track go towards addiction recovery and mental health nonprofit MusiCares.

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.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation has revealed this year's inductees in an announcement delivered by Ryan Seacrest on the latest episode of American Idol – with a list that included some overdue names and omitted others who had an almost surefire shot at this year's class of inductees.

The guitar world is represented by The White Stripes, Soundgarden, and Bad Company in the Performer category. They are joined by Girls Just Wanna Have Fun icon Cyndi Lauper, gravel-voiced English singer Joe Cocker, Atlanta hip-hop duo Outkast, and Chubby Checker, who gets the nod nearly 40 years after he was first eligible for Hall of Fame recognition.

Bass legend Carol Kaye – who has played on more than 10,000 recordings over her six decade-plus career – is honored in the Musical Excellence Award category, alongside prolific R&B record producer, arranger, and songwriter Thom Bell, and English pianist and organist Nicky Hopkins.

Salt-N-Pepa, the first female rap act to achieve gold and platinum status from the Recording Industry Association of America, will also receive the Musical Influence Award, alongside Werewolves of London singer-songwriter Warren Zevon.

Meanwhile, record producer, former president of Warner Bros. Records, and co-founder and co-chair of DreamWorks Records, Lenny Waronker, is the recipient of this year's Ahmet Ertegun Award – reserved for non-performing industry professionals who have had a major influence on music and culture.

“Each of these inductees created their own sound and attitude that had a profound impact on culture and helped to change the course of Rock & Roll forever,” said John Sykes, Chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “Their music gave a voice to generations and influenced countless artists that followed in their footsteps.”

As is the case every year, there are a few high-profile snubs. Mariah Carey's omission, in particular, is a notable oversight, considering this is the second time she has been overlooked by the Rock Hall's voters. Britpop leaders Oasis were also given the cold shoulder, while jam band Phish – who topped the fan vote – didn't make the final cut.

This isn't the first time the winner of the fan ballot lost out on that year's induction. Dave Matthews Band, who won the 2020 fan vote, was ultimately not included in that year's final list – and had to wait four years before finally receiving their flowers.

The Class of 2025 will be inducted live on November 8 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, California, with the ceremony streaming live on Disney+, a special airing on ABC at a later date, and available on Hulu the next day.

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 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.

“AAARRRRRGGGHH!!! THIS IS so flippin’ AMAZING! Hahahaha. Hmmm, what should I do first? Burn my guitar … or light MYSELF on fire! Give me MORE, but GOD ALMIGHTY, MAKE IT STOP!”

Does that sound insane? Yes, indeed. But that was the kind of crazy talk many guitarists engaged in during the ’80s. And who could blame them? George Lynch, Vito Bratta, Steve Vai, Nuno Bettencourt, Reb Beach, Yngwie Malmsteen, Kirk Hammett, Eric Johnson, Paul Gilbert, Marty Friedman and about a billion other handsome virtuoso shredders just kept getting faster and better until all you could scream was, “I surrender! Fuck playing the guitar, I’m gonna join the Marines.”

Then suddenly on September 10, 1991, a date that will live in infamy, everything changed. Nirvana, a melodic punk rock band from Seattle, released a simple four-chord slugfest titled Smells Like Teen Spirit and sparked a musical revolution that blew all the fleet-fingered pretty boys out of the water. 

Nirvana and their charismatic singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain championed gritty “authenticity” over the glamorous excesses of the hair metal of the ’80s, and their disheveled presence suddenly made bands like Winger, Warrant and Whitesnake look like dolled-up saloon girls in comparison. And just like that, the guitar virtuoso crazy train was completely derailed like the Norfolk Southern locomotive in Ohio. 

As shredder extraordinaire George Lynch recalled in Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock’s excellent 2021 book Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion, “Unfortunately, [’80s hair metal] worked its way to an apex, and then we backed ourselves into a corner. There was no place to go. Because you could only play so fast and then what did it really matter? Nirvana came along and said it all with one nasty, dirty, attitude note. You go, ‘Ah, that’s rock and roll!’”

In a purge that would’ve made a Russian dictator green with envy, anything to do with ’80s guitar hair metal – the Spandex, the decadence, the pointy guitars, the makeup, the tapping, the whammy dives – was put up against the wall and shot. And whoever managed to escape was sentenced to live out the rest of their days doing hard labor at the bottom of the charts or playing 400-seaters in Poughkeepsie.

While some Guitar World readers mourned the loss of their well-coiffed heroes, many more breathed an audible sigh of relief. You no longer had to be genetically superhuman to play rock ’n’ roll or get a record deal; being a talented schlub was just fine. 

You still had to play well, but you didn’t have to lock yourself in a room like a Benedictine monk and practice arpeggios in three octaves for 10 hours a day. A good song with a solid riff was all you needed, and you were good to go.

The myth of grunge guitar #1

One of the biggest myths of the ’90s was that the alternative musicians of the day were as primitive as cave-dwelling mud people. The truth is, there were many imaginative, if not downright sophisticated guitarists during that era, including Nirvana’s great insurrectionist, Kurt Cobain. 

While Cobain’s primary gift was writing spectacular vocal melodies over surprising chord changes like on Lithium, he was also a ferocious rhythm guitarist who rarely lost the groove, even when hurtling himself across the stage with total abandon or screaming the choruses to any of his memorable anthems.

“All the years I spent practicing scales and virtuoso-type riffs, [Cobain] was locking onto these chords in a very connected way,” shredder icon Steve Vai once observed. “When you saw Kurt strumming chords, it was virtuosic in a sense because it sounded like an orchestra when he slammed that guitar. Every string had its own ZIP code, if you know what I mean.”

Even if you don’t buy Vai’s assessment that Kurt was a “virtuoso,” there were plenty of other alternative rockers that deserved the title during the Great ’90s Reset. Seattle’s Kim Thayil and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, for example, created daring textures via unorthodox drop tunings and unusual time signatures on many of their biggest songs.

In 1994 the duo used a bizarre E-E-B-B-B-E tuning over an unconventional 5/4 time signature on their single My Wave, a song made even more unusual by the fact that Ben Shepherd used a wah pedal on his bass.

And there was no denying the greatness of Thayil’s wild-ass solo on the band’s chart-topping Black Hole Sun. Sounding like it was being played forwards and backwards at the same time, it was perhaps the most avant-garde lead guitar break on a Number 1 song in the history of rock. (It’s interesting to note that Black Hole Sun also went to Number 1 in Iceland, because if I had to guess what Icelandic rock music sounded like, it would probably resemble the alien splatter-art guitar solo on Black Hole Sun.)

In addition to Soundgarden, there were other groups and guitarists serving up more great riffs and solos than you could shake a Led Zeppelin at. Hard rock bands like Alice in Chains (Man in the Box, Them Bones), Red Hot Chili Peppers (Under the Bridge, Give It Away), Stone Temple Pilots (Interstate Love Song, Plush), Smashing Pumpkins (Bullet with Butterfly Wings, 1979) and Green Day (Longview, Basket Case) kept mainstream rock radio humming for the next decade with ballsy, memorable guitar rock.

And it could be argued that the ’90s was superior to the ’80s when it came to top-notch, up-your-nose-with-a rubber-hose heavy metal. Just skimming the surface, you had Ozzy Osbourne (with Zakk Wylde), Tool, Korn, Deftones, Rage Against the Machine, System of a Down, Meshuggah, Machine Head and Napalm Death releasing brilliant and innovative albums.

Come as you are

Not only did attitudes regarding guitar playing shift, but so did just about everything else. Lyrics became more introspective, and attitudes toward the opposite sex and gay people became more enlightened. 

Seattle punk rock also introduced a more relaxed dress code, which also came as a relief to many guitar players. To be a guitar hero in the ’80s you had to have chiseled cheekbones, washboard abs and look good in tight pants. 

You also had to know how to apply hair dye and eye makeup with the expertise of supermodel Cara Delevingne. It was exhausting. While it was hard enough to play like Whitesnake’s John Sykes, it was even more difficult to look like him!

In the ’90s, being a slob was no issue. You could wear jeans or baggy shorts, a thrift-shop T-shirt and a flannel shirt or hoodie and be done with it. That was a fantastic development if you had a gut and would rather pound a beer (or seven) rather than spend a week’s pay on a line of cocaine. And if you were balding and sorta ugly it didn’t matter that much… you could just grow a beard, get some tattoos and shave your head. That was awesome, too!

That development was particularly good news for Pantera and their incredible metal guitarist Dimebag Darrell. Pantera had struggled throughout much of the ’80s because, frankly, they looked ridiculous in the Spandex. But once fashion trends shifted, and they were able to become who they really were – a bunch of drunk, lovable dirtbags from Texas – the world became their öyster. 

Unplugged

Another interesting manifestation of the Great ’90s Reset was the enormous success of Unplugged, the MTV music series that showcased musicians performing acoustic versions of their songs. What could be more “authentic” than stripping your biggest songs down to their bare essentials than playing them on a Gibson Hummingbird with no amplification?

New-school bands who performed on the show like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Hole, Stone Temple Pilots and Oasis took great pleasure in demonstrating that they didn’t need big-ass amps to bring drama and intensity to their songs. 

At the same time, the show allowed classic rockers like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Kiss to reemerge, while showing “the kids” how big boys played “real” guitars. 

Superfuzz Big Muff

Guitar gear also went under some major transformations in the ’90s. During the ’80s, players took pride in performing with shiny, candy-colored, custom instruments tricked-out with things like locking tremolos, scooped fretboards, pointy headstocks and unusual pickup configurations. 

Whereas in the ’90s, even being seen with a guitar that had any of those qualities could get your grunge card revoked permanently (unless you could prove you were being ironic!).

Most new-school guitarists gravitated toward vintage models, like Foo Fighter Dave Grohl who could be seen playing a Pelham blue 1967 Gibson Trini Lopez guitar. But really, almost any guitar would do as long as it had some wear and tear and didn’t look like it cost an arm and a leg.

In a hilarious Guitar World interview conducted with Cobain by our ne’er-do-well Seattle correspondent Jeff Gilbert, the Nirvana iconoclast summed the general aesthetic and attitude of the era perfectly. 

After proclaiming his love for Fender Mustang guitars, he counterintuitively explained why. “They’re cheap and totally inefficient, and they sound like crap,” he said. “They are also small and don’t stay in tune, and when you want to raise the string action on the fretboard, you have to loosen all the strings and completely remove the bridge.

“You have to turn these little screws with your fingers and hope that you’ve estimated right. If you screw up, you have to repeat the process over and over until you get it right. Whoever invented that guitar was a dork.”

And that was why it was his favorite instrument!

Pedalboards also shrank in size and ambition. Just a few years earlier, elaborate Bob Bradshaw rigs that allowed you to control a bunch of rack-mounted effects were all the rage, but in the punk rock ’90s, a few pedals seemed to do the trick.

Even Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, a man known for his innovative use of effects, pulled most of what he needed out of a modest four or five pedals and a Marshall amp.

Speaking to Guitarist, Morello laughed off any assertion that he had a gargantuan pedalboard.

“I’ve been accused countless times of using a ton of effects – but I’ve used the same four pedals for the last 30 years: a wah, a [DigiTech] Whammy, a delay and a phaser. It’s just about finding different applications for the same old shit. The electric guitar is a relatively new instrument on the planet. It’s just a piece of wood with six strings and a few electronics. But you can manipulate it.”

He continued by explaining his unique hip-hop approach to his place in the band: “As soon as I had that revelation in Rage, it was like, ‘I’m the DJ in the band, but rather than sampling, I’m gonna use my bare hands to create this new vocabulary for the electric guitar.’ ” And he did exactly that.

But perhaps the most hilarious irony of the ’90s came when Korn released their debut album in 1994. Guitarists James “Munky” Shaffer and Brian “Head” Welch raised more than a few eyebrows when they each appeared on stage with the ultimate tricked-out ’80s guitar – a Steve Vai seven-string Ibanez Universe.

But instead of using it to shred, they took advantage of the low seventh string to produce some of the dirtiest, most bone-rattling power chords the world had ever known.

According to the duo, they stumbled upon the axes at a local California pawn shop. During the early days of the ’90s, no guitarist wanted to be caught dead with one, so the price of the instruments had fallen through the floor. 

Although the two guitarists were broke, the guitars were so cheap they decided it was worth buying a couple of them as an experiment. To their amazement, they discovered the gleaming seven-string guitars were actually incredible for creating the ugliest of sounds.

“I knew that somewhere, some kid was going to get the concept of the seven-string and do things with it that were beyond what I was doing,” Vai told Ultimate Guitar in 2020.

“Then, I’m driving down the street and this song comes on the radio and I’m like, ‘What the heck is that?’, and I pull the car over. It sounded so heavy, I instinctively knew it was a seven-string and somebody was doing something with it that was much different than what I was doing. And that band was Korn. That was sort of the rebirth of the JEM Universe.”

The myth of grunge guitar #2

Which brings us to perhaps the biggest myth about the ’90s. Grunge and alternative rock did many things, but one thing it didn’t do was kill shredding. A number of brilliant guitar technicians came of age during that era, including Dimebag, John Petrucci, Ben Weinman, Adam Jones, Buckethead and Jeff Loomis, to name just a few.

The real difference was in the ’80s, you had to be one of the attractive “popular kids” to play in a rock ’n’ roll band. The genuinely awesome thing about Seattle punk rock was it knocked down those walls and gave everyone permission to participate. 

You could be tall, short, fat, bald, hairy, pretty, ugly or even wear a bucket on your head, but as long as you had soul, wit and imagination, you could at least jump on stage without everyone laughing at you. Like a rock ’n’ roll sequel to the Revenge of the Nerds, everyone laughed, cried and learned.  And that, as the great philosopher Miley Cyrus once said, “was pretty cool.” 

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 and the Estate of Chris Cornell have settled their legal battle over the final recordings made by the late frontman.

The news, which sets the stage for the release of Soundgarden’s final songs, was announced on Chris Cornell and Soundgarden’s social media accounts yesterday (April 17).

“Soundgarden and Vicky Cornell, on behalf of the Estate of Chris Cornell, are happy to announce they have reached an amicable out of court resolution,” reads the statement.

“The reconciliation marks a new partnership between the two parties, which will allow Soundgarden fans around the world to hear the final songs that the band and Chris were working on. The two parties are united and coming together to propel, honor and build upon Soundgarden’s incredible legacy as well as Chris’s indelible mark on music history – as one of the greatest songwriters and vocalists of all time.”

According to Rolling Stone, seven songs are lined up for release, all of which were written by Cornell in some capacity. They are: Cancer, Stone Age Mind (Cornell), Road Less Traveled, Orphans, At Ophians Door (Cornell/Matt Cameron); Ahead of the Dog (Cornell/Kim Thayil); and Merrmas (Cornell/Ben Shepherd).

As for what that material sounds like, very little information exists. In my interview with Cornell during the writing of the album, conducted in late January 2017, the frontman was fairly cryptic: “We have a lot of interesting songs… sort of similar in that nothing really sounds like anything we’ve done before, and there’s definitely new territory, but it definitely sounds like us.”

Two years later, as Soundgarden struggled to obtain Cornell’s final vocal recordings, Thayil offered more detail.

“Interestingly, there’s a psychedelic element, and there was more of a grooving, I’d say a little bit more, not ballad-y, but more guitar arpeggiations, like what you might hear on Fell On Black Days,” he revealed.

“And then we had maybe a couple of sad songs, and a couple of heavy songs that in general feel were – where we were at in the writing process – kind of mixed like [2012 reunion album] King Animal, but a little bit less of the heavy stuff. But it was still interesting, still quirky stuff.

“Once Matt, Ben and myself get a hold of those songs and finish putting down our parts, the songs will very likely become heavier, darker and maybe a bit trippier.”

A release date for the recordings has yet to be announced.

Legal wrangles between Cornell’s estate and the band have been ongoing since 2019, when Vicky Cornell sued the surviving members, accusing them of withholding royalties. As part of the suit, Vicky claimed Chris Cornell’s vocal recordings were made in his personal studio and there was no agreement they were intended for Soundgarden.

A second lawsuit followed in 2021, as Vicky Cornell sued Soundgarden over a “villainously low” offer for her stake in the band. Soundgarden responded by demanding they were allowed back into their social media accounts, which they had been locked out of by the Estate.

A temporary agreement over the accounts was reached in June 2021, which was branded “a productive first step towards healing and open dialogue” and paved the way for the final recordings.

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!”

The 2023 nominees for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were revealed today (February 1).

Iron Maiden, Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden and The White Stripes lead a nomination class that also includes seminal post-punk acts Joy Division and New Order, country-pop superstar Sheryl Crow, hip-hop legends Missy Elliott and A Tribe Called Quest, and pop auteurs Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper and George Michael.

R&B legends The Spinners, country icon Willie Nelson and the beloved singer/songwriter Warren Zevon round out the 2023 nominee class.

Crow, Elliott, Joy Division/New Order, Lauper, Michael, Nelson, The White Stripes, and Zevon are all on the ballot for the first time.

“This remarkable list of nominees reflects the diverse artists and music that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honors and celebrates,” John Sykes, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation's chairman, said in a statement. “These artists have created their own sounds that have impacted generations and influenced countless others that have followed in their footsteps.”

Nominations will be voted on by a body of more than 1,000 artists, historians and members of the music industry, but fans can also participate in the Hall of Fame selection via a process called the Fan Vote.

Through April 28, fans can vote online at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's websiteor in person at the Museum itself in Cleveland, Ohio. The top five artists in the Fan Vote will then comprise a “fans’ ballot” that will be tallied along with the other ballots to determine the 2023 inductees. 

The 2023 inductees will be announced in May, with the induction ceremony set to take place this fall, though the date and venue have yet to be announced as of press time. 

The 2022 ceremony saw the long-awaited (and overdue) induction of Judas Priest, along with that of Eminem, Dolly Parton, Duran Duran, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon and influential blues guitar player Elizabeth Cotten, among others.

For more info on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame museum and this year's inductees, visit the organization's website.

A 1979 Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennessean electric guitar once belonging to late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell is up for sale on Reverb.com.

The six-string – which has a rather sizable price tag of $395,000 (down from an original price of $500,000) – was heavily used by Cornell during his time with both Soundgarden and Audioslave, both in the studio and onstage. The guitar can also be seen in the music video for Soundgarden’s Rusty Cage.

In terms of specs, the guitar appears to be all-original, with a laminated rock maple neck, rosewood fingerboard and laminated Cherry-finished maple hollowbody. Electronics come by way of a pair of adjustable pickups and a versatile set of controls, including two discrete volume knobs for each pickup, tone selector and pickup selector switches and a master volume control.

The instrument also features an adjustable bridge with chrome-plated metal parts and a Gretsch Bigsby-style tailpiece.

As Reverb notes, despite its age and heavy usage, the guitar remains in “excellent condition," most likely due to the fact it was supposedly Cornell’s “favorite” and was often kept at his home.

According to the Reverb listing, hosted by River City Guitars of Spokane, Washington, the guitar – serial number 29279 – is “fully documented by the superior court of Washington for King County and is unequivocally by law confirmed to be Cornell’s."

River City Guitars says these court documents will be included with the sale of the guitar, in addition to a certificate of authenticity.

For more information, head to Reverb.com.

This 1979 Gretsch Chet Atkins Tennessean is the latest in a series of high-ticket guitars to be put for sale online. Last month, a rare, unbranded Japanese double-cut played by Jimi Hendrix hit the auction block for the second time, after failing to meet its reserve price the first time around.

George Harrison’s Gibson ‘58 “ransom” Les Paul – used as a bargaining chip to ensure the recovery of the Beatles legend’s stolen Lucy guitar – also recently sold for more than $300,000.

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.

Back in May, Total Guitar conducted a series of polls on GuitarWorld.com. A staggering number votes were cast – just over 150,000, in fact – and now the results can be revealed.

Because we wanted to represent every era, from early classics to contemporary guitar heroes, we divided up our polls decade by decade from the 1960s all the way through to the 2010s and 2020s. Here, we present the top 10 guitar albums of the '90s, as voted by you.

Throughout the '90s, heavy music was redefined by Rage Against the Machine, Pantera, Soundgarden and more. But incredibly, four of the decade’s greatest guitar albums were released within a six-week period in 1991.

10. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991)

Leaning harder into the funk of funk-rock than any of their peers, the Chilis’ defining moment finds John Frusciante drawing as much on Parliament-Funkadelic and Sly Stone as Hendrix. 

It turned out that playing James Brown riffs with a grittier tone and a drummer who wanted to be John Bonham was a winner. Frusciante’s angular soloing on Suck My Kiss and the graunching string bends of Give It Away explored how percussive lead guitar can get, while Under The Bridge is the best anyone has appropriated Hendrix’s combined lead-rhythm style. Amps? You don’t need one – John did most of this straight into the desk.

9. Tool – Ænima (1996)

Unlike his former bandmate Tom Morello, there’s no single aspect of Tool guitarist Adam Jones’ playing that is identifiably unique. Somehow, though, the overall effect sounds quite unlike anyone else. The majority of riffs are in 4/4, but the band’s knack for placing accents in different places for each instrument makes Ænima constantly rhythmically engaging.

Jones’ Les Paul tone is gigantic yet clear, coming from an early blueface Diezel VH4. His use of flangers gave the tone movement, and he’s one of the few guitarists to exploit his guitar’s tone control. The grooves in Ænima are so hypnotic that epic tunes flash by.

8. Soundgarden – Superunknown (1994)

For all the success of Superunknown, a number one in the US, Soundgarden’s fourth album saw fearless experimentation with time signatures. Spoonman is in 7/4, My Wave in 5/4, and Limo Wreck in a head-spinning 15/8 (five ‘triplet’ beats per bar). Their wild tunings included Open C (C-G-C-G-G-E), and Open E5 (E-E-B-B-B-B). 

Nevertheless, MTV found Black Hole Sun irresistible. Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil somehow retained clarity amid such sludgy riffing, thanks in no small part to Cornell’s choice of a Gretsch Duo Jet and Silver Jet and a Fender Jazzmaster to record all the rhythms, split through a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier and 50-watt Marshall JMP.

7. Pantera – Vulgar Display Of Power (1992)

Dimebag Darrell was one of metal’s great characters – Zakk Wylde and EVH mashed into one fret-melting force of nature. On paper, Pantera should have been too heavy to get as big as they did, but Dime’s riffs had such an irresistible groove that everyone got on board. His vibrato was wider than the Grand Canyon, and his chromatic licks were vicious. 

The 12/8 rhythm of Walk defines groove metal, and its hand-crossing tapping lick is just plain fun. Dime proved you didn’t need valve amps for brutality, either. His preferred Randall solid-state heads grind with an unceasing fury here.

6. Alice In Chains – Dirt (1992)

Riffing harder than any of their Seattle contemporaries, Alice In Chains brought metal and grunge fans together. Them Bones successfully turned a piledriving riff in 7/8 into a hit single without sounding remotely prog, and Cantrell’s drop D grinding and layered parts earned him the admiration of Dimebag Darrell and Eddie Van Halen. 

Producer Dave Jerden recorded a separate amp for each EQ band. A Rockman supplied the treble, and a Bogner Ecstasy brought the mids. Bass was either a prototype Dual Rectifier or a Bogner Fish preamp, depending who you ask, but either way the resulting tone is colossal.

5. Megadeth – Rust In Peace (1990)

Marty Friedman’s choice soloing made Megadeth the guitar connoisseur’s favourite thrashers, and he was never in better form than on Rust In Peace. With exotic pentatonic scales and artfully chosen ‘wrong’ notes, he never sounded predictable but he kept enough blues influence to be accessible.

Standouts like Tornado Of Souls show a vibrato Kirk Hammett could only dream of and a perfect balance of technique and melody. Dave Mustaine isn’t outclassed either – his ‘machine gun’ alternate picking is blistering. He delivered his best riffs and songs to date, and went toe-to-toe with Friedman for Hangar 18’s duelling solos.

4. Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine (1992)

There’s a lot to say about Rage Against the Machine’s musical innovation, but ultimately every landmark album needs great songs, and Rage had ’em. Their debut had the best set of Jimmy Page-inspired blues riffs since Led Zeppelin II, and frontman Zack de la Rocha created slamming hooks without the need for singing. Drummer Brad Wilk had a Bonham-esque ability to hit each snare slightly late and guitarist Tom Morello also sat behind the beat, sounding like a T-Rex stomping through New York.

Morello’s preference for neck pickup tones on rhythms made him stand out. He used his Arm the Homeless guitar for standard tuning and American Standard Telecaster for everything in drop D, with overdubs from a Les Paul. 

Sick of tone chasing, Morello picked one amp setting in rehearsal and has stuck with it ever since. Luckily, his Marshall 2205 sounded awesome. Innovation is part luck, and Morello happened to be the first breakthrough guitarist with a DigiTech Whammy. But he also had an astonishingly creative mind and a refusal to be limited by conventional approaches.

His DJ scratching, created with a killswitch and a wide-open wah pedal, was brand-new. At times he’d unplug the guitar and exploit the noises made by a live cable. Somehow, Tom made it all work in context without sounding weird for the sake of it.

3. Nirvana – Nevermind (1991)

The ’90s didn’t really begin until Nevermind came out. There had long existed a punk scene for people who felt alienated by bands like Mötley Crüe. By 1991, that was the majority, and a generation embraced Nirvana for rejecting what had gone before.

Kurt Cobain had bought his Fender Jaguar because it was the only decent lefty he could find, but it helped that it looked unlike anything on MTV. Where ’80s chorus had been digitally pristine, Kurt chose an analogue MXR Small Clone. Where their distortion had come from giant amps, Kurt had a $40 Boss DS-1. And where they had shredded, Kurt played the vocal melody.

Ironically, producer Butch Vig didn’t let Nirvana sound the way they wanted. Nevermind’s sonics reflect the tension between Kurt’s urge for rawness and Vig’s radio-friendly instincts. Audiences connected to Cobain’s raw emotion, but they might not have done so in such numbers had Vig not persuaded him to multitrack a slick wall of guitars.

Beyond the sonics were Kurt’s immaculately crafted songs. The soft-loud dynamics were undeniably effective, and he had a Beatles-like knack for unexpected but satisfying chord changes. Lithium dances between D major and D minor for its verse and changes key for the chorus, while In Bloom somehow weaves a beautiful melody around the most jarring set of chords.

It’s hard to think about Nevermind without thinking of the overall tragedy of Kurt’s life, but it’s a monumental testament to the power of music – and guitars – to communicate feeling.

2. Pearl Jam – Ten (1991)

Stone Gossard and Mike McCready’s smart approach to having two guitars gave Pearl Jam’s debut its expansive sound. Generally McCready plays a Strat while Gossard plays a Les Paul, and one plays high while the other plays low. The distinct tones and frequencies from each guitarist give everything clarity and fill the entire audio spectrum with sonic excitement.

Pearl Jam have been called Seattle’s Rolling Stones to Nirvana’s Beatles. Like the Stones they have the knack of “weaving sonic tapestries”, as Keith Richards put it. Their thoughtful part writing also left space for Jeff Ament’s enormous 8- and 12-string basslines.

Mike McCready’s undisguised Stevie Ray Vaughan passion saw him bring Strats back into vogue. After a decade of compressed humbucker tones, McCready’s dynamic single coils underlined that this was a new generation.

He described his playing on Black and Even Flow as an SRV “rip off”, while he saw the epic outro solo in Alive as a copy of Ace Frehley’s solo in She by Kiss, which in turn was taken from Robby Krieger’s Five To One with The Doors.

Both guitarists used JCM800s for dirty tones and Fenders for clean parts. The guitarists happily shared the spotlight, with Gossard often playing main riffs on songs where McCready took solos. 

Kurt Cobain may have sneered that Ten had too many solos for an alternative band, but Pearl Jam were reconnecting rock with more organic tones and blues-rock roots, more Hendrix than hair metal. Ten was a classic rock masterpiece disguised as a grunge album.

1. Metallica – Metallica (1991)

The standout guitar album of the ’90s. The best-selling heavy metal album of all time. A sonic and creative benchmark for the genre. Metallica’s self-titled fifth album, forever known as The Black Album, is also the inspiration for countless young guitarists, with lead single Enter Sandman an essential riff for every new player. And for Matt Tuck, leader of British metal stars Bullet For My Valentine, the influence of this album is profound.

“They were a big band before that anyways,” Matt says, “but as soon as they released The Black Album it went stratospheric. They’ve been untouchable ever since, as far as getting an album to connect with as many people as they did. The amount of sales, how relevant it is 30 years later – it’s just a phenomenon!”

Tuck tells a story millions of metal fans can relate to: “I was 14 years old. We had just got Sky installed so we had MTV. We put it on and there was this music video on of a truck smashing through a man’s bed, with all these crazy low-end toms raging. It was Enter Sandman. The moment I heard it I was like ‘What the fuck is this?’ I was hooked from that moment. Within a couple of weeks I went out and bought my first ever album, Metallica’s Black Album.”

In that moment, Matt Tuck’s future was set. “I started to learn to play guitar by myself that year, off the back of that album,” he continues. “I learned some basic chords, then put on that album and started to work it all out. I wanted to be James Hetfield!”

In the early ’80s, Metallica had risen to cult status as pioneers of thrash metal, a super-fast, super-heavy hybrid of metal and punk. After a doggedly anti-commercial start to their career, they had made their first MTV video, for the song One, in 1988. 

The following album would be a risky move into the mainstream. For this, they enlisted producer Bob Rock, best known for working with Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi. James Hetfield’s touring guitar had long been emblazoned with a “Kill Bon Jovi” sticker, and some Metallica fans were nervous.

Rock was famously demanding in the studio. Tensions between band and producer are visible in the Year In The Life Of Metallica documentary, and there were times during the making of the album when band and producer were barely on speaking terms.

Matt Tuck compares the process to working with producer Don Gilmore (Linkin Park) on Bullet’s 2010 album Fever. “We’ve never had that kind of ascendancy,” he says, “but Fever felt like a big stepping stone for us. That took us from Brixton Academy to Wembley. Up until that point, nobody questioned the songwriting. Don Gilmore was the only guy that really challenged me as a writer and I didn’t like it! He’s trying to get us to take out double kick patterns and not dumb it down, but just try and make it a little bit more Black Album.”

Matt can understand Metallica’s difficulties with Rock. “It’s such an intimate long-term personal process. The first time you work with these guys you don’t know them, there’s no relationship, there’s no trust. It’s only really when the dust settles and you can look back on it a couple of years later that you actually appreciate the process.”

The Black Album’s monochrome cover both earned its nickname and invited comparisons to AC/DC’s Back In Black. The albums have more in common than just their ultra-noir sleeves. Both were made at the turn of a decade by bands in mourning (AC/DC for singer Bon Scott, Metallica for bassist Cliff Burton).

Both bands had begun with cult followings and made steps towards the mainstream with Highway To Hell (1979) and ... And Justice For All (1988) respectively. For both bands, though, black albums marked the leap to global stardom, securing their places in the rock pantheon – even if diehard fans still prefer their earlier work.

The AC/DC connection was conscious. Drummer Lars Ulrich told Uncut magazine’s John Robinson in 2020 that they listened to the Australians when writing The Black Album: “We thought about the art of simplifying and writing shorter songs... A little more bounce, to make the music more physical than cerebral.”

Where Metallica’s trademark in the ’80s had been fast and furious, AC/DC often made songs heavier by slowing down.

The Black Album was notable for establishing scooped mids as the dominant metal guitar tone. The main rhythm amp was a Mesa/Boogie Mark II-C++ as it had been since Master Of Puppets, but a modded Marshall JCM800 and a Boogie Mark V were among the other amps to hand. 

On Hetfield’s Mesa, mid control was at 0 and the amp’s graphic EQ was a shaped in a V, with the middle 750Hz band all the way down at -12dB. There were two further parametric EQs in the FX loop, cutting mids at 900Hz and 1.2kHz and boosting presence at 4.2kHz and 6kHz. By now, Metallica were using ESP guitars with EMG pickups.

It was directly the opposite of classic mid-heavy tones from bands like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, but Metallica did strategically replace some of the lost mids with the Marshall amp. Rock’s JCM800 was modified by Jose Arredondo, famous because Eddie Van Halen had claimed (falsely, it later emerged) he had modded Ed’s famous Plexi.

“James wanted crunch,” Bob Rock told Reverb.com. “Crunch to me is upper mids. Crunch to him is that resonance when he palm mutes and it goes gonk! It’s the sound of the room we made for the guitar sounds, it’s not all close mic’ed.”

Rock’s input on the guitars was huge. He suggested they tuned down to D standard for Sad But True after noticing all the songs were in the same key. He pushed Kirk to try harder on solos, insisting on him laying down an improvised solo with every live take of each song.

When lead guitarist Kirk Hammett recorded the final solos, they used the improvised takes for inspiration. Rock rejected Kirk’s initial idea for The Unforgiven, and suggested Kirk fingerpick the clean half of the solo – “really pull on the strings and slap them against the frets,” as Kirk recalled to Guitar World. His insistence paid off and Kirk can be seen grinning in A Year In The Life...

“It’s pretty much the type of guitar solo I’ve been trying to do for the last five or six years,” he said, “and I’m really proud of that.” 

It was also Rock who gave James the confidence to pursue the ballad Nothing Else Matters, notable for Hetfield’s first Metallica solo. The Black Album forever positioned Metallica as metal giants. And for Matt Tuck, is still stands tall as a masterpiece.

“We’ve managed to play a few festivals and shows with Metallica,” Matt smiles. “It’s always a bit of a headfuck, I’m not gonna lie. They’re such a huge part of my life from such an early age and they’ve defined me as a person and my career. It’s as big as that for me. So for them to pass me in the corridor at a festival and go, ‘Hey, Matt!’ just blows my mind. They’re the most important metal band there’s ever been, and The Black Album deserves every accolade. They are the kings.”

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.

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.

Melvins have released a cover of Spoonman by fellow Seattle grunge legends Soundgarden, complete with Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron.

The condensed version of the track finds Buzz Osbourne tearing through some of the greatest drop-D riffs of the grunge era, and delivering a double-tracked solo that’s more composed than Kim Thayil’s original, but no less psychedelic.

Besides Osborne and Cameron, the song also features longtime Melvins drummer Dale Crover, as well as Steven McDonald on bass, while Toshi Kasai recorded the session.

And if the cover sounds familiar, it’s because Melvins previously performed the tune live at 2019’s Chris Cornell tribute concert, I Am the Highway.

The track appears on Melvins’ new Lord of the Flies EP, which also features a madcap cover of Led Zeppelin’s Misty Mountain Hop, rechristened Misty Mountain Urge.

Of course, both bands share a lot of history, not least Osborne being the first guitarist to share the secrets of drop-D tuning with Thayil. And while Chris Cornell wrote Spoonman, the cover represents something of a full circle moment for the two groups.

"We were just sitting around listening to records, and Buzz was telling us about Black Sabbath," Thayil recalled to Guitar World.

"He said, 'Hey, you know on this song Tony Iommi uses this tuning where he tunes his E string down to D.' And we were all like, 'Really?' All I knew of altered tunings back then was slide guitar tunings, like what the country guys used. And I knew Sonic Youth was experimenting with a lot of tunings. I was not aware of the Melvins using drop D, but I’m sure they were.

"So I went and started playing around with that. And I wrote the song Nothing to Say, and Chris wrote Beyond the Wheel, and we became married to that tuning."

The Lord of the Flies EP is available now via Shoxop.

Jack Endino’s name has been on a lot of records, but it remains one of the downsides of being an in-demand producer and mixing engineer that oftentimes your name becomes associated with other people’s music.

That’s not always a bad thing. As Endino joins us from his home in Seattle, the onetime “engine room of the Battleship Grunge” testifies that getting the early works of Mudhoney, Soundgarden and Nirvana on record can be good for your career.

“I tell people who are getting into the recording world, like, ‘Your mileage may vary; your first clients when you are learning how to record might not be Soundgarden and Nirvana!’” he says. “I was in the right place at the right time, and grunge is the gift that keeps on giving in that sense because I still have all the business I can handle.” 

And yet for Endino the recording artist, whose career as a musician came together in the ‘80s with the alt-metal, grunge-adjacent Skin Yard, those producer credits can be illusory, telling us little about where he is at artistically.

Right now that could be with Purple Strange, who are waiting for the pressing plant capacity to put their album out, psych rock act Sky Cries Mary, or Beyond Captain Orca!, Endino’s pure improv power trio, or with the release of a new solo album, Set Myself on Fire. 

An expansive work of alternative rock, Set Myself on Fire was once scheduled for a 2012 release before the label at the time fell through. Endino went on to write more songs, eventually finding enough down time to finish it during the pandemic. 

It is an edgy, wry, quicksilver album with Endino betraying his background as a drummer in how a sleight of hand can render an unconventional groove as one that’ll stick in your head.

Endino’s songwriting is pinned to the riff, and yet even those also sound subversive and left-field. In some respects, Set Myself on Fire is a record from another time, as though written in the same freewheeling spirit that made the ‘90s such a febrile period for alternative rock and punk.

After all, those experiences stay with you, and as much as Endino is keen to talk about this record, above all else he just can’t help contextualizing his own music with that which he has recorded for others.

For the audience, there can be a ‘what the chef cooks at home’ perception of a producer’s own material, and as it turns out, Endino can’t switch off his control room perspective, either.

“Recording and playing have always been kind of intertwined for me,” says Endino. “It’s like two different sides of your brain, your left brain and your right brain, and that’s what makes a solo record so difficult. You are trying to use the creative part of your brain instead of the analytical part of your brain, trying to be creative and have fun, and, meanwhile, the other side of your brain is going, ‘Well that guitar tone needs some work.’”

And as Endino can testify to, it’s only when you bring those two competing instincts into equilibrium that you can get the song done.

Your guitar tone on this record is lush, analog and organic, and there’s not that much gain on it.

“Yeah, I go for a cleaner sound. Here’s the thing: when you have a cleaner sound it forces you to play better, and after doing this for 30, 40 years, I have gotten pretty good on the guitar! [Laughs] I can get away it. 

“I am an all right guitar player now. I used to be very insecure, and just tried to play fast all the time because that’s what you were supposed to do – it was the ‘80s, y’know! 

“With each Skin Yard record, I slowed down more and more. Now, I am more in the Robin Trower/Carlos Santana school of soloing, which is finding two notes and making them sound really good. And fill some space. Try and cast a spell on people with less playing. 

“It’s like, how are you playing those two notes? What sort of a feeling can you invoke with the least amount of fiddly-fiddly playing? I am much more interested in that. And also, I like riffs, and this is the thing about my solo stuff: I am always looking for a riff.”

And your sound hangs on the riff.

“It does, and any band in which I am the main component has always ended up being very riff-y. I mean, Skin Yard was a very riff-y band, and my solo records are riff-fests in a lot of ways. 

“I am the worst, because I have a giant record collection – I have been listening to music for my entire life – and if I hear something that resembles something that I heard on a record in 1972, then it’s out. I don’t use it. I am always looking for the riff that I have never heard before, which after 40 or 50 years of being a fanatical music fan is hard to find! [Laughs]”

You like to mix it up rhythmically.

“The underlying timing, groove or rhythmic structure of the riff is what makes it interesting – the actual notes might be E, A, D, and everyone has used them, but if it goes in a particular way, and it has a certain lurch to it, suddenly you have a particular shape of a riff that maybe is not so familiar, that people are maybe not so used to hearing over and over again.

“I have a couple of punk tunes on the record. There are a couple of four-to-the-floor songs. The last couple of songs are pretty straightforward, but the first three are fairly odd grooves. 

“And that’s just normal for me, but now I’m just thinking about it, where’s the 4/4? I don’t think anything 4/4 happens until the fourth song. I have also been really hard with drummers over my entire life as a musician, because I am always coming up with parts that are hard to play.”

You started as a drummer?

“That was my first instrument. With Skin Yard, I would always try and come up with an interesting groove on the drums and that would inspire me to write an interesting guitar riff. There would be nothing without the drum part, so you can imagine, my first drummer, in my first serious band, Skin Yard in 1985, [soon-to-be-Soundgarden drummer] Matt Cameron… Tough shoes to fill after that! 

“Because Matt, by 1985, was already an amazing and ridiculously talented drummer, and I could come up with all these drum parts and show them to him and he would play them and say, ‘Oh yeah! You wanna do this?’ And he would just play them.

“I am not that skilled a drummer, but I can come up with an interesting groove and explain it to somebody who is better than me, and I used to do the same thing with Barrett Martin. 

“You’ll find that on all my records; I find the drummers something interesting to do, and not just to be difficult and math-y and weird, but I want it to groove and to have a swing to it, which is something that is lacking in a lot of rock ’n’ roll.”

Sure, and it becomes too regimented.

“It's a reason why I don't do a lot of production with click tracks, because I think it prevents people from having any sort of natural swing. To me, the drummer, if he is good, is going to be the click track. Let him swing, let his grooves stretch and bounce a little, and you’ll get something with more magic to it. 

“It will draw you in rhythmically, as opposed to a precise sort of thing that never speeds up or slows down. Different styles of music are appropriate for precise groove.”

Look at Charlie Watts. He would change the tempo and the audience would still be dancing, unaware, but it’s so clever.

“It’s genius. I mean, John Bonham, if you really pay attention to the Led Zeppelin records, Bonzo is slowing down and speeding up all over the place.”

Were your musical heroes the drummers because you started on drums?

“I liked everyone. I was very conscious [not only] of which drummers I liked but also the guitar players I liked. I was a big fan of Tony Iommi, Tony McPhee [The Groundhogs], and Tony Bourge from Budgie. I was a big fan of his. And Jimmy Page, of course, but not just for his guitar playing, but for the way he produced those Zeppelin records. 

“As I was a 15-year-old kid, listening to those albums on headphones, I would literally be dismantling those Zeppelin records with my ears and going, ‘How did he layer those guitars!?’ I would be going, ‘How did he make that decision? I see, he made that guitar cleaner so he could overdub more layers…’ 

“That’s what I did as a kid in the ‘70s. I would listen to records on headphones and try and pick the production apart, like, ‘Why do I like this record better than that record?’ When I started actually recording bands in the ‘80s, I had it all in my head already. My aesthetic was already developed from just being a fan but [also] having that analytical engineer [sensibility]. I guess I was a geek from day one.”

Your approach nowadays is not that different to those early production jobs with Soundgarden and Nirvana; just get them in the room and make them play.

“No, it’s not that different. Just better technology, better budgets, and I am very savvy with Pro Tools now.”

That helps.

“You know what the interesting thing about Pro Tools is? It’s not what you think it is. When you are working with a band, you can keep the first take! If there is one missing drum hit, then you just edit that drum hit and then the first take is great! 

“In the old days, you might have a magical first take, but, ‘Oh, there’s a mistake in it! The guy dropped a drumstick in the bridge.’ Now, digitally, you can record the first one or two takes and I can just go, ‘Oh! I’ll just take the chorus from the second take and drop it into the first take, I’ll fix that dropped snare hit and BAM! It’s done.’ You couldn’t do that back in the day recording on two-inch tape.”

And it still sounds human. That’s the problem when things sound too perfect. It’s like a face that’s perfectly symmetrical; it doesn’t look right.

“Leave it in. I don’t think there is a drum take on my record that took more than two takes, ever, on any of my solo albums. There were a couple of points where the drummer was speeding up but, if it speeds up, so what? It’s music. It’s supposed to breathe.”

Is that something that you learned from recording bands when there was no time?

“Yes, when I had zero budgets to work with 30 years ago, then that would be a factor. You had to make a choice. The other thing was you only had so much tape to record on. And in order to do another take, you had to erase the last one. ‘Are we going to erase this take? What if it’s better?’ Everybody would sorta go, ‘Hmm… That’s fine!’ [Laughs]”

What did you use for the guitars on Set Myself on Fire?

“Well, this is my aesthetic for guitar tone that I've had for years and years. I have a certain way of tweaking the amps, and a certain way of mic'ing the cabs. I am very sensitive to which speakers I am using, like for instance I like Celestion 75s much more than Celestion 30s – or Greenbacks as they’re called. 

“Lower-wattage speakers sound a lot more papery to me. They have a fizzy, paper quality; it’s brighter, but it’s also abrasive to my ears.”

And the speakers really matter…

“I think the speakers that have heavier voice coils have a darker tone. You can EQ the brightness in but it doesn’t sound fizzy and papery. My favorite cab has these things called Celestion GM70s in them, which aren’t made anymore. Most people are using the 75s, but they are kinda interchangeable.

“In the Skin Yard era, I was mostly using a Fender Twin, with no speakers in it because I had blown the Fender Utahs out of it. It’s a ’67 Twin. In fact, I still have it; it’s called ‘The Bleach Twin’ because Kurt [Cobain] used it on Bleach. But it was the main amp I used in Skin Yard. 

“I had the Fender Twin with no speakers, sitting on top of a 4x12 with Celestions, and my guitar tone has always been a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails in whatever guitar I have, a vintage Rat [distortion pedal], some kind of Fender amp, either a Twin or a Bassman. And that’s the basic crunch that I get.”

Again, your tone is not that dirty. You don’t push the Rat.

“On the Rat, the distortion knob is never past 10am. It’s not too much distortion. The rest of it is amp volume. The mics are usually fairly close to the cone. Maybe one will be close but a little bit off-axis and the other might be at a little bit of a slant. Or, my two different cones with two different mics – maybe a Beta 58, which is my desert island mic for guitars.

“I am very conscientious of guitar tones. Amp-wise, since the grunge era way back, I graduated to a 100-watt Fender Bassman because I got tired of dragging a big empty Twin around with me, and I modded it a bit, changed the phase inverter and some capacitors because it was a Bassman and I wanted the circuit to be a little more like a Twin.

“It’s essentially the same components. A Fender Bassman from the ‘70s and a Fender Twin from the ‘70s are almost identical. It’s like a bigger transformer, it’s voiced a little more low-end on the Bassman. Anyway… you don’t need to know this!”

Oh no, this is good stuff.

“This is geek stuff!”

This is one of the few places we can have this conversation without people falling asleep.

“Well, I have three different guitars and they all have the Duncan Hot Rails in it because I just like the twang I get and the fact that it is not noisy and buzzy, and translates distortion very well. 

“I am a big fan of the vintage Rat. I had an original Rat, but it has disappeared so I have a reissue, and I can tell you Kurt, using my amp on Bleach, was using a Boss DS-1, the orange pedal with three knobs. That was his sound in 1989.”

Right, and nothing else?

“That was on the Bleach record. The two or three songs with Dale Crover drumming on Bleach, he used his amp which was some kind of Randall solid-state amp, but then when we did the rest of the Bleach album a year later, we used my Twin.

“The first demo I did for Nirvana took five hours and they did 10 songs, and it was recorded and mixed in one afternoon, and then they went and played a show that night. 

“That was the one and only show of that era that they played with Dale Crover on the drums, January, 1988. The songs were like one take. If a band is really good then all you have to do is get out of their way and make sure the sounds are good, hit ‘record’ and let them do their thing.”

Was Soundgarden a similar one-take story?

“When I was recording them it was all eight-track, but we spent so much time on those eight-track recordings, because they had such a clear idea of what they wanted to sound like. They were very rehearsed, and they didn’t do anything casually.

“We would do a few different versions of a song, maybe at different tempos, and Chris [Cornell] was very meticulous with his singing, and Kim [Thayil] was very meticulous with his guitar tones. 

“In those days, he had a Music Man amp, and a single 15" cabinet that he used. He had some kind of flanger/chorus, and that’s what most of the guitar on the old Soundgarden was. He had some kind of Epiphone solidbody guitar, a little like an SG. I don’t remember exactly.”

Did the Bleach Twin get used on all the Skin Yard records?

“Most of the Skin Yard records were done with the Fender, though on 1000 Smiling Knuckles, I had a Seymour Duncan Convertible Head. That is a very interesting amp. I still have it – I haven’t used it since. It’s a strange amp with a strange sound, and it has all these little modules. It’s a ridiculous design. It wasn’t popular because it wasn’t very reliable – as I learned when I tried to take it on the road.”

You mentioned that the Bassman-inspired Sovtek Mig-50 has been your main amp since 2010. Have you any other go-to amps?

“I am very fond of the Marshall JCM800. I use that for recording even though I don’t use it live. And I have another amp called a Zinky Mofo. There was only a 100 of them made. A guy named Bruce Zinky made it in Flagstaff, Arizona. They have been on many, many people’s records in the studio.

“I have various other amps that I use to record with that I wouldn’t take on the road, like a Silvertone, a little single 12” tweed thing – great for harmonica, pure midrange. I’ve got a 1978 Marshall JMP. I have got a JCM2000 which I don’t like at all, but some metal bands really like that.

“Myself, I much prefer more of a Pete Townshend, classic rock sort of schwang to what I do. I am more of a rock ’n’ roll guitar player than metal guitar player, so I tend to gravitate more toward clean/crunch as opposed to the scooped-out fizzy kind of thing.”

And it’s a sound that works with your vocals, which, when all is said and done, are the most important thing. The song Set Myself on Fire could be taken as an apt description of the songwriting process itself.

“Y’know, I have to say, lyrically, this record is appropriate for the time. I am pleased by my lyrics on the record. Lyrics are hard. They just are. You’ve got to come up with something that means something but is not dead obvious. You’re trying to make something that is evocative of a certain emotion without it being a nursery rhyme or too obvious. 

“It’s hard to explain but the lyrics on this record are meaningful to me. I am happy with the singing and I am happy with the lyrics on it, and it is interesting to me that it is coming out at the time that it is because it was the right time to put this record out.”

• Jack Endino's new album Set Myself on Fire is out now Capacitor Records.

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.

Brandi Carlile has volunteered to take on vocal duties in Soundgarden, should the remaining members of the band wish to tour again.

Speaking to Rolling Stone’s Music Now podcast, she told the hosts that despite her own busy schedule, she “would make the time” to accommodate any live commitments with the group, were she offered the opportunity.

“I am such a Chris Cornell fan,” she said. “I loved him so much. I was so devastated when he left us.”

Carlile has previously played with the group several times, initially at the 2019 Chris Cornell tribute show in Los Angeles, before recording a two-track vinyl (A Rooster Says, featuring Searching With My Good Eye Closed and Black Hole Sun) for Record Store Day 2020 with Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd, plus her own bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth.

In addition, the remaining Soundgarden members also made a guest appearance at Carlile’s August show at The Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington state for a performance of Black Hole Sun and the Searching With My Good Eye Closed.

Rolling Stone also cites a conversation they had with Matt Cameron back in 2020, in which he hinted that the band are not necessarily done. “Most people assume the three of us [are] over and done with since Chris passed away,” he told Rolling Stone, “but that’s not the case. It’s nice to know that people still want to hear us play together.”

Meanwhile, Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready appeared with Carlile at Eddie Vedder’s Ohana festival last month, also performing Searching With My Good Eye Closed, which McCready says is his favorite Soundgarden song.

The first instalment of Eddie Vedder’s Ohana Festival 2021 took place last weekend, and the star-studded event saw Brandi Carlile join forces with Mike McCready and Matt Cameron for a live cover of Soundgarden’s Searching With My Good Eye Closed.

Appearing on the bill on Saturday 26, Carlile called upon the electric guitar titan and drumming icon for the cover, which saw McCready – who later dubbed the track his “favorite Soundgarden song” – faithfully conjure up the overdriven lead lines using his Fender Stratocaster.

McCready’s Strat also played host to a rip-roaring guitar solo – which explodes into action around the four minute mark in the video below – suited to boot rapid-fire pentatonic licks and raucous bend-heavy passages.

Soundgarden alumni Cameron, who of course had originally recorded the track for 1991 studio album Badmotorfinger, was as commanding as ever behind the kit, with bassist Phil Hanseroth and guitarist Tim Hanseroth completing the rendition’s lineup.

Carlile is already well-versed in the ways of Searching With My Good Eye Closed, having previously performed the track alongside the surviving Soundgarden members Cameron, Kim Thayil and Ben Shepherd.

“Had a great time rocking my favorite Soundgarden song Searching With My Good Eye Closed live with Brandi Carlile, who sings that song beautifully!” McCready said in a social media post after the event.

In a post of her own, Carlile commented, “Ohana Fest! Thank you for an unforgettable night. Grateful I was able to share it with some of my incredibly talented friends Yola, Celisse and Mike McCready and Matt Cameron.

“Thank you to my friend and hero Eddie Vedder and the rest of the almighty Pearl Jam for letting this power bitch share the stage with you power bitches.”

Carlile and co’s cover of Soundgarden was one of a number of standout performances from the festival, which also saw the singer-songwriter join Pearl Jam to perform Better Man during their headline set, while Vedder took the stage alongside Chad Smith, Andrew Watt and Josh Klinghoffer for a last-minute headline slot on Friday (September 24).

The second instalment of the Ohana Festival, dubbed the Ohana Encore, is scheduled to take place on October 1 and 2, and will feature performances from Pearl Jam, Brandi Carlile, Beck, Sleater-Kinney and more.

To find out more, visit Ohana Festival.

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.

Metallica have released live covers of Soundgarden's All Your Lies and Head Injury on vinyl.

Recorded during the band's set at 2019's I Am The Highway: A Tribute to Chris Cornell benefit concert at The Forum in Los Angeles, the performances see Hetfield and co give the Ultramega OK classics the 'Tallica treatment, while staying faithful to the original's high-gain electric guitars and raucous arrangement.

Metallica were one of a huge list of names to perform at the event. Others included Taylor Momsen – who, with The Pretty Reckless, recently recruited Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil to play on their track, Only Love Can Save Me Now – as well as Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, Melvins and loads more.

Drummer Lars Ulrich honors late Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell in a new statement: “Thank you for your music, thank you for the words, for your thoughts...

“Thank you for the shows, thank you for the good times, for putting yourself out there... And thank you, along with your fellow bandmates, for giving us something that inspired us, excited us, meant something, moved us, and not only gave us belief in the possibilities, but turned us the fuck on.

He continues: “What an honor to have known you, to have shared the stage with you and created next level memories, and ultimately to have been included in the LA celebration of your life, which allowed us the opportunity to share with the world just how much your music and your brilliance meant to us. Here are two of our favorite old-school Soundgarden tracks from that special night.”

In a new Instagram post by Vicky Cornell, Chris's widow, she gives gratitude to Metallica for “memorializing that love, admiration and support” from their performances.

“Joining the tribute concert meant so much to me and my children and to so many fans around the world... And I know how proud Chris would be, not only because you were there as his friends, but also because he was such a huge Metallica fan.

“Thank you so much and thank you Lars for your very kind words about Chris. It is true that ‘a man is not dead while his name is still spoken’. Thank you for continuing to honor him.”

The vinyl editions of Metallica's performances of All Your Lies and Head Injury are available now via the band's official website.

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.”

After months of legal tussles, the surviving members of Soundgarden and Chris Cornell’s estate have reached a temporary agreement over the band’s social media accounts and website.

As of Tuesday June 15, guitarist Kim Thayil, bassist Ben Shepherd and drummer Matt Cameron, along with managers Red Light Management, have regained access to the group’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, and SoundgardenWorld.com.

Up until this point, the trio had been operating on social media under the handle Nudedragons, an anagram of Soundgarden that was used for the band’s secret reunion show at the Seattle Showbox in 2010.

In a joint statement, both camps wrote: “The agreement marks a productive first step towards healing and open dialogue, and the parties wish for the social media accounts to celebrate the Band’s accomplishments and music while continuing to honor Chris’ legacy.”

“Through our joint social media efforts and our temporary agreement, my family, along with the surviving members of Soundgarden, hope to celebrate Chris and his music out of mutual respect and love,” said Vicky Cornell in a separate statement. “We all recognize the profound pain caused by Chris’s tragic loss and the path it has taken us down.”

The band followed up on the official announcement with a message posted to its social media accounts, which encouraged civil discourse and “no more comments about wives, children, exes, significant others, siblings, parents, great aunts, 2nd cousins… etc of any of the current or former band members”.

In addition, the band asked fans not to “post discussions or inane conspiracy theories casting blame for harm to Chris Cornell”, who died while on tour in May 2017.

The agreement marks the first reconciliation in a bitter legal battle that as recently as February saw Vicky Cornell brand the band’s buyout offer of $300,000 as “villainously low”.

It could also mark the first step towards the release of a final Soundgarden album – ownership of Chris Cornell’s vocal recordings for seven unreleased tracks has remained in dispute since 2019, although Vicky Cornell had more recently indicated that “all of Chris’ music, including Soundgarden, will see the light of day.”

Note: this article is also featured in Australian Guitar #142, which is out now wherever great magazines are sold! Click here to read more about what’s in this jam-packed issue!

Despite the LP’s notably bleak title, Death By Rock And Roll is actually what saved The Pretty Reckless from an early grave. After the sudden death of close friend (and timeless grunge icon) Chris Cornell on May 18th, 2017, the New York hard-rockers were shaken to the core. Anyone in their position would be – Cornell committed suicide mere hours after fronting a gig with Soundgarden, for which The Pretty Reckless served as its opening act. They were some of the last people Cornell spent time with, and the significance of as much sent the band into a deep depressive spiral. 

In particular, frontwoman Taylor Momsen hit rock bottom hard and fast. Songwriting was the least of her concerns – especially when less than a year after Cornell’s passing, The Pretty Reckless’ longtime collaborator and go-to producer, Kato Khandwala, was killed in a motorcycle accident. 

Drugs and isolation defined the next couple years of Momsen’s life, until a random glint of creative motivation sparked up. Momsen clung onto the morsel for dear life, pouring her agony out on paper less in the form of structured, aforethought lyrics, and more in a desperation-fuelled stream of consciousness. Little of it made any sense, but in time, Momsen was able to salvage key lines and thematic nodes with which to build the framework of an album.

The end result is not only a monolithic rebirth for The Pretty Reckless, but easily their most impassioned and intense body of work to date. At face value, Death By Rock And Roll is an operatic epic packed with hugely emotive, musically towering cuts that condense and amplify everything the band does best. Beyond that, it’s effectively what pulled Momsen back from the brink of her own demise. 

With the record out and generating inhuman levels of praise, Australian Guitar caught up with Momsen to dig a little deeper.

Especially given how chaotic the journey up to this point has been, how do you feel now that you’ve finally been able to unleash this beast into the wild? 
It’s surreal, honestly. We finished the album a little over a year ago, but we’ve been sitting on it due to the world’s circumstances – the fact that it’s finally out almost doesn’t feel real. It’s crazy, in the best way possible. I’m so happy to be able to share it, and people can finally listen to it. I’ve been holding onto it for dear life for the past year, and now it’s suddenly out there in the world! It’s like sending your child off to college and going, “Okay, do me proud! I hope I raised you well!”

I love how the record ebbs and flows between these really big, balls-to-the-wall rock ’n’ roll moments, and some more atmospheric, sometimes orchestral-based sections. Was that flow between the highs and lows something you wanted to really dial in on? 
Yeah, for sure. I don’t know exactly how calculated everything is, but this record came from a lot of places. We went through a lot of loss in the past few years, and this record is really the culmination of all that. I got very down as a person, I fell into a very dark hole of depression and substance abuse and everything that comes along with grief, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of it. 

But to make a very long story short, and as cliché as it may sound, it was very literally music that saved my life – writing this album is what really kind of pulled me back to life. It was very cathartic, in the way that I almost didn’t have to think when I was putting pen to paper. I feel like I didn’t even write this record, the record wrote itself. It just kind of poured out of me, whether I wanted it to or not. And that’s a rare occurrence as a writer. I put everything I had into it, and I’m extraordinarily proud of it. 

And I think we took a lot of… I don’t want to say risks, but there’s a lot of sonic evolution on this record, and I really do think we took a big step forward with it. Dare I say it: this might be the best album we’ve ever made.

Do you feel like you can hear that catharsis, and the raw passion you put into this album, when you listen back on it? 
Absolutely! I think it’s undeniable, from the songwriting alone to the performances on the record, that we were able to capture a sense of energy and humanness that you simply can’t fake. We were capturing a moment in our lives that couldn’t be duplicated if we’d tried – we were living it, and that kind of purity – that kind of vulnerability – is something so rare. So to capture that on tape… It was certainly challenging at times, but I think it made for an extraordinarily special record.

Early in the tracklist, there’s an obviously really important track for the band, and definitely one that stands out on the record too: “Only Love Can Save Me Now” with (Soundgarden’s) Matt Cameron and Kim Thayil. What can you tell us about how that song came together? 
That song was written from the lowest of lows. Like I said, I was in a very dark kind of headspace, and I think that song in particular was born out of desperation. I’d hit a point where I was so low, and I was just looking for anything to kind of save me. Love is such a powerful force in the world – whether that’s love from other people, or y’know, our love of music… Whatever you equate love to in your own life, that’s what it’s about. It was a very personal song for me to write. 

And then when we came to recording, it was actually one of the last songs we did for the album. When I finished writing the song, I sent a demo off to Matt and Kim, who are very dear friends of mine, and obviously exquisite musicians –
and I knew they would bring this incredible sense of weight and power to it, which no-one other than them could. 

The whole experience of recording it was just amazing: we flew to Seattle to record at London Bridge Studios, which is where Soundgarden recorded
Louder Than Love back in the day, Pearl Jam made Ten and Alice In Chains made Dirt – the list of iconic records made there goes on and on. 

I’m a very firm believer that places are kind of like people, they hold memories in the walls, and so just walking into that studio was incredible. You could feel the vibe; you could feel the energy of all the records that had been made there previously. And to be there with Matt and Kim, y’know, walking around the studio and having Kim point to every picture on the wall or every little note that’s still hanging up there, telling a story about it… It was just incredible. 

And then to hear the song coming to life for real, in realtime, was just absolutely magical. The first time Matt hit his snare and with the first note that Kim strummed out, the song just exploded out of the speaker. It’s by far one of my favourite songs on the record. I’m not supposed to say that because they’re all my favourite, but that song in particular is very special to me, and making it was definitely a career highlight.

Chris Cornell’s family has reached a confidential settlement with the doctor who cared for the singer and guitarist at the time of his death.

Cornell died on May 18, 2017, and his death was ruled a suicide. Shortly after, his family issued a statement that questioned a coroner’s report that he took his own life.

“Without the results of toxicology tests, we do not know what was going on with Chris – or if any substances contributed to his demise,” the statement read.

In 2018, Cornell’s widow, Vicky Cornell, and her two children, Toni and Christopher Nicholas, sued Dr. Robert Koblin for malpractice, stating that the multiple medications he had been prescribed had impaired the singer’s cognition. Now, the suit has been settled.

A report in Rolling Stone outlines the original suit, which alleged that Koblin prescribed Cornell over 940 doses of the anti-anxiety drug Lorazepam between September 2015 and May 2017.

Additionally, Rolling Stone states that the suit claimed that Koblin also prescribed Oxycodone but didn’t conduct appropriate follow-up, and that the doctor didn’t warn Cornell, “an addiction-prone individual”, about possible side effects of Lorazepam which include impairment of judgement and rational thinking, diminished impulse control and increased risk of suicide.

Terms of the settlement, which was reached last month, remain confidential.

At the same time, Vicky Cornell has been engaged in an ongoing legal battle with the surviving members of Soundgarden, with the band members recently accusing Cornell of locking them out of the official Soundgarden social media accounts and website.

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.”

Flannel shirts. Ripped jeans. Long (non-sprayed) hair. Second-hand guitars. And loads of classic riffs. Grunge went global towards the end of 1991, when three now-landmark albums were all released within a span of a few weeks – Nirvana’s Nevermind, Pearl Jam’s Ten, and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger (plus, the year-old Alice in Chains debut, Facelift, hitting just a short while before).

And, for a spell, grunge was undoubtedly rock’s leading style – as evidenced by seemingly non-stop coverage of the “Seattle sound” in print and on MTV, with its influence even spreading to fashion, advertising, and politics. 

While some of the genre’s top contributors may be gone, their music lives on – which was more often than not propelled by simply awesome riffs. 

So, on the 30-year anniversary of its mainstream breakthrough, we count down the 30 greatest grunge riffs, from its ’80s inception to early-’90s heyday.

Betcha can’t guess no. 1…

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30. The U-Men – Gila

There are several Washington-area bands that helped clear the path for grunge, and certainly, the U-Men would be towards the top of the list.

While most standout grunge riffs were of the fuzzed-out variety – and sometimes detuned – the chug-chugging riff on Gila (supplied by guitarist Tom Price) sounds much cleaner than what would come later on from grunge’s “Big 4.” But it still rocks. Ferociously.

29. 7 Year Bitch – The Scratch

One of the things that made grunge so darn appealing was that, like the punk movement of the ‘70s, it put the emphasis back on songwriting, rather than instrumental gymnastics that required hours of training. 

All you needed was a sturdy chord progression and attitude… and the Gits – and their guitarist, Roisin Dunne – certainly had lots of both on The Scratch. 

28. The Gits – Seaweed

The Gits’ story is one of a promising talent being cut short due to tragedy – their singer, Mia Zapata, was murdered in 1993, while the band was working on their second album,  the posthumously released Enter: The Conquering Chicken. 

And a tune like Seaweed shows that guitar-wise (via a chap dubbed “Joe Spleen”), they leaned more towards the “melodic punk” side of things.

27. Skin Yard – 1000 Smiling Knuckles

Jack Endino will forever be best known as a producer. And for good reason – he was behind the board for such landmark grunge releases as Soundgarden’s Screaming Life, Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff, and Nirvana’s Bleach. 

But he was also the guitarist for Skin Yard – and his capable noise-riffing is on display throughout 1000 Smiling Knuckles, including a surprisingly near-shred solo! 

26. Truly – Blue Flame Ford

Grunge’s best-kept secret just might have been Truly, which saw ex-members of Soundgarden (bassist Hiro Yamamoto) and Screaming Trees (drummer Mark Pickerel) join forces with singer/guitarist Robert Roth. 

Their 1995 album, Fast Stories… from Kid Coma was full of coulda/shoulda-been rock classics, especially the psychedelic-grunge guitar stylings of Blue Flame Ford. 

25. Brad – Sweet Al George

Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard seemingly had oodles of riffs oozing out of his amp throughout the ‘90s – as evidenced by the abundance of first-rate leftover material that often found a home in his side band, Brad. And on Sweet Al George, he offers up one of his very best stadium-sized riffs. 

24. Green River – This Town

Were they punk? Were they metal? The members of Green River themselves probably don’t even know for sure.

Featuring contributors that would go on to form Pearl Jam and Mudhoney, guitarists Stone Gossard and Bruce Fairweather slashed n’ thrashed their way through much of GR’s repertoire, especially the frantic riff featured on This Town. 

23. Screaming Trees – Shadow of the Season

Along with the likes of Soundgarden and the Melvins, the Screaming Trees were there for grunge’s first wave in the mid-‘80s. And on Shadow of the Season (the opening track from their second major label offering, 1992’s Sweet Oblivion), guitarist Gary Lee Conner shows off his fondness for utilizing vintage tones as a major part of his style. 

22. Bikini Kill – Rebel Girl

Although not necessarily “grunge”, Bikini Kill were one of the trailblazers of the riot grrrl movement – which combined feminism, razor-sharp lyrics, and raging punk rock. 

Hailing from Olympia, Washington and led by singer Kathleen Hanna, Rebel Girl (and its Cherry Bomb-esque riff, provided by Billy Karren) is Bikini Kill at their best – and provided the movement with a bona fide battle cry. 

21. Hole – Violet

One of the standout tracks from Hole’s commercial breakthrough LP, Live Through This, stakes the unique claim of being one of the few (only?) grunge tunes to feature a “bolero-style” riff.

Of course, we’re talking about Violet – whose memorable guitar line was co-strummed by Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson. 

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20. L7 – Pretend We’re Dead

One of the prerequisites to be a true “grunge band” was that you had to hail from some location within the state of Washington (preferably Seattle). But LA natives, L7, was one of the few outside of WA exceptions.

On their best-known tune, Pretend We’re Dead, guitarists Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner offered up an undeniable gem of a fuzzy/grungy riff. 

19. Nirvana – Scentless Apprentice

The number of memorable guitar riffs that the late, great Kurt Cobain devised for Nirvana was plentiful. But interestingly, one of the heaviest riffs Nirvana ever offered up, Scentless Apprentice, was not penned by Cobain, but rather Dave Grohl. 

However, Grohl would have to wait for the launch of the Foo Fighters to show off his multi-instrumental skills – it’s Cobain who performed the riff on record.

18. Pearl Jam – Rearviewmirror

When you’re in a band with three gents who are expertly adept at creating classic riffs (Stone Gossard, Mike McCready and Jeff Ament), there couldn’t be much room left for another contributor, right? Wrong. 

Singer (and sometime third guitarist) Eddie Vedder composed one of Pearl Jam’s best-ever guitar lines – the repetitive eight-noter that drives Rearviewmirror.

17. Soundgarden – Hunted Down

Want to pinpoint the birth of grunge to a specific riff? Possibly impossible. But we’d be fairly confident putting our money on the A-side of Soundgarden’s first-ever single, Hunted Down. 

The group’s guitarist, Kim Thayil, penned and played the riff on his own (this was before Chris Cornell would regularly provide six-string assistance) – which would also be re-used as the opener for their Screaming Life EP.

16. Tad – Grease Box

A great grunge riff that starts out on… bass? Surely some mistake! But no, this is most certainly one of the few confirmed cases when it comes to Tad’s Grease Box, as bassist Kurt Danielson kicks things off, before handing the ball off to larger-than-life guitarist, Tad Doyle. 

15. Mudhoney – Suck You Dry

Mudhoney single-handedly helped popularize the Big Muff/fuzzed-out guitar sound that would eventually become synonymous with grunge. And Suck You Dry is a perfect example. 

Guitarists Mark Arm and Steve Turner (who were previously bandmates for a spell in Green River) snarl n’ gnarl their way through the song’s furious two-and-a-half-minute duration.

14. Melvins – Set Me Straight

Along with Soundgarden, the Melvins are largely considered “the grandaddies of grunge”.

Detuned guitars and plodding tempos served as the band’s main sonic components, and on one of their most melodic tunes, Set Me Straight – a tune that was also produced by none other than Kurt Cobain – guitarist Buzz Osborne doesn’t disappoint.

13. Mad Season – Lifeless Dead

12-string guitar is not usually associated with grunge. But in the short-lived supergroup, Mad Season (featuring Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley and Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready), McCready does indeed go for the chime-ier of the two necks on his Gibson EDS-1275 for the main riff of Lifeless Dead – and judging from this live cut, he even played the solo on the thing!

12. Alice in Chains – It Ain’t Like That

One of Alice in Chains’ heaviest – and decidedly meatiest – riffs resides deep within Facelift, via It Ain't Like That. Its recipe, you ask? Simply backwards-strum an open E chord, bend the G on yer low E string up a whole step and back down, repeat, and… voila, you have been “chained”! 

11. Pearl Jam – Breath

The Singles Motion Picture Soundtrack was chockful of goodies – Alice in Chains’ Would?, Chris Cornell’s Seasons, and especially, Pearl Jam fan favorite, Breath. 

And it just so happens to feature one of PJ’s best guitar riffs – created via Stone Gossard’s use of sliding octaves up on the neck, and Eddie Vedder's vocal doubling of the melody.

10 - 1

10. Nirvana – Negative Creep

Certainly, grunge guitarists were “anti-shredders” – as it was much more important to be able to write memorable songs – and, indeed, riffs – than it was to offer up never-ending complex suites and warp speed shredding. 

One of Kurt Cobain’s best guitar bits turned out be one that any old beginner could master, Negative Creep – whose main riff mostly requires simply rapidly dragging your finger up and back down the low E string. 

9. Mother Love Bone – Stardog Champion

Grunge was the antithesis of glam, right? Not so fast. While that assumption is largely correct, there were exceptions – such as the short-lived Mother Love Bone. 

Somehow finding a way to merge both styles together and make it all work, two former Green River guitarists, Bruce Fairweather and Stone Gossard, offer up a lazily paced yet mighty Zep groove on the anthemic Stardog Champion.

8. Soundgarden – Spoonman

Another gent who penned his share of grade-A grunge riffs was Chris Cornell, who was the author of the drop-D classic, Spoonman – and perhaps the closest Soundgarden ever came to approaching boogie territory. 

Spoonman first came to life as a throwaway for the Singles film (a solo version not included on the soundtrack), but was reworked full-band style for Soundgarden’s tour de force, Superunknown. 

7. Alice in Chains – Them Bones

No other grunge band offers up as many mammoth riffs per square album as Alice in Chains – even now, Jerry Cantrell continues to astound with an infinite well of killer hooks.

But the band arguably hit their peak with their dark classic, Dirt, which kicks off with one of Cantrell’s hardest-hitting riffs ever – the seemingly relentlessly ascending Them Bones.  

6. Temple of the Dog – Hunger Strike

Not all grunge riffs were mega-ton behemoths. Case in point, the almost country-ish, chicken-pickin’ twang of Hunger Strike.

Another short-lived all-star grunge side band, Temple of the Dog featured both of Pearl Jam’s guitarists (Mike McCready and Stone Gossard), but it was actually Chris Cornell who composed its memorable opening riff. 

5. Soundgarden – Outshined

Soundgarden needed an industrial-sized riff to help break through to the mainstream in the fall of ’91 (just as “grunge mania” was getting underway), and wouldn’t ya know it, Outshined just happened to feature their all-time best.

Although the “Lookin’ California/feelin’ Minnesota” lyric is certainly memorable, the Chris Cornell composed 7/4-time riff that drives the song simply cannot be denied. 

4. Pearl Jam – Alive

The song that first introduced many to the wonders of Pearl Jam also happened to feature their best-ever riff, Alive – penned by Stone Gossard, and whose origin can be traced back to the Mother Love Bone days. 

Situated in the key of A and utilizing slides, open strings, hammer-ons, and pull-offs, props also have to be given to Mike McCready’s Hendrix-y solo, which pays tribute in its opening to two similar-sounding predecessors – She (Kiss’s Ace Frehley) and Five to One (the Doors’ Robby Krieger). 

3. Alice in Chains – Man in the Box

It took a specific song to demonstrate that, in the summer of ‘91, the riff was regaining its composure within the realm of rock: Man in the Box.

And once more, the track proved that a riff didn’t have to be complex to be killer – Jerry Cantrell plays only a handful of notes on his battered and stickered G&L Rampage, and processes it through a talk box, for added dramatic effect.

2. Mudhoney – Touch Me I’m Sick

By the late-‘80s, most rock bands utilized distorted guitar sounds so processed it had gotten miles away from the more purely overdriven/fuzz reverberations of late-‘60s bands like the Stooges.

Lucky for us, it sounded as if Mark Arm and Steve Turner successfully travelled back in time to provide us with the wondrous retro/garage riff rocker, Touch Me I’m Sick, one of grunge's definitive anthems.

1. Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit

Smells Like Teen Spirit claiming the top spot can’t be much of a surprise. Few times in rock history did a single song usher in a global rock music movement, and the song’s riff has joined the lofty likes of Smoke on the Water and Iron Man as one of the most instantly recognizable. 

The fact that the riff is composed of just four simple powerchords means it not only gave birth to a whole generation of new guitarists, but it remains a rite of passage for any aspiring new players.

And we mustn’t forget the solo, which replicated the melody of the verse – an obvious “flipping of the bird” to the day’s high-tech six-string shredders. Goodbye glam. Hello grunge.

Greg Prato takes his grunge seriously. So seriously, that he has penned several books pertaining to the subject – Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music, Dark Black and Blue: The Soundgarden Story, and 100 Things Pearl Jam Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.

The legal battle between the surviving members of Soundgarden and Vicky Cornell, widow of late frontman Chris Cornell – continues on.

Last week 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)”.

Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd have now 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.”

They continued, "All offers to buy out our interests have been unsolicited and rejected outright.

"For more than a year, Soundgarden’s social media accounts have been hijacked; misleading and confusing our fans.

"Being a band from Washington State since 1984, we are proud of Soundgarden’s musical legacy, work and career. We look forward to completing the final Soundgarden album."

This is only the latest development in a string of disputes between Vicky 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”.

The band members also claimed Cornell had used funds raised by the I Am The Highway: A Tribute To Chris Cornell benefit concert for “personal purposes for herself and her family”.

Cornell's legal team responded with threats of legal sanctions, calling the band's actions “shameful and objectively frivolous”. The band agreed to voluntarily dismiss the claim regarding the charity concert.

Vicky Cornell – the widow of Chris Cornell – is once again suing Soundgarden, claiming she received a “villainously low” offer for her stake in the band.

According to court documents seen by Rolling Stone, Soundgarden received an offer worth $16 million from an unnamed third party seeking to purchase the band's recorded music catalogue. 

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

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Cornell's lawyer Marty Singer said, “The band’s contention that this dispute is somehow not about the money for them is absurd and hypocritical. Of course this is about money and their greed.”

Cornell had offered the band $21 million for their own shares, the lawsuit reveals, however they turned the offer down. The reason, Singer said, 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).”

A statement from a representative for the band says, "The surviving members of Soundgarden submitted to the Cornell Estate four months ago a buyout offer of the Estate’s interests in Soundgarden calculated by respected music industry valuation expert Gary Cohen.

“Since then, the band members have continued to try to settle all disputes with the Cornell Estate and in their several attempts to settle, the band members have elected to offer multiple times more than the amount calculated by Cohen. This dispute has never been about money for the band. This is their life’s work and their legacy.”

Cornell has requested the courts determine a price for her assets that – in addition to the value of Soundgarden's master recordings – is based on future merchandise sales, potential tours with a new singer, possible hologram performances and “deep-fake renditions of Chris’ vocals drawn from extant recordings by artificial intelligence that could mint brand new Soundgarden hits”.

This is only the latest development in a string of disputes between Vicky 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.

Surviving Soundgarden members Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd countersued in response, calling her complaint an “offensive recitation of false allegations and accusations”.

The band members also claimed Cornell had used funds raised by the I Am The Highway: A Tribute To Chris Cornell benefit concert for “personal purposes for herself and her family”.

Cornell's legal team responded with threats of legal sanctions, calling the band's actions “shameful and objectively frivolous.” The band agreed to voluntarily dismiss the claim regarding the charity concert.

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.