Kim Thayil Interview — Memoir, Early Days of Soundgarden + More

On Friday (June 5), Soundgarden's Kim Thayil joined Loudwire Nights to discuss the upcoming release of his memoir, A Screaming Life: Into the Superunknown with Soundgarden and Beyond.

Listen to the full conversation in the player near the end of this article.

"There was an opportunity for me to discuss things that usually rock journalists aren't interested in," Thayil admitted to Loudwire Nights host Chuck Armstrong about writing the book.

"Like my childhood, family, things I thought were influential to me that were not necessarily about music. Obviously the publishers were very interested in the music story, and in particular the Soundgarden story, so as much as I might try to steer it away to things that I thought were formative and impactful in my life, they want to steer back to what they think the readers want to know."

A Screaming Life is a great blend of those stories that Thayil wanted to share and the stories that satiate Soundgarden fans — and not just Soundgarden fans, but fans of rock and roll in general.

One memorable story is Thayil reflecting on hanging on a tour bus once with Metallica, Faith No More and Buzz Osborne from the Melvins.

"We were sitting there and Buzz looks around and he looks at me and goes, 'Holy shit,' I'm sitting here with James Hetfield and Kim Thayil and Billy Gould and Jim Martin,' he thought it was surreal," Thayil remembered.

"I looked at him and said, 'And Buzz from the Melvins.'"

Moments like that seem to be really meaningful to Thayil, whether he was discussing it on Loudwire Nights or sharing them in his memoir. That camaraderie of like-minded individuals was a significant thing for Thayil as he grew as a musician and artist.

"When I'm 15 and I'm the only one in my high school who seems to like KISS, and then when I'm 17, apparently the only one in my high school who likes the Sex Pistols and Ramones, or the only one who likes the MC5 — 'Don't invite Kim over, he's going to bring a stupid punk rock record,'" he said.

"Whether it was KISS and Aerosmith in my younger age to the punk rock stuff I was listening to later, my other friends just didn't like that."

Eventually, though, Thayil found friends who shared a similar passion for discovering new music and broadening their tastes.

"Meeting, connecting with Chris [Cornell] and Hiro [Yamamoto] and realizing that our tastes start out in a slightly different place, they all kind of connect," Thayil expressed.

"That's a big deal. And then you're making music with these people who have some interest in your record collection. And then you go on tour and you start connecting with this community. That's important to that kid who drew pictures of Ace Frehley and had other people ridicule [him] for that."

READ MORE: Henry Rollins Discusses Major Milestone in the Cramps' Legacy — Exclusive Interview

But finding this community meant everything to Thayil.

"Meeting those people all over the world and realizing, wow, these people are writing songs and they're starting their own bands and they like our band, they like what we're doing — that's super cool," he said.

"It's really rewarding, especially when you're young and what you're doing is kind of part of your identity. You wear these things like a badge. This is my band. These are the bands I like."

What Else Did Soundgarden's Kim Thayil Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

• Why Soundgarden loved Fugazi's EP, Margin Walker: "We listened to the Fugazi EP and it's like, 'What do you want to hear next,' like, 'Play that again' ... Amazing guitar sounds, everything. It just sounded great, but also the arrangements they had, the songs, it felt live and just kind of jumped at you. They had very creative approaches to guitar, which was something we appreciated because that was something that we thought we were doing. We weren't doing what they did, but similarities, harmonics and feedback and stuff. But it was just sonically so cool. And it was at a point in time where we were a little bit disappointed with the production of Ultramega OK. We thought these songs were just amazing, we thought sonically it was kind of lacking the punch that we thought we had live. And then you hear the Fugazi records, like, man, these guys sound like they are that I imagine they are live. We never had the opportunity to see them live because whenever they were in Seattle, we were in DC on tour or vice versa. Our friends would call us or write us and say, 'Saw Fugazi last week, man, they're amazing. You should have been here.'"
• His first impression of "Black Hole Sun": "It was apparent from the get-go that it was a great song, the way it was crafted. It was put together brilliantly and it was memorable and hooky. But I'd always have to sort of navigate if Chris did a demo. Sometimes he'd bring a song and then show it on guitar, sometimes he'd demo it, thinking that would be a stronger way to present it...his demos tended to be kind of bright and thin in those early days [and] I'd hear that. It's like, I think of us as heavy and big, at least in terms of the guitar and bass sounds even if the song isn't necessarily a heavy song. So you hear 'Black Hole Sun' and it's the opposite. It's the right-hand side of the piano. It's Tinkerbell, these arpeggios. And I wrote a lot of arpeggios...but this is different. It wasn't just like the low end of the guitar neck, doing some triplets or whatever. It was just delicate, dainty and I thought, 'Oh man' ... I have some memory of giving it context with what we had just done with Badmotorfinger. It's like, how would 'Black Hole Sun' fit with that? But there was never a doubt that it would probably be on the album. I didn't hear it as a Soundgarden song at first, I thought but I'm going to have to learn it and turn it into a Soundgarden song."
• What led to Soundgarden not performing at Back to the Beginning and what's on the horizon for their final studio album: "I think it might have been prematurely announced because we were still trying to work things out. Obviously we're trying to coordinate things with a singer and coordinate things with our schedule. At that time, I think Matt [Cameron] was doing Pearl Jam tours and he had some time off, so he's already in that touring mode. So for him, it's like, 'Let's go. I'm in this mode. Let's go there and we'll go do this.' He really wanted to do it. It's like, well, I'm in studio mode. So it means you have to shut everything down and ship gear over there or rent gear...the manager thought we can make it work, but there's a lot of hoops we've got to jump through. And then the person we thought about singing, we had talked to Taylor [Momsen], but her band was on tour and they were in Europe. We thought, well, is that a good thing because she's already over there? We looked at the schedules and her dates and she had to jump through hoops and it was really expensive. We're not getting paid for this ... It all just seemed like a scheduling nightmare ... I think Matt was the most disappointed."

Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below or the Video at the Top of the Page

Kim Thayil joined Loudwire Nights on Friday, June 5; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.