Kim Thayil says he spent years telling people the Seattle bands had no shared drug culture, and put it in his memoir “A Screaming Life“.
Kim Thayil says the argument he has made most often about Seattle in the 1990s is the one people were least willing to accept.
The Soundgarden guitarist launched his memoir “A Screaming Life: Into The Superunknown With Soundgarden And Beyond” at the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle on June 11, in conversation with Krist Novoselic of Nirvana.
Speaking about her**n’s effect on the scene, he drew a line between what individuals did and what the bands were.
“ That is a point I make in the book a number of times, is that none of these bands had a drug culture and the scene didn’t have a drug culture. There were individuals that had their own sense of self and their own sense of adventure. And I had to explain this many times to journalists, interviewers, and I made sure it was present in the book… I explained that the bands didn’t have a drug culture. I was close friends with all these other guys, and they themselves were just as impacted and distraught, and in no way were they somehow reinforcing this risk,” Thayil said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
He described having the same conversation repeatedly with people outside the city.
“As I would tell people, you drive as fast as you want to, you climb a mountain if you want to climb it, and people make choices to make themselves feel good and to enjoy their lives, and a lot of them, a lot of the choices they make are risky, and that’s part of being alive,” he continued. “And the impact of this constantly had me engaging with my family and friends and record labels and tours to say, ‘Hey, this isn’t us. This isn’t even them. This is just a strange aberration with individuals that are living their own lives.’ And that was so difficult for people to understand. So I’d meet adults, because I barely consider myself one now, and then I certainly didn’t. And I’d have to kind of… They would look at me kind of odd or with suspicion or, ‘Here’s this guy with hair too long and doesn’t look like he combs it and a beard, and he plays in one of these Seattle bands.’ And it became very conspicuous after losing Andy and Kurt, and I think the belief was that Seattle was somehow embracing of and reinforcing the decisions that were made.”
The two names he uses are Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone, who died in 1990, and Kurt Cobain, who died in 1994. Alice In Chains lost singer Layne Staley in 2002 and founding bassist Mike Starr in 2011.
Soundgarden‘s own frontman Chris Cornell died by suicide in Detroit in May 2017, hours after a show at the Fox Theatre. An autopsy found several prescription medications in his system and concluded they had not contributed to his death.
A Screaming Life was published on June 9 through William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, and was written with Adem Tepedelen. It covers Thayil‘s childhood in Chicago as the son of Indian immigrants, his move to Seattle with Hiro Yamamoto, and the formation of the band with Cornell.
Soundgarden were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame on November 8 last year at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, in the Performer category. Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron, bassist Ben Shepherd, Cornell and Yamamoto, the original bassist, who played on the first two EPs and first two albums between 1984 and 1989, were all included. The three surviving members performed at the ceremony with Taylor Momsen and Brandi Carlile handling vocals, joined by Mike McCready of Pearl Jam and Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains. The band had first appeared on the ballot in 2020 and again in 2023.
Work continues on an album built from recordings made with Cornell before his death. Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd are making it with Terry Date, who produced Louder Than Love in 1989 and Badmotorfinger in 1991. Cameron said last September that it was more than half finished, with Thayil completing his guitar parts. No release date has been set. It would be the band’s first album since King Animal in 2012, and their catalogue has sold more than 30 million copies.
