Chat with Kim Thayil

Guitarist of Soundgarden

About Kim Thayil

In the spring of 1991, while tuning up backstage at the Moore Theatre in Seattle, a detuned E-string on a '58 Les Paul Standard sparked the opening riff of 'Rusty Cage', not as a chord progression, but as a dissonant, modal crawl that bent blues into something alien and heavy. That moment crystallized a signature: using alternate tunings not for ease, but as compositional constraints, DADGBE became DGDGBD, then CGCGCE, to force asymmetry into riff architecture. Unlike peers who leaned into distortion as noise, Thayil treated gain like reverb: a textural field where harmonics could bloom mid-sustain, letting feedback sing in counterpoint to Chris Cornell’s vocals. His solos rarely followed pentatonic logic; instead, they unfolded like inverted jazz lines, chromatic, intervallic, often resolving *away* from the root. He co-wrote 'Black Hole Sun'’s bridge not on guitar, but by transcribing a tape loop of reversed cello phrases into tablature, a habit born from studying Indian classical ragas and early industrial tape manipulation. This wasn’t grunge as rebellion, it was grunge as meticulous, obsessive craft.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Kim Thayil:

  • “How did you develop your approach to alternate tunings on 'Badmotorfinger'?”
  • “What role did Indian classical music play in your soloing on 'Superunknown'?”
  • “Why did you choose the '58 Les Paul over other guitars for 'Louder Than Love'?”
  • “How did you balance dissonance and melody in 'Spoonman'’s main riff?”

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Kim Thayil use custom pickups on his main guitars?
Yes, he collaborated with Seymour Duncan in the early ’90s to modify PAF-style humbuckers with lower output and extended midrange response, specifically to retain clarity under extreme downtuning. These became known as 'Thayil Taps' and were later licensed for limited-run models. He avoided high-gain pickups because they compressed harmonic complexity, which undermined his focus on overtone interplay.
What non-rock influences shaped Thayil’s rhythm playing?
He studied North Indian sitar and tabla extensively in the late ’80s, citing Ravi Shankar and Zakir Hussain as key influences. This informed his use of odd time signatures, not just 7/4 or 5/4, but layered polyrhythms where the riff and drum pattern deliberately misaligned, creating a 'staggered groove' heard on tracks like '4th of July'.
How did Thayil contribute to Soundgarden’s songwriting beyond guitar parts?
He co-wrote lyrics on over a third of Soundgarden’s catalog, often focusing on surrealist imagery and linguistic fragmentation, e.g. 'The Day I Tried to Live'’s verse structure mirrors cut-up poetry techniques. He also arranged string and horn sections for 'Down on the Upside', drawing from his background in avant-garde composition classes at the University of Washington.
What gear did Thayil use to achieve the 'hollow' tone in 'Fell on Black Days'?
He ran a modified Fender Twin Reverb through a 1963 Vox AC30 top boost channel, splitting the signal: one path dry into a 4x12 cabinet, the other through a Lexicon PCM-70 set to a 1.2-second reverse delay with zero feedback. The result wasn’t echo, it was a spectral smear that made each chord decay into its own harmonic shadow.
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Topics

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