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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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?”