SOUNDGARDEN's KIM THAYIL: “Seattle rock scene of 1990s didn't have a drug culture”
20-11-2025
On June 11, 2026, Kim Thayil, co-founding member and lead guitarist of SOUNDGARDEN, launched his new memoir, “A Screaming Life: Into The Superunknown With Soundgarden And Beyond”, with a conversation with Krist Novoselic, co-founding member and bassist of NIRVANA, at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, Washington. You can now watch the discussion below.
Speaking about the way heroin had blighted the Seattle grunge scene ever since its inception in the mid-1980s — resulting in the deaths of such stars as ALICE IN CHAINS members Layne Staley and Mike Starr, as well as NIRVANA‘s Kurt Cobain and MOTHER LOVE BONE‘s Andrew Wood — Thayil said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “ 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.”
He continued: “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. 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.”
When SOUNDGARDEN frontman Chris Cornell died in May 2017, an autopsy report showed that he had several prescription drugs in his system but they didn’t contribute to his death. Toxicology tests showed the presence of barbiturates, caffeine and lorazepam, also known as Ativan, for relief of anxiety. The report also lists naloxone, an anti-opioid drug, and a decongestant. Cornell hanged himself in a hotel room after a concert in Detroit.
“A Screaming Life: Into The Superunknown With Soundgarden And Beyond” arrived on June 9, 2026 via HarperCollins imprint William Morrow.
In an interview of November 2025 with Allison Hagendorf, the surviving members of SOUNDGARDEN discussed the album they are working on featuring previously unreleased recordings they made with late frontman Chris Cornell before his 2017 death. Guitarist Kim Thayil, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd are collaborating with producer Terry Date, who previously helmed SOUNDGARDEN‘s “Louder Than Love” (1989) and “Badmotorfinger” (1991) LPs. Kim said: “That’s one of the cool things about Terry, is he never imposed his production style or sound on any bands. He would learn from the bands. And one of the things he would assert when he took a job was, ‘I want this to be a co-production thing.’ And it’s, like, ‘Well, that fits just perfect with the kind of band we are.’ There are a lot of producers out there who have a particular style — for instance, you think about Phil Spector and the ‘wall of sound’. It’s, like, okay, well, that’s his thing. But producers had that kind of role in the ’60s and, to some degree, the ’70s, but with the way bands are post-1977, they have a sense of what they’re writing and what they wanna sound like, and the producers should simply facilitate that. And Terry‘s that guy. I mean, you listen to records he’s done, and it’s very different from certainly what he’s done with us. There isn’t a signature Terry Date thing. It is him helping the band be the band.”
Asked by Hagendorf about his previous comment that some SOUNDGARDEN fans might even be surprised to hear that the songwriting was going in a little bit of a different direction from the group’s previous efforts, Matt said: “There’s very familiar elements in some of this new music, but, yeah, there was a couple songs that felt like it was kind of a new chapter or it could have been a new chapter. So it’s really exciting to hear that. It’s bittersweet, of course.”
He continued: “But, yeah, I’m really excited for people to hear it, have our fans hear it. It’s fun for us to be working on it. And sometimes listening to it, it’s overpowering. But, yeah, I’m super proud of the music that we did put together. And we’re pretty close to finishing it. And, yeah, it is nice having Terry on board with us, for sure.”
Ben went on to say that when he first heard the demos, he didn’t realize how powerful they were until he started laying down his tracks.
“I was going to get coffee down the hall from the control room, and Nate and Terry were playing it back — Nate‘s our assistant engineer on it,” Ben recalled. “It was, like, ‘Holy hell. That SOUNDGARDEN. It’s so cool to hear it again.'”
Added Kim: “Yeah, it’s like we had these various demos, and you had a particular quality. And it was, like, ‘Okay, how do we flesh this out?’ And then we start doing it, and it’s, like, ‘This sounds different.’ It’s almost like you can pinpoint before and after. It’s, like, ‘Now it’s SOUNDGARDEN.'”
Earlier this month, SOUNDGARDEN joined the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame class of 2025 in the Performer category. The Seattle grunge legends were first nominated for the Rock Hall in 2020, and were on the ballot again in 2023 before finally being chosen for induction this year. SOUNDGARDEN was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame on November 8 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, California by actor-comedian Jim Carrey, who told the crowd: “Spank you kindly, spank you all. You might ask why would SOUNDGARDEN — the heaviest of rock and roll royalty — want Jim Carrey to induct them into the Hall Of Fame? Is there some deep, cosmic connection between them, or was the ‘Spoonman’ not available?
“When the Seattle music scene exploded, it resurrected rock and roll for me,” Carrey said. “When I heard SOUNDGARDEN for the first time, I wasn’t just excited. I wanted to put a flannel shirt on and run into the streets screaming, ‘My mother smoked during pregnancy!'”
He added: “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. By then, the lineup was Chris (Cornell on vocals), Kim Thayil (on guitar), 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 (guitar) Chris played on the show, signed by the whole band.”
Cornell‘s daughter Lily then took the stage, stating about her father: “I am just really, really happy that he got to make music with his friends. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. I know how much purpose that gave him, and how much it’s meant to people who have heard that music. That’s what I’ll be holding in my heart tonight.”
The surviving members of SOUNDGARDEN — Cameron, Thayil and Shepherd, as well as original bassist Hiro Yamamoto, who left the group in 1989 — were joined by PEARL JAM guitarist Mike McCready and THE PRETTY RECKLESS frontwoman Taylor Momsen for a performance of “Rusty Cage”, while Brandi Carlile and ALICE IN CHAINS‘ Jerry Cantrell came out for a rendition of “Black Hole Sun”.
After SOUNDGARDEN acceptance speeches, Cornell‘s daughter Toni was joined by HEART‘s Nancy Wilson for an acoustic rendition of “Fell On Black Days”.
Thayil, Cameron, Shepherd and Yamomoto all delivered induction speeches. “Chris Cornell, we are so missing you tonight on this stage,” Yamomoto said. “We’ve heard so many stories of how the music we created became your own, and that is the greatest recognition of all. To everyone else out there — especially all you brown kids — let’s rock!”
Thayil said: “If one of us ever hesitated in sharing an idea, Chris would be the first to say, ‘Let’s just try it out and see.’ I miss him. I love him, and I love all my (SOUNDGARDEN) brothers.”
Regarding the artists who were chosen to participate in SOUNDGARDEN‘s performance at the Rock Hall, Cameron told Seattle Times: “We wanted to keep it as Seattle-centric as possible and include some people that were there with us in the beginning.” Thayil added: “To have our peers, friends and creative collaborators from here share that with us is very important. It’s very important because it’s part of our identity. We’re not simply ‘rock guys’ in this band SOUNDGARDEN. We’re rock guys in this band SOUNDGARDEN that helped establish the Seattle scene and the sound. The geography is very important to our identity. It’s where we are. It’s where we came from. It’s who we are.”
SOUNDGARDEN was first nominated for the Rock Hall in 2020 and again in 2023 before finally being inducted this year.
The band finished sixth in the fan vote with 233,205 votes.
This marked the second induction for Cameron, who previously got the nod with PEARL JAM in 2017.
Regarding being inducted twice, Cameron told Cleveland.com: “It’s a huge honor. I haven’t really wrapped my head around it, and it’s not lost upon me that it’s pretty rare to get in there two times. I’m feeling great about everything. It’s just been really exciting to gather up all these people we worked with over the years that helped us create the band, create our legacy, and it’s going to be a really great night.”
Asked if one of his inductions means more than the other, Cameron said: “They’re both huge honors, of course. For me, personally, I helped build SOUNDGARDEN from the ground up, and I helped create the sound, I think, a little bit more than I did with PEARL JAM, which was definitely more of an established thing that I came into. So in that sense SOUNDGARDEN‘s induction is a little more meaningful for me as an artist and musician and songwriter to go in with a band that I helped establish itself.”
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