KIM THAYIL says it's very likely he will play SOUNDGARDEN songs again with BEN SHEPHERD and MATT CAMERON
14-03-2021
During a recent interview with LifeMinute, SOUNDGARDEN guitarist Kim Thayil commented on the possibility of sharing the stage again with his fellow surviving SOUNDGARDEN members Ben Shepherd (bass) and Matt Cameron (drums). He said: “I think it’s very likely that Matt and Ben and I will play together. I think we know that the songs that we love, that we did for decades with SOUNDGARDEN, if we’re gonna play those songs again or hear those songs when we wanna hear them, at best it’ll be with at least the three of us; that’s the closest we’re gonna get at this point. So I think we’d wanna re-explore that and do that at some time in the future. And I think the three of us have an interest in doing new things. We certainly like working together.”
Last August, Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd joined Brandi Carlile onstage during her concert on at the Gorge Amphitheatre in in George, Washington to play SOUNDGARDEN‘s “Searching With My Good Eye Closed” and “Black Hole Sun”.
In June 2021, SOUNDGARDEN and Vicky Cornell, the widow and personal representative of the estate of the band’s lead singer Chris Cornell, announced that they had come to a temporary agreement that would transfer the SOUNDGARDEN social media accounts and web site to Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd and their managers, Red Light Management. This included SOUNDGARDEN‘s web site, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
A year ago, Thayil, Cameron, Shepherd and their business manager Rit Venerus filed papers in Washington state U.S. District Court claiming that Vicky Cornell had locked them out of their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, YouTube, Snapchat, Tumblr, Top Spin and Pinterest accounts, as well as SOUNDGARDEN‘s official web site, and changing all the passwords.
Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd claimed their socials were previously managed by their then-management company Patriot Management. They said they later learned that Patriot had handed over all the login information to Vicky after Patriot was terminated in October 2019.
Chris Cornell was found hanged in his room at the MGM Grand Detroit hotel in May 2017, following a SOUNDGARDEN show at the city’s Fox Theatre. His body was found soon after he had spoken with a “slurred” voice to his wife by phone. The death was ruled a suicide.
In December 2019, Vicky filed a lawsuit against the surviving SOUNDGARDEN members, alleging the group owed Cornell‘s estate hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid royalties and the rights to seven unreleased recordings made before the singer’s death in May of 2017.
Responding to Vicky‘s lawsuit, Thayil, Shepherd and Cameron claimed that they “don’t have possession” of their “own creative work,” and alleged that “Vicky Cornell has possession of the only existing multi-track recordings of the last SOUNDGARDEN tracks that include Chris Cornell‘s instrumental parts and vocals. All of the band members jointly worked on these final tracks, Vicky now claims ownership of the final SOUNDGARDEN album.”
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