SOUNDGARDEN

Louder Than Ever

The grunge move­ment that emerged dur­ing the mid-1980s and found com­mer­cial suc­cess in the late ’80s and early ’90s was inspired by a group of like-minded Seat­tle bands: Mud­honey, Nir­vana, Pearl Jam, Scream­ing Trees, Alice In Chains and Soundgar­den. Relent­less in their exper­i­men­ta­tion with alter­na­tive metal, hard rock and psy­che­delia, Soundgar­den also boasted an indomitable front­man in Chris Cor­nell who raised the rock vocal­ist bar with his pow­er­ful wail and those darkly enig­matic, exis­ten­tial­ist lyrics. Between their for­ma­tion and acri­mo­nious break-up, Soundgar­den released five stu­dio albums, scored a num­ber one record with Supe­run­k­nown, won two Grammy Awards (for ‘Black Hole Sun’ and ‘Spoon­man’) and sold over 20 mil­lion albums. To the delight of their diehard fans, the Seat­tle grunge leg­ends reunited 13 years later. We caught up with lead gui­tarist Kim Thayil to chat about Soundgarden’s legacy, head­lin­ing Big Day Out, what it means to be “grown up” and their much-anticipated new album.

On April 16, 2010, Soundgar­den walked onto stage at Seattle’s leg­endary deco-style ball­room, The Show­box, to play their first 21st cen­tury gig. Among the atten­dees were Eddie Ved­der, Mudhoney’s Mark Arm and Matt Lukin, Built To Spill’s Scott Plouf and Exene Cer­venka of LA punk leg­ends X.
It was spe­cial because it was the first time that we played in 13 years, and we were play­ing in front of an audi­ence who were pri­mar­ily friends, rel­a­tives and peers. This is what con­sti­tuted our audi­ence for most of the shows in our early days. Then we started play­ing these big­ger venues where of course that changes, so it was fun to play together again and to be play­ing for the guys in Mudhoney.

Did that per­for­mance rein­force the fact that reunit­ing was an inspired deci­sion?
Yeah, I think so – we all really enjoyed play­ing, and we enjoyed the way the show went. What I remem­ber was it was a very pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence and a feel­ing that lasted for quite a while. After­wards, we played a few shows and there were pro­mot­ers inter­ested, and peo­ple who wanted us to play at Madi­son Square Gar­den, so we thought ‘look, we’ve had fun play­ing these shows – we should go on tour’. The inter­est was rec­i­p­ro­cated by fans and promoters.

Serv­ing Soundgarden’s cat­a­logue and legacy has been an impor­tant quest for you, Chris Cor­nell, Matt Cameron and Ben Shep­herd. What imme­di­ately springs to mind when reflect­ing on Soundgarden’s incred­i­ble 13-year jour­ney?
I think it’s meet­ing a num­ber of under­ground and indie bands com­ing up that were inspired or influ­enced by us with­out being imi­ta­tive or deriv­a­tive. I think that was really encour­ag­ing and sat­is­fy­ing to me. Bands like the Japan­ese band Boris or the band Ohm, Sleep and High On Fire… I love these guys.

The reunion of Soundgar­den was a dream come true for many fans. Your Lol­la­palooza head­line gig is still being talked about rap­tur­ously and Soundgar­den are return­ing to Aus­tralia at the begin­ning of 2012 to head­line the 20th Big Day Out. It’s Soundgarden’s third time head­lin­ing BDO – can you recall much from those ’94 and ’97 Big Day Out fes­ti­vals?
I remem­ber a lot of expe­ri­ences – I have friends and rel­a­tives in Aus­tralia. I remem­ber the first time we played, one of the excit­ing things was meet­ing the guys in Björk’s band, who were great guys, just won­der­ful, and of course the Ramones – to meet and hang out with the Ramones all the time… we went on to tour with the Ramones here in Lol­la­palooza. And of course, the Breed­ers, Smash­ing Pump­kins… and on our next tour, we played with Prodigy and Urge Overkill. It was really excit­ing on our first tour to meet the guys in You Am I and see them play. I remem­ber run­ning back into our dress­ing room and grab­bing Chris and Ben, and say­ing ‘hey, you guys gotta see this band that’s out there open­ing for us – these guys are like a cross between Nir­vana and The Who. Chris, Matt and Ben were like ‘wow, these guys are great’. We had the oppor­tu­nity to bring You Am I to the US and they did their first US tour with us.

In Feb­ru­ary, Soundgar­den announced that they’d been work­ing on a new album. How were those first few jam ses­sions as a reunited band after 15 years?
That kind of came out of rehearsal for the shows. We were obvi­ously try­ing to rec­ol­lect our older mate­r­ial and that was a humor­ous time in itself because I might for­get my own gui­tar parts, but I’d remem­ber one of Chris’ vocal parts or one of Ben’s bass parts and they would remem­ber my gui­tar parts. So it was funny what we remem­bered and what we for­got [laughs], but in the course of play­ing together in a room, it’s very nat­ural for us to kind of impro­vise and jam and come up with ideas. So while we’re work­ing on Spoon­man or Limo Wreck or 4th of July, we’d throw up some other riff and some­one else will respond. And it became obvi­ous that we had that kind of rela­tion­ship where we were nat­u­rally cre­ative with each other, so we decided that we should com­mit to mak­ing an album. Ini­tially, you walk on tip toes; you’re not sure if peo­ple are feel­ing the same way that you are, but then you get pleas­antly sur­prised when they all feel the same way. I guess it’s like when you’re young and you have a crush on some­body or you’re attracted to some­body, and that great feel­ing when you find out that they feel the same way about you. In this case, with the band, every­body is excited about play­ing together… so we all held hands and walked into the sunset.

What stage of the album-making process are you at now?
The first songs were writ­ten about a year ago and we recorded in March, but of course our record­ing ses­sions are bro­ken up schedule-wise because of the com­mit­ments that Matt has with Pearl Jam and Chris with his solo tour, so while they’re on tour, Ben and I would work on gui­tar and bass and arrang­ing songs. Then those guys come back and we’ll develop other mate­r­ial, so we’re get­ting close to the end of this record. We’re still writ­ing new mate­r­ial, but we’re close to record­ing and track­ing the basic instru­ments and lead instru­ments for a num­ber of the songs. So we hope that we can com­plete the record some­time after Australia.

Chris has said that writ­ing songs with­out bot­tles of Jack Daniels has led to longer and more cohe­sive ses­sions.
I think in some ways they’re very sim­i­lar but in some ways they’re much bet­ter. The way that they’re sim­i­lar is that there is a way in which we respond to each other musi­cally. It’s dif­fer­ent because we are older. Ben, Matt and I still drink beer, but we wait till after rehearsal (laughs). When you’re younger, you’re prob­a­bly drink­ing beer as soon as you wake up. We’re grown up now.

Your gui­tar play­ing has inspired rock devo­tees around the world and across gen­er­a­tions, which also earned you a plac­ing in Rolling Stone’s Great­est Gui­tarists Of All Time. You’ve stated that Soundgar­den have “always tried to explore how to make really heavy, aggres­sive music with­out sound­ing like a bunch of knuckle-dragging meat­heads” and the new songs have a very heavy vibe.
Some of them def­i­nitely do – we were always work­ing on redefin­ing what ‘heavy’ meant. We always thought that you could do a slow song and have it be heavy. We always thought that you could take the dis­tor­tion off the gui­tar and still do a song that’s heavy by the mood or feel­ing that you evoke or can cre­ate. Music can be heavy with­out it being loud or dis­torted; by the same token, vol­ume does help as well. We’re still try­ing dif­fer­ent approaches to songs and ideas, and try­ing to bring out that dark psy­che­delia, that heav­i­ness that we were known for. [The new album will] be full of that dark psy­che­delia. You’re not gonna see a party album or a pop album – we’re the record that some­one puts on when they want peo­ple to go home. We’re not the record that you put on to get every­one dancing.

Your explo­sive Lol­la­palooza set was praised as “a blue­print of the Seat­tle sound” – that must make you proud?
It makes us feel that we’re doing some­thing right – that we’re accom­plish­ing what we’ve always intended to do, which was to play well and write songs that we enjoy and that our fans would enjoy as well. It’s great to find like-minded peo­ple out there who also like what it is that we’re doing.

As one of the most influ­en­tial bands of the ’90s, how does the knowl­edge of being a generation-defining band sit with you?
I love that. All the bands that are com­ing up now, I love these bands – I think they’re inven­tive and inter­est­ing, and to know that they were fans of ours, that’s a great feel­ing. Of course, we had sim­i­lar feel­ings in the late ’80s and early ’90s when we had an influ­ence on Nir­vana and Smash­ing Pump­kins and Alice In Chains. Nir­vana were just one of our favourite bands for so many years – it’s amaz­ing to think that they were inspired or influ­enced by us. When we read in Rolling Stone that Billy [Cor­gan] had felt that way about our early records… that was also fan­tas­tic. To influ­ence your peers – not just bands that are pop­u­lar – but bands that you like your­self, it’s like ‘wow, I like what these guys are doing and they’re say­ing ‘hey, thanks – we like what you’re doing’… that’s a great feel­ing. It’d be dis­ap­point­ing if we were influ­enc­ing pop acts or dance bands or knuckle-headed rock – that would bum us out, but to have influ­ence on peo­ple that we respect and enjoy is def­i­nitely ful­fill­ing as an artist, per­former and writer.

By Chris­tine Lan

Soundgar­den head­line Big Day Out 2012 along­side Mari­achi El Bronx and Kasabian, as well as per­form­ing select sideshows with The Bronx. Live On I-5 and their career-spanning ret­ro­spec­tive album, Tele­phan­tasm, are out now through Universal.

Jan­u­ary 22 – Big Day Out, Gold Coast QLD
Jan­u­ary 25 – Syd­ney Enter­tain­ment Cen­tre, Syd­ney NSW
Jan­u­ary 26 – Big Day Out, Syd­ney NSW
Jan­u­ary 29 – Big Day Out, Mel­bourne VIC
Feb­ru­ary 1 – Sid­ney Myer Music Bowl, Mel­bourne VIC
Feb­ru­ary 3 – Big Day Out, Ade­laide SA
Feb­ru­ary 5 – Big Day Out, Perth WA