Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil recently spoke to Guitar World and discussed about the band’s one of the MTV hits, ‘Outshined’. It was noted that though he played a great solo on Outshined but he wasn’t too pleased when it was cut out of the video. Previously, a rumor floated about Axl Rose possibly singing with Soundgarden.
Kim Thayil opens up on the matter
He recalled that their A&R guy, Bryan Huttenhower, was in the studio trying to come up with a single edit, and Chris Cornell came in to work on it. They figured out they’d have to take out some verses or lyric lines. They had asked Kim Thayil to cut down the song and he told them to take one of the three verses out.
However, Chris did not agree to that decision and thought that the song, the story and the way the lyrics developed, a huge part of the lyrics could not be taken out. Thus they came up with the decision to cut his guitar solo.
Here is what he said:
“Finally, they said, ‘Well, if we take out the guitar solo, we can shorten it.’ I was like, ‘You’re kidding. Then it’ll be misrepresenting a guitar band or a rock band. It’ll sound weird.’ Well, we listened and I was like, ‘God, fuck. You’ve got to shorten it, I get it. If that’s it, that’s it. It’s not the real version.’ So I went with it, and I rationalized it to myself saying, ‘This is not the real version. The fans are going to buy the album.’”
Check out the music video of ‘Outshined’ below:
