Former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke discussed being unable to top Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” on radio charts in a new Audio Ink Radio interview.
“Well, no, it wasn’t overnight. I have a couple of opinions about it. No. 1 – before I got the Guns N’ Roses gig as a guitar player, I was a Virgin Records songwriter.
“So I knew a lot about what new projects were coming up, so I heard the Nirvana record before it came out. And I go, ‘Oh my god, it’s a really good record!’ But I didn’t think of it as grunge.
“You could obviously tell it wasn’t a hard rock record, I just kind of thought it was almost like what Green Day was, it’s kind of like a pop-punk-rock. That’s what I thought it was when I heard it.
“So when grunge first came in, I was in Guns at the time, and it didn’t affect us. We were playing sold-out stadiums.
“It affected us later. I’d say it affected us later like when I did my first solo record [1994’s ‘Pawnshop Guitars’] and when Slash did Slash’s Snakepit.
“The environment had changed a little bit – a little harder dealing with the radio. And I remember when I put out my first record ‘Pawnshop Guitars,’ my song ‘Cure Me or Kill Me’ was doing incredibly well on the radio…
“But I couldn’t break over that song ‘Black Hole Sun.’ And that’s when I started really noticing climate change.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his remarks.
