Soundgarden bandmates Kim Thayil and Matt Cameron returned to Detroit for the first time since Chris Cornell’s death in May 2017 on Friday night at Saint Andrews Hall for a show with MC50. Soundgarden performed in Detroit at the Fox Theatre on May 17, 2017, and Cornell died by suicide just an hour after the performance.
marksparadise posted on Instagram, “#MC50 was ??. So glad I got to work this show. It was the coolest thing watching them soundcheck, and their energy during the actual show…holy shit. We had members of #MC5, #Soundgarden, #PearlJam, #Fugazi, and #FaithNoMore all on stage and under one roof. This was one for the memory books. Fuckin ?. #KickOutTheJams muthafuckkaaaaas.
#Detroit #StAndrews #WayneKramer #yetanotherconcertphoto.”
You can watch “Kick Out The Jams” below.
The return to Detroit comes with “complicated and dark” emotions, Thayil says in a new Detroit Free Press interview.
“There certainly seems like there’s an offering of closure. I doubt that it will happen. But it seems available,” he says. “There’s also an element of irony to be asked by Wayne [Kramer] to play on a tour with my favorite band, which is from Detroit, that would culminate in a Detroit show. The poetic irony and the opportunity for closure were not lost on me.”
Thayil and other Soundgarden members were already en route to Columbus for the band’s next date when they got word that Cornell had died back in his Detroit hotel room.
There had been no signs anything was particularly amiss that night, he says — “nothing that would have allowed us to anticipate what would happen.”
“There were a few minor difficulties (early) in the show that I felt adjusted themselves within a few songs,” Thayil says of Cornell’s Fox performance. “And then the rest of the show went pretty well.”
