Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil teased a new box set in a new Lifeminute interview. Soundgarden are just 2 years away from their 40th anniversary, so it would be good timing. A Reddit recap by PJLucania stated:
His old girlfriend had an electric guitar and she taught him some chords and let him practice on it until he got his own. So, thank you, old GF. He learned how to play by watching guitarists and just figuring out how to make the sounds they made.
His mom was a music teacher so she was happy that he was into music. His dad was wary of his focus on music until he saw Kim on TV.
When he first got together with Hiro Yamamoto and Chris Cornell, they wrote 5 songs together like in the first couple of days. That is was the most effortless and inventive situation he had been in until that time. If it weren’t for Hiro and Chris, he may have still been stuck sounding like AC/DC or the Ramones because they were the ones who made him explore different sounds.
Ben Shepherd’s arrival to the band revitalized what they had been missing since Hiro left.
He thinks Nirvana was the group that most embodied the term ‘grunge’ while Mudhoney was the prototypical/archetypal grunge band.
Favorite SG album for him (and Matt Cameron) was Screaming Life, but now Badmotorfinger is probably it. Favorite SG songs depend on whether he’s playing it for a crowd or just listening to it. He mentions Slaves and Bulldozers being fun to play for an audience. Other songs: Beyond the Wheel, Limo Wreck, Blood on the Valley Floor, Non-State Actor and Switch Opens, which he feels is overlooked by fans.
The interviewer asks him about the unreleased tracks with CC and he doesn’t get into it. He does say that there are live recordings and alternate takes that fortify a box set.
It’s very likely that we’ll see the three remaining SG members playing together. SG songs are best played by the three of them because that’s the closest you’re going to get to that sound today.
I think he says that he sometimes thinks he would like to play with other people but that he naturally defaults to the SG sound and it feels weird without CC singing or Matt drumming.
