As he publishes a memoir, the pioneering guitarist talks about rejecting spandex and hair metal, his fears for breakthrough hit Black Hole Sun \u2013 and completing nine unfinished Soundgarden songs<\/p>\n
Kim Thayil has always felt like an outsider. For example: the Soundgarden guitarist has lived in Seattle, a city infamously addicted to coffee, for more than four decades, but only started drinking the stuff himself during lockdown. \u201cI was pretty against-the-grain to my Seattle friends, who always wanted to meet up at coffee shops,\u201d he grins, cradling a freshly brewed cup of java in his kitchen. \u201cMy girlfriend in the 80s and 90s even worked at the original branch of Starbucks and made coffee with a French press every morning. But I drank tea, because my parents are Indian.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thayil\u2019s Indian heritage also set him apart from his peers. In his new memoir, A Screaming Life, he writes that when he and bassist Hiro Yamamoto formed Soundgarden in 1984, the group was \u201ctwo-thirds Asian\u201d, and that \u201cas liberal and accepting as the punk scene was, it was still largely white, and I was ever aware of that\u201d. Nevertheless, Soundgarden went on to become pioneers of Seattle\u2019s grunge movement, a multiplatinum-selling, critically acclaimed, Grammy-winning group whose breakthrough hit, Black Hole Sun, transcended their gnarly milieu to become an enduring anthem.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/c7b11f1c79e7cead05a072d9b7560a5a520f9a59\/343_149_2314_1851\/master\/2314.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=d3adb9fae0985a31101d629a45657928\" "\\"\u2018We")
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