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‘We were going off the cliff’: Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil on inventing grunge – and losing Chris Cornell and Kurt Cobain

As he publishes a memoir, the pioneering guitarist talks about rejecting spandex and hair metal, his fears for breakthrough hit Black Hole Sun – and completing nine unfinished Soundgarden songs Kim Thayil has always felt like an outsider. For example: the Soundgarden ...

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As he publishes a memoir, the pioneering guitarist talks about rejecting spandex and hair metal, his fears for breakthrough hit Black Hole Sun – and completing nine unfinished Soundgarden songs Kim Thayil has always felt like an outsider. For example: the Soundgarden ...

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According to The Guardian’s source item, ‘We were going off the cliff’: Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil on inventing grunge – and losing Chris Cornell and Kurt Cobain, As he publishes a memoir, the pioneering guitarist talks about rejecting spandex and hair metal, his fears for breakthrough hit Black Hole Sun – and completing nine unfinished Soundgarden songs 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. “I was pretty against-the-grain to my Seattle friends, who always wanted to meet up at coffee shops,” he grins, cradling a freshly brewed cup of java in his kitchen. “My 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.” Thayil’s Indian heritage also set him apart from his peers. In his new memoir, A Screaming Life, he writes that when he and b

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The development sits in VINI’s Technology file for readers following technology, science, product policy, markets, infrastructure, and the public consequences of innovation. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-06-09T04:00:43+00:00.

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Primary source: ‘We were going off the cliff’: Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil on inventing grunge – and losing Chris Cornell and Kurt Cobain via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.

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