Kim Thayil wants to clear up one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding Seattle’s legendary rock scene.
The Soundgarden guitarist has pushed back against the long standing idea that the city’s grunge explosion of the 1980s and ’90s was built around a culture of drug use, arguing that the reality was far more complicated.
Thayil discussed the subject during a conversation with Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Company in June, held to mark the release of his new memoir, A Screaming Life: Into The Superunknown With Soundgarden And Beyond.
The guitarist addressed the devastating impact heroin had on people connected to the Seattle scene, including Alice In Chains’ Layne Staley and Mike Starr, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Mother Love Bone’s Andrew Wood.
But Thayil stressed that the musicians and bands themselves did not promote or operate within a drug culture.
“That is a point I make in the book a number of times, is that none of these bands had a drug culture and the scene didn’t have a drug culture. There were individuals that had their own sense of self and their own sense of adventure. And I had to explain this many times to journalists, interviewers, and I made sure it was present in the book… I explained that the bands didn’t have a drug culture.”
A Screaming Life: Kim Thayil In Conversation with Krist Novoselic
The perception became difficult to challenge
Thayil said the perception became increasingly difficult to challenge as more prominent figures from the scene died.
“As I would tell people, you drive as fast as you want to, you climb a mountain if you want to climb it, and people make choices to make themselves feel good and to enjoy their lives, and a lot of them, a lot of the choices they make are risky, and that’s part of being alive.”
His comments arrive as Soundgarden continues to work on previously unreleased recordings made with Chris Cornell before his passing in 2017. Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd are working with producer Terry Date on the material.
Thayil’s memoir was released in June through William Morrow, offering his account of Soundgarden and the wider world surrounding the band.
Soundgarden were also inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2025. Thayil, Cameron, Cornell and Shepherd were joined in the induction by original bassist Hiro Yamamoto.
The band’s surviving members later performed at the ceremony with Taylor Momsen and Brandi Carlile handling vocal duties, alongside appearances from Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready and Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell.
For Thayil, however, correcting the record about Seattle’s past remains just as important as documenting it.
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