It’s been nine years since Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell died. Since then, the band has held onto an album’s worth of material that they plan to release. However, guitarist Kim Thayil has revealed that the process of putting the album together has been an “emotionally difficult and challenging” experience.
Speaking to Paul Ghiglieri and Jason Kerepesi on the State of Love & Trust podcast, Thayil opened up about the process of putting the final record together. After noting that their “goal is gold,” Thayil added, “It’s difficult because it’s atypical in the way we’re pursuing this recording. Obviously, we’re missing a creative member.”
“Fortunately, we have his works; we understand that aspect of his vision,” he went on to say, as transcribed by Blabbermouth. “And we have to understand what our vision is from our creative viewpoint because a lot of these songs were written with us or by us — Chris or Matt [Cameron] or Ben [Shepherd] or myself.”
Chris Cornell died on May 18, 2017, after a Soundgarden concert in Detroit
“So we have to explore that kind of down one person,” Thayil explained. “But also, the whole process, it’s not as obviously linear. There isn’t a start point and then a budgeted schedule, and an ending point. There’s kind of a series of sideways moves and retroactive visitations.”
When it comes to the tangible qualities of building the albums, Thayil shared some insight into their collective approach. “It’s, like, ‘Oh, we have to go back and fill this in,’ because the track we have is just a demoed part and I gotta redo that guitar part,’” he said. “So that’s unusual and very different.”
Thayil continued, “And, again, the budgeting of the time and the money is also different. It’s not, like, ‘Here, we’re gonna go in in March, and we’ll finish by May, and hopefully by May we’ll be doing the background vocals and guitar solos. And then we send it off to mixing.’ We’re kind of fitting it in with the schedules of the individuals, the producers, engineers, Matt, Ben, and myself.”
Cornell’s final solo album, ‘No One Sings Like You Anymore, Vol. 1’, was released posthumously in 2020
Finally, Thayil confessed that working on an album with his late bandmate’s vocals is very existentially complicated. “It’s emotionally difficult and challenging because we tended to write songs that we liked, songs that we enjoyed, songs that moved us. If it didn’t do anything for us, we probably weren’t gonna pursue it. So it is moving us emotionally, intellectually, psychologically.
“So you’re constantly re-exploring that within this context,” Thayil said. “And that’s different. That’s a trip. So the fact that we love it, that we enjoy it, we enjoy the goal, we enjoy where we want to be, where we want this project to be, that makes it pleasant and a labor of love. The process is different and at times difficult. But the goal and the endgame of the project is the best that we can have.”
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