Kim Thayil of Soundgarden says ‘Superunknown’ recording sessions brought high-profile
Soundgarden’s famed “Superunknown” album turned 20 years old back in March, but the birthday celebration is lasting all year long. Not only will Soundgarden take tracks from “Superunknown” on the road this summer on a co-headlining tour with Nine Inch Nails, but the guys also just reissued the album in a variety of packages.
Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil remembers the recording sessions for “Superunknown” well. As it turns out, it wasn’t uncommon for other, now-legendary grunge musicians to stop by the studio during the album’s creative process.
“I remember Josh Homme coming by and I remember Billy Corgan coming by,” Thayil recalled in a new Spin feature. “Pearl Jam were hanging out. I remember Josh Homme really wanting to play ping-pong after Adam Kasper and I had just eaten a lot of Indian food. So we were all kind of sluggish and bloated and he was like, ‘Man, let’s play ping-pong!’ and I was like, ‘If I play ping-pong, it needs to be against someone equally sluggish and bloated.’ I remember that conversation like, ‘Come on you guys, let’s play!’ and I was like, ‘Dude, I can’t move.’”
According to Seattle-based record producer Adam Kasper, members of Nirvana and the Breeders would stop by the studio, too.
For Chris Cornell, “Superunknown” was anything but the beginning of Soundgarden’s story. “We started as a band in 1984,” the singer told Spin, “so I look at ‘Superunknown’ as being kind of a later period, the moment when we were actually kind of reinventing who we were and pushing the boundaries of what we did, broadening our creative approach to a record.”
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