Soundgarden’s lead guitarist Kim Thayil has announced that the band will be planning on releasing some previously unreleased material, including some early demos from the Sup Pop era. This comes soon after the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination, which was announced earlier this week.
Thayil was an early friend of Sub-Pop’s founder Bruce Pavitt, and eventually recorded two early demos with the label entitled Fopp and Screaming Life in the late 1980s. The band eventually released their breakout hit Ultramega OK on SST Records soon after, which was nominated for a Grammy in 1990.
“There’s stuff we recorded back in the early days with Sub Pop, just low-budget eight-track stuff we did with Jack Endino that never came out,” Thayil explained. “In terms of stuff we’re working on, that’s kind of static right now. At some point we hope to work on that and complete the material we were writing.”
The band’s frontman Chris Cornell passed away at the age of 52 over two years ago, in what was ultimately ruled as suicide. Thayil and other members of the band expressed interest in finishing up some of their tracks using Cornell’s vocal demos earlier this year, however obtaining those demos seems to be a difficult task.
“Well, there’s still catalog issues to address,” Thayil told Billboard. “There’s still things we want to release — old tapes, some live performances. So in that regard there is a current concern. But also looking back in terms of the legacy, something like this nomination is important. I never had a chance to look back like that and understand it in this way, in terms of the legacy and the body of work we’ve completed to this point.”
Cornell’s daughter Toni Cornell recently released “Far Away Places,” which was written when she was merely 12. This was one of the final pieces of music recorded before Chris Cornell’s death, and was recorded in his home studio back in 2017, months before his passing.
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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